Author: Not a Perfect Earth Mom

Usually my least favorite month, this year March felt merciful. Snow and ice melted, family visited, the dog almost made it a year without an injury.

Technically it was the shortest month of the year but in reality, it felt like the longest.

Two months down, ten to go. Our summary of month 2 in the 1,000 hours outside challenge.

Now that our baby is (mostly) sleeping through the night, my husband Ryan and I decided it was time for another child.

This child is 16ft wide, 24 ft long and lives in our front yard. It is our ice rink.

I’ve been wanting this child for a while. In fact, a couple years ago, I dropped Ryan a hint by sending him an article subtly called “Why Your Family Needs an Ice Rink.”

Being a supportive spouse, he read the article (apparently more thoroughly than I had) and said to me: “Annalise, this isn’t very convincing. The author here gets a horrible sinus infection from going out at 2am to add water to the rink.”

Ryan’s not wanting a sinus infection, combined with me expecting our actual children (and therefore unable to skate) several of the last winters, has led us to not build a rink. Until now.

Reasons to not build an ice rink this year:

• pregnant
• busy doing indoor activities with people
• taking a tropical vacation
• fear of sinus infection
  
  Clearly there weren’t enough reasons to not build a rink this year.

So on January 1, we celebrated the New Year the way normal people do – by dragging our dog’s kiddie pool (that’s a subject for its own blog post I suppose) to the front yard and filling it with water so we could measure the yard’s slope.

Ryan sketched out some rough calculations, with the assistance of our children.

Slope determined, it was time to find a building plan and gather materials. The easiest option was a premade kit costing roughly $1,800. Since we weren’t entirely confident of the rink’s feasibility (or of our children’s ability to get to college on a skating scholarship) we decided to go a cheaper route and build one out of wood.

In addition to wood, we also procured 50lbs of steel stakes, boring miscellaneous hardware and a enough white plastic liner to build 4 rinks (because white liner, which is helpful to reflect the sun, was only available in this astronomically large amount).

Supplies gathered, it was time to build before the snow storm and deep freeze that were headed our way in about 24 hours.

The next morning we determined the exact location to start building. And as Ryan drove in the first spike, our conversation went like this:

Annalise: “It’s just like the railroad! Let me get a picture.”

Ryan: “That was the last spike.”

Now at this point you might be thinking “wait, so the ice rink was Annalise’s idea but up until now she has done nothing to bring it to fruition?” This would seem correct.

While measuring, calculating and building in general are not things I am good at, I am very talented at talking with friends. A “soft skill” if you will. And while my grade 6 teacher thought I needed “to learn that socializing is for recess” (per a report card I’ll never forget), I would argue that in this situation my chattiness served us well.

I mentioned our ice rink plans to a friend of ours a few days before we planned to build. A retired carpenter, he volunteered to help. In addition to skills and knowledge, he also brought a trunk full of tools.

A few hours later, the frame was ready to be filled with water. Now all that was needed was a blow torch to thaw our outdoor faucet. Thankfully our friend had one of those as well.

Faucet thawed, we attached the garden hose and watched the sun set over our newest family addition. We were so proud of our little one.

Over the next few days we excitedly checked on the rink and took a few cautious turns trying out the ice. And just when we thought it was about ready to use, it snowed and snowed and snowed and our newly formed ice turned into icebergs.

We were out of the honeymoon phase with our 4th child. Like a teething baby, the ice rink needed a bit of extra TLC and Ryan and I spent most of the evenings the following week rebuilding the ice, freezing a few inches of water at a time.

And, just as you learn a routine for soothing your teething child, we became pretty proficient at taking care of the rink using the following 10 step process:

1. Bundle up in snow pants, coat, boots, hat, gloves, scarf.
2. Find hair dryer.
3. Run extension cord from the garage to the front outdoor faucet.
4. Plug in hair dryer and thaw faucet for a minute or two.
5. Haul garbage can full of garden hose out of the house (where it’s being stored so as to not freeze).
6. Attach hose using wrench.
7. Flood rink for approximately 10 minutes, being sure to move hose around sufficiently so as not to create melted area in ice from water pressure (those prove very hard to fix).
8. Turn off water.
9. Attempt to wrangle quickly stiffening hose back into empty garbage can. Feel like alligator wrestler.
10. Haul hose, hair dryer, extension cord and tired self back into house.
    

I was telling my neighbor about our ice rink TLC antics and she confided to me: “You know, a few times I’ve seen some dark shadows in your front yard as I’ve been heading upstairs to bed and I’ve had to go check and make sure that it is actually you guys out there.”

The TLC combined with a long cold stretch finally paid off and all of us have enjoyed some great skating as a family and with friends.

Sometimes the kids just walk on the ice. Sometimes they crawl on the ice. Sometimes they skate for 3 minutes and then want their boots back on. And sometimes they just eat the ice.

One night, after taking care of the rink, Ryan and I came back inside and had the following conversation:

Ryan: “This ice rink is a pain in the ass but it’s also the best thing ever.”

Me: “So it’s kinda like having kids.”

In the end, it turned out Ryan didn’t need to worry about getting a sinus infection. It was me who got the sinus infection, which I suppose is only appropriate as it is moms who bear the brunt physically with children.

Would I do it again?

Sometimes it’s too soon to ask a mom if she is thinking of having another child.

But last week I caught our oldest child, who a month ago could barely skate herself, teaching her younger sister how to skate. The lesson lasted about 10 seconds before they both just laid down on the ice. But to answer your question, ya, I think so.

And now it’s time to review the highlights and low lights of our first month in the 1,000 hours outside challenge.

One of the top reasons the world would be a better place if run by women is this: the sport of dressing children in snow gear would finally be included in the Olympics. It would be called Bundlesweating.

Stuffing, zipping and tying my 3 offspring into their snowsuits, boots, hats, gloves and scarves again and again over the last few days, this sport, and the Herculean energy it requires, has been top of mind.

Let me tell you about one of my recent Olympic training workout.

One afternoon, thinking it was only 4pm, I told the kids that we were going to go for a walk. Overhearing me, my wise husband Ryan checked his phone and said “the sun will be setting in 21 minutes.” I logically assumed this pocket computer didn’t know what it was talking about.

I was wrong.

Apparently my internal sundial clock was about 45 minutes behind (admittedly not the first time this has happened).

I had been slacking on parenting duties that afternoon, so I got the kids ready while Ryan wrapped up a few things he was working on.

Getting my oldest child out the door is pretty easy. It’s my warm up. She’s almost 6 and, aside from needing a bit of mitten help, can do most of the work herself (assuming it’s something she wants to do, of course). As she stepped out the front door, I felt proud. Kind of like the first minute or so of your workout.

These feelings were short lived.

Because 3 year olds and small drunk people have a lot in common, part two of the workout is more intense. In case you’re wondering what it’s like to dress a Small Drunk Person, it’s like this:

You: ask Small Drunk Person where their hat is

Small Drunk Person: climbs the side of the couch

You: pull Small Drunk person off the couch and sit together on the floor

Small Drunk Person: giggles, knocks you over and speaks made up language

You: get yourself back up, find Small Drunk Person’s boots and attempt to stuff the feet into the corresponding boots.

Small Drunk Person: lifts opposite foot of the one you’re trying to put into boot

Harnessing my remaining energy, I move onto exercise 3: the baby snowsuit. While this requires less cardio, it does require more speed and agility.

First, torture put the baby’s arms through the snowsuit sleeves. Once the baby is zipped up, wrestle the slippery snowsuited baby into the carrier you’re wearing under your coat. Once baby is somewhat secure, dance around as you try to buckle the clasp that is just out of reach on your back.

Voila, your “free” workout.

As I stepped out the front door, sweaty and exhausted, I wished for a moment I lived in Florida. Then I remembered the alligators.

We finally started our walk. In the dark.

The first few blocks of the walk were so pleasant, looking at the Christmas lights still up around the neighborhood. Then my oldest two started arguing about our destination (the youngest probably would have started arguing, too, except she doesn’t have words yet).

We silenced told the kids we were sticking with the plan of walking to the large boulders the kids love to climb on the edge of a nearby nature park.

After a few minutes of boulder jumping we were suddenly joined by a herd of 7 deer.

I know deer are not an endangered species and their prevalance in our neighborhood is the reason why our dog is on year-round tick medicine. But there was something special (for lack of a better word) about unexpectedly sharing this time and space in the snowy darkness. Our group of jumping kids and tired parents and this group of shy but curious does and fawns.

It felt like being acknowledged for trying. The work and annoyance of getting everyone out the door, paid off.

I don’t know if I’ll take gold in Bundlesweating but apparently I can draw a crowd.

We all remember our big firsts.

First car, first kiss, first romantic comedy.

My Best Friend’s Wedding was the first romantic comedy I ever watched. I was in 7th grade and it didn’t take long before I knew the movie line by line. One of my favorite lines, which I still say to my husband some 25 years later, is something Julia Roberts, our protagonist, screams into the phone while she drives a stolen bakery truck away from a wedding (a key plot line in any rom-com):

“This is what comes of telling the truth”

My Best Friend’s Wedding

Today I found myself living this line. Except instead of professing my love to my long time best friend on the day he was marrying someone else and now chasing him in a hijacked commercial vehicle, it went a little more like this:

“This is what comes of attempting 1,000 hours outside”

My brain

Let’s rewind.

A few days before Christmas, my neighbor came to the door with a set of pajamas. She had received this cute set of Christmas PJs in the wrong size and wanted to know if I would like them. The answer to this questions is always, yes.

The pajamas are so comfortable I wear them . . . frequently.

Fast forward to today. Still in my pajamas (they have been washed once, at least).

After spending approximately 423, 987 minutes telling my children to go to the bathroom before bundling up, we finally made it out the front door only 3.5 hours after we got up, a new record.

In my distorted view of what is actually feasible, I had planned to take the big girls sledding while the baby took her morning nap. As that plan had not materialized I now had all 3 of them with me in the front yard, a yard we hadn’t left in about 4 days.

So I decided to just take them all sledding. We’ll seize the day.

The park was fairly empty. I unloaded the sleds and thought: “oh, interesting – a skunk must have just sprayed.” Then I saw a car running idly and sniffed again. Not a skunk. Pot.

I wasn’t going to take my kids all the way across the park to the big sledding hill but I also wanted to get away from the smell in the parking lot. I found what seemed like a good compromise. The hill was modest. I set the baby down in the snow and put “the bigs” on the sled.

I was a little surprised to see how far the sled went the first time I sent it down the hill. I had underestimated the layer of ice beneath the snow.

The second time they went down the hill, I made sure the sled was pointed straight at a wide opening with no trees. Somehow the sled managed to veer to the left, and I’m fairly sure I terrified the elderly man walking by with his dog.

Time to find a new spot in the park.

By this point the baby was starting to get a bit fussy and I couldn’t blame her. She had been patiently sitting/laying in the snow during all of this. No worries, I could nurse her. A snowy park isn’t the most ideal spot but it would have to do. Just a minute, though. Let me get the bigs set up at a better place.

We found a more gentle hill and decided to let the 3 year old have her first solo run. Ever.

Off went the three year old, down the hill. I was so proud. My offspring, spreading her wings!

Until the sled kept going and I realized it wasn’t the best decision of my life to nurse the baby while my 3 year old tried sledding independently for the first time.

The sled kept going. My 5 year old took off after it.

I had put my child in harm’s way and now I was watching it all unfold while sitting in the snow, nursing my 7 month old in my Christmas pajama glory. This is what comes of attempting 1,000 hours outside.

After forever 5.7 seconds, the sled did stop. No one was hurt, but the combination of adrenaline and nursing hormones had me feeling a high stronger than the hotboxers in the parking lot.

I don’t know if this happens to all mothers who attempt to get their children outside for 1,000 hours a year. Maybe it’s some sort of initiation. Or maybe it’s just my luck.

I’m still not sure how such a small hill made for such a long run. But I’m also still not sure how Julia Roberts didn’t know she was in love with her best friend.

When my husband Ryan and I were newly weds, we went on outdoor adventures a lot.

Then we got a cat, a second cat, bought a house, got a dog, had three babies and voila, our grand adventures became a little less. . . grand.

One of our daughters is attending a nature based preschool in our neighborhood this year. We’d like to say we chose the school because of its educational theory but, honestly, not needing to buckle a car seat to get her there was the bigger draw.

During our first parent- teacher conference, I told the teacher that we were working on the “1,000 Books Before Kindergarten” challenge. I explained I had finished the challenge with one of our children and wanted to do the same for our other kids.

I think I was secretly hoping the teacher would be impressed with my commitment to literacy. Instead, she asked me if I had heard of the “1,000 Hours Outside” challenge.

I had heard of this challenge but it had always seemed like a lot of work and therefore a bit stressful. At least reading 1,000 kids books doesn’t take 1,000 hours.

Even though we still like to spend time outside, it now requires explanations like: “It’s cold, you have to wear a coat!” Questions like: “Where are your shoes?” And statements like: “We’re not taking the blocks with on our walk.”

I could easily spend 1,000 hours a year just getting ready to go outside.

While I trusted the advice of this teacher and wanted to do what was best for my children, I also didn’t want to take on too much (because I never do that).

But as the idea went round in my head and I mulled over its feasibility, three things stuck out:

• I thought about the fact that we’re still in this pandemic and being outside is one of the only places where our kids can live fairly normal lives.
  
  
• I thought about all the outdoor places I love where we live and how infrequently I actually take advantage of them.
  
  
• I thought about how being outside always puts me in a good better mood (after all,”if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”).
  
  And then, I’m not going to lie, I thought about how I’ve been wanting to blog again but not sure where to start. Maybe I could write about our adventures in attempting to reach 1,000 hours outside in a calendar year.

So there you have it. If there was ever a year to do it, 2022 is probably the one.

Here’s to outdoor adventures (and hopefully not exhausting ourselves the first month)!

My parents both immigrated to Canada from The Netherlands as young children.

My mom was 9 months old and traveled with her parents (men in one section, women and children in the other) for 10 days on an old WW2 troop boat. My grandmother was sea sick the whole time.

My dad was 7 and flew with his parents and 3 younger brothers. His mother experienced a miscarriage a few weeks before their flight.

Both families left not knowing if they would ever see the relatives they were leaving behind again.

My grandparents spent their teenage years living through German occupation of the Netherlands. Growing up, I heard stories about their experiences regularly.

A Saturday evening with my mom’s parents always brought the comfortingly predictable rounds of snacks and tales of war stories, especially from my mom’s dad, who was taken from his family in the Netherlands to work as a “guest” laborer in what later would become East Germany.

I can picture him with a handful of nuts, half serious and half with a chuckle, telling us how he and other “guests” engaged in deliberate sabotage by continuing to make the airplane parts as the Nazis had ordered them to, even though they knew they were the wrong measurements. I later learned their bravery could have gotten them sent to a concentration camp.

I got used to hearing about my dad’s father who spent 3 years in hiding to avoid being taken to work in Germany, like my mom’s father had been.

One night he lay hiding in a field from a squad of German soldiers who were searching the area for men who hadn’t reported for work, to either shoot them or send them to concentration camps. He was on one side of a haystack when he heard someone else on the other side. He spent the night lying there, fearing it was a soldier. On the other side of the haystack was another Dutch man who thought my grandfather was a soldier.

I wish I could tell the story as well as my grandfather did but basically what happened is that both men were scared “shitless” that the other man was the enemy until the morning when at last one of them crawled out. I can still picture my grandfather stroking his white beard and telling this story, a half smoked cigarette in his shirt pocket (lest you be wasteful and smoke a whole cigarette at once).

During this pandemic, when we’ve all been asked to make sacrifices, I’ve been reflecting on ones my grandparents made when they were younger than I am now.

My husband and I have taken pandemic precautions pretty seriously and think they are worthwhile. But every now and then I get annoyed with the inconveniences the pandemic has on my everyday life. Like the new dining room table I want from IKEA is suddenly not available for shipping.

Furniture shopping aside, the pandemic has been hard. As an entirely extroverted individual, it’s been just a tad challenging to not socialize normally. I imagine I’m not alone.

It’s not normal to avoid seeing friends and family (that you like). To stay 6 feet apart. To wear a mask. To only hug the people in your house. To hear your two year old say “maybe when Coronavirus is over we can do …..”

The reason we have to keep doing this is for the sake of others. For the sake of this country and for the sake of the world. This is not about us and our preferences or “rights.” It is a sacrifice. It’s hard but it is important.

My grandparents were/are not perfect people. They had tempers. Sometimes they nagged. They could, at times, be too proud. No one, regardless of what generation they were born into, has ever been perfect.

Yet every now and then I’m struck by their character and what they gave up, thinking back to those stories I used to take for granted.

I remember my mom’s mother telling me about washing the neighbors’ laundry by hand at age 13. It was so cold, she said, that her knuckles started bleeding. Her payment was a bucket of milk to bring home to her family.

And here I am, frustrated about my IKEA order.

May God sincerely give all of us, myself included, the grace and perseverance to see this pandemic through. That we, like those before us, might be able to make sacrifices for the benefit our community, country and world.

About 6 months ago, one of the dreaded yet inevitable realities of having young children occurred: we got the stomach bug.

It started with our youngest child, then hit our older child and then, just for fun, I got it, too. My husband somehow escaped it, for which I am bitter happy.

After I was well enough to get off the bathroom floor but not well enough to get out of bed, I productively spent many, many hours binge watching Netflix’s Grace and Frankie.

The show is hilarious, and I could write a lot about it, but as I’ve been thinking a lot lately about race, I remembered one thing that made an impression on me. Frankie, one of the two 70-ish female protagonists, dates a farmer named Jacob. I’m a little apprehensive to say this but I was surprised to find out that Jacob was black.

Their relationship didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was that Jacob, a black man, was a farmer. When I asked myself why, I realized I don’t think I had ever seen a black farmer in the United States. Somehow in my 34 years on earth, this had not occurred.

Off topic, again

I never thought I would be writing blog posts about pandemics and racism but the events taking place this year, particularly in the country where I am raising my children, demand some sort of response. A break from the usual.

So while the last post was about surviving the pandemic, this post, with the unrest over the murder of innocent black citizens still palpable, is about trying to do something to address the reality of racism while living my very white life.

During the days and weeks following George Floyd’s murder, there was a back and forth in our home between wanting to know what was going on and simultaneously wishing we were not watching the news. Racial injustice is nothing new and, honestly, we should have taken a stronger stand against it earlier.

We finally did do something. And choosing to do something has led to doing a few things.

1. Telling my kids (and myself) the truth

Sometimes being a parent forces you into unpleasant conversations (like when your 4 year old asks you, within ear shot of your neighbor, if you have a baby in your tummy and you say loudly: “no, mommy does not have a baby in her tummy. That is just her food”).

But sometimes you have to have unpleasant conversations for a good cause. Like when you tell your kids about racism for the first time.

Shortly after George Floyd was murdered, our oldest daughter asked about the sidewalk chalk writing in front of our neighbor’s home where they had written Black Lives Matter. The first time we walked by it I honestly tried to ignore the writing so she wouldn’t ask questions. I didn’t know what to say to her.

The next time she walked by it, with my husband Ryan, she asked him about it. He explained that sometimes people are treated differently/badly because of the color of their skin. Since she is only 4 and very sensitive, he didn’t get into too many more details.

A few days later we hosted a candlelit vigil with some neighbors to acknowledge George Floyd and systemic racism. A few hours before the vigil started, as we drove home from an errand, I decided I needed to explain what the vigil was about. I reiterated what Ryan had already told her and explained that this is why we would be lighting candles. To acknowledge that this happens. To say it’s not OK and that Jesus doesn’t like it, either.

2. Educating myself

Plenty of resources will tell you that if you want to do something about systemic racism, you should educate yourself.

Since my Netflix binging revealed that I clearly didn’t know anything about black farmers in the United States, I decided to start there, thinking it would be a straightforward mission. I would find a statistic citing the number of black farmers in the country, plop it into my blog and then (quietly) congratulate myself on being enlightened.

Instead, I learned that the history of black farmers in this country is complicated, unjust and often disheartening.

In fact, the main reason it took me so long to finish this blog post is because this education I was trying to give myself was difficult to digest (and scrolling Facebook, in comparison, was so easy). I realized I had been biased with some of the sources I trusted. I found a statistic from the United States Department of Agriculture that seemed trustworthy, only to later read about how this same department had been sued because of a history of discrimination against the very population I was researching.

National Public Radio’s Black Farmers in America, a great article on the subject, states: “the Agriculture Department’s own records show that black farmers’ requests for help generally received scant consideration. Instead, the white southerners in charge gave first priority to helping white farmers, especially those who held large farms and were politically connected.”

In case you’re wondering, yes, it is depressing to discover that there are even more stories of discrimination out there than you realized. But I think it also makes me realize more the breadth of systemic racism. It puts the pieces together, if that makes sense. It was naive of me to think that this topic wouldn’t include discrimination.

3. Trying to diversify

My husband jokes that there is nothing spicier than marrying a Canadian. And while it’s true that most of the time my citizenship does technically make me a minority, my being a minority has nothing to do with how I look. In fact, most of the time when people find out I am Canadian they are surprised. They say I don’t sound Canadian and then proceed to make a joke in what is actually a Minnesotan accent.

Our family is white, our neighborhood is predominantly white, so is our friend group and our church. Our dog is even white.

We have to be very intentional about showing our kids (and reminding ourselves) that our skin color is not the only skin color there is. There are a lot of resources, like this one, that give suggestions on how to do this.

During this time of limbo lockdown, here’s a few things we’ve been doing:

• Reading stories about characters who are not white
  My favorite book right now is Corduroy (not just my favorite kids’ book, my actual favorite overall book. It has pictures, I can usually finish it without my kids interrupting me 5,000 times, need I say more?). I love how the book is about a little girl who wants a teddy bear. That little girl happens to be black. The book doesn’t openly talk about diversity—it just lets the story and pictures do the teaching. While books that address racism and diversity more directly are great too, this one has a special spot in my heart.
  
  
• Not assuming skin color while coloring
  This is a bit embarrassing but Ryan and I have started being intentional about not always choosing “peach” as a skin color when coloring pictures with our kids. Sometimes we ask the kids for their input about what color we should use. And sometimes they suggest blue, showing me that their idea of diversity is more expansive than ours.
  

• Asking myself how
  I’ve been wrestling with the article Mom, Why Don’t You Have Any Black Friends? I know a lot of my friends look like me and honestly, I don’t know how to change this, especially during a time when a pandemic has made it almost impossible to make new friends.

And while I don’t think I should beat myself over the head about this reality, I also shouldn’t dismiss it either. I need to keep asking myself how I could diversify my friend group. Your suggestions are welcome!

When you think you’re not effective

Ryan and I talked about getting a Black Lives Matter sign for our yard for several weeks. Then a neighbor ordered a stash and gave us one. We decided to put it up as a family one night, after dinner. We explained to the kids again why we were doing this. Their reaction? To climb through the bottom part of the sign as if it were a jungle gym.

I am clearly dismantling systemic racism in my front yard.

But I have a feeling that our 4 year old is processing this information.

It’s like the first time I had to tell her about death. Our neighbor had died and since I didn’t know how to tell a then-2-year-old about it, I called the family counseling line at Focus on the Family. They told me to just be honest and frank about the situation and that she might just take in the information and then go on with her day. That’s exactly what she did.

But, in the almost 2 years since then, I can’t count the number of times she has brought it up. She is clearly thinking about and processing the topic. And I think that’s what she’s doing now with the concept of racism.

A start, not an end

Nothing we have done has been earth shattering or, arguably, even very effective yet, so please don’t think this post was written to brag. It’s more the re-telling of our attempts, sometimes failed, of addressing this huge topic.

Ryan has reminded me the reason we are doing these things. These things are not the answer nor does doing them get us some sort of check mark on an anti-racist checklist. They are baby steps to the end goal of racial equality.

Hopefully these actions will remind ourselves and our children that all people are people and everyone is created in the image of God, whether they’re black, brown or white, like us. This universal truth should inform the decisions we make, the way we treat others and the policies and candidates we choose to support.