PDX happenings: mother's day shopping event

Head down to North Williams on Friday May 10th for a street-wide Mothers Day event hosted by Queen Bee, Ink & Peat, Lark Press, Yoga Shala, myoptic and Lodekka! 

From 5-8pm, stores will be hosting with festive drinks, snacks, and offering 20% off everything in their shops!

At Queen Bee, they'll also be selling raffle tickets to benefit the local Children's Book Bank. Bring in new and used children's books and for every book donated, you'll be entered to win some sweet prizes.  

We love hanging out on North Williams, there is great food, coffee, and unique shops all within a few blocks radius. I've gone into Queen Bee and admired their beautiful bags, covet everything at Ink & Peat, wish I lived close enough to make regular classes at Yoga Shala and long for some super stylish hipster glasses at myoptic. Lark Press has gorgeous paper and cards, last time we were there we bought a set of Portland Bridges cards to hang as artwork. Lodekka is a super awesome dress shop IN a double decker bus.  Definitely worth checking out!

the sunshine project: bringing light into delivery rooms

It's time for our Mother's Day project!

I'm so blessed to call Adriel a friend (and I get to meet her next month!) and her generous heart for the women and children in Papua New Guinea has literally changed my life - it was through her Project Baby Bilum initiative that I started Umi Sling, and the year before that, worked with her Bloggers for Birth Kits drive. Adriel is on it and she's kind, wise, and innovative in coming up with ways to improve the lives of women everywhere, whether it's an encouraging word or a solar suitcase - which is this year's Mother's Day project!

This month, she brought all the projects and initiatives under one umbrella to create the Love A Mama community, where we can come together and support women and children who have so little and don't need a hand out, but a hand up and the opportunity to give birth in a more sanitary environment or carry their children while collecting the food for their families.

Introducing the Sunshine Project

During a research trip to Africa, Dr. Laura Stachel discovered that women were often giving birth in clinics by candlelight, lantern, or the dim glow of a cell phone because electricity was unreliable and inconsistent. While observing a c-section, the power cut out and she assisted by holding a flashlight for them as they finished the procedure. Can you imagine?

From the We Care Solar site:

"She witnessed deplorable conditions in state facilities including sporadic electricity that impaired maternity and surgical care. Without a reliable source of electricity, nighttime deliveries were attended in near darkness, cesarean sections were cancelled or conducted by flashlight, and critically ill patients waited hours or days for life-saving procedures.  The outcomes were often tragic."

After returning to the states, Stachel and her husband developed the Solar Suitcase - a suitcase outfitted with solar-powered light and power, plus a fetal doppler, that could be given to clinics and aid posts so they can care for patients in all situations. Dr. Stachel's story was even shared in a CNN Heroes feature!

And we're going to send one to Papua New Guinea, with your help.

From the Sunshine Project post:

This year the Love A Mama Community (that’s you guys!) is fundraising to obtain one solar suitcase to trial in the Gulf and Western Provinces of PNG. We need to raise approximately $2000 to pay for the suitcase as well as the international shipping. If it’s something that works well within the areas our ship reaches, then we’ll look at getting more to help outfit as many clinics and aid posts as we can. But for now, we start with one:

One suitcase that can bring light to many.

One simple innovation that can help sustain life for countless women and children.

Learn more about the Sunshine Project and get all the info for donating by visiting Adriel's web site and the Love A Mama community.

handling toddler meltdowns {peaceful parent, happy kids series}

Thanks for all your encouraging comments after my last mama meltdown post. You all gave me some great tips and also the reassurance that this parenthood thing is pretty hard but that we're not in it alone - how lucky I am! It's hard to break life-long habits and sometimes I feel overwhelmed by my commitment to raising my girls without physical discipline, because it's just what most people around here DO. Fortunately for me, I've found a great community of moms teaching me how to do it a different way. So thank you and keep coming back and lending your voice to this series! 

After that post I felt ready to dive back into Dr. Laura Markham's book, 

Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids

and continue on with the series. This book is so packed with innovative information, I'm pretty sure this will be a loooong series.

This week's topic is something that I wish I'd read about 2 weeks ago: keeping MY cool during meltdowns. Yes, it's important to learn how to help my kids work through their tantrums and big feelings, but they can only do that when I'm calm and in control. They can sense my crazy and I've experienced firsthand that it makes things worse.

Let's be real: young kids - toddlers, especially - are sometimes just plain crazy. Sometimes I look down at them on the floor crying and just go "um...what?" 

But Dr. Laura explains that children get upset often because of their cognitive immaturity, and that they are still developing the neural pathways to calm themselves. Basically, it's their brain's fault! This knowledge certainly allows me to feel more empathy for my kids and to realize that really, it's not personal.

Even though it's plain biology, it still doesn't make it any easier on me as their mama. We generally respond in three ways: Fight, Flight, or Freeze. We want to get away (flight), experience a sudden rage and the desire to make them shut up (fight), or we just go numb (freeze). Or like me, you experience all three in a ten second period.

This is totally natural - our bodies are programmed to respond this way, because we perceive our child's outburst as a threat. But what if we could learn how to not respond this way? Sign me up.

Dr. Laura gives some tips for managing our reactions to our kids' upsets, and after reading these tips and really working intentionally on this for the last week, I can say that it has definitely helped me cope, and in turn, either I am perceiving less tantrums (possible) or they really aren't melting down as much (possible?). Below I've listed four of my favorite tips; there are lots more in the book but these especially resonated with me.

Tips for Keeping Your Cool During Meltdowns 

Take deep breaths and...

Acknowledge your own feelings and remind yourself that this isn't an emergency. 

Say hi to your panic and then tell it that you can handle this. My new favorite catchphrase is "feelings are not an emergency, feelings are not an emergency," and it actually helps! Which leads me then to...

Remind yourself that expressing feelings is a GOOD thing. 

So the hard part is that my kids are going to feel big, deep feelings no matter what I do, and according to Dr. Laura, the only question is whether I will make it OK for them to feel or teach them that their  big feelings are "dangerous." If isn't expressed, it gets stuffed! From there, I can begin to teach them how to regulate their own emotions.  

Tolerate the emotion without taking action. 

I don't need to act on my anger or panic, and when I keep it under control, I'm modeling to them the same thing. But this is a hard one for me, especially when other people are present because I'm a pleaser. It's so easy to feel judgment - and there might actually be some judgment happening - but what's more important, keeping up appearances or nurturing my child? 

As long as she is not hurting herself or someone else, or interrupting something important, there is no emergency. If need be, I can take her into a different room/area and sit with her until she calms down. Again, the teaching moments come after the emotional episode and when their brains are calm enough to be reasoned with...so all she needs during an emotional outpouring is my presence, either right next to her or close by.  

Keep it simple: choose love.  

Our kids need to know that they are loveable despite their behavior. Dr. Markham emphasizes the need for parents to witness their kids' displays of emotions and not to try and fix it in that moment. "Don't force her to express herself in words; she doesn't have access to her rational brain when she's so upset. Of course, you want to teach - but that needs to wait. Your child can't learn until she's calm." Contrary to what I always believed, the teaching moment comes after the emotional episode. Right after a big tantrum, they need an even bigger hug.

And don't forget to breathe!

How do you keep your cool during your kids' meltdowns? 

Check out Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting for more helpful tips for keeping your cool. 

So now I know how to walk myself through my own emotions during my child's meltdowns, but how do I help them walk through their own emotions without making the problem worse and help them learn to regulate themselves? Up next!