Carfree on the Internet

This week I've been noticing just how much stuff comes with kids. We picked up a lot from friends used, but I still feel like the stream of stuff pouring into our house is wide and deep. We have gifts for H's birthday, an avalanche of parts for the many electric breast pumps in our home, and new tools from some home renovation projects taken on by Dorea's dad. We're trying to counterbalance the influx by clearing out our basement, including paring down our vast collection of hand-me-down clothes to what will actually be worn.

I've been surfing around the carfree internet today and found a few items of interest:

• Kristen Dirksen puts together a video of her current walkable neighborhood and her memories of carfree and suburban living.
• And now for the bad news: a boy has his bike confiscated for riding it to school. Yes, the school has a no-biking policy. The boy was trying to participate in Bike-To-Work day. (Thanks to Strollerderby for the original link.)
• I submitted a previous post from CFWK to the Carnival of Pecuniary Delights, so hop over and check out all of the posts on the carnival where you can find some fugal and financial planning tips.
  

First Bus Trip and Parent Group Round-up

Baby R. and I went on our first bus trip on Friday. I tied him to my chest in our stretchy wrap (really just 4 1/2 yards of Jersey Knit fabric, tied like this), grabbed the diaper bag, took a moment to revel in not needing to pack any bottles since I'm nursing this kid, and headed out to catch the 77. We made our way north to the Arlington New Moms group hosted by Boston Jewish Family & Children's Services and showed up right on time (the group runs from 10-11:30 at the Calvary United Methodist Church at 300 Mass Ave). New parent groups were a great resource to us when H was a wee babe, and I have been really looking forward to attending them again with R. Here's a round up of some more local groups in the Cambridge/Somerville MA area:

• JF & CS hosts lots of New Moms groups in the Boston area (open to all new moms, not just Jewish moms, unfortunately not open to dads). The Somerville group (Thursdays, 11-12:30, at 42 Prescott St) is accessible via the 87, 88 or the 90, a 1.3 mile walk from Porter, or a 1.5 mile walk from Davis (though I'm not yet up to that much post-partum walking quite yet, ask me again in a couple weeks). The Cambridge group (Wednesdays, 10-11:30, at 132-134 Magazine) is a .6 mile walk south of Central Square.

• The Cambridge Birth Center hosts three groups at 8 Camelia Ave, right across from Cambridge Hospital and right next door to the Birth Center. There are nursing support groups on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10-12, both with lactation consultants, and a parents group (theoretically open to both moms and dads, though I only once saw a dad there when we attended with H) on Wednesdays from 10-12. These are accessible via the 83, 91, 69, or a 15 minute walk from Harvard.
  

• For both Moms and Dads, StellaBella toy store in Inman (1360 Cambridge St) hosts a new parents coffee hour, complete with tasty coffee & snacks from 1369 on Fridays at 10:30 (accessible via the 83, 91, 69 or a 15-20 minute walk from Harvard or Central)

• The Mount Auburn Midwives host a group for parents (they don't specify moms only) of non-crawling infants at the Vineyard Church in North Cambridge on Mondays from 2-3:30. (15 Notre Dame St, accessible via the 83, short walk from the 77, 15 minute walk from Davis or 10 minute walk from Alewife)

• The Cambridge Center for Families hosts a group for parents (any type!) and caregivers of babies up to 15 months on Mondays 12:30-2:30. This group is open to Cambridge residents only, and is held at the Peabody School at 70 Rindge Ave (accessible via the 83, short walk from the 77, 15 minute walk from Davis or 10 minute walk from Alewife). The entrance to the Center is at the rear of the school, and they host lots of events for families with kids six and under. Here is a pdf of the May/June schedule and newsletter, or look here for links (on the lower left) to future calendars.
  

Please feel free to leave additional info about similar groups in comments if you know of something I've missed, and do say "Hi" if you see me, Angela or baby R. at one of the groups!

Update: Our (not so) Carfree Birth

Rowdy Kittens wrote recently in the Small Living Journal that one way for people to become more involved in their communities is to go carfree. We couldn't agree more, and we've noticed this in particular around the birth of our baby boy.

Because of complications, Dorea had to be induced at 38 weeks, and we had been hoping to take the bus to the hospital for the induction. We were all set with that plan until we left the house with our luggage in tow and realized that it was raining. After a few minutes, the rain slacked off a bit and we were set to go out in the drizzle. Just then, our neighbor stepped out onto her porch.

"How are you getting to the hospital?"

"We're going to take the bus," Dorea said.

"Do you want a ride?"

Dorea and I exchanged a meaningful look and then responded with a somewhat sheepish, "Yes."

Our neighbor ran back into her house, hollering to her husband that we needed a ride now, and then her daughter joined us for a very non-exciting ride to the hospital (it had even stopped raining).

Less than 24 hours later and we were headed back home, still without a baby. We'd had a round of induction attempts and wanted to get a good night's sleep before starting another. This time our wonderful doula drove us home. As we were getting out of the car, our neighbor's son spotted us and shouted out, "Dorea and Angela are back with the baby." Kids and grownups came pouring out of houses and alleyways to have a look, and we had to tell everyone it was a false alarm -- no baby yet.

The next morning a friend who lives a few blocks away drove us to the hospital for a second round. A few eventful days later we were ready to come home, this time with our beautiful new baby boy. Dorea was under doctor's orders to rest for a couple weeks and a bus was out of the question. We called yet another friend who came to the hospital and hauled us, all of our junk, and our new baby, back home.

So, how did we do on our carfree birth? It wasn't particularly car free, but we are grateful to be connected to our friends and neighbors and to be able to depend on them when we need help. And that's really what being carfree means to us.

He's here!

Our son arrived very late on Wed night (May 27th). He's a healthy 7 lbs 4 oz with a full head of reddish blond hair. We have lots of recovering to do around here (let's just say it will be quite a while until I'm back on that bike), so details and pictures may be slow to appear, but know we are all doing well.

Container Gardening, My New Hobby

I've wanted a good hobby for a long time. Dorea has her knitting, but the only hobby I've been able to come up with is reading books. I enjoy it, but it's pretty lame as hobbies go.

A few months ago, I decided I wanted to take a stab at growing some vegetables. We have no ground for a garden, so we have to grow in containers. Dorea took charge of making self-watering containers with instructions from instructables.com. She used some rubbermaids and other material we had around the house to make them and some tools borrowed from a neighbor.

Here is one of the finished containers:

The containers turned out great, and the whole family got involved in planting seeds, and eventually planting seedlings in the containers. The plants, however, seem to have become my own personal babies. Sometimes I feel the need to check on them multiple times in one hour. In addition to the tomato, zucchini, and basil plants we have outside, we also have some lettuce and other seedlings growing on our sunny porch. And we stuck some green onions into some soil in order to grow those as well.

Now our little seedlings have grown into great big plants and we couldn't be more proud!

So as we wait for a real baby to arrive (any day now), at least I have a hobby. I just hope that I remember to keep watering everything after our new addition throws the house into chaos!

Retail Therapy

I've learned something about myself in the past couple of weeks -- I'm not immune to retail therapy. Since Dorea got diagnosed with a semi-rare pregnancy complication, we've been bleeding money.

Some of the spending is legit. She's been having acupuncture appointments and we've spent money on medications of various sorts. But looking at my purchases, it seems that I think the whole problem will go away if I just spend enough money at Cambridge Naturals on natural products of questionable efficacy. And earlier today I accidentally bought two metal water bottles and a baby doll. I'm a far cry from the woman who wrote about buying everything used.

Maybe I should  be happy with this development. I was starting to worry that by saving my money and spending as little as possible, I was hurting the economy. There's no danger of that now, and I expect a call to come through any day from the president or at least the chair of the Fed thanking me for my patriotism.

I have learned two important things through this.

• Being anxious, tired, desperate, and fearful leaves you vulnerable to purchasing things you don't really need. Like all of the essential oils I bought last week because they might be helpful during labor.
  
• I hate spending money on things, but I actually really love spending money on people. We're having not one but two birth attendants at the hospital, and I'm happy to give both of them my money. In the past few weeks Dorea has seen a number of holistic/natural practitioners and I'm happy to spend money on them as well. I feel really happy knowing that these transactions are going to help us have the best birthing experience possible, and to know that I am helping to directly sustain alternative practitioners.
  

Making some room

As we've blogged about before, we have a small condo and we are soon to be a family of four. With the baby coming in just a couple of weeks, we realized a few days ago that we don't actually feel like we have enough room for the baby, either time-wise or space-wise, despite our protests otherwise.

So we finally got around to converting H's Ikea dresser back into a changing table. We cleaned out H's closet and made room for baby things. We donated all of the junk we have been collecting for a garage sale (finally admitting that the garage sale wasn't going to happen). With that done we were actually able to get to the crib out and set it up beside our bed.

With our physical space a little more freed up, we are starting to believe we have the mental space for a baby as well. Our goal is to be ready to welcome the baby next weekend!