2011 in Review

Every year I sit down and review the entire set of blog posts written over the past twelve months, admittedly not a lot this year. I make pledges to write more often even though I know I won’t, realistically; I will have spurts where I write every day and I will have spurts where I write nothing for months at a time.

It feels weird to be sitting here thinking about the changes that went by in the last year, and how much has changed in some regards while very little has changed in others. Last year at this time I was sitting 5 feet away from this spot, on the couch, facing east while reminiscing, this time I am facing south, but the room is unchanged aside from a new couch where the old once was.

I’m thinking about what it was like to share in my wife’s third pregnancy; after the second felt so very rushed, the third seemed more real to me in a lot of ways because I was able to slow down and take in all of the sights and sounds as it were. There were some scary moments but we had a beautiful baby boy in February, got ejected from the hospital during the worst snowstorm of the year (it took hours to drive home) and went back that night when I experienced a kidney stone – a horrifyingly painful experience I don’t wish upon anybody. Now Ben is almost a year old, starting to walk, slowly switching to milk and food; and I’m taking advantage of the rare quiet of a nap time to go over my thoughts and appreciate just how fast the year has gone by.

Before the birth, I thought about what might be useful to parents who need a babysitter – the result was Babysitter Buddy – a website that prompts parents for emergency contact numbers and other important details that a babysitter should know; it’s a useful way to make sure nothing gets forgotten so you can go have fun and know that the person that you’ve left your children in the care of will know everything your kids need to get through the night. Next year I want to re-visit it and improve the interface, make it a bit friendlier and easier to use, now that I’ve had some time away and can approach it objectively again.

2011 had a lot of highs and lows. There were the cute moments that put everything into perspective and remind us why growing a family is so important. There were the nights of frustration and lost sleep that make you want to start scratching days into the wall to count down the time before they turn 18 and move out. We tried new things like having the kids help out with chores and revisited our old standby, the cloth diaper. We’re back on disposables now; cloth is a lot of work when you have three non-stop potty machines on the go.

What’s next for 2012? All three kids will be walking, the oldest may finally be big enough to fit into a booster seat, and we’re going to look for ways to get more involved in our community. By focusing on the core five of us and contributing to the neighbourhood, I want to strengthen our family bonds and give our kids a healthier and happy foundation to begin their school careers (in 2013!).

It’s Easier to Raise Kids with Positivity

There’s been a big change in our household this month, and it is all thanks to a small change in the way we express ourselves. Rather than saying “Don’t throw your food”, we say “The food stays on the table”. Rather than “Don’t hit mommy”, we say “We keep our hands to ourselves”.

Not surprisingly, our son reacts more favorably when we take this approach. If there’s one thing a toddler doesn’t like to hear, it’s the word “NO”. When you tell your child they can’t do something, it’s up to them to figure out what they can do; a young child doesn’t have the capacity to figure that out on their own, so they are more likely to act out.

Telling our son what he can do has made all the difference in the world. When we say “We keep our hands to ourselves” he knows exactly what’s expected of him. “We sit on the couch” is much more understandable than “Don’t stand on the couch”. By including an acceptable action (sitting), we’re implicitly excluding actions we don’t want him doing (like jumping, dancing or standing).

Aside from our son’s improved behaviour, we’re finding the positivity floats into other areas of our lives with our langing shifting to phrases like “We should get something else” rather than “We can’t afford that”. Overall, it’s improved our moods and reactions to everything around us; the change has been extraordinary.

Next time you’re about to tell your child not to dump sand out of the sandbox, take a second to think about the way you’re expressing your wishes. You’re really asking is for your child to keep the sand inside the sandbox. Before long, this kind of thinking and the benefits it can bring will come naturally.

Top-Down Fires for Heating

If you use a wood stove to keep your family warm in the winter – particularly if you have a small wood stove with a low ceiling – you may well have gotten used to waking up out of bed during the night to keep the fire going. It’s not as big a deal to wake up to a cold house once the children are older, but babies are less tolerant of extreme temperature changes which means, yes, another source of sleep deprivation for you.

A top-down – sometimes called front-back – fire is a new-ish (depending on who you ask) technique for building fires. The idea is to burn the fire from the top of the pile down to the bottom; rather than burning all of your wood at the same time, this method will burn a single log which will crumble away as the next starts to burn. With a large enough stove and proper home insulation, this can keep your house comfortably warm all night while you stay in bed.

The way I was shown to build fires goes something like this:

1. Place two large logs next to each other with space in the middle for newsprint
2. Crumple as much newsprint as will comfortably fit between the two logs
3. Lay 4-5 pieces of small wood strips across like a grill in order to catch the heat from the newsprint while at allowing for good airflow
4. Place 2-3 smaller logs on top of the whole apparatus to collect heat from the kindling as it warms up; again allowing lots of space all around for airflow so the fire won’t smother
5. Light the newsprint in a few places and watch the whole thing take off; as long as you’ve left a nice amount of room for air to flow around, you can’t miss. The fire will take off quickly
6. Watch everything fall into a smoldering mess – poke and position the embers and put more wood on top – fire will not die until all fuel is extinguished

I still use this method during the day because it keeps the house nice and hot. The only downside is it requires a lot of maintenance with a small wood stove such as mine, and will smoke badly if not given enough air so constant attention to the airflow and flue is needed. At night, I prefer to use the top-down method:

1. Start at the back of the stove and stack large logs in a tight cluster with as little space between as possible
2. Place 2-3 pieces of dry kindling/wood scraps on top
3. Take 3-4 pieces of newsprint, roll each tightly and tie in a knot, place on top of the kindling
4. Light the newsprint, close the door and walk away

The fire will burn steadily all night. I like to tie the newsprint as if I were tying a shoelace, because there is no kindling to hold it down and this technique will prevent it from blowing away or falling off the wood pile.

The most amazing part of top-down fires is the lack of smoke. Most people are accustomed to the idea of bottom-up fires because as the heat from the flame rises it warms up the larger wood and increases the temperature of the fire. The problem is the air around the wood is not heated as quickly, so when the wood catches it will smoke at first. Top-down flames are pure heat and do not smoke; they won’t leave as much creosote in your chimney and they burn the wood much more completely.

The best part about owning a wood stove is the sense of connectivity you experience with the heating in your home. It’s one thing to flip a switch and have a furnace come on; it’s quite another to gain some level of mastery over the ability to make fire for your own comfort. Everyone who burns wood ultimately figures out their own method for best results; with so many different approaches and models of stoves you can literally spend your whole life improving your technique.