The 21st Century Husband and Wife

I entered adulthood with the turn of the century. I turned 18 just three months before New Years 1999. However, I'm not exactly sure when the shift in gender roles and expectations occurred. I'm pretty sure they were occurring before the 21st century began, but obviously I was not a parent then. I know we had definitely moved past the point where a woman was a man's possession.

All I know of 20th century parenting are the traditional roles and expectations that my own parents lived their life by when they were raising my sisters and me in the 80s and 90s. My mom was a stay at home mom while my dad was our one and only source of income for those first ten years of our family life. The first couple of years she went back to work she only worked part time on Mondays and Saturdays in the banking industry. What I recall of my childhood was my mom doing all of the laundry, all the cooking and dishes, all the housecleaning, and all of the family bookkeeping. My dad worked long hours in which he was typically gone 12-14 hours a day, mowed the yard and  took out the trash once a week. He then came home and spent many warm nights playing catch in the yard with us. They had their roles and they both worked hard. By the time my Mom started working full time my sisters and I were old enough to start doing the laundry, cleaning up the dishes after dinner, and help with the house cleaning on Saturdays. It wasn't until we moved out of the house that I noticed my dad started doing more cooking and cleaning up around the house. I always liked to kid him about getting on board the 21st century train, but I'm not really sure what encouraged him to pick up more responsibilities on the home front. I'll have to ask him sometime.

The gender roles and expectations in my time of parenthood today is completely different than my parents. I love my parents dearly and wouldn't have wanted them to do anything differently than what they did but there are many noticeable differences from their days of childrearing to mine. However, after recent discussions with a variety of different women a few comments they've said have stuck with me. One was from a woman who said something about what happened to the time of getting married and men taking of women and the other came from a working mom who is at her breaking point with a husband that doesn't seem to get that parent expectations are not the same as they were 20-30 years ago when their parents were raising them.

Both of these irritated me in a way. First of all, I am an independent woman. I don't need or want a man to "take care" of me. I have been independent according to my mother from shortly after birth. I need a man that's my equal; that's my partner. Second of all, cooking, cleaning, laundry, taking care of the children is not just woman's work in today's society. This 21st century parenthood gig is a partnership with whatever both partners agree is equal in their particular family lifestyle.

I'm lucky that I married a man that gets this. Most of the time. I call it the parent two step. In the evenings our routine is he gets dinner ready while I clean up the house from the kids' recent messes. After dinner I do dishes while he gives them a bath. We usually alternate nights on who puts them to bed. We both sort, wash, and fold laundry. He will help with the cleaning up in the evenings and if he's home on Saturdays. The only thing he won't do for whatever reason is wash dishes. However, this isn't always perfect, and we have had our fights over who should be doing what when it comes taking care of things in our life. The understanding on most nights is if one of us is can't sit down for the final down time of the evening then why is the other one. We both work hard, and we both deserve some down time to regroup.

We are also raising daughters in this new and exciting time for women in our society. Even though at times we are still battling for equality when it comes to pay and possible other rights, I want them to know when it comes to marriage to accept nothing but equality, and I'm confident they'll see that modeled in their own parents.  Hopefully by then society will have also deleted the "obey phrase" out of marriage vows. Marriage is not about a woman's will to obey a man. Marriage and parenthood is a partnership. I'm not saying it wasn't when my parents were raising us, but times are different today than they were 30+ years ago. Women today can have their independence, their careers, their families, and a marriage of two people working together to make it all successful.





I don't have any pictures of him doing any of that boring housework. If he ever does dishes I will definitely take a picture of that. But the best thing about any partner is their love for their children.

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In the last few years, Nate and I have had several cousins that have had babies at a young age. Not so young that they are teen parents, but barely 21 to me is so young now. There's still a lot of growing up to do after 21 and even more after we become parents.

One of my biggest worries about becoming a parent was wondering if I could move past being so selfish and just always thinking about myself. At certain times I even wondered if I wanted kids because I enjoyed my freedom of doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Nate I think enjoyed that about ten times more than I did. We would not have made very good parents at 21. We were definitely not ready to grow up until years later and trust me we're still growing up.

However, we are all different people; we all grow up at different times in different ways. I think our own individual personalities too make a difference on when we're ready to accept different responsibilities that come in life. I have seen some of these young parents face parenthood in the adult grown up way that we expect of parents but others not so much.

Nate and I were almost thirty when we embarked on parenthood, possibly old to some's standards. Trust me thirty was a more appropriate age for us. I know lots of people that started their families in their early twenties and that choice worked well for them. They've proven their capabilities.

I would say the moment that slammed the reality home to us that our capabilities needed to improve themselves in the game of parenthood was when a week into parenthood, we brought our baby to a bar.

Now in our defense, we loved to go there for wings. Even though it was a very bar like atmosphere, we had seen kids in there a few times, and we figured since we went on a Sunday night it should be non bar like. Boy were we wrong. To make the embarrassment worse my parents were visiting us to see our baby girl. The place was hopping with loud music, people standing around the bar. Even though we got a booth, it was definitely the wrong place to go. I remember my dad giving us the you can't do things like you use to look and speech.

Parenthood is a lifestyle change. There is no doubt about that. It's giving up a level of freedom, it's giving up a part of yourself, it's willing to make sacrifices, it's thinking about how a decision will effect someone else besides yourself in the long run, it's compromise because whether you're married or not you're in this with someone else and you're going to have to learn to work together, and it's a commitment for the rest of your life. Sure they grow up, they move on, they become independent, but no matter their age we're always a parent. Our lives are forever different from the moment we see the positive pregnancy test and even more so when they place that baby in our arms. For most of us, it's a change we're willing to make from the start and is totally worth it. However, I see some struggle with this and the honest truth is no matter your age, when you become a parent, it's time to grow up whether you're ready or not.

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For those that know me well, know I am a photo nut. My mother long ago when I’d complain about being bored would tell me to get a hobby. I grew up watching her spend her spare time sewing and reading. So following my mother's advice and example early on in life I began the three hobbies that I still indulge in today-reading, writing, and photography. But not photography as in taking pictures but as in using pictures to tell a story. In our new digital age, we love to share photos and even create digital albums on social media. I do this a ton, but I have always loved to be able to look back at pictures years and even decades ago in an organized photo album or book that tells a story of a different time in life.

In high school I took up scrapbooking.  My memories of my  four years in high school are saved in one of those giant three ring binders full of scrap book pages that I spent years creating.  Unfortunately or fortunately because I didn’t have much spare time and I was busy having a lot of fun, my college photos never really made it into anything memorable. At the time I was in college I had all my college photos pinned up on one of those cork boards, but I never took the time to create a college scrapbook the way I did for high school. For now they are still stored  almost ten years later in an old shoe box in the storage of the basement.

Once Nate and I began what would be become our story, I started keeping our photos in those big nice photo albums that had the lines to the left to write captions and words to explain the memories I wished to save.  However, I realized pretty quick I was going to need a whole bedroom, not a closest, to store hopefully 50 + years of photo books.  About a year ago, I decided to jump on board with the technical age. Now that I take all digital photos, I started uploading them into shutterfly rather than printing them. From there I would create what started off as seasonal family albums. However, I’m thinking instead of putting the pictures throughout the year into four separate albums, I might cut it down to three: Summer, Fall-Christmas, Winter- Spring.

I have also with the birth of each daughter started creating a year in review photo book for each of them on their birthdays. Originally it was looking like at 18, I would have 18 photo books to hand over them that retold the stories of their childhood. However, I’m backing out on that idea. With Averi turning 5 this will be the last yearly one I do for her. My plan then is to create an elementary, middle school, and then high school one so they’ll have eight instead of eighteen to take with them. The memories and stories of their childhood will forever be kept in these books. I would also at some point like to also print the posts I have on here that I have written for or about them to put in some kind of notebook for them to take too when they are ending this chapter of their lives and embarking on the next. I love pictures and I don’t want them to just sit abandoned and forgotten in some box. Pictures tell the stories of our lives, our families, who we are and where we’ve been.  I hope one day the girls enjoy these as much as I've enjoyed putting them together for them.

 

I am affiliated with Shutterfly, so for those that don’t know what that means, it means when you visit and make a purchase with Shutterfly after you click on one of their links or banners on my website, I get paid a commission.  However, those of you that are frequent readers know I don’t push this very often, but if you do business with Shutterfly in the future I hope you can come through my site to do so. Right now they are having up to 50% OFF on their photo books.  Valentine’s Day is coming but they are great for any family moments and memories.  Below I’ve included links to view one of our family photo albums and the most recent year in review album that I’ve made for the girls. This one is Nakenzi’s but with Ave’s fifth birthday just five weeks away I need to get started on hers. If interested in creating and purchasing your own, click on the bottom link.

This time is flying by. I hope you get a chance to tell and save your story through your pictures J

A Year in the Life of Baby Girl


Family Summer 2013






                    Click Here to get up to 50% off a Shutterfly Photo Book through January 27!
                                                                         

  

    

The Common Core: The Pros and Cons

As an educator but also as a parent I have been struggling a bit with how I feel towards the education reform with common core. First, people that don't understand exactly what common core is needs to first understand that common core is the new set of standards. It is not the curriculum or even the actual exam. These standards are then being used to create new curriculum and new benchmark test that we are calling PBAs or Performance Based Assessments. These PBAs are to prepare students for the new upcoming standardized test called PARCC that will be replacing the previous No Child Left Behind assessment which were the HSAs here in Maryland.

I want to clearly state that I am not against the common core. I do not see common core as the enemy. In fact, as an educator I feel for the first time I am working with something that makes sense. As a teacher of ten years, all I've known is the No Child Left Behind Era, in which case I thought testing students with a multiple choice test especially for Language Arts was one of the most meaningless assessments ever.

In order to succeed in college and the adult world there are things students need to know but the former HSAs were not really measuring those things. First, yes, everyone should know how to read,  write, and do math. But even more so than content skills  they need to know how to think critically; problem solve; fail, reflect, and retry, and the assessments with common core I believe can measure those things. The projects are relevant in the way that they present students with a task that usually over the span of days or sometimes even weeks they must complete. I think there can be some improvement with the type of tasks or assignments they give them with the PBAs but I do feel that long range projects and assignments is the right direction to be moving. Students are going to have to problem solve, think critically, and tackle problems in their adult life within their role of family, career, and as a citizen. These are hard  and challenging tasks, which might be what has some people frustrated,  but that's what the adult world is, a task or problem and working our way through solving it. Students need to know how to push themselves to work through a challenge if they have any hope of succeeding beyond their school  years.

But here is where the problem lies. These assessment really show who has the potential to succeed and sometimes it's based more on a student's work ethic and persevance rather than their intelligence. But I have always felt that work ethic will lead an individual to success more so than intelligence.  There is clear line within a class who has the potential and the drive and who doesn't most of the time due to laziness. The problem with the current data driven education system we live in is everything will be focused on the kids who aren't succeeding. The majority that aren't succeeding though will be because they're lazy. Again because of the laziness of a few and the complaints of those that don't want to push their child harder, we will possibly lower our standards and continue to put band aids on our broken education system.  In the past, we have enabled laziness by lowering the bar, caving into parental complaints, giving passing grades rather than what students rightfully earn. If we continue to do this than common core won't be the improvement for our education system and society that it has the potential to be. Students have to know how to push themselves through a challenge; we are not doing them any favors by not letting them fail. This also ties in to the need to eliminate the fear factor in our education system. Teachers can't be afraid to push students and give them the failing grade they earn. Some are too afraid to challenge students, let them fail and struggle, for fail of the repercussions he or she will face. Struggle and working through something is how we truly learn. Pushing ourselves to our limits is when we grow. We can't keep blaming teachers for the laziness of others.

However, another problem is this one size fits all mentality. The problem I'm seeing with the curriculum is it is designed more for the elite rather than with the diverse needs of our population in mind. I don't feel that more is always better either. As a parent with only a preschool I am already conflicted with the horror stories I am hearing from elementary parents of students coming home with hours upon hours of homework. Children should have homework but throwing too many things at them at once is only going to overwhelm and discourage them from the learning process.  All students are not going to be doctors and lawyers. And an even bigger truth that no seems to want to say is they are not all going to college.

Some will lead successful lives without a college degree because they prefer to work with their hands in trade career fields. Giving them all the same test would be like giving doctors and carpenters the same test to enter their fields. As a child that comes from a hard working, blue collar family who lives very fulfilling lives I get quite annoyed with this college is the direction we need to push everyone. If everyone in our society had a college degree, our society would fail to function without the diversity of interest and skills we need in our workforce to function as a society. They should all complete performance based assessments but the tasks given to them to complete should be more appriopriate to their individual strengths and interests. However, deciding that would have to fall to individual teachers, not some policy maker in some high office that has no idea what we're working with in each individual classroom.

I understand one of the goals of common core is to eliminate the inconsistency for students that move and change schools frequently, but if we take away a teacher's ability to create assessments that work for her students for her to measure their individual growth throughout the year, then I feel we may just be creating a new set of problems rather than working with common core to be the improvement that it could be.




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With my first daughter I was so excited for her to reach each milestone. She's smart and always seemed a little ahead so I was all about conquering those milestones of feeding herself, walking, sleeping in a big girl bed, potty training, whatever would get her closer to the being the little independent girl that she is today.

For the sake of my own memory when I won't probably remember all of this twenty years from now unless I consult something I wrote it in, here's what I remember about Averi's transition from baby to independent toddler.  I remember we completely switched her over to table food at nine months when she just started digging into my plate of Thanksgiving food. I don't recall then or even now what is the supposed age to make this switch, but yay for the first step towards independence. She started taking steps at 10 months but we didn't consider her walking until 11 months. By eighteen months I took her out of the crib and put her in a toddler bed because she was climbing out of it anyway, and I was so excited about thinking how she could sleep in a big girl bed now. I won't even get into the headaches or stories of a baby with easy access out of her bed at that age. I also introduced her to the potty at about eighteen months. My mother insisted she potty trained us by the time we were two so I said why not. Even though she wasn't potty trained by two, she was a month after her second birthday. She was a quick talker too. I just remember by the time we found out we were expecting our second, she had mastered what I call my three requirements before another baby can be considered-sleeping in a big girl bed, potty trained, and able to communicate.

Now this second time around, I have not been in such a big hurry to hit these milestones. With each new step of independence I knew also came a new headache of child rearing. Sleeping in their own bed meant they could get up on their own, feeding themselves meant they made a much bigger mess for me to clean up, potty training meant I couldn't let them wander around for a bit in a wet diaper while I finished something. Instead it meant I must drop everything right then and run her to the bathroom before she peed all over the floor. Going out in public is much easier with a diapered baby than a newly potty trained toddler. As they tend to say with the second one, you don't remember things as well as you do with the first one. By this point as moms we're a little more distracted and  already experienced each milestone before so it doesn't quite have that new excitement to it.

Kenz probably started eating table food about the same age as Ave, around nine or ten months. I don't think she took her first steps until 12 months and wasn't fully walking until 13 months. It appeared her, nor us, were as gung ho to master all these baby to toddler independency steps so fast this time. Even though we talk of a third, it's not like it's in the making or anything at the moment, so I didn't mind dragging out her babyness a little longer.

Except I forgot this little one of mine has had a stubborn, insistent, independent mind of her own since the first night she was born and she screamed all night. I don't remember if it was right before Christmas break or after that she started insisting that she wanted to sit at the dinner table like her big sister without a booster seat. The thing is disgusting and food just hoards itself in any little crevice on those things that it can find so I didn't care too much about giving it up. Then she started not wanting anything to do with sleeping in her crib. I was pretty set on keeping her in that crib until this summer when she's two and half. She's kind of difficult sometimes. I need something to contain her so I started letting her sleep with Averi in her queen size bed. When I got rid of the crib this summer I was going to let them share a room anyway. We will hopefully have bunk beds for them by then but if not I figured the queen size bed was big enough for two little girls. Aside from their little girl giggling lasting too far past bedtime, they have been falling asleep in there together. It is kind of the cutest thing. Averi still gets up and comes in our room, but Kenz sleeps in there all night. I just worry about what she'll get in to if she wakes up before we do. The crib is staying up in her room until summer though because I want to know I have it there if bedtime becomes problematic. When she turned two I of course did plan on working on potty training with her, but she's just taken that over too. In the last week she fights me about putting a diaper on. She wants to wear underwear so I've let her in the evenings and now for the past two days she's been in underwear all day. And she's done great. Except she's not that crazy about pooping in the potty. We have two more days to this weekend to see how it goes, but if she keeps up like this, guess I'm going to be bringing her to the sitter's in big girl pants Tuesday. And that's it. She's not a baby anymore :(  (She'll still have a diaper at night.)

The independence and determination of these little people just amazes me sometimes. Whether I want her to be a big girl or not, she wants to be a big girl like her big sissy. Even at two she's rather insistent on proving to mommy that she can do it and she's not my baby anymore.

                                                     My baby doll! Where did the time go?

                                                     Seriously, Mom, I can feed myself.

                                                Come on, Mom, how can you resist this face?

                                                      I might need your help out of here.

                                                              I promise I'll be good.

                                                  Look at me now, Mom. Aren't I so big?

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