Why we seldom say "no" around here

I have been writing very little lately. I always become aware of how little I write when I start feeling awkward. I find myself complaining about "this feeling of inadequacy" and then I realize of my urgent need to write. It has been like this for a long time. However, I don't seem to find the mood to write in my journal as I used to do, so I've thought I would give it a go here, why not.
Today I was wondering whether I am the only mother who has decided to quit some of her business and stay at home with her daughter most of the time. I know I am not. I mean I follow many blogs whose authors are SAHM -or WAHM. Neither of them lives in Spain, though. It seems there are so very few here I sometimes find it difficult to share. If you are out there and relate to what I say, please stop and say "hello". Even my two best maternity friends have already gone back to work and whereas we share parenting ways and many good get-togethers, I am the odd one now.
One of the issues I wanted to write about was why we very seldom say "no" around here. Without ever discussing the subject, both my husband and I have agreed that giving alternatives worked better than saying "no". If we pay attention to an adult talking to a baby or toddler, we can quickly note the word "no" is on the top ten words the adult uses. I had noticed that before becoming a mother and I found it annoying. Well, I must say I always take words very literally so I found it sort of negative. There are several ways of saying "no" without negating, without prohibiting. And this is actually what my husband and I do with our toddler.
First of all, we don't leave the items we don't thing she should touch anywhere within her reach. There are very few off-limits objects in our house, by the way. She has access to all rooms, including kitchen and bathrooms. Only my husband's camera and laptop are "forbidden" but they are never left on a reachable surface, so out of the question. This eliminates a slew of potential "noes".
When she was a small baby, we let her free to explore and never discouraged her from bringing things into her mouth. Many times I get asked how is it that M doesn't put in her mouth everything she finds along the way and I guess it is because she has overgrown this interest.
We have always let her explore. In the studio, for instance, we used to have many of her books on the lower shelves and she used to grab them, dump them and play on top. Little by little she grew acquainted with books. Our house is full of books. Our experience has showed us that children don't necessarily tear pages. This is, I believe, another of the negative opinions grown-ups have about young children. In my humble opinion, children's behaviors become destructive when they have nothing interesting to become engaged with. This may happen when the environment is not child-friendly and they don't have freedom of movement.
Something similar happens with the ever-present fear of choking. I know our particular experience can't be raised to general, but from what we have seen babies are very capable of spitting out seeds, stones, or pits. It might have been that M was never bottle-fed and hardly ever pureé-fed, but the truth is that she can eat custard apple and spit the pits out. I have also seen other children eating cherries at 10 months without ever choking. This leads me to believe that the more we empower our babies, the more capable they are. Unfortunately, I feel in our society babies are too often over-protected in a way that renders them unable to perform actions which are otherwise natural abilities inherent to human beings.

Joy Pockets

Inspired by Vibrant Wanderings who was inspired by Holistic Mama, I have decided to join this wonderful idea of collecting pockets of joy... Despite feeling there is much to be grateful for, I sometimes forget.

My old love of crispy leaves highlighted by the joy my beloved daughter showed in treasuring one

Magpies, blackbirds, mockingbirds, wagtails in our garden

The gift of a patient toddler when we adults are in a hurry and the weather doesn't help

Yummy pasta cooked by grandma

Inspiring readings

Uncountable smiles

Kindness, generosity found along the way

"mama mama" heard hundreds of times a day

Snow on a Thursday morning

Stroll under the snow -M and me; nobody else in the streets

And, always great expectations

On our shelves last week

I was about to consider last week's environment a complete flop but after having a glimpse at the pictures I took I've been able to see M showed more interest in some of the activities suggested than I could remember. For part of the week she was dumping objects not knowing what to do with them. It was there when I realized my idea had not been too good.
I had set up a mono-thematic work station, as you can see, and it was a bit too abstract for M.
Dick Bruna's book was one of the things she liked best. The 7 shapes puzzle was of course too difficult and I knew. It has no knobs and I had been wanting to make a 3 shapes knobbed puzzle but I kept running out of time.
On the lower shelf, the stacking shape blocks belong to a wooden train M got for Christmas. The house for sorting shapes is a recent acquisition. She has been toying around with the blocks but has not sorted them at all.
The second picture, where she can be seen comparing the real dish to the one on the book (I was lucky to find one the same color, uhu?) was one of those flashes where you tell yourself "this must be coincidence". Maybe not, who knows.
The bit of art work I suggested was not a flop. She was interested in the stickers and sticked some of them to a kitchen paper roll.

Any of you with 13 months old? What activities are you doing? Has it ever happened to you that a suggested environment was a flop?

Our shelves

Showing interest in the round shape

Comparing real plate to the one on the book

Having a close look at the new exhibition

Working with blue square stickers

Homemade materials and toys

Some of the homemade materials and toys we've recently made have been dictated by the kind of activities M is interested in but there were some that are either timeless, see discovery bottles, or planned for the near future.

 A simple box and toilet paper roll for coordination skills. M found this way too easy so I am currently doing another one with three cylinders -small, medium, and big.

 Bottle caps and handmade box. We used a small box, strengthen it with construction paper and covered with sticky contact paper. The interior of the drawer is lined with purple velvet. It was very easy to cut a slit with the paper cutter, and voilà!

 This sensory bottles are merely bottles filled with water and (red / golden) glitter. Easy, cheap, and very nice. M likes them a lot.






Having dressing skills in mind, I have designed a sun with detachable rays. M is not ready to button her clothes yet but she is always willing to help me dress her so I feel it won't be too long before she starts noticing buttons, hooks, zips, and so on. This activity is intended as a motivation. For the ball I used a knitted ball (thanks, mum, for helping me with that). The rays are made with felt. The buttons were removed from an old jacket before trashing it.

Our week in images

Before I rearrange our shelves tonight, I would like to revise what we've done this past week. A bit tired after a whole weekend of activities, including a wonderful and totally unplanned trip to a nearby farm, I am going to summarize our week in pictures. We are so lucky!!! We've set out for a walk this morning and been invited by a young farmer to have a look at all his poultry. After a week playing with the new set of farm animal magnets, transferring wooden eggs, and reading Rosie's walk, a visit to a poultry farm on Sunday morning was just ideal.

Hand-eye coordination skills:

Turning on the lights.

Getting the plug in the socket.

Eating with spoon and fork at the same time...

Gross motor skills:

Dragging her chair.

Climbing onto her chair.

And our trip to the farm:

Our daily rhymes

I think it is common knowledge that rhymes favor the development of language.
I have always had a tendency to make things rhyme for fun but since my daughter was born I surely do it even more. We started out with rhymes very early with songs and riddles. I sometimes had the feeling I was odd to sing "one two three four five, once I caught a fish alive..." to a two months old baby. That tiny baby used to smile at the song encouraging thus my silliness. Jokes apart, to my surprise, now that M is 12 months she always smiles at the sound of "one two three" and together with her smile of recognition, she points at her fingers.

Some of the songs we like:

In English:
Ring a ring o' roses
Old Mc'Donalds had a farm
Round the mulberry tree
Oranges and lemons
Ten little indians
Ten brown teddies
Twinkle, twinkle little star
Jack in the box


In Spanish:
cucú saltaba la rana
el caballo de cartón
canta pájaro lejano

In Catalan:
La gallina ponicana
Les oques van al camp
Una plata d'ensiam


We also have some books, mainly for counting, which contain rhymes. I specially like the Australian "One Woolly Wombat" and "An Old Oxford Ox".


There are of course some of my fav. lullabies. Songs we repeat every day.

Some of the daily repeated rhymes we have made up are:

When dressing:
One hand through the hole, the other hand through the other hole.
One sleeve off, the other sleeve off.
Toes with toes, heels with heels,
and sock up to the knees.

It's cold, very cold,
let's get some clothes.

We will now count to twenty-five and we will sleep all through the night (up to now my words have unfortunately had no effect).

All this repetition is, in my opinion, very important for language learning, and it has proofed pretty useful in our getting-dressed routine.

Do you have some rhymes you would like to share? I'd love to hear!!

Of buggies and carriers part 2

Well, I find it surprising but here I am informing the world (or whoever is so nice as to stop by and read what I post) that my little one, M, who for months rejected the stroller every time we tried it, seems to have gone to another stage and now hates the carrier (our otherwise outworn Manduca).
As we were preparing to leave home this morning, she has clearly expressed, as she has been doing lately, she had no intention of being carried. I wanted to give the carrier another go, since we were going to a place where strollers are a nuisance -there are no elevators at the underground station, sidewalks are narrow, streets crowded...- but after a while I have realized M is now in a new stage and we would better use the stroller. Staying at home was not an option, since I had been invited to talk about Montessori at a gorgeous place called "mamás graciosas". To my surprise, I have invited M to sit in the buggy and she has gratefully accepted. We were in the garage, so I have only been able to offer her an ugly toy, one of those I won't have in the house. However, and despite my dislike for the toy, she has started playing with it, we have set out, and she has stayed happily in her seat for a whole walk to the station, around 15 minutes, and 20 more minutes in the train. In the city, my dear "hubby" was waiting for us to have lunch together. Of course, the moment M has seen her father, she has raised her arms to be picked up.
As a memorandum of our " babywearing times":

M was here around 2,5 months and we were both wearing native American costumes.

11 months there and I am afraid that's the end of a cycle.