by World Moms Blog | Dec 8, 2012 | Eva Fannon, Older Children, Polish Mom Photographer, Saturday Sidebar, Siblings, World Moms Blog, Younger Children
This week’s Saturday Sidebar Question comes from World Moms Blog writer Karyn Van Der Zwet. She asked our writers,
“What is your theory on spacing births within a family, and what age gaps did you end up with?”
Check out what some of our World Moms had to say…
Dee_Harlow with her twins.
Dee Harlow of Laos writes:
“When parents of a single child see me with twins, they always ask what it’s like to have two? We always tell them to make sure that by the time the second child comes, the first one is old enough to pick the baby up. Believe me – you need the extra pair of hands and eyes.”
Documama of USA writes:
“When we weren’t trying, I got pregnant, and when we were trying to, I didn’t, yet we ended up with four kids spaced almost evenly 2 years apart! It looks like it was a plan, but we learnt pretty quickly that we only had so much control of how things worked out. I have to say the two year gap seems to work well, they are close enough to play together but when the baby is born the toddler was also young enough to forget quickly that they had just been usurped. A bit chaotic when you have a mess of babies on your hands, but I did feel like my 30s would be my child bearing decade, and then in my 40s I could get back to me a bit. Getting there!”
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World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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by Melanie Oda (Japan) | Oct 5, 2012 | Childhood, Family, Japan, Kids, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Parenting, Siblings, Sports, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Karate white belt. This is for beginners who have not yet achieved a rank.
Sometimes as a parent, you get so involved in the nitty-gritty everyday, that the big picture is lost in the pixels. Then a random moment sweeps over you, and you see things from the distance for the first time in a long time.
In those moments, you can see how far you’ve come, how you’ve gotten older and wiser, how your children have grown, and how all the nitty-gritty, messy, sticky everyday battles weren’t in vain. I had a moment like this recently. I wasn’t expecting it. It came out of the blue like a thunderstorm on a muggy summer afternoon.
My daughter has recently joined my son at his karate class. I bought a new dogi (karate uniform) for him. The old one was too small, and now Sister would need it.
Brother’s needed taking in. He tried it on and he seemed so big in the grown up, crisp, white uniform. (more…)
If you ask Melanie Oda where she is from, she will answer "Georgia." (Unless you ask her in Japanese. Then she will say "America.") It sounds nice, and it's a one-word answer, which is what most people expect. The truth is more complex. She moved around several small towns in the south growing up. Such is life when your father is a Southern Baptist preacher of the hellfire and brimstone variety.
She came to Japan in 2000 as an assistant language teacher, and has never managed to leave. She currently resides in Yokohama, on the outskirts of Tokyo (but please don't tell anyone she described it that way! Citizens of Yokohama have a lot of pride). No one is more surprised to find her here, married to a Japanese man and with two bilingual children (aged four and seven), than herself. And possibly her mother.
You can read more about her misadventures in Asia on her blog, HamakkoMommy.
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by Ana Gaby | Sep 19, 2012 | Being Thankful, Brothers, Childhood, Family, Husband, Kids, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, Siblings, Toys, Uncategorized, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Ana Gaby’s son, Evan, climbing yet another tall structure.
“Boys will be boys” people say when they see my two-year-old run around wild and try to jump off the steps or throw sand on his head or when he decides the restaurant table is the perfect race track. Yes, “boys will be boys” I’ve realized, the problem is I don’t really know what boys are like. I learn a new lesson on boyhood everyday as I breeze or trudge through the journey of motherhood.
I grew up surrounded by estrogen. I was an only child until the age of seven and before that I attended an all-girls school and visited with my female cousins often. When my sister was born, my mom, my sister and I created a very special bond that keeps getting tighter despite the distance and space between us. My sister and I grew up in a fluffy, pink bubble where the worst tragedy that could happen in our eyes was related to ice-cream staining our dresses, or our best friend not being allowed to come over for a sleepover.
I was not used to the dirt, rowdiness, sounds and smells that little boys bring into the picture. Nobody told me about the bleeding noses they would give me (product of accidental head butts), or the sore toes (victims of Tonka road accidents), and the fact that I might find dirt and sand in the most bizarre places in my boy’s anatomy. I was not aware of the physicality that entails chasing mothering a very energetic little boy and the taxing toll it would take on my back let alone my manicure. (more…)
Ana Gaby is a Mexican by birth and soul, American by heart and passport and Indonesian by Residence Permit. After living, studying and working overseas, she met the love of her life and endeavored in the adventure of a lifetime: country-hopping every three years for her husband’s job. When she's not chasing her two little boys around she volunteers at several associations doing charity work in Indonesia and documents their adventures and misadventures in South East Asia at Stumble Abroad.
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by Dee Harlow (Laos) | Sep 7, 2012 | Culture, International, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Relocating, Siblings, Uncategorized, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Well we made it to Vientiane, Laos!
As I typed that exclamation point it feels slightly anti-climatic after going through all the pre-move drama of logistics and planning, the emotions of saying good-byes, surviving the 36-hour journey across the globe followed by the trauma of transitioning into a new life.
And yet adding more than one exclamation point feels overdone after four weeks of being here and starting to feel settled. Things are starting to come together logistically and emotionally, which compared to how I felt upon our arrival is a world apart from where we began.
I can hear everyone asking, “So what happened?” “How was the flight?” “How’s Vientiane? ” “How are the kids” “Tell us everything!” – all the things I would be asking myself if I wasn’t the one writing this post. And I wish we could all gather around with coffee or wine or both and have a long long chat, a much needed mother-to-mother chat. A chat that would be more for me than for you because this move was TOUGH.
It was tough on me, tough on the kids, tough on my husband. The transition was tough, just like all major life transitions are tough whether it is a move, a divorce, a death, illness, new sibling – it’s all tough on the kids despite of how much we believe they can “bounce back”. Sure. They do bounce back but those bumps can be hard for us parents to take. (more…)
One of Dee’s earliest memories was flying on a trans-Pacific flight from her birthplace in Bangkok, Thailand, to the United States when she was six years old. Ever since then, it has always felt natural for her to criss-cross the globe. So after growing up in the northeast of the US, her life, her work and her curiosity have taken her to over 32 countries. And it was in the 30th country while serving in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan that she met her husband. Together they embarked on a career in international humanitarian aid working in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan, and the tsunami torn coast of Aceh, Indonesia.
Dee is now a full-time mother of three-year old twins and continues to criss-cross the globe every two years with her husband who is in the US Foreign Service. They currently live in Vientiane, Laos, and are loving it! You can read about their adventures at Wanderlustress.
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by Mamawearpapashirt (Singapore) | Jun 1, 2012 | Siblings, Singapore
The sibling relationship begins even when the younger one is still in the womb.
How so?
When I was carrying my second child, Javier, I began to introduce Vera, my first-born, to the concept of a younger sibling.
The day we discovered that the baby was a boy, we told Vera she was going to have a ‘di-di’ (little brother in Chinese) to play with, and that they would have loads of fun together.
Being the chatty 2.5 year old that she was at the time, she relished the thought of having a captive audience, and she would thoroughly enjoy talking and singing to my womb, or rather, the di-di who was stuck inside.
At first, I gave her the words to say, such as ‘I love you, di-di’ and so on. Thereafter, her creative self took over and for the remaining 4-5 months of the pregnancy, I think she pretty much dominated the airwaves where her little brother was concerned. (more…)
June, born and bred on the sunny and sometimes rainy shores of Singapore, is a mother of two - a chatty 4 y.o. girl and a toddler boy who babbles. She works part-time as a communication consultant, and she is deeply passionate about family, writing, faith, and good old-fashioned love. She can be found on her blog, Mamawearpapashirt.
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by Mama B (Saudi Arabia) | May 2, 2012 | Babies, Motherhood, Saudi Arabia, Siblings, World Motherhood
Today I sat in my baby’s room, nursing him, while I looked over my eldest son’s math homework (and pretended to remember how to add fractions and prayed I was making sense). My daughter was busy changing into her 6th outfit for a birthday she was going to and coming to show me, while my other son lay on the floor, face down and whaling like the world was ending.
I was resisting the urge to pierce my ear drums when it hit me. I have a two-year old again! I seem to have blocked the other 2 times I had two-year olds (as people block out traumatic times in their lives), but I found solace in the fact that this, too, shall pass.
They won’t be stubborn, screaming, irrational, dramatic little people for ever.
B is 2 years and 4 months old and in the last 3 weeks (surprisingly coinciding with the birth of my fourth son and the travel of his nanny) he has turned into a little opinionated, loud (VERY loud) stubborn, and I’m afraid to say, sometimes rude, little child.
I did well to get my 2 eldest through this phase, but I cannot for the life of me remember how! Granted I didn’t have a new-born when they decided to have their “terrible twos.” (more…)
Mama B’s a young mother of four beautiful children who leave her speechless in both, good ways and bad. She has been married for 9 years and has lived in London twice in her life. The first time was before marriage (for 4 years) and then again after marriage and kid number 2 (for almost 2 years). She is settled now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (or as settled as one can be while renovating a house).
Mama B loves writing and has been doing it since she could pick up a crayon. Then, for reasons beyond her comprehension, she did not study to become a writer, but instead took graphic design courses. Mama B writes about the challenges of raising children in this world, as it is, who are happy, confident, self reliant and productive without driving them (or herself) insane in the process.
Mama B also sheds some light on the life of Saudi, Muslim children but does not claim to be the voice of all mothers or children in Saudi. Just her little "tribe." She has a huge, beautiful, loving family of brothers and sisters that make her feel like she wants to give her kids a huge, loving family of brothers and sisters, but then is snapped out of it by one of her three monkeys screaming “Ya Maamaa” (Ya being the arabic word for ‘hey’). You can find Mama B writing at her blog, Ya Maamaa . She's also on Twitter @YaMaamaa.
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