Simply Bike

slowing down

To say that we are stretched thin right now would be a massive understatement. This morning, after attending May’s baby book club, I dropped C. off at daycare and returned home to unclog a kitchen sink, unpack from a weekend trip to St. Louis, put away two loads of laundry, do another load of laundry, apply to two jobs I came across over the weekend, and pack. Not pack for a trip but for a move. Our move that is happening in roughly a week from now.

That’s just today. Everyday is similarly full of things to be done, some more urgently needed than others but never with an hour to rest or spare.

When C. started daycare last week, I thought it would open up this huge amount of time for me. That I would have time to tackle all of those chores and life to-do lists while still finding the time to finally read a book again or take a nap or go on a walk. Maybe even do some prenatal yoga to start my days. Somehow, that time between dropping her off and picking her up in the afternoon flies. Before I know it, I’m back in the car and heading to her school. I write another list of things to do for the next day and add that to the one from the day before.

The last few months were busy because I was teaching a course and taking care of our daughter full time. The only childcare I had was for the time actually spent in the classroom and one additional two-hour slot a week for some lesson planning and grading. I did most of my lesson prep and course-related work in the evenings or during C’s naptimes. Add to that first trimester nausea and fatigue and I was definitely feeling overextended. I thought that finishing the semester and starting daycare would take care of everything.

But it doesn’t. And the truth is that it’s as much my fault as it is external circumstances. Because I’m a prodigeous over-achiever and over-committer. I take on way too many projects at once and I have a hard time saying no to anything. I love a good challenge and thrive on being active and engaged with lots of things at once. I’m sure that’s why I was able to survive grad school – a time during which you’re expected to teach, be a student, conduct research, write, travel, submit grant proposals and fellowship applications, mentor undergrads, serve on committees, and oh yeah, if there’s any time left in there, have a personal life. Because these are your prime years, so go ahead and get married. Start a family. Just, you know, don’t get too behind on your comps.

Maybe it’s a lingering case of grad-student-itis, maybe it’s just my personality, but I need to slow down. And nothing’s a better reminder of that than a tired, achey, pregnant body.

I know things won’t slow down a whole lot with our new home once we move because we’ll still need to unpack and get settled and plant a vegetable garden and make the space our own. And I still want to lead monthly Kidical Mass rides and volunteer at the library. I’m also still applying for jobs that come up and are a good fit and that takes time. Job applications and cover letters take lots of time. So does maintaining a blog and answering reader emails (although this is a thousand times more enjoyable of a time committment than applying for work). And editing submissions for Flyover Feminism and answering those reader emails also takes time.

I’m not really sure where to cut back (cutting back is not my forte, taking on more is my forte) but I recognize that it needs to happen. I want to be able to enjoy this time before the baby comes and I need to find a more balanced rhythm to my days: one that includes reading a book, taking a walk, attending a prenatal yoga class, or simply sitting still with my eyes closed and my mind blank. I also want to enjoy this coming summer, the last one with our daughter as our only child. I want to be there, fully present and awake, savoring this time for what it is before the chaos and sleep-deprived fog of newborn parenting sets in. I want our weekends to be relaxed and sponteneous and free of urgently needing to be done chores.

So I’m slowing down. And I’m cutting back. And I’m intentionally doing less. I’m going against every grad school/academia-ingrained instinct and aiming lower. Much more lower.

I’m taking a deep breath today, looking around, seeing what really needs my attention and vowing to live each day with a little more room for unplanned life.

Posted in Academia, Family | 9 Comments

bike ride to the first farmer’s market of the season

Thank you all for the congratulatory wishes on our announcement! I can’t wait to share more thoughts on cycling while pregnant in the coming months. Here are some photos from a recent bike ride with C. and baby in utero to the farmer’s market…

{we rode through a nearly deserted campus now that the semester is over}

{we stopped to watch the train go by and to wave to it of course. C. is obsessed with trains right now}

{we parked our bike, sampled the goodies, stocked up on farm fresh lettuce (the only produce available right now with the recent snow and all of the cold weather we’ve had), and ran into a ton of familiar faces (including my new friend and awesome biking mama who I met at our first Kidical Mass ride of the year)}

{we packed all of our belongings back into my bike crate – I’m constantly amazed just how much stuff fits into something as basic as a rear rack crate}

{and then we rode home with bear rescued from the crate and safely tucked underneath the seatbelt bar because these two are inseperable!}

♥ More farmer’s market bike rides from last summer and fall.
♥ And a farmer’s market visit in Ohio

Also:

♥ I use the Tom Bihn Snake Charmer (packing cube) as a diaper pouch and I swear by it. Perfect size for diapering essentials and can easily go from purse to car to bike basket to where have you. Best trade for a diaper bag I ever made.

Posted in Biking while Pregnant, Biking with Kids, Spring Cycling | Tagged farmers market | 6 Comments

new life

New life is all around us. Our backyard exploded overnight and looks like this now…

Also, there’s THIS new life!…

Yay!!!!

We’re thrilled to be welcoming baby #2 into our lives this November! We finally heard the heartbeat this week and caught a glimpse of a very mobile and very active little baby that we can’t wait to hold in our arms this winter! We are so excited about this and so thrilled to be giving C. a little sister or brother. ♥

Posted in Baby, Family | Tagged baby, pregnancy | 46 Comments

this eight feet {a short film about parklets}

This Eight Feet from Seamus Harte on Vimeo.

Thanks so much to Meli of Bikes and the City for sending this my way: an awesome six minute documentary about parklets in San Francisco and their story of origin. I recently shared some photos from our very first parklet here in our college town in Iowa, which will hopefully reappear as the city writes street ordinances allowing for such people spots were parking spaces used to be. So thrilled to see that our own town is welcoming such awesome people-centered projects!

Love the different examples of parklets shown above, especially the one right around 2:44 of film. Enjoy!

Posted in Inspiration | Tagged parklet | Leave a comment

the trailing spouse

I really appreciate all the feedback you gave me on my recent post asking you what you’d like to read more of. It feels like I’ve been at a sort of cross-roads with this blog and I haven’t been entirely certain how to proceed. Do I keep writing about biking or has that been exhausted? How much of our daily family happenings should I keep writing about? Do I even have anything of value to add on the topic of academic motherhood now that I’m barely making a career in that field…?

While I contemplated narrowing the focus of the blog on just biking and outdoor family adventures, several of you wrote that you appreciated and wanted more posts on balance and life/academia.

So here’s a post on balance. And academia. And motherhood and family and community:

When it comes to balance, the overarching theme of many things written on this topic seems to be how to make more room for your personal life amidst work and career requirements. For me, it’s the opposite that I struggle with: how to built more of a career to compliment my identity as partner and mother.

I feel a whole range of mixed emotions as a result: guilt that I’m unsatisfied with working little or less than others (after all, isn’t that what everyone seems to be after: more time for personal goals and less time at work?). (And here I’m talking about paid work, which our society often sees as the only kind of “work” that counts.) I also feel shame that here I am, after nine years of grad school with a PhD in hand, struggling to make some sort of career happen. But I also feel fortunate that in this tough job market one of us has a great career going and that I don’t have to worry about putting food on my child’s plate or a roof over her head despite job rejection after job rejection.

I’m sure my story isn’t unique: it’s the story of many a trailing spouse who’s made sacrifices to his or her own career so that the other partner could follow a promising path. I’m happy that we’re not both struggling and that my husband has effectively and efficiently established himself in his field. He works very hard and he’s more than worthy of where he is now. And we had always agreed that we would follow the career path of the person whose job seemed most promising and could best provide for our family. (Naively, I thought that an advanced degree in the Humanities could somehow compete with one in the Sciences and that that person could be me – ha!)

So here we are: my quest for balance is one that pushes me everyday to embrace all of the good in my life while patiently waiting for the one missing puzzle piece to fall into place. I love our life and our community and am very happy with where T’s job has landed us. It’s not where I ever imagined myself being but it’s a place that I’ve come to love and appreciate. And most of all, I love the people we’ve met here and the friendships we’ve made.

I love that we’re able to live a simple life in the best possible meaning of that term: close to friends and neighbors with little traffic and short commute times and a whole lot of parks, green spaces, and activities for kids. I appreciate that despite it being a small city, our town boasts diverse and rich cultural events: everything from music and theater performances to a small but wonderful farmer’s market to annual art fairs to free community classes at the coop to a whole lot more. The university brings with it regular cultural events and nationally renown speakers, most of which are free to the community at large. And what we lack here we can easily find in larger urban areas such as Minneapolis or Chicago, which are only a half a day’s drive away.

Life here is pretty good and finding balance – in the traditional sense of the term – in such a family friendly place is not that difficult. Most of our friends work hard but also make it a priority to spend evenings and weekends with their families and children and are actively involved in adding to our community. It’s been so (surprisingly!) easy to put together a monthly community bike ride because people here are interested in healthy, outdoorsy, family focused events. It’s also been relatively easy to fill our days with things such as our monthly toddler book club, our babysitting co-op, trips to the park with other families, and regular meet-ups at the library for story time (where I now also co-lead a monthly German story time as part of the world languages story time program).

So is it fair for me to complain that it’s still hard being a trailing spouse? Should I not admit that I struggle with where I am career-wise? That I sometimes feel lost and angry and resentful? Well, there is it. The ugly truth. Being a trailing partner – even when everything else in your life is going great and you know you have so much to feel thankful for – still sucks.

As I put in my daily time looking at job listings, polishing my resume, and crafting hopeful cover letters, I’m try to stay optimistic and patient. And I would love to hear from you if you’ve ever found yourself in a similar situation – how did you resolve your trailing spouse status? How did you build a career while geographically immobile? How did you stay sane during a seemingly never ending job search? (Or, more importantly, – do you have a job for me??)

Posted in Academia, Family | Tagged trailing spouse | 35 Comments

in which we biked to the botanical garden for mother’s day

This year’s Mother’s Day was truly the best day ever. We kept it simple – no gifts, no fancy dinner – just breakfast out at my favorite restaurant, a nap, a bike ride to the botanical garden (free admission to moms on Mother’s Day means we’ve gone every year since I became pregnant with C. We’re not ones to pass up a good deal ;), concluded with home made pizza by request.

This year I received my first Mother’s Day card from C (made with a little help from papa) which proudly showed off her crayon coloring skills and completely melted my heart. It now rests on the fridge where I can see it every time I walk by.

Amidst a busy month of moving, starting daycare, a couple of out of town trips, and preparing our current house as a rental, yesterday provided a much appreciated respite from the chaos. The gorgeous weather, the bike ride, and the delicious food was just icing on the cake. I hope we can continue our tradition of bike rides to the botanical garden for many more Mother’s Days to come.

{I didn’t post any pictures from last year’s Mother’s Day outing but here are some from two years ago when I was pregnant with C. Looks like we did pretty much the same thing as this year just in reverse order: Reiman Gardens and The Cafe for a meal out. We’re nothing if not predictable (ahem, … boring?).}

Posted in Bike Dates, Biking with Kids, Family, Family Bike Dates, Spring Cycling | 4 Comments

creating a kidical mass scavenger hunt

I so loved Molly Westerman’s pictorial scavenger hunt that I decided to create one for the older kids on our Kidical Mass rides. I thought that it could give them a little something extra to enjoy while getting them to really look and notice their surroundings. Rather than use Molly’s exact image, I decided to create my own so that I could add a few things we’d be likely to spot during our ride.

I added a cupcake (since there’s cupcake shop downtown that we might ride past), a slide (can you spot it? it’s terribly drawn but our parks where we start and end our rides all have slides that the kids love using), glasses/sunglasses (a few participants wear glasses and even more wear sunglasses), a hat (we make the little ones wear hats in the sun), and a picnik blanket (we end our rides with a picnik lunch in the park). I loved some of Molly’s cartoons so much that I straight-out copied them (like her mailbox picture – how cute!).

I’m thinking that I’ll keep the rules pretty simple: each kid old enough to identify the pictures and check the off the list will get a handout and a pen. If they’re riding along in a trailer or weehoo or cargo bike, they can carry the paper with them and check things off during the ride. If they’re on their own bike, they can study the image ahead of time and look for things while riding but wait to check them off when stopped at the end of the ride. They can also continue to look for things while we’re all hanging out at the park.

When they’re done and hand the paper back to me with a minimum of ten items (out of the thirty) checked off, they will get a small prize: a bike sticker for their helmet, their bike, their notebook, or whatever item they choose to decorate. I found a multipack of cute, affordable, and eco-friendly bike stickers on Etsy that I ordered for this purpose. If they come in time, we’ll be able to do the scavenger hunt during this month’s Kidical Mass ride already! Otherwise, I’ll plan on saving it for June’s ride. Either way, I’m really excited about this and hope the kids will have fun with it.

If you like this idea, feel free to poach it! You can download a free copy of Molly’s scavenger hunt on her site here and you can also download a copy of our Kidical Mass scavenger hunt from my Flickr account. If you use this on your blog or website, simply link back and give credit to the original images. And if you do use it for a family walk, bike ride, or community event of your own, let me know! I’d love to hear how else this idea lived on!

Posted in Biking with Kids, How-To Posts, Inspiration, Social Cycling | Tagged kidical mass, scavenger hunt | 2 Comments

our baby book club

{Reading “Beautiful Oops” by Barney Salzberg}

Once a month, a handful of us meet up at our friend’s house for our babies’ book club. We still refer to it as “baby book club” even though there’s no denying that our children aren’t babies anymore. They’re energetic, willful, spirited two year olds who run, laugh, fight over toys, and keep us constantly on our toes. They’re also two year olds who love to be read to. Like most toddlers their age, they love to be held on our laps while listening to stories and looking at colorful and beautiful picture books.

My friend S. started this book club almost a year ago and we’ve been meeting monthly ever since. I’ve posted on Twitter and Instagram pictures and tid bits about our meetings and every time I get a host of questions on what we do, what books we read, and how we structure our activities. So here’s a long overdue post on all of that…

{Creating multimedia collages and making “stained glass” toast with milk and food coloring after reading “Beautiful Oops” by Barney Salzberg}

You can read more about the inspiration for the book club on the official book club website, maintained by S., who started and runs the whole thing. She’s truly the mastermind behind all of this and we’re all so grateful to her for planning and organizing it. You can also “like” our book club Facebook page for updates on books we’re reading, activities we’re planning, and links to the photo posts on the blog. The book club basically works like this:

We have a list of books we’re reading each month so that we know ahead of time which books we’ll need and when.
We talked to our local library’s children’s librarians and they generously pull together and hold for us as many copies of each month’s book as they can (so that no one is forced to buy the book if they don’t want to)
We share the books before the meeting and at the meeting (so it’s no big deal if someone doesn’t get a copy)
We read the books at home with our children ahead of time so that they come to know and love each month’s book
We meet at a regular time and day each month in the morning (this allows for the working moms and daycare kids to still join in before going in to work/daycare a bit late on that one day)
We each bring a food item and a craft supply to pull together all the items needed for each month’s activity and snack (we email coordinate this ahead of time)

AND THEN:

We read the book together as a group
We do an activity based on the book
We create a snack based on the book
We eat together, hang out, then part ways

Our baby book club has been a highlight of my month ever since it started. I would encourage any group of parents interested in doing something similar to get a group together and read a book each month with your kids. Your group can be as informal/big/small/organized as you want it to be. For our group, we’ve reached that magic number of just enough kids that it works without being overwhelmingly chaotic. It also helps that our kids are roughly the same age so that the same type of activities and books appeal to them. The oldest child in our group right now is just a little over two years old and the youngest will turn two in September.

{Reading “Beep Beep” by Petr Horáček, playing in cardboard box cars we made, and eating car snacks made of apple slices and blueberry wheels}

When we set the book schedule for the year, everyone chimed in with books they loved and we collaboratively determined our reading list. We tried to match books to the seasons thematically, ie: reading about fall and apples in September and about snow and winter in December. During October’s meeting, we brought all the kids dressed up in their Halloween costumes and we read “Where is baby’s pumpkin?” by Karen Katz.

If you want to learn more about the books we’ve read, the activities we’ve done, and the themed snacks we put together, you can find all of that information as well as links to recipes, activity guides, etc on our baby book club page filed appropriately under each month’s entry.

Do you have something like this in your community? It’s never too early to create readers and lovers of literature! If you don’t have something like this where you live, how about starting a baby book club yourself (feel free to refer to our club’s website or our Facebook page for ideas and inspiration)! If I’ve left anything out or you have any other questions about how our club works, please leave a comment below! Happy reading!

{Reading “Little Cloud” by Eric Carle, playing with cotton “clouds” and making cloud artwork}

Posted in Family, How-To Posts, Inspiration, Reading Recommendations | Tagged baby book club, reading | 4 Comments

a kid friendly scavenger hunt

{image c/o Molly Westerman}

I just came across this child-friendly scavenger hunt image on Offbeat Parents, where Molly Westerman (who also writes the awesome feminist parenting blog First The Egg) offered it as inspiration for other parents looking to make walks with their young ones more fun. As Molly notes, her toddler Noah had become disenchanted with “boring” family walks since it usually meant trailing along while his parents talked about “grown up” stuff which did not capture his attention and imagination. Molly thus came up with this genius solution for keeping him engaged and excited about their regular strolls through the neighborhood: a pictorial scavenger hunt that allowed him to become an active participant in the route and to use his imagination in looking for and finding all of the depicted items.

Not only do I love this idea for walks with little ones but I also think it would make a great accoutrement for family bike rides! Hand your child a similar scavenger hunt image and let them search for and locate all the different items listed as they ride along in your trailer, cargo bike, weehoo, bike seat, etc, etc. I can’t wait until C. is just a little older and we can do this with her.

Molly has generously made her scavenger hunt image available for download so if you’re not artistically inclinded and don’t feel inspired to make your own, you can just grab a copy of hers here. Or you could make your own with objects and items specific to your route and neighborhood. In our case, I think I’d add a cupcake representative of our favorite place to get a treat downtown and a dog since C. is obsessed with “woof woof’s” and loves pointing them out whereever we go.

Thanks, Molly, for the great idea! Love this? Print it out and share it with your child!