We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2004 - Mamma
Update First off, I just got another call from Rod. He explained to me that the problem was that the "drive won't mount", and this seemed to him to have an easy explanation. Buy a new drive, inform it that it's the "master", then try to read the old drive as the "slave".
Ummm...ok.
I document software for a living, it's true. But I document for the completely non-technical software user, and I lay no claim at all to understanding hardware.)
Anyway, Rod called a few minutes ago to tell me that he'd tried his first theory, and he is now back in business with all files recovered. (And backed up this time, honey?) Lonely Only?
Jack is an only child. Oh, he has four brothers, but they're all grown and live far away. Effectively, that means that Jack is an only. At our age, it pretty much has to stay that way.
And we're really ok with that. Oh, if we had met at twenty, I think we probably would have had a dozen kids, but we have grandkids at this point and we have plans. If we ever hope to move back to Australia, we have to start saving NOW. And if we hope to see our kids and grandkids reguarly, we can't think in terms of round the world treks with multiple kids. We're unlikely to ever have that sort of money!
OK, so Jack is an only child.
But Rod and I both grew up in large families. I have five brothers and Rod has five brothers and three sisters. We each had a pair of children in our earlier lives. We don't have much experience with this solitary childhood thing, and I don't know about Rod, but a part of me worries that Jack would have been better off with siblings if only we could have managed it.
Then, along come stories like this and this and I really start to wonder whether we're doing Jack a serious disservice.
I don't really believe that we are...but I am inspired to make sure that Jack gets all that he needs to give him a well-rounded childhood.
In the short run, that means making sure that we have a community with a lot of children for Jack to hang out with.
So far, we have several friends with a total of eight children of various ages with whom we can get together for holidays and special occasions, though one family lives forty minutes away and the other closer to an hour away, so that's not an every day event. We also hang out with other kids (mostly around Jack's age) at playgroup on Friday and Saturday mornings.
But I have begun to consider whether a more permanent arrangment once we get back to Australia might not be a good idea. In Victoria, of course, we have cousins (mostly second cousins, but who's counting) and there is a co-housing developement going up in Melbourne.
Co-housing is one form of "intentional community", in which the "relationships" are preserved as they were in old fashioned neighborhoods and extended families, but unlike the "communes" of forty years ago, co-housing provides for the privacy of the nuclear family with individual homes and for community with a communiy center in which common meals and free time can be spent together.
My thought is that in co-housing, Jack would probably have a group of children to play with, much like in an old-fashioned neighborhood. The same kids year after year to run around with, learn from and grow up with, without the dramatic turnover that one sees in other neighborhoods, and with neighbors who respect other people's parenting choices. Some of our choices aren't very mainstream -- no television or electronic toys, a "continuum" style family life, and the like.
As the time gets closer, we would, of course, have to make sure that the community would be open to our ideals and that our ideals and theirs aren't too far apart. And I really don't know all that much about life in a co-housing community, so I'll have to learn more about that, too.
The acquaintances I have who live that way, though, seem to like it and seem like the sort of people we would enjoy having in our community.
We'll see.
