And We Have Blog-Off

What can you expect from this blog? I'm not really sure how to answer that question, because I'm really not sure what I'm going to want to blog about.

Now that question has remained unanswered, I shall tell you a bit about myself. I'm 27 years old; I live and work in Melbourne, Australia with my partner and our almost 2-year-old daughter. I have a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Criminology and Psychology with Honours in Criminology. I'm currently working for a department of the state government, and trying to figure out where I want to go with my career for the rest of my life.

Many people would probably use the term "hippy freaks" to describe us given some of the practices we adopt and choices we have made. For one, our daughter was born at home, but wait it gets even more hippy freak than that, she was freebirthed (there were no medical professional present at our daughter's birth).

We babywear. Up until about a month ago, we used a range of slings and carriers to carry our daughter, instead of using a pram. Now our daughter is almost 2, and too heavy to carry in the slings for extended periods we use a pram more often. We also use cloth nappies and face washers instead of disposable nappies and baby wipes.

Our daughter is still breastfed, she will be until she decides that she no longer wants to. This is rather confronting for some people, but rest assured the World Health Organisation recommends that babies are exclusively breastfeed for the first 6 months of their life, and continue to be breastfed until at least the age of 2.

We attachment parent. There's probably a blog post in what I mean by that term and who knows, one day I might actually write one. In short in means we co-sleep, our daughter sleeps in our bed with us. We treat our child as we treat each other, we don't hit or "smack" her because we wouldn't hit each other, we talk to her about her feelings when she is upset, we explain to her why she shouldn't hit/push/kick/pinch others instead of yelling at her or hitting her, (what a radical notion we don't use violence to teach her not to be violent). We make ourselves available to her and treat her as an equal.

We have decided to homeschool our daughter, further we have decided to undertake a form of homeschooling termed unschooling because there is no set curriculum, you take your lead from your child about what they want to learn about on a particular day. Children are by nature, curious and inquisitive and want to learn about the world around them, we believe that this is something that should be cherished and nurtured. We do not believe the education system in Australia places any/enough value on this as it deems what children should be interested in learning and what they need to learn at particular times and ages (apparently I needed to learn trigonometry for 5 years in high school and yet have not used it once since I left school).

So back to the original question about what to expect from this blog, well there will be some posts about the above topics, there will be some posts about my family and our adventures because these two funky women are my life. There will be posts about some current affairs and political issues; I've already got a blog post in mind about a court case that was resolved on Friday. Much to my partner's distaste there might even be the odd post related to sports, because I have been known to get rather passionate about my football (only 13 days until the start of the NAB Cup, Essendon vs. West Coast).

So there you have it, a bit about me, and what you can expected from this blog. Hope you enjoy it.