Accidental Hippie

They say that recognizing your own faults is in itself a virtue, right?
Well, here's one fault of mine that I am highly aware of:
I am a mocker. Self-satisfied, pretentious, judgmental. I don't think I'm a bully, but I do gain a lot of satisfaction from watching people from afar and judging them silently.
Oh, man. This turned out to be much more confessional than I was anticipating.
I'm also, like, super nice.

Anyway. One group of people that I have previously loved to mock and totally judge are hippie mamas.
You know. Co-sleeping. Non-vaccinating. Cloth-diapering. Home-schooling. Breastfeeding-until-age-6. Vegetarians, maybe. Wives of farmers, probably. Those people are the worst.

Except. Thanks a lot, universe.
I think I might be joining them. 

It happened innocently enough. Obviously, I breastfed the boys, because... that's how babies get milk.
I really didn't realize (until after my kids were born) that some people choose not to breastfeed, out of convenience or something. I just figured, everybody breastfeeds. So, I inadvertently joined the breastfeeding clan. (Yeah, guys. It's a clan.)

Then, we decided to cloth diaper the boys. I can honestly say that 100% of my decision there was that I wanted my kids in those cute little diapers! But in order to convince my more-practical spouse, I did a lot of research and learned about how cloth affects the environment, saves money, and is better for your baby, etc.
So, I guess I joined the cloth diaper clan, too.

Then I started learning how to cook. I grew up with daily homemade meals and cookies, so I was all about home-cooked food to begin with, but I didn't care that much about where my food came from. But in an effort to be trendy and hip and interact with my city- I started going to the farmer's market.
And again, my penchant for pretty things drove me to buying things like copper and turquoise chicken eggs, and meat wrapped in brown paper packages tied up with string. And I watched Food Inc and (like the rest of America), wanted to throw up at the idea of fast food burgers. I read a couple books about food and was sucked into the slow-food and whole-food movements.

And it's getting worse.

I think we'll probably homeschool the boys, at least until they're 7 (the age at which you legally have to send your kids to school or get an affidavit to homeschool.) I have lots of reasons that seem minuscule when I list them out, but honestly- it's just a feeling. I feel like homeschooling. Just like I felt like cloth diapering. No real reasons matter, except that I want to.
I read books about it all the time, seek out homeschooling bloggers and instagramers to follow, and am now officially part of the Salt Lake Homeschooling Email Group. How did this happen? I love to mock home schoolers! And I super-extra love to mock books with titles like "Bible Science."

Now, Travis and I are hoping to buy a home this summer, and I entertain myself for hours looking up regulations on backyard chickens, tips for kitchen gardens, advice on composting, and trying to find local farmers who will sell me an entire cow or pig at a time. (Our first big, new-home purchase is going to be a great big freezer. I, like, cannot wait.)
I hate animals. I also hate yard work.
But you guys, I really, really want chickens. I think about my future chickens all the time.

And we skipped rice cereal, and went straight to table scraps for our puppy baby.
We outlawed all television on weekdays (except the occasional YouTube for educational purposes or dance-parties).
We bought some kind of camping thing? Once? Just kidding. Travis buys camping stuff all the time -including state and national park passes, and often pretends that someday we'll use it all and our kids can learn about nature. Luckily for me, that's all talk so far.
(I'm just not ready to also face nature.)
I even purchased an insanely expensive bottle of essential oils, once, in a moment of weakness.

I just find myself accidentally turning into a hippie.
Sometimes I feel like it's all or nothing.
If we think local, hormone-free meat is sooo important, how can we vaccinate our precious babies?
If I cloth diaper my kids, they should also only wear upcycled thrift-store clothes.
If I am super religious and like to talk about Jesus, how can I possibly believe in evolution or probably-aliens?

You know, none of those things even seem related to me.
Sometimes I just want to know that other moms exist who think the same way that I do. I just want there to be other slightly-hippie moms who are cool and awesome and not insane.
(Just to clarify, I do not think that I am necessarily cool, awesome, or not-insane.)

And it's strangely embarrassing and awkward to tell people that I'm thinking of home schooling. I've avoided writing about it here for months. 
But whenever people ask, "Are the boys starting preschool yet?" I get all shifty.
"Uhhh. Nooooooo. They, um. You know. I'm thinking 'bout.... so. That weather, huh?"

Anyway. I decided it was time to come out of the hippie-closet and admit to you that I sometimes actually make my own granola and graham crackers. You know, to avoid high-fructose-corn-syrup.
And I kind of want to move to Portland.
And sometimes, I think about riding a bike- but don't worry, people. My lazy legs and asthmatic lungs always nip that idea in the bud.


I hope you appreciate these unrelated pictures of August sleeping. I've included them because he is cute and perfect and you'd want to home school him too, if he was your baby. Because then you'd get to play with him all day.

** Don't freak out. We totally vaccinate. I am all about vaccinating. Shots are a modern miracle.