kentonandrebecca.com

We’re down in Viroqua, WI, to see the Newenhouse, a super-ultra-mega efficient home design. Of course, we’re also taking the opportunity to explore the unglaciated topography– wandering hills and valleys that escaped the scouring influence when the last glaciers retreated a mere ten or fifteen thousand years ago.

Last night we stayed in a hotel room, and King Ludd would be proud of us. It was . . . strange. We haven’t slept in square walls since we visited family at Christmas, and that nearly two-month stretch in the yurt has been enough so that we’ve almost forgotten what modern technology was like (they say as they make a blog post — ah, it’s a tangled skein). At any rate, the strangest thing is the electric heat. You just turn this little dial and it gets warmer or cooler. Whoa. No getting up to feed the wood stove, no adjusting dampers to get the air flow “just right”. You simply  turn the dial, and moments later the entire room is “just right”. Then there are the electric lights. This was so odd that we pretty much abandoned them. They’re just too harsh. So we had a bath in the dark, and in the morning we slowly cracked the curtains open to let in the natural light.

Did I mention a bath? Yup. We both had one, Mirabelle staying in for the entire duration. You merely turn that crank and hot water comes out. No heating over the fire. Wow.

The reason King Ludd would be proud is that we’re not exactly celebrating these things. It’s almost . . . too easy. We’re supposed to think that all this technology improves our lives, but there is something very different about being toasty warm when you’ve decided to use that “perfect” log, as opposed to when you just turn a dial. There’s something about the sunlight that slips in through the yurt’s dome, telling you (by its color and quality) what the weather is like outside. And there is certainly something wonderful about the thin walls that let you hear the wind, the soft patter of snowflakes falling, and the morning crow-song and squirrel chirps.

Today we’re off to the mysterious Wildcat Mountain, then in the evening we’ll tour the Newenhouse. Wildcat is said to have a buried treasure near the mountain’s summit, by the way, and we can never resist a treasure hunt. Wish us luck!

Many of you have asked for updates on how the ‘elimination communication’ thing is going with Mirabelle. Today, we definitely have some news to report.

Although Mirabelle is a bit ‘behind’ (pun intended?) babies who are 100% diaper-free, the approach we’ve been using really seems to be making an impression. At almost sixteen months, we only use a couple of diapers a day, and at this point she never poops in a diaper (unless she is sick and there is diarrhea, which can sneak up on her). She uses sign language to tell us when she needs to go to the bathroom, and then will go over to her baby toilet to do her business. A number of times she has done this unassisted. She’s walking about playing, and the next thing we know she’s at her toilet, making her deposit.

The last two nights, she’s done something else significant. She’s woken up around 2 or 3 in the morning (she’s never pooped at night before this), signaled that she needs to go, and we take her over to the toilet. Both nights she has pooped in her toilet, then come back to bed and gone right to sleep. We always felt lucky that she didn’ t have night poops, but now that she does, she’s letting us know so that she doesn’t have to poop in her diaper.

One of the ideas behind EC is that you don’t ever do ‘toilet training’. It just develops naturally as parents and baby communicate about how we do the ‘potty thing’ in our culture.

It may seem strange, but this has been one of the most fun parts of parenting. It’s helped us to develop a high level of communication with Mirabelle so that we have a strong understanding of what she wants, doesn’t want, when she is in pain from teething, when she’s sick, etc. Rebecca can usually tell with a glance if Mirabelle has a fever, and the thermometer nearly always agrees with her assessment.

We’d definitely recommend some version of EC (Try checking out The Diaper Free Baby by Christine Gross-Loh). You can start at any time, and can do it even when your baby is wearing diapers. (Just learn their signals and take them to the potty before they go. Most babies apparently love it.). You don’t have to do it full time, either — even if you only see your baby after work each day, you can do an hour or two of EC practice. Even a little, most EC parents say, pays off.

The next step for Mirabelle? Today she went over to her potty and began to take off her diaper. She had one side off but couldn’t quite get the other, so we helped her out and she did her thing in the potty. Yipee!

When we first decided to give yurt-life a try, we felt sure that there were amazing things waiting for us. We just weren’t sure what. The obvious lessons had to do with consumption, with how much ‘stuff’ we need in order to be happy, with exploring the idea of living in a one-room situation (as much of the world’s people do) as opposed to a multi-room situation (which is the norm here in the States).

Living in nature delivers beauty every day

Yet the real lessons have been much more subtle. Most of all, our life has slowed down. I’ve long known that this slowing down leads to immense happiness, but it was nevertheless powerful to re-experience it. Interestingly, it took us much longer to find this semi-mystical state in the yurt. (Longer, that is, than what I’ve witnessed with people going out into the woods and living time-and-schedule-free). It was rough at first, going through that slowing-down process. But now we’ve emerged from the other side, and everything feels very, very clear.

The things we’ve encountered in this slowed-down state are our own mindsets regarding success, love, and life patterns. We’ve now developed a morning practice, where we don’t just get up and eat breakfast or rush off to whatever “needs” to be done. Instead, we read from some of the books that are influencing us right now (the Busting Loose books by Robert Scheinfeld, The Paradox of Intention by Marvin Shaw, Zen Flesh Zen Bones by Paul Reps, and most powerfully of all, The Gift by Daniel Ladinsky, which is a collection of poems by Hafiz). Then we talk.

Mirabelle doesn't always join in our morning talks, but she always participates. Here she watches from her perch in the chair given us by our dear friends Murray and Madonna

Since we started this, life has become quite a bit more serendipitous. The things we were chasing are unfolding before us, and the patterns that we’ve been continuing to follow in our lives are falling away. It’s a magical time. The biggest secret behind it all? Hafiz talks about it in every single poem. It’s being immersed in love, and encountering every moment of your life with that love. Every person, whether they are “nice” to you or not. Every emotion, whether it is happiness or frustration. This love reaches out to everyone around you, making their dreams start to come true as well.

It can be challenging, at first, to bring love to bear in every moment. We’re so used to chasing our preferences, to pushing things away. Yet when we welcome everything in, such changes open before us! It seems to be a strange rule of the universe that “what we push away will enter our lives”.

We’re considering the possibility of moving into our friends’ small “bread house” come spring. Partly this is because winters are much easier than summers in the yurt, and partly it’s because we’d like to devote the next year to finishing the second two books in the trilogy we’re working on (the first one is being sent out to agents and getting a great reception thus far). Having electricity available would make the writing much easier. The yurt, for the next year, would become a dojo/dance studio/meditation hall.

The bread house would feel like living in a gypsy wagon. We haven’t figured out the square feet, but it’s probably less than our 20′ yurt. We’ve always been attracted to the idea of a “small house”, so this next experiment would give us a chance to see what that’s like.

The more we explore during our morning talks, however, the more we discover some startling things about life. One of them is a platitude we’ve heard over and over, but its importance can’t be overstated. It’s that life takes on a vibrant hue when you are fully engaged in this very moment, in love with your life as it is, unafraid to dream, yet without any grasping of those dreams. Then you’re always home, no matter where you are.

Since she was born, Mirabelle has been attending belly dance class. She loves to watch all of the beautiful dancing, and all of Rebecca and Jen’s students are incredibly welcoming. The other day, while practicing a veil piece, Mirabelle picked up a silk veil and gave things a try.

A special thanks to all of the students who have gracefully included Mirabelle in class.