That’s right… we’re THOSE parents.

While at a birthday party this weekend for a frouple’s two-year-old, I realized that we’ve become those parents.

Which are those parents you may ask? (Even if you didn’t, I’m going to pretend that you did, because otherwise there’s no point to this post. Blogging is so convenient when one can speak for one’s own readers…)

Thanks for asking, I’ll tell you.  We are the parents who:

1. Give educational non-branded toys for birthdays and other gift-related holidays.
2. Buy granola in bulk from our local co-op.
3. Buy chickens pastured locally from our doula and her husband who are also farmers.
4. Make homemade teething biscuits.
5. Forgo baby food for baby-led-weaning instead.
6. Are still breastfeeding at a year.
7. Still co-sleep at a year.
8. Make our own pasta.
9. Have started on the journey of making our own bread.
10. Are considering having a VBAC at home for baby 2 (if we’re blessed enough to get preggers again).

I won’t go on.  There is more, but I think you get the point.  Don’t get me wrong… we aren’t as far out as being part of the raw-food-movement or anything (no offense to those of you who are, more power to you and your raw food!).

And we aren’t luddites, either.  While G has a whole ton of books and tactile toys, he is also ALL about the iPad and M’s iPhone.  He’s been talking to Siri (one of his favorite playmates).  But Siri, as with Scots accents apparently, doesn’t understand baby-speak.  And my Windows OS phone he finds vastly inferior as it has neither Siri, nor his Bubbles game.

And G also watches TV sometimes… in that he watches what we watch, which is mostly hockey, and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  Sometimes it’s cooking shows, which he seems to find relaxing.  And then there’s the occasional BBC/PBS mystery or other drama.  G decided that playing with his toys and reading his books was often more entertaining that Downton Abbey.  I suppose I would have thought that at his age, too.

But yeah, despite some “normal” tendencies, we have become a set of those parents.  I think I babysat for some parents like that once in my tween years.  They were abit more austere… no TV at all.  But otherwise fairly similar.  I remember thinking, while at their house, that they never had anything good to snack on (e.g.: processed salt/MSG/sugar-laden fake-food).  I’m pretty sure I thought to myself that I would never be a parent like that.

Oh how time changes things.

And let me take a moment to say that I’m not trying to be preachy here.  I firmly believe that all families should make educated decisions about what’s right for them – we’re all in different circumstances and have different tastes and preferences.

This is more about me not realizing just how crunchy I’d become.  It sort of snuck up on me and just hit me on the forehead (along with one of G’s wooden blocks, one of many fantastic birthday gifts G’s received from family and friends).

Yup, and not just crunchy.  I think I may actually be growing up.

There, I said it.

GROWING UP.

I may even qualify now as a *gulp* adult.

It’s not that I equate this crunchy lifestyle with being adult… it’s that I’m thinking, getting educated, making decisions, actively parenting, actively living.

Lord knows I am not perfect, and I am very happy to say that there are large swathes of my personality which can still be childish, but I hope it’s in the good way.  The way that allows me to be silly and play with G.

When did you realize you’d become a grown up?