Sunday, Aug 24, 2008 | Chores, Kids, Spirit |
We’re not a church-going family. Coming from a Mennonite background, I’ve tried my best to make us so, and we may attempt Sunday school again this fall (AB enjoys it), but we don’t find ourselves naturally drawn, on Sunday mornings, to our church. Other religious rituals have found a comfortable place in our home, including singing a prayer before our family meals (led forcefully by F, age 3), and, for me personally, humming hymns. I’ve had the first line of a hymn in my head these past couple of days: “My life goes on in endless song, above earth’s lamentations.” So yesterday afternoon, while the children were splashing outside in the wading pool, I sat nearby with the hymnal on my knee and sang the whole of that song. F came and sat in a chair beside me, cuddled in her towel. She wanted to know why I was singing, and I said it was because it made me feel happy and comfortable and peaceful. She said it made her feel the same way. Baby CJ was nursing, and it was a really joyful and calm moment for the three of us, in our beautiful shaded backyard, in the humidity of an August afternoon in Ontario, the leafy canopy overhead, the big kids splashing gleefully (the neighbours love us, I am sure!).
We have managed to give our kitchen and dining-room that just-moved-in feeling. Everything’s cleared out for painting purposes, and it echoes. I picked up take-out pizza for supper last night, and as we sat eating together, it felt exactly like it feels when you’ve just moved in somewhere new, that very first meal in a brand-new house. I like that feeling, actually. I’m glad to discover it’s as easy to replicate as ordering take-out and taking the pictures off the walls. The smell of fresh paint added to it too.
Did I suggest in my last post that I’d actually finished all my (house)work the other night? Yah, that didn’t happen. Literally, by the time I came down the next morning, the kids had replicated the disaster in the living-room. I shall either have to ban all creative play (art projects, puzzles, games, and Playmobil), or live with the consequences of having fostered such fabulous creativity in my chiildren. Hmm. The latter, I think. If only I were just slightly more slovenly. How’s that for a personality trait to work on.
Saturday, Aug 16, 2008 | Chores, Kids, Local Food |
Some good adventures in local food today, including Nina’s buying club. I took pictures, but haven’t figured out how to post those easily yet, so will put off doing that till later. She’s also got a chicken coop in her backyard, the cutest coop you’ve ever seen, but my kids weren’t interested in posing. Too busy playing. And begging for apricots. And squabbling over the fact that we hadn’t brought enough money to buy a giant pretzel (or, better yet, an almond horn) for each. Lessons in sharing. Not necessarily lessons learned, but lessons nevertheless.
While I was cooking supper, Kevin came in with apples and pears from the trees in our backyard we’d written off as dying. They haven’t produced since we moved in five years ago, but this spring Kevin did some pruning (Google-guided), and … pears and apples!! A said: “Quick, take them to Mom so she can cook them!” Since they didn’t go in my beef stir-fry, I thought I’d whip up a cobbler. Ah, yes, whip up a cobbler. The kitchen was at this point in a state beyond disarray, the dishes having not been done all day, supper in progress. But with help from Kevin and AB, the apples and pears were getting chopped while I cut butter into flour (local and local). AB wanted to cut an apple. They were small and hard, and I said, better not, but she is very determined, and next thing … blood!
It was one of those moments that makes me blog in my head, if you know what I mean. I’ve been doing this for years, long before blogging existed, and it helps cut through the crazy moments (at least, for me): I mentally narrate as we go, imagine dressing up the moment in fabulous or funny or tragicomic or whatever style best suits. It never flows quite as fabulously out of the moment, but oh well.
The Scene: Utterly disastrous kitchen, sink piled with pots and plates, vegetable debris on counter, flour on floor, baby sleeping, A unloading a 1/2 bushel of apricots into the fridge for me, radio on, F playing on her own, AB and Kevin happily chopping, rice steaming and wok bubbling, and me measuring, when ack! “I cut my finger!” Shrieking and howling because this child is nothing if not melodramatic, I race her to the bathroom, door partially blocked by apricots and A, run nasty gash under water, bandage, all the while assuring her she won’t bleed to death. “If only I’d listened to you Mommy,” she actually says. Am I a terrible mother for finding some pleasure in that rarest of statements? Adding to the moment, F immediately dashes upon hearing shrieks and begins wailing that she herself is mortally wounded too, coincidentally also on her hand, clutches my leg, look look Mommy (on close inspection it appears to be a well-scratched bug bite). Of course, the moment is soothed and conquered, and we move right on, finish the cobbler crust, lay it over sugared fruit, set the table, et cetera.
Can I also say that I did so many dishes tonight the accomplishment was medal-worthy? Funny story: The other morning, after Kevin had gone to work, the kids kept regaling me with: “Daddy did so many dishes this morning!” and “You wouldn’t believe how many dishes Daddy did this morning!” and “Did you know Daddy did a huge pile of dishes this morning?” It was true. He’d washed the dishes I hadn’t gotten to the previous night because he’d been at soccer and I just couldn’t manage them (this never happened before the birth of #4; somehow, I always always managed to wash the dishes at the end of the day, kind of a personal policy for me, clean kitchen, happy house, or something like that). So, yes. He’d done a day’s worth of dishes first thing in the morning. I was grateful. But clearly I’m not selling my own dishwashing very well. When I asked, the kids had no idea that I regularly (ie. EVERY DAY) washed the same huge pile of dishes ALL BY MYSELF! They weren’t impressed, though. There’s some fundamental difference between the things Mommy does and the things Daddy does. What is it??? I don’t know. It’s not Kevin’s fault. He pitches in always and spends a lot of very very hands-on time parenting and keeping this house going. But still.
