One More Thing
The kids have taken an interest in their blogland pseudonyms and suggest the following improvements: Captain CJ, Teacher Fooey, Mrs. Apple-Apple, and Professor Albus (aka P. Albus).
Category: Kids
A Good Morning
A good morning, goes like this … wake, tired, but that’s okay. Sun pouring through drawn blinds. “Good morning, Mommy!” Fooey never fails to greet me this way. Apple-Apple is reading in her bunk. CJ cooing from his crib. Albus: “Is it morning-time?”
Coffee grinder roaring, bread toasting. Joining in an endless search for tights that fit and have no holes. Bags packed. The first load of laundry tossed into the washer. Lost snowpants and hat located. Muffin recipe considered, rejected. Kisses goodbye. Diaper change and big sister picking out little brother’s clothes for the day (pink sweater with rainbow detailing at wrists chosen). Up and down the stairs. Breakfast shared by mother and babe (we both like cooked cereals with yogurt and pearsauce). Muffin recipe chosen. Hair braided. Outfit for daughter dug out of basket of clean clothes waiting on living-room floor. Skim front section of newspaper. Grocery delivery, teamwork to put everything away.
Arrival of morning playdate! First cup of coffee! Check in with Facebook. Start muffins. Check diaper, change. Clementime peeled, and raisins and seeds doled out. Play. The smell of fresh baking. Second half-filled cup of coffee (the dregs). Diapers into the washer. Muffins out of the oven. Second snacktime. Fussy baby. Girls playing upstairs. Baby in backpack.
Eggs boiling on stove for lunch. Blog. Nap. Peace. Radio (Jian Ghomeshi). Sunlight!
Local Food Rounder-Upper
A new discovery: soup on Wednesdays, with fresh bread and cheese, has been a big hit these past couple of weeks. Wednesdays we need a fast meal, on the table by 5pm, in order to get the big kids to their music class after supper. Cream of cauliflower, made with frozen veggies, last week; black bean and hamburger, the one before. This week I’m planning to try a grain & bean recipe that sounds easy, nutritious, and will make use of some frozen beans.
This week theme is: Dig in the Freezer. Honestly, frozen apricots? Suggestions? I froze a couple of bags last summer, lovely and organic, and have no idea what to do with them now.
Yesterday it was a big red sauce from the freezer tomatoes, with basil shrimp (both basil and shrimp from the freezer), over pasta. The leftover tomato sauce will be sent back to the freezer, in easy-to-use format. Always handy to have tomato sauce prepared and ready to heat and serve.
Tonight, it’s turkey sausage with chickpeas (both from the freezer), and cabbage. I’m winging the recipe with flavours leaning toward curry. Over rice. Wednesday, soup, as mentioned above. Thursday will be baked potatoes with leftovers on the side. Friday, I’m boiling up a big frozen chicken for broth and stock and meat. I’ll make some of it into a comforting illness-fighting noodle soup.
This week, thus far, has felt a bit scrabbling-about-ish … I have to remind myself to focus and remember to set priorities and stick with them, to keep the planning very basic and simple. Can I continue to blame the weather? I have felt overwhelmed at moments this week, incapable of figuring out what needs to be done most urgently. Partly, it’s due to Kevin working this past weekend. That removes my day of cleaning and organizing, otherwise known as Saturday, and it means the floor is still covered, in parts, in last week’s crumbs, and last week’s scattering of toys hasn’t been gathered and sorted and returned to order. I really like when all the toys are in the baskets and drawers and containers to which they belong: craft items in the craft cupboard; doll clothes in the orange bin the girls’ room; books on shelves; baby blocks and puzzles in the baby blocks and puzzles bin (okay, honestly, I’m the only person in the whole house to whom this really seems to matter, so it is a losing battle, but nevertheless one I intend to keep on fighting).
Priority at this exact moment: wake baby from nap, change diaper, load handful of children and off to music class. Like, now.
Hi 5
Not writing much in Blogland, just noticed. Not sure why. I’m writing more in fictional world, so perhaps that’s draining off all the words.
Heartwarming thing my baby did yesterday: toddled up to me, grabbed my hand, opened it, and placed into my palm a toy he’d been playing with. I almost cried.
He also heard me say “hi” this morning, and instantly grabbed my hand and tried to give me a high five. This is a new trick he learned this week, and it made me think we should teach him more. He’s so eager to communicate and connect and participate. There are times when he walks through the house laughing and laughing–joining in with whatever fun and jokes are going on.
Just repaired son Albus’s totally shredded snow pants, and though the kids were impressed (“you know how to knit, Mommy?”) …. sewing, not my thing.
Tripping over Life’s Little Lessons
Random thoughts kicking around …
1. My friend Katie’s Facebook status recently read (to paraphrase): “Katie is grateful for all of the reasons she is tired.” I’d like to borrow and adopt that as my own default tagline. There’s nothing wrong with complaining and worrying sometimes, but I’m a big believer in attitude making a genuine difference in how our lives proceed. Not that daily gratitude will prevent disaster and sadness, but that disaster and sadness will be made easier to bear. I am thankful not to have to test this theory, except in small ways, at present.
2. Experience = wisdom. Right? Somehow I’ve always accepted as fact that layers of experience, age, will gradually result in wisdom gained. Except I’ve had the revelation that it’s possible to keep discovering the same things over and over again, in slightly mutated form, such that it would seem all that marvelous experience hasn’t been exceptionally integrated into a grand interior mural of cohesive wisdom, but is hanging about in separate clumsy segments waiting for me to trip over it again. Partly, this is to do with age itself, and the feeling that time continues to speed up, and the fact that my brain is actually about two seasons behind, right now. It’s so hard to maintain a focus, to remember the resolutions, to stick with the plan (while trying to remain flexible) and ultimately better oneself. The previous sentence would be a terrible mantra.
3. Speaking of mantras, my siblings, when confronted with the above rambling non-mantra, suggested I should keep a “Life’s Little Lessons” kind of diary. A list somewhere with those nuggets of wisdom recorded.
4. Just had another thought: maybe it’s not that important to remember these lessons. Maybe experience simply kicks in during a regular day as situations arise, everything from walking to the library in the rain pushings a stroller and pulling a three-year-old on her bicycle (and enjoying it, as experience tells me such moments are fleeting), to rewriting a story a million times over, because there is always something more to learn.
5. Little Life Lessons have a tendency to sound bland, trite, and obvious written down.
6. Still, it might be nice to return to thoughts like: I like baking bread! Or, I’m glad for everything that makes me tired! Or, three-year-olds need to feel like they’re independent sometimes! Or, you can always say your sorry, even if it was an accident! Et cetera. Yup, that could become addictive. (Why each life lesson cries out for an exclamation point, I cannot say. But it does!)
7. Writing. I want to blog about the writing, but nothing coheres into firm thought, just the usual angst-ridden blether. I’m finishing a poetry collection right now, mostly on young motherhood, and memory. And I’m continually writing and rewriting these stories in the Nicaragua book, and wondering how many more years will be wasted/usefully applied in pursuit of that book, and whether perhaps the subject is just too loaded and therefore doomed. Perhaps I will understand more clearly when this draft is done, but if experience has taught me anything … no, I won’t.
8. What was that about daily gratitude? Here’s a little life lesson: it is infinitely easier to be grateful for and to love my children than to be grateful for and to love my other creative outlet of writing. I have such a simple relationship with my children, despite the minute complexities. I just love them. I trust my instincts about them, and have never questioned this journey we’re on together. But the writing … I love it and crave it and need it; and hate it and resent it and agonize over it. I haven’t yet discovered the antidote.
Local Food Round-Up
Is there a plan? Here’s an amusing detail about this past week’s local food plan: the best meal of the week was the one I threw together on the fly, zero advance plotting. Ugh. Or fab. Except that such results do not inspire continued Planning.
Nevertheless, despite, because, as if, et cetera …
I’m planning to cook a pot of black beans for one main meal this week. In the fridge, I still have a few red beans from the chili meal, so for a second meal this week, I’ll toss those together and make a two-bean soup, or another chili. Meal number three may involve yet more of those beans (I always make lots), and some red sauce I froze from Friday’s successful meal–spiced up with cumin and coriander and baked in layers with tortillas and cheese. I’m also glad to have a winter squash to pop in the oven for colour and variety, and some cabbage to chop into a salad.
So the theme appears to be, by default: beans. I’m off meat at present, so I’ll stick with some local hamburger as an add-in, if desired.
Have to add as a note that I originally typed: “I’m planning to cook a plot of black beans …” Sounds like a spicy short story set in the tropics. I was going to riff on that theme for a few glorious moments of fantasy here, but have been advanced upon by a weary husband holding a newly bathed and howling baby who looks darned adorable in his ducky towel and, though said babe is pre-verbal, he seems to be calling my name rather effectively.
Well, then …. Shabaddy-woo (as I like to say, heaven knows why, to my baby).