Sleeping Babes, Three
Well, that was short-lived. CJ spent at least half the night in our bed. I’m not sure whether this was because I was too tired to move him out, or because everytime I did move him out he seemed to reappear again. I went to bed at the same time he did last night. 9:30. I’m pretty sure Apple-Apple was still awake (she has these torturous prolonged bedtimes, seemingly endless cries for water bottle or kleenex or jammies are too itchy or she’s too hot or too cold or she just can’t fall asleep.) Lucky for us all, once asleep she’s as sound as they come.
In any case, I was grouchy. Bed seemed the best option. The serenity following our holiday, which I’d optimistically planned to keep, uh, forever, has dissipated ever so fractionally amidst the hairiness of schedule, of having to be somewhere at a particular time. Mostly, it’s dragging children to events in which they have no stake that’s hardest. Fooey and CJ bundled up and tossed in the stroller to take the big kids to school. I’d complain too. CJ woken out of a nap and dragged along to Fooey’s music class, where for entertainment he has his mother, a banana, and an empty hallway. Et cetera. No matter how organized, how much time I’ve left, there comes a moment when I’m shouting, “Put on your snowpants, now!” and then regretting it instantly (Fooey hates shouting). Or worse, “We’re leaving without you!” Never true, and rarely motivating, as the kid has no interest in coming anyway. But I’ve been doing some deep breathing and back-tracking and attempting to focus on the larger picture: does it matter if we’re five minutes late for Fooey’s music class? Or for anything? I don’t want to become cavalier about responsibility, just realize that rushing accomplishes little except to put everyone in a lousy mood.
It’s interesting how my mood really affects the mood of the household.
It’s also interesting, if unrelated, that our family ate an entire loaf of homemade bread for breakfast yesterday morning–and CJ and I ate oatmeal instead. That’s slightly alarming when contemplating future appetites, and my own plans to bake all of our bread from scratch. Because I’d gone to bed early last night, I woke up early and started a fresh batch of bread. My life revolves around food.
So far, so good, in the eating out of our stores experiment. I’m planning to do a regular Sunday update and round-up on food.
Sleeping Babes, Two
Apparently CJ did wake and squawk briefly several times last night; Kevin said these episodes lasted mere moments, but because he was in another room, and we’re running two humidifiers now (so much for cutting down on energy consumption), I didn’t hear the babe and instantly leap to grab him up and feed him back to sleep. He is now 20 pounds, 6 ounces. Weighed today. I’m noting that here because I seem incapable of noting it anywhere else.
I’m only a tiny bit torn about moving him out of our room. Mostly I’m looking forward to reading before bed (while lying in bed), and to resting more consistently, ie. more than an hour or so consecutively. And I’ll still get to bring him into bed for snuggly night feedings, just fewer and further between. It always seems to come to “it’s time.” This may be the case for every transition. Something just tells me when it’s time.
To speak of a more fundamental transition, I’m finding myself in this New Year thinking often about life beyond primarily childcare. Researching possibilities. Feeling excitement, even impatience.
But.
Kevin stayed home Monday morning so I could write, and he reflected afterward how these moments will never come again. You either decide to spend this time with your growing children, or you don’t, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t spend this same time with them later. They will be grown. You can’t sit on the kitchen floor while CJ practices standing and taking a step, and Fooey gobbles handfuls of peanuts perched on a stool, talking utterly non-stop. Sometimes it feels too slow, too boring, too quiet. Sometimes it feels like you need some positive feedback, some notice, some worldly recognition. That feels vain to admit, but there must be something in human nature that craves recognition, recompense, for work done. But this isn’t regular work. You might even argue that it’s not work. It’s living, life. It’s experience. It’s definitive.
And I’m trusting that I’ll know when it’s time to shift my focus, that I’ll know when my time has come to get up off the floor. Maybe it will be when CJ can run away from me, or when Fooey has her nose buried in a book, or when Apple-Apple can cook supper, or Albus can walk to school by himself. I’m just guessing. I never know it’s time … till I know.
Sleeping Babes
He did it! He slept through the night! Well, mostly, and enough. I sense that he’s actually more comfortable sleeping by himself. Less restless. I fed him at around 5 this morning, in our bed, and within an hour he was wriggling and sweaty; so I carried him back to his own crib.
He’s still sleeping now and it’s time to put the porridge on. These mornings are so very dark. Snow this morning, too.
Local Food Round-Up
January. Time to start eating out of our stores, in earnest. Don’t want to come to spring and discover some cache of forgotten and uneaten beets. Here’s what’s in our black freezer: a few roasts and steaks, hamburger, pork and turkey sausage, a whole chicken, turkey parts, and a lot of chopped red peppers. In the white freezer: big bags of tomatoes, strawberry jam, strawberries, frozen pear and applesauce cubes for school lunches, homemade ketchup, raspberries. In the fridge freezer: dill, parsley, basil cubes, more pearsauce cubes, poultry gizzards and livers, cookie dough, peas, bread. In the cold cellar: two butternut squash, loads of potatoes (storing well in their paper sacs), garlic (also storing well, loose on wire shelves), one pumpkin, four cabbages, a handful of yams. In another cupboard upstairs: what’s left of the onions (note: my pantyhose storage method in our over-warm basement was a recipe for rotting onions suspended in nylon. Not pretty. A few survived to tell the tale and be made into onion soup). In jars: grape juice, pearsauce, grape jelly, and tomatoes. Plus we’ve got lots of local oats, flour, cornmeal, honey, maple syrup, and vinegar. We also have lots of local canola oil, but I find the taste too strong, overwhelming even in baking, and am unlikely to use it up.
The challenge: To eat as exclusively as possible from these stores till it’s all gone.
The method: Thaw at least one big meat item per week and plan at least one meal around that. Remind myself about the potatoes … to that end, look up some hearty winter recipes. Sunday evening advance planning.
Today’s Recipe of the Week: Tomato Sauce. Saute chopped onions and garlic in olive oil till soft, add some chopped red peppers if desired (frozen fine). Toss in a bag of frozen tomatoes (3.7 litre capacity). Add a can of tomato paste. Season with frozen basil cubes, parsley, 1 to 2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon each of thyme and oregano. Pepper to taste. When cooked down to desired consistency, stir in a dollop of vinegar.
Suggested uses: We ate this for supper, as is, over spaghetti with parmesan and feta, and a cabbage salad on the side. Tomorrow it might be resurrected with fried hamburger and some cumin and ground coriander over brown rice. Leftovers might also find their way on to homemade pizzas later in the week.
This week’s meat: smoked turkey sausage, currently thawing in our fridge. I’d planned to use it in a split pea soup, but just noticed there are no potatoes on this week’s menu, which makes me think … smoked sausage baked over potatoes and yams? Suddenly, I’m yearning for a little after-dinner nap. Full disclosure: I prefer vegetarian fare, but beans and legumes are hard to come by, locally. Meat, however, is everywhere.
Most surprising storage discovery: The red peppers are amazing. I’d run out patience by the time I put them up, so literally chopped and seeded them and chucked them into yogurt containers. But they’re easy to remove piece by piece, the flavour is amazing, and the kids eat them like popsicles.
One last note: For anyone missing Nina’s buying club, I’ve tried out and can recommend Oakridge Acres (http://www.oakridgeacres.ca/), a farm family from near Ayr who raise Black Angus cattle, and also source and sell a variety of local products, including cheeses, and who deliver to the Waterloo region.
Ahh, The Warm Glow of Self-Improvement
Haven’t stopped thinking about the New Year, and inevitably that means self-improvement. Right? It’s funny how at the stroke of midnight on the 365th day of the year, we pretend collectively that the slate has been wiped clean and we can Be Better. Except we’re just ourselves. Except that shouldn’t be an except or a just, because we’ve earned all of that grime and all of those scratches, and who would want to be wiped clean, really? That would be a recipe for unchecked narcisism.
Some thoughts on our family’s carbon footprint. Last year we went down to one vehicle, I started hanging laundry even off-season, did some canning, and attempted to source and eat local food. We also managed to lower our water consumption, but that was probably the new efficient toilets. Our electricity bill continues to climb; we moved in five and a half years ago, and every year we’ve consumed more electricity, not less. We have added family members during that time, but it’s no excuse. So this year, I’d like to do an energy audit, figure out where we’re leaking electricity and staunch the flow, train the kids to turn out the lights every time they leave a room, and continue to do many of the things we’ve started: walk as much as possible; hang the laundry; do more canning and preserving this coming summer; continue to buy local and cook from scratch. There must be other actions we could take, too, that I’m not thinking of right this second.
To add to that, here is a fantasy goal: I’d love to rid my cupboards of any prepared food that I could actually make myself. ie. no more boxed cereal, only homemade granola. Crackers? Bread, of course. Cookies, yes. Butter? Not unless we source our milk off-grid. Will it happen? Unlikely. But it’s a dream.
Some other random things I’ve been contemplating doing …
Smugness, begone! (Have I become a “Smug Married”? This thought has plagued me, slightly, over the holidays. All the things we consume, how full our house is of comfortable objects, how satiated we are. How much I don’t want to give up these comfortable things …).
Childcare … I’ve been thinking that I might enjoy caring for other people’s children during the day, or exchanging childcare. This is less fully-formed-thought than persistent notion. It would also be a good goal to have one day per week with nothing extra in it, one day just to hang out at home, read, play, nap, bake (with children, I mean). On the other hand, accepting that there is no Normal, that the day is bound to be broken in many ways by many unexpected occurrences, is really good for the sanity. You can’t have a household of six people and expect even one day to run according to Plan. So–flexibility. Going with the flow.
Embracing cliches.
Continuing to write. Think about how to get back to Nicaragua again–and for how long? Maintain and nurture the good things we’ve got going, but stay critical. Not complacent.
And next post, tell a good story rather than preach.