I use my crockpot a lot. As in multiple times per week. It is the only thing that enables me to give my children real food to eat during baseball and football seasons. And yes, those two sports pretty much encompass the entire year.
Yesterday afternoon I put meatballs and spaghetti sauce into the crockpot. The kids were excited since having meatball subs is something that they all like. I wasn’t going to be home until after 8:00pm and scrambling to make dinner at that time is a nightmare filled with tantrums and crying, sometimes even from the kids.
I was feeling pretty happy with myself. The same way I feel when all the laundry is washed and put away. Or all the kids have clean sheets on their beds. In other words, not something I feel all that often.
I heard a huge pop sound and discovered this:
I stood there and stared at it for awhile. I was completely in shock. Not only was my crockpot broken, my dinner was ruined. We were leaving for baseball soon and I had no back-up dinner plans.
I unplugged the crockpot and just left it there. Because what else is there really to do with a hot crokpot filled with inedible food.
Dinner last night was a hodge podge of foods: leftover pasta for one, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for three, Raman Noodles for the other three. Because despite having spent a ton of money at the grocery store the previous day, there was nothing in the house that could be cooked up quickly.
So now I need to go out and buy a new crockpot. Either that or get my family to embrace cold cereal, salad, and toast as a real dinner.
(The French braid. Not to be confused with any other kind of braid)
I have been attempting to French braid my daughter’s hair since she had hair long enough, but she was never that keen on having me do it. I like it because it keeps all of the front of her hair out of her face. But she was impatient. She didn’t want to have to wait soooooo long to have her hair done. She is busy. She has places to go. Things to do. Episodes of Hannah Montana to watch.
A couple weeks ago one of my friends, who has only sons, asked her if she could French braid her hair. My daughter sat there on the baseball bleachers and never moved, never complained, and never grabbed her head in exaggerated agony. Everyone made such a big fuss over her hair that she wants to have French braids almost everyday. And even the days when doesn’t want to have French braids, she willingly lets me brush her hair.
It is like a miracle. No more fighting and fussing. No more chasing her through the house with the hairbrush begging for her to let me get the rat nest under control.
She is willing to endure the pulling and tugging. Realizing that maybe in the end it is worth it.
Patience. There is a lesson for my life in there somewhere I think.
A month or so ago Mary, from Owlhaven, offered me a copy of her book, A Sane Woman’s Guide to Raising a Large Family. I jumped at the opportunity, not just because I really like and admire Mary, but Lord knows I could use a little more sanity in my life.
I got the book and, as I often do, I opened it up to a random page and began reading.
I’d love it if my insides matched my outside all the time. I’d love it if I could feel serene all the time instead of just faking serenity. But despite what others assume about me, endless serenity is not my personal reality as a mother…
Maybe that’s the heart of patience: refusing to be sucked down into negativity and instead choosing kindness; not avoiding the negative emotions… but resisting them, rising above them, and prevailing over them.
This passage resonated with me. People often comment on how patient I am. And I always laugh. They want to know what my secret is. I tell them honestly, there is no secret, I am just better at faking it.
I tell my children that you can never go wrong with choosing kindness. This is especially important advice for those of us, ahem, who are quick to anger and something I really hope my teenagers take to heart as the walk out the door every day.
When faced with choice of lashing out, it is almost always a better idea to take a deep breath and to react with kindness. Even when you don’t feel like it. Even when you think you have been wronged. Even when you think you would feel better by cutting someone else down. In the end, you won’t.
After I read this passage I was hooked on the book. I closed it and started from the beginning.
Mary’s honesty is refreshing and the book is filled with stories of her own family that will make you laugh. Mary dispels the myth that you need to have endless money, space, or patience to raise a large family. I often found myself furiously nodding my head in agreement with what she has written.
Mary has chapters on breaking the Supermom myth, encouraging your children to be life-long friends, parenting hacks, affordable vacation solutions, extra-curricular activities, to name a few. She shares what has worked for her family and for other mothers with many children that she interviewed. Her practical advice will work for you whether you have two kids or twenty kids.
If you are tired of reading books by so-called experts, that advocate certain child rearing theories, but offer no concrete advice, this is the book for you. This book should be a must read for any new mother who is wondering if she will ever be able to handle more than the one baby she currently has. Or for a mother with several small children who thinks she will surely suffocate under the never ending pile of laundry. Or for those of us with large families who are already slugging it out in the trenches, but wondering if there might some new solutions to some old issues.
On that note, Mary is offering a free copy of the book to one lucky commenter. All you have to do is leave a comment and one winner will be chosen by the random number generator thingy. She will even sign it for you. Don’t you love having books signed by the author? I know I do.
Two Kids,Two Teams, Two Days, Eight Games, One Trophy
April 26, 2009
I am not sure that I can adequately explain how stressful it is to watch your child play competitive sports.
I write, “Yes! My child hit a homerun!”
But I don’t write that leading up to that homerun hit I had to watch him swing twice and miss, watch three bad pitches go by, and foul off two other ones. All before the home run hit. And by that time I just really need a stiff drink. And possibly a Xanax. And that is only his first at bat.
There are the good pitches that they just WATCH go by. I wonder if they are waiting for an engraved invitation to hit the ball.
And the times where I just have to shout, “Child, this is not GOLF.”
But then, the little team that NEVER practices. The team that just shows up to games and has fun. That team does this:
Undefeated in the tournament. Winning first place.
I ran back and forth between their games today. They each had two games. And the games happened at the exact same time.
This is the photo I took of my 8yr old hitting a homerun today. Keeping with the tradition of missing the shot. At least I was there for this one.
My 8 yr old son’s team, the team that practices every day, was crushed. If there was an adjective stronger than crushed that I could think of I would use that instead.
Updated to add: My 10 yr old son has informed me that in the first photo the ball was outside the plate and that is why he didn’t swing. My 14 yr old son, who was watching this game confirmed this and pointed out that you can see the catcher lunging outside to try and catch the pitch. Ah well, what do I really know.
My 10 year old up at bat. He hit a homerun, his first of the season. This is not him at bat that time because I missed the homerun. MISSED IT. He was walked this time at bat which is not nearly as exciting.
So just pretend that this is right before he hit the homerun. I am.
It is part of my revisionist parenting memories, filed along with all the “fun” and “relaxing” family vacations, the babies who slept through the night and never cried, my love of being pregnant, and the killer body that I had before I had kids.
Where was I? I was across the park watching my 8 yr old son’s game. The son who plays on the cuh-razee team, which suits him and his cuh-razee intense self just fine.
Every morning I stand behind you in the bathroom brushing your hair. Ever since we moved to this house you like to stand there and look at yourself in the mirror while I do your hair. The mirrors here go all the way down to the countertop in the bathroom, very unlike the small medicine cabinet mirrors we had at our old house. You couldn’t see yourself in those unless you climbed on top of the sink, something I generally frowned upon. You would go and look at yourself in the shiny brass doorknobs, which apparently are much more forgiving than a real mirror.
And now that you can see yourself in an actual mirror you suddenly have ideas about how your hair should be fixed. Ideas which can not be replicated and somehow are not even possible in this world, what with gravity and all. And if I have to say one more time that the Disney princesses are cartoons and not real people with actual real life hair subject to the laws of physics, well, I might just scream.
(Sometimes even the happiest place on earth just doesn’t do it for you.)
And so we stand there and I brush your hair, bathing in your scowls and disappointment. I know this is just a taste of what is to come. Except one day they will be real disappointments. Real ways that I have let you down. I hope with all my heart that you will remember that I never once whacked you on the back of the head with the hairbrush, even though most some days I am so tempted. That should give me some points, right?
Every day I see the small scar on the top of your head. A reminder of the last brief moment of time when we were one. It is the spot where an electrode was threaded up through my vagina, through my cervix, and then screwed into the top of your head. When the doctor did this it felt as though he was trying to reach my thorax, which sounds much more pleasant than it actually was.They did this to better monitor your heartbeat which kept disappearing from the traditional band around the belly monitor.
It was a long tough labor. Don’t think I won’t be bringing that up one day. Some mothers say, “I was in labor x number of hours with you,” to guilt their children into doing something. I can top that. The highlight of my labor with you was having the doctor treat me like a hand puppet while trying to turn you. You were stubbornly stuck upside down. It was horrible. Even now remembering the experience I tightly clamp my legs together and shudder.
Then they made me have an epidural in the hopes that given time, presumably without me writhing in pain and shouting at everyone, you would turn on your own. Something went wrong with the epidural and I couldn’t breathe. Or more accurately it FELT like I couldn’t breathe, according to the nurses, my lungs were working and providing me with oxygen. I just couldn’t tell that I was breathing. But I am here to tell you that it FEELS LIKE THE SAME DAMN THING.
And later on I wondered if I was breathing okay what was up with the alarms and nurses running into the room? And the oxygen mask, was that just a placebo? And having the anesthesiologist come running down the hallway and almost knock your father over in the hallway was a nice added touch, one that in no way said this could be serious.
But like everything else, time eases the edges of the memory. And while I remember that during your labor I thought I might die, now I can laugh and think I had a touch of the melodrama. Because you are here now and healthy and perfect, and to use that tired old cliche, you were worth it.
Except for the part about being a hand puppet, I’ll have to wait for your teen years to decide about that.
I can hardly remember you as a tiny helpless baby. You have grown into a lanky, capable girl. You make friends easily and are just as comfortable shooting hoops with the neighbor boys as you are playing dress-up and giggling with the girls.
You have learned to do lots of things this year: Ride a bike, ride a horse, blow a bubble with bubble gum, read and write. One disappointment you have is still being forced to sit in a 5pt harness carseat by your mean, terribly mean, mother. How dare I want to keep you safe? Maybe this year you will finally hit 40 pounds. Only 6 more pounds to go… perhaps if you try eating actual food instead of the photosynthesizing you do now?
Really, at this point I am just hoping you don’t need to ride in a carseat your highschool prom.
That song will be stuck in your head all day now. You can thank me later when you involuntarily belt it out in public.
When I was a child I had a doll collection. I never wanted a doll collection. What I actually had wanted was a Madame Alexander Alice in Wonderland doll like my best friend had. Somehow that request morphed into an expensive doll collection. Every holiday I would get a doll for the collection as my big present. I hated those stupid dolls.
To make it even worse they were dolls that I was not allowed to play with, or even touch, I could only look at them inside their glass case. Though truth be told when I was home alone I would take them out and brush their hair. Oh, such a rebel.
Remember, this was back in the old days when it was perfectly acceptable to come home from school and spend a couple of hours all alone at 8 yrs old. Don’t want you to think I was 15 and secretly playing with dolls on a Friday night. Though that might have been more exciting than what I was actually doing, which was watching Dynasty and eating ice cream drowned in Hershey’s chocolate syrup.
One of my sons has a vintage globe collection. But really I think I love the collection more than he does. In an effort not to turn completely into my mother, however, I never buy him globes as a present. I just buy them and bring them home announcing, “Hey, I got another globe for myouryour collection!” So it isn’t as if he is getting a globe in lieu of a Ripstick or Nintendo.
He does seem to enjoy them, just not quite as much as I do. I love the subdued blues and greens.
These tiny tin globes are my favorite. They are the size of gumballs. I suppose that once upon a time they were used in gumball machines? I am not really sure.
So the contest for the printer is coming to a close today. But, come here and I’ll tell you a secret. Come closer…. closer…. Holly is doing the same contest on her site this week. So why not go over there and enter to win on her site. You can also see the fabulous project she did using the printer. A project involving vintage maps, another thing of which I have an irrational love.
