Wordless Wednesday: Helping With the Dishes

Remembering the Now

Mama and kids piled up, as seen by my phone.

I am more of a morning person than anything else. The occasional day I like to sleep in, lounge, and cuddle until later hours, but usually I am easily restless, curious to see what the day will bring. With a nursling in bed, this can sometimes be a challenge.

Sister-Bug loves to snack and snuggle from about 5:30 on. Sometimes she gets up at 7 or so, sometimes not til 8 or later. Somedays she is deep enough that I can get up and grab a few moments with Papa-Bug, or to myself. Most mornings we cuddle and nurse.

Some mornings Brother-Bug cuddles up to me, effectively pinning me between two sleeping kidlets. Then I am truly stuck, even if Sister-Bug is deep enough for me to detach and persue my own aims. 

Some days I lay there fuming, impatient to get going.

This is a waste of time and energy, as well as precious moments.

In what will feel like minutes, these precious children of mine will leave the family bed and I will be able to get in and out as my whimsy dictates. In the blink of an eye I will kiss them as they leave for sleep-overs, travels, college... Papa-Bug and I will have our bed back to ourselves again.

As Gretchen Rubin so aptly states: "The days are long, but the years are short." I lose so much if I wish away these long morning cuddles. 

Right now, in these moments, my kids want only that I cuddle them. They still fit snug next to me. They aren't so big yet. These are not moments to wish away, so that I might do dishes, or check email, or other mundane dailies. These are precious moments to savor, each and every one.

To get some extra rest.

To dream or daydream.

To read a little while they snooze.

To enjoy the curves and lines of these two beautiful little people, and to marvel at how fast they are growing.

These are the moments I will miss someday.

Crisp and Tasty

Our new house is blessed with a bank of Day Lillies out front - both orange and a deep red.



I considered this quite a blessing because flowers are lovely and Day Lillies need little special attention.

A friend, visiting from elsewhere, enlightened my to the delightful prospect of eating Day Lilly petals! They are incredibly crisp and bitable, with a melon flavor. Melon might not be the best descriptor, but it is the best I can think of.

A google search has found lots of pages with recipes galore, like this page.

For now, I think I will add them to salads. It's amazing how a few flowers or petals make a salad so much more delightful, as well as appetizing to the Little-Bugs. Thanks to my friend for the new edible flower!

Mindful Monday: Sorting It Out and Re-Configuing

With the craziness of summer, the arrival of backyard-grandparents, the trip to Breitenbush, and Country Faire, my Mindful Monday posts and plans have taken a back seat. This is fine. Absolutely perfect in fact. Some times are just more busy than others, and we adjust accordingly. And with the fine weather (as well as broken computer) I have been lounging in the sun more, reading, playing, and dreaming of the someday-garden here at the new house. This is good.

But today is rainy and so I return to the blog and contemplate. This is also good.

Past Mindful Monday intentions have been:


*Three Good Things at Bedtime - This has been really great and I want to keep doing it. It has lost consistency and I want to go back to making it an every night thing. I also want to think about how we get in bed (the routine), what time we go to bed, and other minor bedtime details.

*4 Walks a Week - This was awesome. And then I ran out of audio book. I just need to get a new one on my iPod and re-commit. But this really seemed to make me a MUCH better person all around.

*Making the Bed - Got the habit and then lost the habit. Loved it while I did it and don't like that I dropped it. So back on the horse here.

*Washing Hands - We never really caught on to this one, though I have noticed less whining when I do make a point to get hands washed... and I remember more often too. We'll keep working here.

*Getting the Glasses on Brother-Bug & Picking Up Library Books - These two started right as the crazy times also started, so they never really got off the ground. We will re-try them until we get them.

*Playing the Yes! Game - I'm still sorting out the details. It's easy to say Yes at Faire. It's hard to say Yes when struck down by a horrid head cold. That's where I am at for now. Further updates as I figure out more details and how to persue this goal in a more trackable way.

I also want a good way to track these. I want to check them off, but the system I have (a paper inside the cupboard door) doens't really do it for me. I love Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project Toolbox, but with minimal computer access, what I really want is an iPhone App for Happiness Project Resolutions. Really. That would be so cool!

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It's been a bit since I shouted out. I got the idea for Mindful Monday from Meagan Francis over at The Happiest Mom. It's a good blog and a fun book. Check it out.

Just a Thing I Do

I made spanikopita for dinner. This is something I do a couple of times each year. This evening I was thinking about when I learned the recipe.

As far as I can remember it was probably about twenty years ago, while I was studying Greece and its culture. As a homeschooled kid I undertook a full Greek banquet as part of the project, along with other components. Homeschooling rocks.

But back to this evening's dinner.

Spanikopita is one of those recipes that I can't give out because I know it in my hands and heart, and I wouldn't know how to write it down. I can tell you that I usually add other greens to the spinach - kale, nettles, whatever. I can tell you that it bakes at about 350 until it's done. It should certainly have lots of garlic.

Recipes like this, recipes that live in my bones, delight me. I cook them and it feels like a dance. I eat them and I am sated to my core. My spanikopita recipe is twenty years a part of who I am.

Does anyone else have recipes like this? What is a core piece of you?

Come to Laundry Mountain...

This is the mountain of laundry - now clean - from our weekend of dressing up. There are still three loads, maybe four loads, to do.

But it was fun. And totally worth it.

How long will it take to fold it all, I wonder? We'll find out later this evening!

Ugh....Hack....Sniff....

Back from the Country Fair with 12 loads of laundry to do, unpacking galore, storing the Fair supplies for next year, thinking about ways to improve our 2012 Fair (we have only 362 days to plan, you know), and trying to decompress from the craziness with the kids... And of course I get an awful head cold.

A head cold in the Summer is just cruel. In the fall and winter it is expected. It makes sense. It's time to snuggle inside and drink hot tea anyway. I still hate every snuffy minute, but at least it is seasonally appropriate.

This all leads me to the grander question: how does one lovingly and effectively parent with a head cold? These are the days when I am at my worst. I look back on the day as I wheeze in bed, and I hate the parent I was all day. Cranky. Crabby. Impatient. Irrational.

I know that I can only do so much, but it almost seems like some other part of my brain wants the kids to be as miserable as I am. Or something like that.

What doesn't help is that I really don't like to be touched at all when my nose is stuffy. And I have a one-year old co-sleeping snuggle-bug.

I'll repeat my question: how does one lovingly and effectively parent with a head cold? If you give me useful and/or inspirational advice, I might just give you a prize.

Back to the trenches now.

Wordless Wednesday: A Selection of Favorites from Oregon Country Fair

Mindful Monday: Playing the "YES" game

Sometimes it seems so much easier to say NO. No, you can't have that for dinner. No, we can't play that right now. If you have young ones, I'll bet you are just as good at the No Game as I am. But, truth to tell, I don't really like playing it. This week we leave for Fair, where my only responsibility is to have fun and enjoy my family (and keep us warm, dry, fed, and hydrated of course). This is a good time to practice saying "YES" when I otherwise might be compelled to say No.

Who: Me, possibly Papa-Bug, as we interact with the kids.

What: Embracing YES as our favorite word to use with the kids.

Why: Positive attitudes are catching and I want all of us to catch this one.

How: This is harder because I don't have my sights on a concrete action to take. This is more esoteric than I usually work with. My goal for the week is to identify the events and times I give a knee-jerk NO, and analyze why that time and place. What is going on for me? What are the potential outcomes of yes versus no? My further plan is to refine this and update this intention the week after Fair. Expect a report back.

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Because of the computer issue I wrote about and the learning of the new phone, I am having a hard time getting pictures and formatting just the way I want it. Bear with me and I am sure I will figure it out.

Catastrophe!

Keep your fingers crossed for me. Apparently a sippy cup of water was behind my laptop last night. Apparently it also tipped over, leaking a puddle of water under and (hopefully not too far) into my computer.

All personal conflicts aside, I am very glad that I got this iPhone. At least I can keep up with the things I must do online, like banking and emails while we figure out what to do with the computer. Buying a new one, in the possibility that this one has visited Davy Jones' Locker is not financially feasible right now.

It's been one of those weeks. Sister-Bug has been dissatisfied for days - sweet and charming to everyone except me, but I am the only one she wants. We are gearing up for Faire as I have already noted. My Dad and his wife parked their RV in our yard for the summer - which is so great - but comes with more yard rearranging than I had planned. Plus I haven't seen them since winter solstice and I want to be hanging out, not doing chores.

But FINALLY it is sunny out. It is warm enough to put on a sundress without a sweater first thing in the morning. Strawberries are ripe all over the place. And I am bound for a couple of delightful hours working at the Eugene Farmers Market.

So I think it will be a good day and a full, rich weekend. And I hope my computer survives. Say a prayer to the gods of technical things and circuits, won't you?