What There's Time For

Redemptive Soup

If you're feeling like kind of a Bad Mom because your older child - by gleefully grasping every opportunity to be mean to your younger child, gleefully grasping every opportunity to piss you off in every other way imaginable, and gleefully NOT grasping ANY opportunity to take a nap - has so thoroughly defeated you (at the tender age of 3 and a half) that mealtimes are often a nutritional wasteland of frozen chicken nuggets and Nutella sandwiches (on whole wheat! you tell yourself, desperately clinging to some standards)...

And then you go and hang out with a bunch of other moms that you don't know all that well and they (even the ones whose kids you swear you saw wandering the house with an entire open bag of marshmallows once) are all going on about how easy it is to get their kids to eat vegetables...

Well, in that moment, that moment of a million moms explaining their head-smackingly simple strategies for vegetable-feeding, you're gonna feel even more Bad Mommish, sorry...

BUT, you might come out of the mud with a gold nugget of information (you can make almost anything in to a VERY SMOOTH PUREE!) and a small ember of hope...

Which just might be all you need to smithy yourself a very thin (in fact, invisible to anyone but you) Good Mommy halo through the next slogging week of meanness and Time Outs as your child actually eats carrots, tomatoes, cauliflower, and some other stuff, all in the form of "Special Bunny Soup".

It's been a fabulous week of cold rain to declare as soup and sandwich week.  The pressure cooker and the whizzer (I think it's officially an "immersion blender" - secret mommy power tool; don't have a child without one) have seen heavy use this week.  It would be a lie to say that Mr. PureePants is guzzling buckets of pureed veggies, but he has truly consumed non-negligible amounts of that SouleMama-inspired carrot tomato soup I mentioned earlier and a cream of cauliflower (CAULIFLOWER!!) and carrot with tandoori seasoning.  The beef broth with alphabet noodles was rejected, which is most bizarre, since "soup with noodles" is the only thing he ever says he ate at school and there were no actual veggies in that one.

First Blogiversary Celebration Giveaway for YOU!!!

 

Wooooooooooooooo!!!  I am celebrating today - my first post went up a year ago and since then... well, I'm kind of astounded by what there's been time for, to be honest.  I haven't even had time to go back and read it all.  I did find time to knit up a new banner to test some things and it turns out that my brilliant idea for knitting intarsia in the round (I knitted this in the round and then stitched two lines and cut) is not entirely new and needs some refinement to avoid ugly stitch distortion, plus is irritatingly fiddly.  If I ever get around to my Child's Christmas in Wales stocking idea, I think I'll be planning them so as to do without intarsia.

So...  BLOGIVERSARY!  I could go on and on about various nuances of this blogging thing, but how about we just hit the big points?

First, thank you ALL so much for stopping in here and reading so often.  Even if you don't leave a comment (sniff!), it means a lot to me that you choose to read my blog amongst the many many things you could be doing with those few minutes every day.  A bunch of you already noticed yesterday that you can now "like" What There's Time For on Facebook (there's a button over there in the sidebar), and I didn't even point it out to you!  You rock!

Second, blogging has made me a happier parent.  On a day like today, when I drove Mr. ThreeWithAVengancePants to school, visions of a nice morning naptime for Shmoogie and blogiversary blogging time for me dancing in my head, only to find the entire street totally closed (some festival, I think, but you'd think they could put up a WARNING, you know, YESTERDAY?) and decided I'd rather just have a different kind of morning than try to find a parking place and walk with a baby on my back and a not-at-all-wanting-to-go-to-school-because-it's-Friday-and-his-favorite-teacher-isn't-there boy for... half a mile? I wasn't even quite sure how far away the Umleitung had dumped me...

Anyway, we enjoyed a beautiful drive the loooooong way around (no going back home the way we'd come!  all streets had become one-way overnight!), through dappled shade, past fields looking something like this, but sunnier...

 

...and instead of being pissed off about my ruined morning, I was smiling about the beautiful drive and the chance I now had to share that beautiful picture (credit to Mr. Right) with you.

Other than becoming, say, a farmer, I don't think there's anything quite like becoming a parent/(cough!)mother  to blast into your brain how very very much energy living things - including the vast majority of humans - put into simply getting from one day to the next.  I find myself hardly outraged at all anymore over the near-total absence of women (especially mothers) from "history".  Now, as I spend all day washing the same dishes I washed yesterday, making more food in the same pans that I made yesterday, washing the same laundry that I washed yesterday, wiping the same faces (and floors) that I've wiped three times already this morning, reading the same books that I've read three times a day for the past eon... it's more like, Oh, duh.  There was no time for a mother to record her story.  And, really, I'm sure her story looked quite bland an unremarkable to all the important people out there doing real, lasting things, so why would they have bothered to record her story for her?  And how could they have done it justice if they'd tried?

Which is why I feel so privileged to be able to share my little story here, my one water drop in the vast ocean of mothers' stories, told and untold, heard and unheard.  It's a pretty awesome thing, even if all I'm doing most days is trying to keep myself laughing and hope you laugh with me.  At the end of the day, it's a real balm to have one silly little blog post, one actual completed thing that won't be undone for me overnight by adorable little elves.

Now that you've waded through all my philosophizing this week... here's your chance to win a prize!  A Piglet prize!

 

Mr. TWAVPants loves his Piglet.  Too much for his Piglet's own good, really, since his Piglet (having been played with, thrown up on, bathed, chewed, squeezed, and repaired) now looks kind of like a mutant cross between Piglet and Beaker.  

 

Mr. TWAVPants loves his Piglet so much that when he saw your Piglet, he decided that he needed two Piglets.  He's grudgingly come around to the idea of mailing the new one to someone, though, so leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite post of the blog so far ("That one where you couldn't find the coin slot for the laundry!" would be good enough) and I'll put your name in the hat!  (Comments will be open for a week.)

Thank you!

The New Normal

This is our first routine Monday in at least seven weeks and it is going extremely well.  Mr. Don'tWantToPants actually got out the door to school on time with a full bowl of oatmeal in his tummy and only a few tears.  Shmoogie's done a lot of growing since our last routine Monday, thus she sat in her highchair happily with a Zwieback for most of the getting ready time and I didn't get sidelined for twenty minutes nursing her while Mr. Don'tWantToPants did whatever it is that he does when I'm not paying attention.  Shmoogie napped, I cleaned, we picked up a happy (but still recognizable) version of Mr. Don'tWantToPants at school (who had eaten a lot of lunch, including vegetables!), Shmoogie had lunch and they both went to sleep.

I like normal!  Especially this normal!  Even if it only lasts one day... what a day!

Now I'm going to grab the last few quiet moments to stitch bias tape (made yesterday with my new bias tape maker, ooooo!) around the edges of my new apron.  I asked Mr. Right last night what he thinks of aprons and, after a considering silence (he must have sensed there were depths to this question he might not fully understand), he said, "Well, it's kind of an unusual hobby, but there are worse ones to have."

A Doozy

You know those days that start out quite well and then around midday they start to seem a little long and then by the afternoon you're thinking wow, this has been a DAY, and then you get a migraine and it takes an hour for the ibuprofen to hit and it starts to seem like kind of a crappy day and by the time you get home with one whiney-mess-of-a-napless-child past his bedtime and one conked-out-from-total-exhaustion baby past her bedtime, who then wakes up and seems like she'd actually like to have her evening cereal, so you make some and also try to get some food into the boy and somehow in the midst of all this the baby (who has been persistently practicing her recently acquired reaching skills) tips over her water glass (twice), which you really thought was out of her range, and you say S&*T! in front of your kids and think maybe it's OK because, really, this has been one helluva day, and then somehow the baby manages to do this...

and you say S&*T! even louder and then smile to yourself as you begin to realize (as you try to keep the dogs from licking up the cereal before you can take a picture of it) that, yes, this has been ONE HELLUVA day and will at least make a humorous blog post, and then a few minutes later the baby somehow manages to do THIS...

and you let out one glorious, ringing F*&K! (for possibly the first time since the pushing phase of the birth of reachy-grabby-baby) and take another picture because, really, as funny as that imaginary blog post in your head might be, it is not actually going to get written because you are just too DONE with the day (with two put-to-beds ahead of you yet) and at least the pictures (with a choice selection of words) might convey some small portion of your experience...

You know those days?

Whiny Tyrant Goes Shopping

Mr. WhinyTyrantPants has had it.  He was much better behaved than anyone could expect for the whole spend-a-week-in-the-car thing and now that we're back and everything's settled down and Daddy has gone back to Austria and DiDi and PaPa have gone back to work... he is DONE.  Which he made quite clear to me yesterday on a very brief, very focused, yet still disasterous trip to REI.

It is one thing to carry a cute quiet baby through a store while smiling humbly at your fellow shoppers. It is another thing to carry (or cart) a tantruming toddler through a store while smiling ironically at your fellow shoppers.  It is quite another thing to carry a cute quiet baby through a store while also attempting to keep hold of the hand of a not-really-a-toddler-anymore meltdown who screams whenever you touch him, "OOOOOWWWW!!!!!!  WHY ARE YOU HURTING ME??!!!  I DON'T LIKE THAT!!!!  AAAAAAH!!!!!!!!" and smiling at your fellow shoppers through gritted teeth, hoping none of them are going to call the police.

$15.95 for shipping starts to sound like not such a bad deal.  Just sayin'.

Another Manic Monday

On the adorable front, Shmoogie, who has long been chewing on anything she can get her mouth on, has recently discovered her feet.

Give yourself a moment to recover from that wallop of cuteness....  

 OK, yes, back to reality:  Monday is cleaning day.  Which means an hour-ish of running around spiffing while Shmoogie naps and Mr. Wakefulpants is at school.  This leaves about twenty minutes, usually, to chill or eat or use the bathroom before waking Shmoogie to go get Mr. Wakefulpants.

But, Saturday was The First of May.  Which is a national holiday.  Which means no groceries.  (As I think I've said before, there are never groceries on Sunday.)  So, this morning I whisked through the store, put Shmoogie to bed, put away the groceries, did a curtailed housecleaning, and then we ran off again to get Mr. Wakefulpants.

Who is now, as you may have guessed from the name, not napping.  He is having "Quiet Time" in his room, which is not that quiet and is significantly less psychologically restful for Mommy than actual naps were.  Oh, well.  At least his general behavior continues on a positive trend (although he was having quite a fit walking to the car to come home - because he ran with a stick after I asked him not to and then I took away his stick - such a fit as to provoke a smile and tsk tsk from a man in a suit waiting on the bus as we walked by).

I have been knitting.  See, now it's big enough to disguise the laundry I should have been folding...

 

I have some lettuce nearly ready to eat and some seeds sprouting (zucchini pops enormous leaves out of NOWHERE; it's frightening) and some seeds not sprouting (they're supposed to be single-season strawberries).

     
 I still have some seeds to plant and I am unenthusiastic.  I've been trying to figure out why I don't seem to enjoy gardening even though I've always wanted to enjoy gardening.  I'm thinking gardening is too much like mothering.  Too much responsibility, too much daily attention required, too serious the potential consequences of ignoring it for a little while.

Not that there isn't a glory in all the repetition, all the sheer constancy.  It's meditative.  It's character building.  It's spiritual (check out this reflection on the monotony of homemaking).  And, ultimately, there's no way around it and it's really really important.

But it's nice to have an antidote.  An hour cleaning the house will have to be redone all over again.  And again.  And again...  But an hour of knitting will remain done forever (well, as close to forever as matters in the context of my life).  So will an hour of sewing.  No matter how long it takes to get back to it.

 

Oh Snap!

 Head down and plowing through the end of week two with sick boy home from school.  We played with the snap press this morning (found the accoutrements!), which was surprisingly as enthralling as A Charlie Brown Christmas, which DS suddenly adores but whose depressive approach to the holidays sparks some concern in Mommy.  Not to mention the large dose of people being mean to each other (yes, it ends sweetly, I know).  While on that subject, may I just say that Thomas the Tank Engine episodes seem to mostly consist of the various characters behaving quite biliously towards each other?  Its like someone turned a 1920's British boys' prep school into talking trains.

Snap?  (How pitiful is it that I am only just beginning to understand that slang?)

Yeah, snaps on a mystery project to be revealed in good time.  And snaps snaps snaps on previously-velcro drool bibs.  Why do they put velcro on those things???  It gets gummed up and stops working in approximately 4 months, which is less time than a baby (at least, babies of mine) need to use them.  And it attacks other things in your laundry.  Even after losing all ability to stick to itself enough to keep it around baby's neck, it sticks to other things quite viciously (like, say, Mommy's underwear elastic).

Oh snap!

(That wasn't right, was it?)

Now I have viciously removed it from eleven bibs (with a now-perfected technique employing sharp tiny embroidery scissors followed by blunt-pointed utility shears) and replaced them with sweet little snaps.

I'm particularly happy to have rescued this adorable one that was also DS's (see?  ick velcro)...

...and this one that totally cracks me up (plus has sentimental value, having been purchased with my dad while at a concert a few weeks before DS was born) but which had especially vicious velcro, which had begun to curl in such a way as to always scratch baby's neck, so had been out of use for a while.

 I say this counts as accomplishment enough for one day.  We're having leftovers for dinner and it looks like DS will be happily whiling away much of the evening watching YouTube videos of kids' very impressive Duplo train constructions.

Lavanda feminamque cano

 I sing of laundry and the woman, 

whose task seemed oft to rival lamentable Sisyphus in his toil...

O! the finely balanced race 

of washables dirtied matched to washer's slow pace!

I am not even kidding, people (well, maybe just a little).  The weekend away generated the usual three day's laundry (but with three days of laundry loads skipped), plus a few small items that were probably never worn but having been mashed into the suitcase with all the dirties, it seemed pleasanter to run them through.  

Then small boy's slight runny nose became overnight a snot deluge of epic proportions, necessitating a wash of all his bedding (I avoid doing the blanket often, since there's only one and he misses it if it isn't ready for the next bedtime; also, it tends to unbalance the extremely finicky machine).  

Then baby got too full of breakfast and a good bit of it ended up smack in the middle of our clean sheets (just changed yesterday, as a matter of fact).  

 Add in the weekly towel wash, the sometimes multiple shirts per day for me (due to baby spit... I'm happy to just go along with a little spot here and there, but a whole half-front full and I do like to change) turned into definitely multiple shirts per day for me (the usual baby spit hazard accompanied by epic snot fountain, which routinely becomes even more epic as the boy, being sick (just learned this morning he has a double ear infection), misbehaves abominably, is reprimanded, and dissolves into a pitiful epically snotty sobbing mess and moans, "Can you pick me up?" - which is either very sweet or a cleverly manipulative way to gain access to my shoulder for snot-wiping), and a few extra shirts for DS (we generally let him wear a few food smears, but if we get to naptime or we're leaving the house and his sleeves are visibly coated in opaque snot-slime, a change seems reasonable)...

...to say that I have done 10 loads in the past 48 hours would be only a slight exaggeration.

I'll admit I have not been keeping track, but I'm pretty sure it isn't actually 10 loads because our (European; highly energy efficient) little stacking set of washer/dryer is barely capable of washing a full bed's worth of sheets and takes an hour and a half on the "really, I want this actually clean, but don't boil it, please" cycle (the boiling cycle is a bit faster but can have some unfortunate effects on your clothes).  Sometimes longer, because if the fates are not with you, some item will have unbalanced the load and the machine (delicate, sensitive thing that it is) will have "tried" to spin, then given up.  Given up very quietly, though, so that when you come back expecting to be able to put in another load, there it will be, blinking sweetly at you, "Schleudern.  Schleudern.  Schleudern."  Then you turn it off (to fool it, I think) and tell it again, "Schleudern!" and it tries (complaining mightily) and you wait and repeat the process as many times as it takes until the darn thing bucks up and does its dang job.

Once the washer has released your laundry, you can stuff it into the miniature drier, empty the water from the previous load (the drier does not vent to the outside, so it has a reservoir into which it condenses the moisture it has removed from your laundry), and tell it to make your laundry "Extratrocken," please.  This translates to "Extra dry", and has a chance of actually working (though you may have to run an additional "30 Minute Warm" cycle, or maybe two, bringing the total drying time to something in excess of 2 hours).  Woe betide the fool who chooses "Sehr trocken" ("Very dry") thinking that "Very dry" actually has anything to do with "dry".  There are some other settings, with names like "Cupboard dry" and "Ironing dry", which I think are intended purely as practical jokes on foreigners.  Or perhaps there is some funny grammar rule in which adding any modifier to "trocken" makes it no longer mean "dry", but actually, "Very warm and Extremely damp".

 These are the trials and tribulations which leave me in awe of those I know who do not possess driers.  Some who have had to actually do all the washing by hand.  The thought makes me slightly queasy.

Now take a minute and think of all the laundering done by the hands of someone in every generation - all the way back to the invention of clothes and up to the invention (and purchase) of the automatic clothes washer - to keep in clean clothes and bed sheets the bearers of genes that would one day be combined to make up YOU.

Puts me in mind of "Standing on the shoulders of giants," though I'm guessing Newton (and, lo!, some other guy who actually came up with the phrase; I didn't know) may not have had in mind the particular iterative marvel that was his family tree's washing.  And possibly I've wrung the metaphor a bit out of shape, anyway.

(Oh, ha!  Ha!)

***

Congratulations to Gina, first submitter of correct answers Salzburg and Rust!  (Which roughly rhymes with 'wouldst', in case you were wondering.)  Worth a trip, definitely.  Come visit.  :)

Quick! Say something controversial!

Things have been bubbling across my radar screen lately (like this (love the graphic!) and this) and now this morning I'm sitting here with all the windows shut again against a cold windy rain (it has been so lovely the past week!) and thinking...  can I let just ONE worm out of the can?

The main reason I decided to stay at home (remember, disclaimer!) - Quality of Life.  Now, it would be the selfless mommy thing to talk about how me staying home improves my kids' quality of life (I think it does) and my husband's quality of life (I think it does, and so does he) and then stay quiet about my quality of life.

But, dude, remember Bad Mother point two:  I am human and freely admit it.  I like having home-cooked meals.  (I don't looooove cooking, but no one else is going to do it.)  I like knowing pretty much everything that's gone on in my kids' lives each day (yes, as they get older, I will know less) and having the opportunity to help them learn to shape their behavior and deal with their emotions.  I like being able to fit the cleaning in a bit here and there so I am neither seriously pissed off nor losing weekend family time to chores (nor living in squalor).  I like having a little free time to blog or knit or sew or maybe even sometimes read.  I like seeing the sun and the snow and the rain and actually being able to go out and be in the sun and the snow and the rain (you know, when putting on all the gear doesn't seem way too daunting).  And you know what I really really really like?  Not being in a constant battle with my spouse over who should be doing what... like we used to be when we were both working full time (for comparable paychecks, I might add) and yet it was always me that was cooking and doing the laundry and coming home in time to walk the dog.  And, dang, was I pissed off!

Oh, wait, was that negative?  Sorry.

Now, if I could have a paying gig that I really really enjoyed and earned "enough" to hire someone to cook and clean for us and someone to take care of the children the way I would like them to be taken care of?  I don't know.  We actually had a full time live-in housekeeper/cook/dog-carer for two years (third world; before kids) when we were both working (and I had a job that was ok, though not utter joy).  She was nice.  It was nice. I got a kick out of living the life of a 1950's man for a while.

But...  I would go out of my way to avoid having "help" in the future (if I'm ever again in a country where shopping is a daily trial, the vegetables must all be soaked in bleach, and the air is so dirty that every surface in the house must be damp-mopped daily... I will definitely be hiring help).  I guess I feel a little territorial about my home and my family (really, that dear woman folded our underwear).  Even the work and the otherwise-not-fun parts, I like being responsible for it.  This is my life and I don't feel like outsourcing it right now.

But being responsible for all that and also having a "real" job?  That sounds draining.  To me.  Or maybe I've never had the right job?

(I'm stopping here, while hoping I've still managed to keep all the other worms stuffed into that can.)

Pop Quiz

You know how everyone says there are no medals awarded for motherhood, even though there really should be? Well, I recently discovered that you CAN get a medals for motherhood, as long as you're a man and your baby is of a different species. (Seriously, click on that link. And also this one, where the man who hand-raised the world's most famous polar bear says that sometimes, "I could throw him against the wall when everything comes together and he's shat all over his cage at three o'clock in the morning." Ah, motherhood! Medal-deserving motherhood!) 

Us run-of-the-mill female intra-species mothers have to make do with the unexpected kind remark (or simple smile) of strangers, the (biased) praise of our own parents and in-laws, and, every once in a while, the relief of passing an unexpected pop quiz. 

DS had his three-year check up yesterday and I had completely forgotten how much like a tribunal on your adequacy as parents those things feel like! We started off poorly, ten minutes late because we had spent at least twenty minutes trying to get out the door - teary battles over everything from eating breakfast to using the potty to putting on a clean shirt to putting on shoes to taking Legos with us to having the Legos break apart as we tried to corral them in a bag. (These are the times that sound ho-hum or mildly humorous to an outsider, but require a deep core of inner-mommy-strength to persevere.  Sometimes, I'd rather be cleaning baby polar bear poop at 3 AM.)

 Then, the instant we're at the doctor's, he became a perfect angel. He took one toy from the waiting room to occupy himself, he followed the nurse's instructions, he followed the doctor's instructions, he drew a picture for the doctor and (having slowly picked up - based on the many questions for simple things like the word for "hand" - that the doctor needed things spelled out) narrated the whole thing for her, "Now I'm going to do the green one! First we take off the cap and then we put it over here..." [pause for drawing] "Then we put the cap on and put it back in here..." She asked him what he had drawn and I think he said that first green circle in the middle was "a sun" and the blue squiggle in the bottom right was "a banana" and then there was "a pine tree" (I think that was the pink squiggle on the right????) and another banana... 

He knew his first AND LAST names (I was kind of surprised by that). And he knew his parent's names, although he's a little confused about the whole everyone-in-the-family-shares-a-last-name thing).

When she asked, "Do you brush your teeth?" He said, "Yes." And when she asked, "When do you brush them? In the morning? At night?" he said, "In the morning AND at night; I do both." He even said he needed to use the potty once and did. 

I slightly sweated through this whole thing (Thank God we brush his teeth twice a day (most days)! What if we'd let that one slide? How embarrassing!) but eventually started to relax, even feel rather impressed with how well he's growing up so far (even allowed myself some feeling of pride for my contributions thereto). We ended up with subdued praise (He has a very good vocabulary! and a final summary He's doing just fine) and mild advice (his skin is really dry; try lotion) and only two Bad Mommy Points (I have not taught him to hop on one foot, nor does he understand to answer, "A circle" when asked "What shape is that wheel?"). 

He shocked the nurse by being excited about his shot because - get this - "I get a band-aid!" 

Then, the instant we left the office, he was a teary tantrumy mess again. Didn't want to leave. Wanted to play with the toys. The entire rest of the day was peppered with broken hearted requests to go back to the doctor's office to "check on how the toys are doing."

********** 

As for the hopping on one foot thing - how am I supposed to know that before he's three I'm supposed to teach him to hop on one foot? It brings me right back to the check ups in his first year when they asked me, "Does he stack one block on top of the other?" And I was like, "Uh... I... I've never given him blocks."  And then a few months later they asked me, "Can he eat with a fork?" And I was like, "Uh... I... I've never given him a fork."

A fork? A sharp pokey FORK?? For a one-year-old? Really?