Driving on Ice

So you find yourself driving along, the weather seems to keep getting worse and as you go under an overpass you hit a patch of ice.

Life can be much like this. Let's say you are at day 5 of getting over a cold, and you've powered through it. It's morning, the kids are up extra early and you are exhausted and your bed is far too welcoming. Pulling yourself out anyway and into the cold and dreary day, you start to run through the motions of your morning: change diapers, use bathroom, get dressed, toss hair up out of your face. Upon entering the living room you cringe at just how disastrous it has become in the last few days, how many things you have not been able to keep up with while being sick. The thought passes like a dagger into your mind, "You will never be able to catch up." In fact, you still have piles of things that have made it to that list of never, and now that line has shifted even further away. It has made it to the land of "never ever" and yet it is still there, in your mind, taunting you. Threatening like a storm on the horizon. The chaos of the home shows in everything from the scattering of toys, food, clothes to the actions and reactions of it's inhabitants. The kids are fighting, and tripping over clothes and things on your way to rescue the toddler is infuriating. You try in vain to clean it, to retain some semblance of order and it just spirals downward.

And so you are driving through a storm. In your mind, you repeat your mantras, you steel your patience and you falter. You yell at one of the kids, your anger explodes, you hit black ice. Do you hit the brakes? Do you stay here, more anger bubbling? You head into a spiral, spin out of control, angry at yourself for saying something to your darling children that you never thought you'd say. You enter into the loathesome mother area. You are a failure. You have said something, done something, that has written on the slate of who your child is. You have changed them forever, you have done damage that can never be fully erased. And so you sit, you dwell, you feel failure grabbing you and smothering you with its viscous guilt. A tiny part of you knows this territory, it struggles to break free. Find something positive! And so you try. You try to turn on music to change the mood, you try to change the scenery, you try to change your attitude. And yet....it is lurking. And one more thing topples into the scene and it resets you back onto the spiral. You call out for help.

This is when you realize that no one can help you. All the suggestions, all the shots at humor...they all fall like patronizing thorns. No one else understands. No one else can fix this. The spiral has you convinced of your failure. Your home is a mess, your children are unhappy, it is your fault. If you could just, if you could JUST. But you cannot. Because you are you, and there is no hope.

But there is hope. You do not see it when you are in it. When you are sliding on ice, you do not stop and think about all the things you SHOULD be doing, you just do what you are doing. We all know not to slam on the brakes when you hit an icy patch and yet some do it anyway. I think with practice this would be less likely. They can pop up without notice, or they can have little warnings along the way. But when it hits you can feel helpless.

Or

You can let it ride. It doesn't feel like a choice. It is automatic. Just know that it will ride out, whether you hit the brakes or not. You will eventually be free of the ice. Hitting the brakes means there will be more damage. But you will never be stuck on ice forever.

Pumpkin French Toast Muffins

I never really measure anything so these are approx.

2 cups Pumpkin Puree (I used homemade)
4 eggs
leftover sour dough bread, cut into chunks
1/4 cup of cream or half & half
1 Tbs sugar
2 big globs of honey
1/4 cup AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
cinnamon, ginger, cloves
2 Tbs coconut oil
pinch of salt

spray muffin tins, add 3-4 chunks of bread to each space. Mix remaining ingredients well, should be quite wet. Fill each tin with mix. Bake at 350 for um...20 mins or so? Until the edges brown and toothpick comes out clean.

They were really really good! It was like a perfect French Toast bite everytime! And with all that egg and pumpkin I would assume these are reasonably healthy...at least that's what I'm going to tell myself LOL

Focus

Living life with many small children underfoot can have many surprising challenges and tend to magnify and accelerate any seemingly small issue into a giant in-your-face dilemma. Each and everyday we have a list of things to try and accomplish and with minimal time to focus on any one area, it can feel like a mad rush to get even a partial list completed by days end. I'm sure my list looks like anyone else's, cleaning chores, mealtimes, bedtimes, errands....it really can feel never-ending.
We've all heard the saying, "It's the journey, not the destination..." but how does that apply to daily life and the ubiquitous tasks we undertake to raise our families?

From the mundane (making dinner) to the less occasional (annual doctors appointments) we rush through hoping to swipe a rag along the way and pick up debris scattered about. We hope that our children are tagging along, picking up tidbits of good habits and lifelong skills on the way, but mostly we are just sprinting and wondering all the while, "Where did this past week/month/season/year go?"

Applying the ideal of focusing on the journey, then we can look at dinner not so much as a checkoff but as an event. Instead of trying, in vain, to get things accomplished in spite of having little disaster creators running amok, we can look at it with a different perspective. A typical day of hitting only check marks can be one of using distractions, the tv for instance, while we squeeze in dishes, sweeping, maybe toss a load in the washer, before making snack and calling the kids over to eat and then trying to get them to help clean up, rinse and repeat ad nauseum. Or just loading the kids up and running through the nearest fast food joint to fill their tummies. Yes, this may get us to the same destination at the end of the day, but the journey is sorely lacking. Instead we are trying to focus more on how we can enjoy ourselves and eachother while still getting things accomplished. Today, I wanted to roast some pie pumpkins and while I could've tried to sneak it in and quickly rushed through it while some of the kids were napping, I instead brought the whole family into the experience. For lunch, we brought out all the sandwich items and each made their own, and afterward we all cleaned it up. In the end, each child has a job, each child wants to be a part of the process beginning to end, and each takes pride their work. There is no coercion or bribes or rewards or punishments. It is a lovely time, pouring out slowly like honey, we laugh, we talk, we enjoy eachothers company.

I am saying that multi-tasking is NOT a skill. I say it's not a good thing at all. Take the time to do ONE thing at a time, not 2 or 3. Do each one, do it well, enjoy it. In a world of too much, too fast, just hop off that train and venture into a more relaxed state. Somedays I feel like everyone is running in an opposite direction, how can I possibly keep up? And the answer is so simple, just call your little ducklings back and waddle on your way. If you are running, they cannot keep up with you either!

At the end of the day, maybe not everything gets done, but I can be at peace that what we did get done, was done to completion and the time was spent to the fullest.

Is your backyard safe?

We've fenced our backyard for many reasons and one was for safety. With 4 kids under 6, we wanted them to have free run of an outdoor space to burn off energy and be with nature on an almost daily basis without the constant hovering of an adult. I am frequently pulling prickly weeds, moving bricks and blocks of wood that are possible tripping hazards and trying to remove many wasps nests that are in main play areas. I tend to leave some wild weeds and flowers growing for the kids to play with, make fairy homes, pick, smell, and to make our habitat more natural and less like a large only grass area. I welcome dandelions, clover and Queen Anne's Lace. We mow spirals and mazes in late summer when the Yellow Foxtail comes up.

Yesterday, while a friend and I were looking for my surprising small amount of plantain growing, I asked her about a lovely vine-like plant that is growing all along our fence. She informed me that it was of the Nightshade family. My tomato plants are in the near vicinity and I thought of course of those first and didn't give it another thought other than to repeat my mantra to the kids to never eat a berry without asking an adult. We have raspberries and blueberries and mulberries and cherry tomatoes that are all for the kids to eat at their discretion. All within an arms length of this Nightshade plant. It wasn't until I was somewhere within a half dreamy half awake state that the words floated into my mind..."Deadly Nightshade...Belladonna". Thankfully, this particular plant is not Belladonna but the closely related Woody Nightshade. Also poisonous, and medicinal, but can be deadly to children. I spent some time fraught with fear, my toddler has squished those berries in his fingers, I've had many friends with young children over and there in the "safe" backyard lurked a deadly, beautiful, plant with sweet berries taunting the children to taste.


Cicely Mary Barker's Nightshade Berry Fairy


"You see my berries, how they gleam and
glow,
Clear ruby-red, and green, and orange-
yellow;
Do they not tempt you, fairies, dangling so?"
The fairies shake their heads and answer "No!
You are a crafty fellow!"

"What, won't you try them! There is
naught to pay!
Why should you think my berries poisoned
things?
You fairies may look scared and fly away-
The children will believe me when I say
My fruit is fruit for kings!"
But all good fairies cry in anxious haste,
"O children, do not taste!"

Backyard Green Tea

My children all recently came down with a cold. As I was making my dinner menu for the following week, I looked up healthy foods for colds and came across a few ideas of making your own green tea from healthy items in your own yard.

This is our Green Tea, made from rose leaves and petals, raspberry leaves and dandelion leaves. Next time we are hoping to find some of the Plantain herb, to utilize all of its wonderful healing properties!


It was dubbed the "Feel Me Better Tea", steeped for 20 minutes in boiling water from our teakettle, mixed with a spoonful of raw honey and enjoyed immensely! It had a very earthy green taste, was sweet and chock full of zinc and vitamin C!

Whole Grain Corn Bread

DanaMama's Whole Grain Corn Bread

2.5 Milk
1.5 cups of Stone Ground Corn Meal

Mix together and set aside for 5 mins. Grease a 9x13 pan, preheat oven to 400

2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 Tbs Vital Wheat Gluten
1/4 C Coconut oil
1/4 C applesauce
1/4 C honey
2 Eggs
1 Tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt

Mix together & add corn/milk mixture. Beat very well. Pour onto greased pan and bake for 30 mins.
Enjoy!!!

Handling the setbacks

Each day as I stay home with my kiddos I strive to complete certain tasks to be able to live in a cleaner environment and also to have a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Without doing these things, they end up as clutter in my mind, an endless list of things I need to get done, clouding my thoughts throughout the day and leading to a more stressful home. Currently with a newborn in the house, this list is rather small but still important. Everyday I need to do dishes, clean up any garbage or food left over from meals and sticky toddler fingers, sweep the kitchen and wipe down the table, the latter happening several times during the course of a day. On my list of things to try to get to are laundry, cleaning up toys, vacuuming, bathrooms and as such they only get accomplished every few days or weekly depending on which chore needs the most attention.

Some days, I get the minimum accomplished or perhaps am even able to get something off of the extended list done but more often than not I'm apologizing to my husband and myself at the end of the day. It usually goes something like this, "Oh, sorry! I meant to get that done today but Toddlerboy was clingy and grumpy, the Bigs were fighting nonstop and I just didn't get to finish it." And then it hit me....

If we look beyond the outward appearance, what did I really accomplish today? Certainly loving and comforting a teething toddler is chock full of importance. Teaching children how to navigate troublesome relationship woes and modeling connection and compromise are infinitely more important than some pile of clothing that needs to be folded. So why is it that at the end of the day, the feeling of accomplishment only comes from completing physical tasks? I believe it is only because of the value I place, and perhaps society at large, on these domestic duties as some sort of measurement of our success as mothers. You can see whether there is a large pile of clothes to be folded or dishes in the sink to be washed but the nurturing of children is often unseen.

So I'm embarking to change my mental attitude towards what constitutes a successful day. Doing such will, I believe, make me feel like less of a failure and also change the whole atmosphere of our home. Instead of feeling as though the kids fighting is a distraction or delay to my laundry folding quest, and therefore an annoyance and a setback to my goals; I can look at it as an opportunity for connection and learning. I won't have to use scolding or physical separation of them from eachother or from me so that I can get back to that all important task of not feeling like a failure because I don't have to use chores as a measurement of my value as a mother.

So yes, my house may never be spotlessly clean but it is a chaotic harmony. Just clean enough to live comfortably, just dirty enough to give me time to love on my children.

Wednesday Pasta Party!

Continuing the themes for dinner time, we are incorporating a Pasta Party night. Wednesday seems a good a night as any to party! This weeks pasta dish was Shrimp Parmesan with linguine noodles. The kids always love pasta and it has all my favorite things; quick, easy and cheap! Of course you can modify this night to be as quick as Spaghetti, fun as everyone making meatballs or have the warm comfort food feeling of Lasagna. The versatility of this night keeps me sane from not having to endure yet another boring night of Macaroni with cheese and keeps the kids happy too! Just think of all the different noodle and sauce combinations! Add some veggies and meat and voila! And I really love to bust out the food processor and obliterate some veggies to hide in the sauce making it even more healthy. The kiddos really get a kick out of the different pasta shapes too. Worms, butterflies, pipes! We know these better as spaghetti, bowtie or elbow. Now if only I can convince hubby of my needs for more KitchenAide attachements for my mixer....making my own noodles would be awesome! And that gives me an idea for making raviolis! I can just picture it; the kids covered in flour and smiles, the serious looks of concentration while they try to make their little fingers work, the satisfaction of eating something they've made themselves. Sounds like a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon! Raviolis freeze great and then just toss them frozen into boiling water. YUM.

Here is this Pasta Party recipe! We ate it with a yummy Cesaer salad!

---Shrimp Parmesan
Uncooked thawed Shrimp
Linguine Noodles
Veggies (we used shredded fresh baby spinach, halved grape tomatoes,
diced green peppers, thinly sliced onion, fresh mushrooms)
garlic
olive oil
butter
parmesan cheese (from a block)
italian seasoning
salt & pepper


Start water for noodles and cut up veggies. Cook garlic and onion in olive oil on low. When translucient add mushrooms and green pepper. When mushrooms brown, pour veggies in bowl over spinach and tomatoes (this warms the tomatoes and wilts the spinach). Put a dab of butter in pan, add shrimp and cook until they curl and pink, careful not to overcook and make them rubbery. Add seasoning. Add veggies and cooked noodles, stir in parmesan and serve!

The Land of Chachkis

As a child, I lived in wonder at the shear volumn of my mothers knick-knacks. They abode in every corner, on every flat surface and even adorned the floor. Boxes of seasonal things were put away making a lovely tradition of setting up well remembered porcelain salt and pepper shaker mushrooms, Santa Clause Bells, gnomes, mice, you name it. When I became an adult and started making my own home, trinkets were, to me, like badges of my grownupedness. My lack of them seemed like a lack in my home being where a family lives verses a bachlorette pad, a telltale showing of how much of child I must still be. A failed attempt at creating traditions for my family.

"Do not have anything in your home that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful"
--William Morris

Until I realized that I want to create meaningful traditions in my home. I do not want mindless clutter and endlessly dusty twaddle causing the dreadful cleaning dirge to rise up among the natives. I want only things that I absolutely LOVE, items that I cherish and gladly clean while holding their memory or blissful enchantment in my thoughts. I want to be able to tell each child why this one, this one right here, why it is so special.

So thank you for the gifts, we appreciate the thought! We will admire it for a time and then send it along its journey to find its true space with another family.

As we continue to simplify and add peaceful moments to our surroundings, I think many things will be getting the oneway ticket to GoodWill including toys, various brickabrack whose sole purpose lies in causing parental blood pressure to rise during times of intense childhood fun and any clothing that has been permanently plastered to the bottom of drawers; out of use.

Purge on my friends...purge on.

Monday Mexican Fiesta Night!

Molcajete - Authentic Mexican Mortar and Pestle
by CHEFS

In an effort to extend the idea of Friday Pizza and Movie Night, we have adapted a couple of new ideas we hope to incorporate into our week. The first is Monday Mexican Fiesta Night! This concept helps to alleviate a few different areas of life that we are having issues balancing. By having a few nights a week that are themed we hope to start a tradition that our kids can really look forward too. In the future, I even hope to have a lovely chili pepper tablecloth and brightly colored bowls to hold the buffet style meal items. Mexican style food is a big hit with our 4 kids as well as one of our favorite meals and they love the MYO aspect of choosing which sides they will add to their taco, burritos, enchiladas or salad. I love the idea that it can be as simple and quick as throwing together some tacos or as challenging as experiementing with new flavor profiles and recipes.

The idea here is to also be making a restaurant-type atmosphere. All the fun of going out to eat, AT HOME. And of course when you eat at home, you save money! Even if you buy the most expensive meat and organic items, it will be cheaper than eating the dollar menu, it will be more than one meal and it will be cheaper in the long run on your health care bills. Don't believe me? I've heard constantly that getting a McBurger is so much cheaper to feed your family. Well take a pound of organic grass-fed beef at $5 per pound. How many ounces do you think Taco Bell puts into a soft taco? Well first off lets list what is IN the Seasoned Beef from Taco Bell available on their website

Beef, Water, Seasoning [Isolated Oat Product, Salt, Chili Pepper, Onion Powder, Tomato Powder, Oats (Wheat), Soy Lecithin, Sugar, Spices, Maltodextrin, Soybean Oil (Anti-dusting Agent), Garlic Powder, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Caramel Color, Cocoa Powder (Processed With Alkali), Silicon Dioxide, Natural Flavors, Yeast, Modified Corn Starch, Natural Smoke Flavor],Salt, Sodium Phosphates. CONTAINS SOYBEAN, WHEAT

Mmmmmm caramel color....sounds delicious! Okay so your beef and spices will be fresher and taste better. Wait...you like the cooked all day flavor and don't have time? Me neither! As a busy mom of 4 under 6 years old, I barely have time to sneeze but I can let you in on my time saving secret, the old fashioned fast food, a pressure cooker! No more worrying about images of exploding cookware and scalding red sauce splatters! You can cook frozen meat with an all day cooked flavor that is tender and juicy in about 30 minutes. I'll go more into pressure cooking concepts in another post.

Back to the original thought: the Beef Soft Taco at Taco Bell is 135 grams, which is less than 5 ounces for the beef, small tortilla, cheese and lettuce. Let's assume the beef makes up the bulk of the ounces, although having eaten many of these I would argue that the tortilla might make up at least half. For the sake of easy calculating, we'll say 4 of the less than 5 ounces is beef. That would be $1.25 for the grass-fed organic meat per taco. And I'm not even going to bother calculating the miniscule cost of iceburg lettuce, a tortilla and cheese. Of course we both know that Taco Bell has never put a 1/4 pound of beef in a taco, so I'm positive you are spending less than $1.50 to make a much healthier option at home. And the cost savings of the trip to your local fast food joint if you don't use organic grass-fed beef (and let's face it, most of the time we don't!) would be miniscule. But the point is really, that fast food isn't THAT much cheaper, it's just more convenient! But when I consider needing to either load 4 kids into carseats and drive the 5 minutes there, wait in line, hope that they get the order correct, listen to my newborn babe cry in the backseat, decide to not order the dollar menu items....is it really harder to toss some meat in a pan and shred some veggies? Sure it takes a bit of planning to have the items on hand, but we almost always have some meat, cheese, beans, lettuce and tomatoes. What more do you really need? I would spend another dollar per family member for healthier food. And when I spend $10 for some super yummy carnitas, plus incorporating a family tradition of eating at home with eachother vs. the old tradition of yelling at dad what they want to order at drive-thru and spending over $20....it all seems to logical and self-explainatory. So why then is it so hard to pass up the grease traps? I think I'll consider this further in another post.

So now that I've gone through our reasons why....here is the first Monday Mexican Fiesta Night recipe! We forgot to take a picture....it was eaten too quickly!

----Pork Carnitas----

Pork Loin ($6 on sale at Target --traditionally I believe they use Pork Shoulder)
Cumin, salt, pepper,
1/2 Onion
2 cloves of Garlic
Can Stewed Tomatoes
Can Green Chilis
2 cups Water or Stock

Toss in Pressure Cooker on high setting for 30 minutes and letting pressure release slowly. Take out pork and shred, drain liquid through sieve and put the chunks of veggies with pork on lightly oiled sheet pan covered in foil for easy cleanup. Put pan in oven under broiler for 15 mins, stopping once to drip leftover liquid over meat to keep from drying out. When meat has crispy tips, it is done!

In bowls, have cheese, lettuce, pico de gallo (premade by store, make your own or just tomatoes), sour cream, black olives, guacamole...whatever you desire! Warm tortillas and go to town on your fiesta party!

First!

This is our attempt at holding ourselves and eachother accountible. Over the last almost decade of being married, we have made goals, dreams, plans, lists, lists of our lists....and we've lost them. They've been forgotten, thrown away, drawn on by one of our 4 children. Circumstances change, life happens and here we are still gazing towards our future full of opportunities. We will keep making promises and fulfilling urges to improve our life and the life of our children and here is where we will document this and hopefully help to inact a real change in our pattern of behavior.

Posts will encompass a wide variety of topics from finances to food, childrearing to chachkis. They are all integral parts of an intricate web, woven together with love, one strand having enough weight to effect the framework of the whole.

So here's to keeping focus on what's really important! Creating our home with love and harmony, balancing the wants and needs of a family of 6 and learning life lessons along the way!