Mommy and Me

I ran across a rant of sorts yesterday from a couple of young mothers seemingly at their wits' end with their children.
Their five-year-olds are driving them crazy, misbehaving, refusing to clean their rooms. Shouldn't five-year-olds be more responsible?
Shouldn't they listen to their mothers and just obey, for goodness sake?
I mean, should children of this age force their mothers to raise their voices, threaten, and demand obedience?
After all, they're five years old.
Now that they can "think for themselves," it's time to at least expect decent behavior.
Isn't it?
Well, isn't it?

Now, I'm a seasoned mother of four, so I've seen 5 years old four times already. And I have years of mothering experience and lots of frustration under my belt, and I'd like to tell these young mothers that I certainly empathize.
Being a full-time, stay-at-home mommy is hard, often frustrating work.
But I'd like to ask them to step back and imagine the hard work and frustration involved in being 5.
Yes, that's right.
It's hard to be a little kid.
And a child's mommy should never be his or her adversary.
Now, I don't believe in un-parenting. I don't believe that rules and discipline stifle a child's imagination.
But it's time to take a hard look at your priorities, ladies.

Is it so important to have a child pick up his or her room every single day? Is that really the most important lesson for your five year old to learn today? Or even tomorrow? Do you really think threatening a five-year-old with punishment or declaring you will charge him if you clean up his toys for him is the message you want your child to get from you? His mommy?
When my boys were little they could mess up a room, heck the entire floor of a house, in an afternoon of play. They liked to build cities using Legos, blocks, Tinker Toys, Little People, basically every single toy in the house, that covered the floors of entire rooms. It used to bother my husband to come home to this "mess" and he wanted it cleaned up right away.
But the boys had spent all day on their creation and would continue to play with it the next day. I asked him how he would feel had he spent an entire day of work, only to be told to remove it and start over the next day.
He changed his mind.

Now, that doesn't mean we lived in a perpetually messy house. But I knew it was too much to ask of a young child to pick up and sort all those toys.
The best strategy? To help them pick up.
That's right.
Help them.
Even though I had other things I needed, even wanted to do, when it was time to clean up, I helped them do it.

Why? Shouldn't they be expected to clean up their own messes?
Well, partly because it was a kind thing to do. But also because it is too much to ask of a five-year-old to put away and organize alone. There was a benefit to working alongside my little ones as well; we had great conversations during clean up, I could help them learn how to go about such a task, they learned organization skills, and more.

What about the misbehaving? Purposeful disobedience?
Most often I discovered that naughty behavior came about because my kids weren't getting enough of my time and attention.
That's right. My children's behavior often reflected their need for more "mom."
So, maybe you have a home business, younger children, older adults you're caring for... it's easy to get overwhelmed and self-involved. You think you're giving your child enough attention, you think the attention you're giving ought to be enough, for goodness sake. You have too much to do in a single day, can't that five-year-old just behave?
Well, no.
What other way does a young child have to tell his mommy that he needs more of her than to misbehave. Maybe it's time to set aside your business, cut back your hours, reduce some of your socializing, or homeschooling, and just be with your child.
To do this, you will make sacrifices.
You will ask your friends, your family, your spouse for more help.
And that's as it should be.
Your number one priority needs to be your little ones.

And you know what?
When they're bigger, say teenagers? They still need to be your number one priority.

Rearing children is not like training dogs. The number one thing I want from my children is their love and respect. But if I don't teach them how to show respect through my own behavior, how will they learn? Through loving and respectful interaction with my children, I have maintained wonderful, emotionally close relationships with all four of them.
We've never had "rebellious" teens, at least in part because my kids didn't really have a lot to rebel against. That's not to say there weren't limits or rules, because there certainly were. But our rules were "family" rules, not rules imposed on the children from the all-powerful, authoritarian parents.

It's not easy being a mommy.
But the last thing you want to do is create an adversarial relationship with your child. Walk with your little one, hand-in-hand, together through life.
Believe me, the rewards are boundless.

Kitten in a Cupboard

When we moved into our house 3 1/2 years ago, we couldn't afford to buy built in cupboards for the remodeled kitchen. I had always wanted an unfitted kitchen, so we found free-standing furniture pieces and made an old-fashioned kitchen.
Well, fast forward three years and the novelty of the free-standing kitchen had worn off. While I loved the look of the furniture pieces, it was time to create a more functional kitchen.
I was able to keep some of my old furniture pieces, so the kitchen still has a somewhat unfitted look to it, but I love having so much counter space!
Unfortunately, so do the cats.
They've discovered the joy of counter tops and now can climb to the top of the fridge, the tops of the cupboards, and, as you see here, into my antique shelves.
Oh well, what's a little more fur?

Shell Game

Ain't they purty?
I'm ridiculously proud of these beans.

Last summer, for the heck of it, we decided to grow some beans. I ordered a couple packages of heirloom beans and a couple packages of black beans.

And grow they did.

It was just about as easy as tossing them out the window and watching them take off, a la Jack.
The only challenges they faced were a certain St. Bernard, who like to reach into the garden and steal them, and the occasional rogue chicken.



I first jar was shelled last fall and was brim-full. I honestly can't say I've noticed a flavor difference between home-grown and store bought, but that may be because I almost always cook my dried beans from scratch.

Sunday, after a little siesta, I came downstairs to find Michael and the girls shelling the rest of the beans.

Apparently, it takes intense concentration. Probably because you have to dodge all the flying beans.

Sarah and Melissa

Melissa and Michael



The un-shelled.

We'll definitely grow more beans this summer. I hope we can work to maximize our growing space yet again - it's been a work in progress since we moved here 3 1/2 years ago. Someday, I hope to have enough room for a huge garden so I can grow whatever I want. That someday is likely not so far away anymore...

In the meantime, I'll just have to be patient and content myself with only 5 jars of beans.

The problem is, they're so pretty, it's hard to make myself use them!

The Un-yon

Hmm, found this on my windowsill Sunday morning...

Goodbyes

There we are, the whole gang, at the Des Moines Botanical Center in December.
For most people, it seems, the new year started on January 1. But for me, the new year always seems to start when it's time to say goodbye.
Zachary just left today to head back to Iowa State where classes start tomorrow. Stephen has one more week before his classes start. He graduates from college this spring.
Sarah will be home this semester while we try to conquer her migraine pain, but the time for her goodbyes is fast approaching. She'll be 17 in April, with college right around the corner.
And though Melissa will just turn 13 in March, I know how fast six years can speedy by.
There were a couple of times this holiday break that I purposely stopped to form an image in my mind of the whole family together, laughing, joking, loving each other.
I know we'll have many, many, more times together, but life is just around the corner, with marriages, travel, work. Who knows how long before the parameters of our nuclear family change and grow.
Not that this is a bad thing; I know we'll stay happy and strong even as we add more members. It's just that, well, things will change.
And when they do, I know I'll be ready to embrace those changes with open arms. Can anyone say "grandchildren?"
Last spring when we pulled out of my mom's driveway in Arkansas, our week-long visit ended, I watched as she stood by the garage waiving her goodbyes.
Just a few years ago, my dad was standing next to her.
Thirty years ago, my grandpa stood by his garage, waiving, and ten years before that, my grandmother stood with him.
Someday it will be my turn to stand by the garage, waiving goodbye to those I hold so dear in my heart. I can only hope that circumstances keep us close, in distance and in love.
I have to admit, though, I am sooo glad those years are not yet here.

Eat from the Pantry Challenge - Week 1

The first week of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge is going great-guns! We've had some great meals this week from roast turkey and mashed potatoes, to turkey noodle soup, from homemade pizza to falafel.

The pantry challenge just happens to coincide with a challenge I've given myself to make all our own breads this month. Whew! That uses a lot of yeast and flour, but fortunately I started the month with a pantry well-stocked with nearly 60 pounds of white flour and 20 pounds of whole wheat. I bought the white flour last fall when it was on sale for 99 cents/5 lb. bag. The bags of whole wheat flour were full-price - it never seems to go one sale! I bought 10 jars of yeast early last fall when a small store was reducing it's inventory - I believe they were less than $2 a jar. I still have two or three jars left, which should see me through the month.

Above you see but one tray of a double-batch of pitas I made, half of which went directly into the freezer for a later meal. I find that whenever I can double a batch, whether it's bread, muffins, waffles, or even main dishes, it's well worth the effort since it saves me so much time down the road.

My oldest son, Stephen, has spent a lot of time living in foreign countries, especially when you consider that he's only 21! One night this week he made us falafel, using dried garbanzo beans I had on hand, to go with the pitas.

Oh, my, was it ever delicious!
I must also comment on the gorgeous bowl it's in - one of a set of three nesting bowls I received for Christmas this year. I absolutely love the color! In addition to being 50% off full-price, we were able to use a special one-day coupon for another $10 off, making the present even sweeter!

I gave myself $200 to spend to get through the month, which isn't a lot for a family of 6, three of whom are adult males and two teenage girls to boot. Saturday Hy-Vee had a one-day sale that I couldn't pass up. Milk was only 88 cents a half-gallon and grated cheese was $1/8 oz. bag, making it $2 a pound. We drink a ton of milk here and had just run out. Last fall I started buying grated cheese whenever it hits that $2 a pound (or less) mark and freezing it. That way, I always have the cheese I need on hand and I never have to pay an exorbitant amount due to lack of planning. I also had just run out of cheddar, though we were still well-stocked with mozarella.
So... the very first week I spent $78.50 of my $200 budget stocking up. I bought two weeks of milk, about 10 gallons of skim and 2 of whole, and 30 packages of cheese. Add to this several cans of green beans on sale, of course, 1 bottle store-brand ketchup, 1 jar of garlic-stuffed olives (believe me, this is a staple in my house!) and 1 pint of cream.
Add to that total $6 I spent at another grocery store on reduced-price fresh produce. I've discovered one of the local stores regularly marks down perfectly good fruits/veggies for 99 cents a package. Saturday I found a package of 6 pomegranates (only 3 turned out to be good); a package of 5 zucchini, which my daughter promptly turned into two loaves of zucchini bread; two packages of mushrooms, porcini and button; and two packages of mesclun salad mix.



We used the mushrooms in an omelet for lunch that day and for homemade pizza, the salad was huge - and beautiful - and lasted for two meals. We've also discovered a love for pomegranates!



Here you see the falafel in pitas ... we topped them with ripe avocado slices I had on hand in the fridge. Yum!
So, now at the start of week 2, I have $72.50 left and three weeks to go... gulp.
I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

Burn baby, burn

When we moved to our house nearly 3 1/2 years ago, it needed lots of work. We invested nearly $50,000 in remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms.

After we moved in.

I will never, ever, ever, do that again!

But despite having the Contractor from Hell we ended up with a much-improved (as in livable!) house.

Unfortunately, we couldn't afford to remodel the fireplace then, too, so we spent a darn cold first winter in our old 1904 house. If I remember correctly, the girls and I spent most of every day upstairs, which the radiators seemed to keep almost too warm at times.

But downstairs?

Yikes.

Just the cold waves moving in from the walls and huge windows were enough to send us scurrying for covers.

We've toughened up since then, however, and are able to keep our thermostat set at 65 degrees during the day and 55 at night. I'm not sure, however, that we could have borne this without the repair to our fireplace late last fall.

This is what it looked like the first year and a half we lived here. Everything original, complete with cold air whooshing down the chimney. The woman who owned the house before us kept the whole fireplace covered with black plastic to keep out the chill.

It even had a nice coating of antique ash.

Last fall we finally decided to install a high-efficiency wood burning unit. It doesn't quite have the look I wanted, but we had to find something that would fit in our unusually small opening. That left only one choice, but I've come to like it. I also had to come up with a tile solution, as we didn't want to (nor could we afford) to replace the period tile. I found this set of three tiles on-line and am quite pleased with how the whole thing turned out.

Here is the fireplace as it looks today:

It's made a huge difference in our comfort downstairs, making this room the family gathering place.

It has an electric fan and puts out a lot of heat.

We also discovered that by closing one set of pocket doors and a hallway door we can effectively shut off the front half of the house, thereby trapping all that luscious heat in the living room.

And with temperatures here at -3 degrees and lows around -17, never mind the wind chills, this room has become our haven!

In-House Outhouse

I grew up hearing my mom tell about life with her grandma and grandpa. This was the 1930s when frugality was not simply a lifestyle choice. She remembers watching her grandpa make laundry detergent and her grandma making cottage cheese.

Even after her own mother paid to have electricity wired to their house, my great-grandparents sat in the dark at night so as not to spend the money on lighting.

My mom told of using the outhouse at her grandma and grandpa's; it was just a fact of life. People really did save the old Sears & Roebuck catalogs for toilet paper, but, according to my mom, the best t.p.-of-old came from summer peaches.

Let me explain.

Summer peaches came by the box, individually wrapped in tissue paper. My mom remembers her grandparents carefully smoothing out each of those wrappers for later use in the outhouse.

My dad used to tell stories involving outhouses, too, though I'm not sure when the farmhouse in which he grew up got indoor plumbing.

He told of Halloween pranks involving disassembling an outhouse and reassembling it atop a downtown building. I seem to remember something about some unfortunate soul falling into the outhouse hole in the process...

Anyway, it's easy to wax nostalgic about days-of-old when living in the comfort of our modern houses. Though my house was built in 1904, it does have all the modern conveniences of indoor plumbing, except when it comes to heating certain rooms.

The remodeling of the kitchen and creation of a half-bath next to it helped make this old house livable, with one minor exception, that is. There was no room for a radiator in the kitchen proper, nor in the downstairs bathroom.

Most of the year this isn't a problem.

This isn't that time of year.

With temperatures below freezing, using our little half-bath becomes an arctic expedition. We can't leave the door to the bathroom open since that would only serve to lower the temperature on the main floor of the house. We also can't leave it open since a certain puppy loves to grab toilet paper and Kleenex boxes.

Michael has a nifty little temperature-assessing device he borrowed from work - it looks kind of like a ray-gun that measures the temperature of individual objects when pointed at them. Last night, while huddled at the dinner table, we decided to see just how cold our little in-house outhouse really is.

Let me tell you, it was eye-opening.

Or perhaps I should say, bun-numbing.

At 8 p.m. it was -4 degrees outside. The thermostat in the house was set at 65 degrees. But a little trip to the bathroom might have required gloves and a coat, with the air temperature measuring 41 degrees, the outside wall of the bathroom at 32 degrees, the floor at 34 degrees, and, get this - the toilet seat at 39 degrees!

Now, to lend an additional measure of perspective here, someone suggested measuring the temperature of my, um, rear. Always game for an experiment, Michael and I stepped into the other room, I bent over, he pointed the thermo-gun, and, well, we came up with a butt-temp of 83 degrees, sans jeans.

This massive temperature differential prompted my eldest to proclaim, "It's lucky mom's butt doesn't fracture."

Indeed.

So, when you're feeling a little chilly in your house, thinking maybe you'll nudge that thermostat up a degree or two, I urge you to think of your forebears and the long journeys undertaken in all weather to the "necessary."

Or you can just think of me.

And my really, really cold rear.

Daily Bread

So today was the first day of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge and my own challenge to make all our bread from scratch for the month of January. Today's menu, all from what we already had on hand, included mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted turkey, brown rice casserole, green bean casserole, asparagus Parmesan, cranberry-orange bread, three grain bread, and pumpkin bars.
There's been a lonely bag of cranberries resting in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator since Thanksgiving. Every time I'd see them in there, daring me to make something of them or throw them away, I'd think, "I really need to make cranberry-orange bread." But I never seemed to get around to it. Until today, that is.
Food waste, be damned! We now have three loaves of cranberry-orange bread ready for dinner tonight, breakfast, and for the freezer.
I love this recipe, since it uses half whole wheat flour, yet the bread still moist and delicious.

I boiled up a bunch of brown rice this morning, since it's so handy to have it ready to heat up and use during the week. Unfortunately, I think I used up all but a couple of cups today making this three grain bread and the cheesy-rice casserole for dinner.

This is a great whole grain bread, incorporating brown rice and corn meal, along with white flour. When the kids were little I always baked in in loaf pans, but I really like the look of the ovals. This was Sarah's favorite homemade bread when she was little. She misunderstood my calling it "Three grain rice bread," and forever after it's been known as "Three Blind Mice bread" in our family!

The two pie pumpkins and the acorn squash sitting accusingly on my kitchen counter since September have also met a fitting end today. I finally baked them into a squash puree and made whole grain pumpkin bars for tonight's dessert (and probably tomorrow's breakfast, as well!)

The Eat from the Pantry Challenge gave me the nudge I needed to use what I had on hand, rather than allowing good food to spoil. It never hurts to have a little push to help turn intentions into actions.

Eat from the Pantry Challenge

A glimpse at part of my basement storage

Here it is, January 1, 2010, and it seems all the blogosphere is setting goals for the new year. I don't usually proclaim my goals to the world, but there's an interesting challenge I decided to try this month, the Eat from the Pantry Challenge from Life as Mom and Money Saving Mom.

The idea is to try to eat from your stockpile as much as possible this month, but the parameters of the challenge are individual. Now, since I started couponing in August, I've built up quite a stockpile, but I've always had that tendency. When you can and freeze in the summer, you naturally end up with quite a stash of food to see you through the winter. I have home-frozen corn and green beans, tomato sauces, pesto, strawberries and blueberries. I have home-canned tomatoes, salsa, dill pickles and dilly-green beans, two bushels of potatoes (grown at a friend's house), sweet potatoes and beets.

Since I've started paying attention to sales, I also have more cereal, flour, canned fruits and veggies, sugar, spices, cleaning products, laundry soap, etc., than I could possibly use up in one month.

I'm going to keep the rules for myself relatively simple. I'll continue to buy fresh fruits and veggies, though opting for the best prices when I shop. If there's an incredible "deal" I'll likely still stock up, though I'm going to try to spend only $200 for the rest of January on food/grocery store items for my family.

For example, Hy-Vee is having a one-day sale tomorrow and I plan to stock up on grated cheese ($1 a bag) and milk at 88 cents a half gallon. By stocking up on grated cheeses when the price hits $1 a pound, I know I save a ton. We simply freeze the cheese and pull it out when ready to use it. Also, we drink a lot of milk. I prefer to buy my milk from the local dairy, but since deciding to hit our debt with everything we've got, I decided to choose price over preference, at least for the time-being.

I typically make homemade breads, but rarely manage to do so exclusively. For this challenge, I will try to make all our breads from scratch for the entire month. I'm off to a good start today, making 3 loaves of cranberry-orange bread, three-grain bread, and pumpkin bars.