Welcoming Committee

My best friend and I had a recent discussion about the unconventional parenting styles of our husbands, when they are left alone with the kids. First of all, let me just say that I completely appreciate the fact that our husbands are even WILLING to spend time with their kids (I know some moms who have to bargain and coerce to get time "off"...), and recognize this as a relatively recent phenomenon. My mom marvels at how "involved" my husband is, and although she says in some ways it was easier for her to parent without consulting my dad about every decision (he left much of the childcare to her), she is impressed with the care he gives them.

So, back to my friend. She is a dance teacher, and once a week, travels to a nearby town to teach, leaving her hubby home with their four children through the dinner hour. What he makes each week is this: grated cheese in the bottom of a pot, cooked noodles poured on top, cold spaghetti sauce poured on top of THAT; stir it all up and serve. Haha! The best part is that they all sit on the kitchen floor, and he feeds them from the pot, with ONE FORK so that he doesn't have to wash dishes.

While SHE prefers a nicely set table and civility at dinner, she eventually recognized that her kids will likely cherish this memory of their dad, the way I cherish my memories of the days my mom worked. Dad would have to braid my long curly hair. The plaits were always crooked, too tight, or messy. And I loved them anyway, because I loved the rare experience of my dad's clumsy fingers trying to wrestle my mop into submission.

I sometimes marvel at the fashion ensembles my husband creates for our kids. And it used to secretly bug me, way back when I used to sweat the small stuff. He makes "interesting" meals for them, and somehow they eat his concoctions with enthusiasm. While I spend my whole day trying to make headway with the neverending housework, he takes them outside and "putters" around in the barns.

Recently, I came home to find this handsome fella standing beside our laneway, welcoming me home to my sweet man and happy kids:

It sometimes pains me when I think of the work imbalance that often occurs between mothers and fathers and how, in spite of the fact that I do at least 75% of the parenting and housework, my kids will likely remember daddy as the "fun" parent. They'll remember me cooking and cleaning and taxiing them here and there. And then I feel a little bit sorry for myself, because of the love, committment, and HEART I put into my job as a mom. What if they never appreciate me?

Then I remind myself of the gift it is for my children to have such a loving, involved father, who, by building a Welcome Monster with his kids and puttering in the barns teaches them creativity, resourcefulness, and the wonder of seeing everyday objects with fresh eyes.

If your children's wonderful daddy is nearby, go and give him a hug, and thank him for being there for you and for them.

Wandering Wednesday

I've been seeing this around other blogs and thought I'd get involved...those pictures of people's feet wandering where they wander are so charming! I've been a homebody for most of the summer...aside from daily forays to the beautiful beach for swimming lessons, and weekly visits to the library, we're mostly HERE. We wander from barn to clothesline to swingset to my favourite place of all: the garden.

I love my summer feet. They're really, really dirty. I'd give a pedicurist an aneurysm. I keep my toenails painted to hide the dirt...in this pic, they're green to match the flowers, because I care about such things (she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm). The floors in my house are always covered in various spills and bits of food/glitter/glue/playdough (today I swept the same area 3 times in one hour), so I have to wash my feet before I go to bed. I laugh when people offer to take their shoes off when they come in the house...I tell them to keep them on to protect their socks! My mom says that her father did the same thing every night. We take such good care of other parts of our bodies: taking off makeup, washing our face, brushing and flossing our teeth...what about our feet?

 I think my hardworking, reliable, sausage-toed feet deserve a wash and a rub with some Fair Trade Foot Lotion from LUSH after a day of futile attempts at cleaning the house, standing for hours to prepare meals, wiggling into warm earth and cool grass, and dancing to ABBA with my kids. I'm off to do just that (washing and moisturizing, not dancing to ABBA!) before nestling into bed with my new library book! Happy Wednesday, all!

5 Ways to Love a Zucchini

Don't you just love zucchinis? The plant has leaves like an elephant's ear, tropical blossoms, and the ability to hide what's really happening under there. You'll check daily, and see nothing, nothing, then one day...kapow!

Zucchinis as big as a toddler!

1. Mmm...one of my favourite way to dispose of zucchinis is to slice them into rounds, dredge them in flour, then beaten egg, then either bread or cracker crumbs...fry them in butter and devour. Yes, if you cook them this way you'll be negating any health benefits of this lovely vegetable. And you won't regret it. This also works with green tomatoes, fresh pickerel or rainbow trout fillets, chicken strips..you name it. This is not something we eat on a weekly basis, so it's a real treat at zucchini time.

2. Grating them finely into spaghetti sauce or casserole is also a good way of using them up.

3. And then there's always:

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk (I use rice or soya milk)

Cream above ingredients together in a large bowl.

Then sift together:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp EACH cinnamon and ground cloves

Combine wet and dry, then stir in 2 cups grated zucchini and 1/4 cup chocolate chips.

Bake at 325 Degrees F (160 Degrees C) in a greased and floured 9"x13" pan for 45 minutes.
(I grate and store zucchini in 2 cup bags for winter baking).

4. As a treat for the chickens, I'll slice a zuke lengthwise, and they pick it clean leaving only a thin green rind.

5. Finally, the most popular way for a zucchini gardener to use up zucchini: shower your friends and acquaintances with "gifts"...leave one on their car seat when they're about to leave your house, bring them as hostess gifts to August parties, hand them to the lady who delivers your mail, the man who cleans your chimneys (yes, we get this done in August), and the guy on the street. Most people are too polite to refuse homegrown vegetables. One day we came home to find a BASKET of zucchinis left anonymously on our doorstep. I laughed and laughed at how karma works (I'd been dumping zukes on everyone I'd met for a week)...

Resisting zucchini love is futile. Surrender to the zucchini. Make friends with it. And let me know if you come up with any other ways to use the bloody things up!

Poetic Monday: Weepy

I've been feeling weepy lately. I'm weeping about a friend's loss and children living with illness. I'm weeping about the generational shift that takes place when you're my age. I weep when I hear certain songs, and even wept when I saw the trailer for "The Blind Side"...AFTER I'd seen the movie (I didn't even like it that much). When I feel weepy like this, I know that the best remedy is a BIG CRY. An EPIC CRY. The kind of crying where you know your face looks contorted and red and ugly and you don't give a damn.

I haven't done it yet, but keep telling my husband I need to find a moment and the space to open the dams and let all my heart's feelings flow free.

Here's a poem I love on the topic:

Crying
~Galway Kinnell

Crying only a little bit
is no use. You must cry
until your pillow is soaked!
Then you can get up and laugh.
Then you can jump in the shower
and splash-splash-splash!
Then you can throw open your window
and, "Ha ha! Ha ha!"
And if people say, "Hey,
what's going on up there?"
"Ha ha!" sing back, "Happiness
was hiding in the last tear!
I wept it! Ha ha!"

I've been thinking lately about how uncomfortable it makes us when our children cry. We want to stop them, with comfort, or reprimands, or isolation. Violet in particular cries about everything; when it's tantrummy, ear-splitting, shatter-the-window-panes crying, we have to put her outside on the porch till she's done. This isn't a punishment, but more a move towards preserving the aural health of the other people in the house.

But maybe she knows something I've forgotten. Maybe the next time she starts, I'll let 'er loose, and cry right along with her. I know happiness is hiding in there somewhere!

Procrastination

I am a terrible procrastinator. No, actually, that's not accurate: I'm an EXCELLENT procrastinator. In fact, in order to avoid something right now, I'm WRITING about procrastination.

I understand that if I clean up the kitchen and livingroom BEFORE I go to bed, it will make getting up so much more pleasant. I know that if I prepare for a workshop/class/gig weeks in advance, I'll present with poise and confidence, with none of those unforeseen glitches that sometimes happen.

But somehow, I've always ignored deadlines until the last possible moment. I maintained a B average throughout university, when most of my papers were written between 1 and 8 a.m. of the day they were due (but honestly, more often when they were 2 or 3 days late). Back in those days, I'd save my work to a floppy disk, run to the closest computer lab and print out the paper, and make it to class for 8:30 a.m. I guess you could say I was a bit cavalier about the whole thing...but because I managed to get fairly good grades using this method, I didn't see any reason to change it. I did learn to play guitar during those university years, and that is something that has stayed with me much longer than any Geography facts ever did!

So. Tomorrow I have a 1 hour gig at our local museum. They are focussing on women and music this summer, so it is to be a retrospective performance, a reflection on my journey as a woman and as a musician. I thought of parcelling my life into chapters, and singing a couple of songs to represent each time period: childhood, teens, university, living in Northern Ireland, teaching, living in the Arctic, love, marriage, kids, farming...I'd been thinking up songs while driving, and singing a bit. But it is now after 8 p.m. and I'm still not practising. My attempts to run through some songs while the kids were in the bathtub failed miserable...guitars and bubbles don't mix.

There was a time in my life when I was performing regularly. In Whistler, BC, I had a regular weekend gig at a resort. Back home again, I also entertained tourists at a local whitewater rafting place 2 nights a week. Back then, I thought I'd never be able to forget the words or chords to the songs I sang so often.

But tonight, while I was starting to strum a bit while the kids were in the tub, my voice felt...rusty. The reasons for me not singing for so long are varied...newborns, postpartum exhaustion, setting limits on how much I do outside home in order to avoid burnout...the few gigs I attempted with small children in attendance (because I was breastfeeding) were extremely stressful, with baby frantically struggling in daddy's arms: "What?? What does she think she's doing in front of all these people? Holding a guitar instead of ME? I don't think so..." Another time, I booked a gig between Violet's bedtime and her first nighttime nurse, then lost my keys. I was in a panic to get back to her, and vowed that it just wasn't worth the stress.

I went through periods of resentment, as my husband is also a musician, and his involvement in music has experienced nary a pause since we had children. I feel like it's something I've had to give up in order to be peaceful with parenting. Acceptance does not come easily, and I struggle with bitterness. I know it doesn't serve a healthy purpose, so I'm working on it.

Singing is a deep part of who I am and always have been. So I'm starting small, with a daytime gig. Hubby will stay here with the kids (I've learned that much!), and I will try to find my footing again, to reacquaint myself with She-Who-Was-Me...and I imagine still is Me.

Enough procrastinating. I'm going out to my potting shed with a cup of tea and my guitar. Maybe you'll hear my first tentative notes on the wind...listen for the moment they become stronger, more sure of themselves...and send me some love!

And the Winner Is...

The winning comment, chosen randomly, was number 21...that means that Stephinie at Gypsy Forest is the winner of a lovely, handmade Mushroom Cottage! Please contact me by email, Stephinie, so I can make arrangements to send it to you as soon as it's done (just a few more flowers and some wee curtains to sew on...yours has a yellow door, a blue roof...curtain colour to be decided soon!)

It's been a lovely week "off", although I do miss writing my daily posts! You can imagine how limiting it is for me, without a camera! We've done some visiting, some idea-sharing over at the Toadstool, and lots of playing, pretending, cuddling, and story-reading.

Margot is working on 5 teeth (four of them molars). She is not a happy camper. As I write this at 12:48 a.m., she is having a cuddle with daddy in the livingroom. This is unusual for her; my kids all go to sleep at around 8 p.m., and we never hear a peep until morning. This is our third teething toddler (she's a toddler already? What happened to my baby?) so we know that "this tooth shall pass".

Jude's been big into pretending these days. He's perfected his pirate voice (preceding every statement with "Yar!"...sometimes he forgets, then shifts into an accented rumble), and has had many an adventure on the high seas with his "skelescope", alternately saving and terrorizing the girls. It all depends on whether it's a good pirate day or a bad pirate day.

We've also been treated to quite a few magic shows, knitted afghan hung across the doorway as a curtain; it's swept aside in his dramatic entrance. He loves to use knitting needles and drumsticks as his magic wand.

Check out that posture and focus!

(and shift your eyes from the mess in the background!)

Yesterday I had the singular horror pleasure of playing "Doctor" with my eldest two. I was instructed to lie down on the couch. My role was to play a mother in labour.

Let me just clarify here that all three of my children were born at home, under the loving care of my midwife, sister/doula, sister, mother, and of course my husband. So you can imagine my horror surprise to find myself lying on my back, a belt around my wrist, an accordion at my head that would now and then be given an experimental squeeeeze. Between the sips of "oil" to make the baby come out, Jude pushing my ankles together, and Violet giving me a "needle" in the forehead, it was all rather hilarious and distressing! I played my part well, yelling "Can I just have the baby now???", and Violet stroked my forehead, whispering, "Just bewax, Mommy...bewaaax". When the babies were born (twins, no less!), Jude whisked them away, promising to take care of them for me.

Wow. It was all a bit too mid-20th century for me! They have obviously forgotten how and where they were born. But the time will come when I can explain it all to them. For now, pretending is lots of fun.

Have a great weekend!

Poetic Monday: A Bedtime Poem

I'm posting late today, but couldn't pass up sharing this wonderful little poem. I know that there are kids everywhere just waiting to hear it read aloud to them at bedtime! It is so charming, I may just take the time to memorize it so I can recite it to my kids every night as I tuck them in!

The Plumpuppets
~Christopher Morley

When little heads weary have gone to their bed,
When all the good nights and the prayers have been said,
Of all the good fairies that send bairns to rest
The little Plumpuppets are those I love best.

If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin, and flat,
The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at:
They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool, and fat ~
The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!

The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds;
They have nothing to do but to watch sleepyheads;
They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight,
And they dance on your pillow to wish you good night!

No matter what troubles have bothered the day,
Though your doll broke her arm or the pup ran away;
Though your handies are black with the ink that was spilt ~
Plumpuppets are waiting in blanket and quilt.

If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin, and flat,
The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at:
They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool, and fat ~
The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!

P.S. Don't forget: if you are a follower of this blog, you can enter my sweet giveaway once a day by entering a comment here! (that is, not on this post, but on the one entitled "Holidays, and a Giveaway". The winner will be randomly selected this coming Friday!