I've always been irritated with people who are quick to dismiss Mother's Day as a greeting card holiday. Holidays are what you choose to make them. The commercialization of certain holidays can indeed get out of hand to the point where the real sentiments get lost, but that's the fault of capitalism and the juvenile insistence of the average person in this country that everything be fun or dramatic rather than meaningful.
Major Christian holidays in this country get a lot of attention, and I know members of minority faiths who resent how little the mainstream knows about other holidays when they come around, but I've often felt they should be a bit grateful that the relative obscurity shields them from some of the nonsense, and they don't see important traditions reduced to another excuse to buy unnecessary things. My kids were surprised to learn Easter was a religious holiday at all, because they've only known it as egg hunts and candy. For us that works, again, because we can make holidays what we like, and for some of them that means making them silly.
But even secular holidays aren't immune from further secularization. Mother's Day in this country was eventually denounced by its creator who found its reduction from something meaningful to something used as a marketing ploy to be deplorable. However, we can pick what we like and reject the rest, just as we can on any other day. The tricky part is navigating the larger context and being prepared for the various meanings any holiday has for others. We can't assume it's the same for everyone.
Mother's Day can be complicated because mothers are complicated.
My own space apart from the babble of the internet
Showing posts with label breakfast in bed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breakfast in bed. Show all posts
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Fire and Flowers
It happened around 11 at night the evening before Mother's Day. Aden happened to be up late reading when she noticed all the sirens and flashing lights on her side of the house and came and got us. She was in tears.
Mona and Quinn slept through everything, but there were dozens of emergency vehicles gathered around the building only two blocks away. From Aden's second floor window we could see the flames leaping through the roof, and the smoke billowing into the sky flickering red and blue from the frantic lights below. It was scary.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Mother's Day and Movies
I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day!
Mine was the best ever (with the possible exception of the first one I got to spend as a mother with a five month old baby Aden in my arms, because there is nothing quite like certain firsts). It was a day filled with lots of nice moments and bookended with movies.
My kids made me breakfast in bed, which as sweet as it was, actually put me in an uncomfortable quandary.
They have breakfast in bed down to a kind of science, where they know to clean up the kitchen as part of the present, and they give thought to what might be too messy (for instance, they always serve me water in a water bottle to avoid spills). This morning they served me this:
That's a bowl of clementines all peeled, and a couple of slices of something we call a David Eyer Pancake (that they baked themselves) along with an overabundance of powdered sugar on the side to sprinkle on it. (There is also the aforementioned water bottle, a little bouquet of things from our front garden, and the appropriate silverware and a napkin all on a tray that belonged to my grandmother. This is several steps up from when Aden was three and she served me an uncooked egg in the shell with a fork a flower.)
So what was the quandary? Well, I'm doing 30 days again of no grains, dairy, legumes, or sugar. I fell off that 'paleo' diet wagon a couple of months ago and my weight started to creep back up and my headaches returned. I miss bread and cheese and chocolate but I can't take the headaches anymore. I want to do a whole month off of those items again and then experiment with adding things back one at a time so I can pinpoint what my problem might be. I'm on Day 13. And my adorable children specially cooked me a meal of flour mixed with milk and garnished with pure sugar. Do I choose my own self-imposed food rules, or create a Mother's Day exception?
I really agonized. And then I told them I couldn't eat it. I thanked them, and ate the clementines, and then asked if I could feed the David Eyer Pancake to them instead, which turned out to be fun. I haven't lifted a fork to any of their mouths in years, so they pretended they were little birds and each took turns having bites until the plate was clean. Then Aden made me an omelet--with a tiny bit of cheese. That I decided to make an exception for because come on. (Cheese was the first thing I was going to add back into my diet anyway, so why not.)
I also got some amazing gifts:
Quinn made me a tissue flower, Mona let me have the duct tape 'angel dragon' she made a couple of weeks ago that I've been admiring, and Aden bought a watch from Target and replaced the band with one she crocheted herself. They all pitched in to make the card. I don't even know how to describe how much I love all of this.
Next we sat on my bed and folded laundry while watching episodes of Phineas and Ferb. (We call these "Fold Phineas and Ferb Parties" and it makes laundry a pretty enjoyable event in our house.)
Then I made all the kids get out of my bed for a while and gave some thought to what I would like to do that would be just for me for a change. And I picked archery. I took archery lessons back in 2005 just because it was always something I wanted to try, and I loved it. Aden used to come with me in her pretty little dresses and help collect my arrows out of the hay bale targets at the public park and it was so cute. But then Ian got deployed and that was the end of that. My bow and arrows have been gathering dust ever since.
Until today! But it almost didn't happen just because it had been so long I didn't remember how to string up my recurve bow. I turned to YouTube where several different people demonstrated stepping through the bow and bracing one of the limbs against a leg, etc. and none of it rang a bell. I tried to copy what they were doing, but no luck. Then I found a different guy who said the bracing against the leg method was the wrong way to go and he was leaving one end of the string slipped down a ways, bending the bow, and sliding that end all the way up into place. That looked more familiar, but still no luck. After about half an hour of messing with my bow and trying to jog my memory and getting ready to give up, I looked at one more video and found a guy who said what I really needed was a bow stringer. A bow stringer.... That method involved hooking a string to each end of the bow and standing on it to pull the limbs far enough to slide one of the ends where it should be. THAT was starting to look familiar. So I went to my arrow quiver and emptied it out and I'll be damned if I don't own a bow stringer! Ha! The second I saw it, it all came back to me. Nothing to it.
So off to the park! My kids loved it there. Aden and Quinn retrieved my arrows, Mona collected broken bits of balloon from around the targets and created some pretend cooking game with them. The dog even had fun running free until it was time for me to shoot and it seemed safer to put him back on the leash. I was pleased to discover my aim is actually not bad considering how long it's been. I think next time I'm feeling down I will head back out to the range to clear my head. There's something nice about concentrating on an activity that is simple but not easy.
Perfect weather, perfect company, and I got a chance to do something with no purpose other than it's enjoyable. Can't ask for a better Mother's Day than that.
After the park we got the kids a pizza and left Aden in charge of everyone while Ian and I went to a movie. We've been experimenting more often with leaving them on their own for short stretches and they do fine. It still makes me nervous and will take some getting used to, but the idea that we have the freedom to escape to a movie from time to time is a wonderful new thing.
Now, the movies at each end of my day could not have been more different. In the morning I watched Melancholia on my laptop, and in the afternoon Ian and I went to see The Avengers in the theater. Melancholia is about the world ending with no hope of saving it and some question about whether it even matters. The Avengers is about saving the world and it's all very self-important. Melancholia moves in a slow and deliberate way, with music by Wagner to imbue everything with a gorgeous sense of tragedy, and it made me cry. The Avengers was all explosions and smashy smashy cool things to see and it made me laugh. Melancholia was calm as the world ended. The Avengers was frantic as it was saved.
I don't know if I can recommend Melancholia because it's haunting, and once you've seen it you can't unsee it. I don't want to be responsible for someone else having to ponder elements of it the way I seem to be. It's beautiful, but painful. The Avengers I would recommend purely for Hawkeye shooting aliens with arrows--sometimes without even looking (man, do I need practice!)--but also the Hulk hitting things and Robert Downey Jr being born to play Tony Stark. It's all so silly, but the best kind of silly.
My day also included cooking with my kids and my husband, watching my kids make things out of modeling chocolate, walking with them to Target, playing games with them on the computer, seeing them bike, hearing them laugh, and just being proud that I have any connection to these lovely little people at all. My life with them isn't the extremes I saw in either movie. It's just right. And I'm the luckiest mom in the world.
Mine was the best ever (with the possible exception of the first one I got to spend as a mother with a five month old baby Aden in my arms, because there is nothing quite like certain firsts). It was a day filled with lots of nice moments and bookended with movies.
My kids made me breakfast in bed, which as sweet as it was, actually put me in an uncomfortable quandary.
They have breakfast in bed down to a kind of science, where they know to clean up the kitchen as part of the present, and they give thought to what might be too messy (for instance, they always serve me water in a water bottle to avoid spills). This morning they served me this:
That's a bowl of clementines all peeled, and a couple of slices of something we call a David Eyer Pancake (that they baked themselves) along with an overabundance of powdered sugar on the side to sprinkle on it. (There is also the aforementioned water bottle, a little bouquet of things from our front garden, and the appropriate silverware and a napkin all on a tray that belonged to my grandmother. This is several steps up from when Aden was three and she served me an uncooked egg in the shell with a fork a flower.)So what was the quandary? Well, I'm doing 30 days again of no grains, dairy, legumes, or sugar. I fell off that 'paleo' diet wagon a couple of months ago and my weight started to creep back up and my headaches returned. I miss bread and cheese and chocolate but I can't take the headaches anymore. I want to do a whole month off of those items again and then experiment with adding things back one at a time so I can pinpoint what my problem might be. I'm on Day 13. And my adorable children specially cooked me a meal of flour mixed with milk and garnished with pure sugar. Do I choose my own self-imposed food rules, or create a Mother's Day exception?
I really agonized. And then I told them I couldn't eat it. I thanked them, and ate the clementines, and then asked if I could feed the David Eyer Pancake to them instead, which turned out to be fun. I haven't lifted a fork to any of their mouths in years, so they pretended they were little birds and each took turns having bites until the plate was clean. Then Aden made me an omelet--with a tiny bit of cheese. That I decided to make an exception for because come on. (Cheese was the first thing I was going to add back into my diet anyway, so why not.)
I also got some amazing gifts:
Quinn made me a tissue flower, Mona let me have the duct tape 'angel dragon' she made a couple of weeks ago that I've been admiring, and Aden bought a watch from Target and replaced the band with one she crocheted herself. They all pitched in to make the card. I don't even know how to describe how much I love all of this.
Next we sat on my bed and folded laundry while watching episodes of Phineas and Ferb. (We call these "Fold Phineas and Ferb Parties" and it makes laundry a pretty enjoyable event in our house.)
Then I made all the kids get out of my bed for a while and gave some thought to what I would like to do that would be just for me for a change. And I picked archery. I took archery lessons back in 2005 just because it was always something I wanted to try, and I loved it. Aden used to come with me in her pretty little dresses and help collect my arrows out of the hay bale targets at the public park and it was so cute. But then Ian got deployed and that was the end of that. My bow and arrows have been gathering dust ever since.
 | |
| Using the bow stringer |
So off to the park! My kids loved it there. Aden and Quinn retrieved my arrows, Mona collected broken bits of balloon from around the targets and created some pretend cooking game with them. The dog even had fun running free until it was time for me to shoot and it seemed safer to put him back on the leash. I was pleased to discover my aim is actually not bad considering how long it's been. I think next time I'm feeling down I will head back out to the range to clear my head. There's something nice about concentrating on an activity that is simple but not easy.
Perfect weather, perfect company, and I got a chance to do something with no purpose other than it's enjoyable. Can't ask for a better Mother's Day than that.
After the park we got the kids a pizza and left Aden in charge of everyone while Ian and I went to a movie. We've been experimenting more often with leaving them on their own for short stretches and they do fine. It still makes me nervous and will take some getting used to, but the idea that we have the freedom to escape to a movie from time to time is a wonderful new thing.
Now, the movies at each end of my day could not have been more different. In the morning I watched Melancholia on my laptop, and in the afternoon Ian and I went to see The Avengers in the theater. Melancholia is about the world ending with no hope of saving it and some question about whether it even matters. The Avengers is about saving the world and it's all very self-important. Melancholia moves in a slow and deliberate way, with music by Wagner to imbue everything with a gorgeous sense of tragedy, and it made me cry. The Avengers was all explosions and smashy smashy cool things to see and it made me laugh. Melancholia was calm as the world ended. The Avengers was frantic as it was saved.
I don't know if I can recommend Melancholia because it's haunting, and once you've seen it you can't unsee it. I don't want to be responsible for someone else having to ponder elements of it the way I seem to be. It's beautiful, but painful. The Avengers I would recommend purely for Hawkeye shooting aliens with arrows--sometimes without even looking (man, do I need practice!)--but also the Hulk hitting things and Robert Downey Jr being born to play Tony Stark. It's all so silly, but the best kind of silly.
My day also included cooking with my kids and my husband, watching my kids make things out of modeling chocolate, walking with them to Target, playing games with them on the computer, seeing them bike, hearing them laugh, and just being proud that I have any connection to these lovely little people at all. My life with them isn't the extremes I saw in either movie. It's just right. And I'm the luckiest mom in the world.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
A Birthday off to a Good Start (Babble)
Happy Birthday to me! I’m 43 today. I really enjoyed being 42 and am sad to see it go, but 43 isn’t too shabby so far.
About a week ago I was feeling a tad grumpy about my birthday. The Army has managed to interfere with it almost every year since we moved to Wisconsin. It was scary having Ian in Iraq for two of them, and just irritating when he was home but had drill. Looking ahead to my birthday on my calendar when I got it at the beginning of the year I thought to myself, “Wednesday! There won’t be drill on a Wednesday.”
So of course Ian got sent to Ft Knox for the whole week to do things like SRP and PT and LMNOP and other capital letter events. And it’s a week where I have rehearsals three nights in a row and have had to find sitters.
I gave up on the idea of going to work. When Ian was last deployed Quinn wasn’t in school yet and I didn’t have to deal with the half-day pickup. Now the half-day pickup is such a wrench in the schedule, and I couldn’t figure out a decent way to run the store from 10:30 until 5:00 with pickups at the school at 11:00 and 2:20, and still feed everyone and get them to violin lessons and choir, etc. I hope my assistant is having a good time running things alone.
I had visions of getting a lot of work done on my violins since I would be home all week. That has not happened. I literally did not step foot in my shop yesterday, and the day before I cut a piece of ebony (for a saddle) down from 39mm to 36mm and that was it! At this rate those violins will be done, uh, never.
But it’s okay. Ian will be back soon and I will work again because we can share the chores and there will be a pocket of time for me to do what makes me feel like myself. There’s a huge difference between getting by for a week or two, and having to adjust to an absence long enough it may as well be permanent. The stress of always being denied the chance to do the things that interest me was hard to bear. It made me unfairly resentful of the kids and a less pleasant person. But just a week? I can enjoy being here for them and not worry that my life is on hold. It’s fine, and I’m having a good time, actually, running the house the way I like it and getting to spend more time with each of my children.
So back to my birthday. My big gift today has been feeling like I have done a damn good job raising my kids. I suffer the same guilt many mothers do about not doing enough or being there enough or any of the myriad of ways that enough doesn’t seem like enough. But my kids are lovely and have some decent life skills and I got to see that on display this morning.
When I say life skills, I mean my kids can make crepes. They would not survive the zombie apocalypse, or frankly even survive a movie trailer about it, but my kids put together a breakfast in bed that got my birthday off to the best start ever.
Aden and Mona set their alarm and got up early and told me to stay in bed.
They made crepe batter and flipped them all on their own.
They walked the dog.
They CLEANED THE KITCHEN. (They emptied the dishwasher and refilled it and wiped down the counters and cleared the breakfast table of their own plates.)
They brought me a plate of crepes on a tray that used to belong to my grandmother. They served them with honey from Germany given to us by my brother, along with a little powdered sugar and brought me water in a water bottle. There was a knife for the honey and a hand drawn card signed by all my kids.
It was pretty amazing.
Now, my children are not perfect, because that would be boring. They don’t have good time management skills and we got to school very late. There was also a moment when Aden got angry with Mona for blurting out, “We’re not making you breakfast in bed!” and I had to break it to Aden that I had already figured it out and really what I want for my birthday is for everyone to get along so she needed to get over it and forgive Mona. And Quinn was in tears for a while because when he couldn’t figure out what to draw on the card he got embarrassed and started telling his sisters to leave him alone and they were mad at him for trying to eat his own breakfast rather than help. I had to cuddle the tears away and give him a bunch of my crepes because he didn’t want to go back downstairs.
So there’s that.
But that my kids have figured out that the true joy of breakfast in bed isn’t the thought or the food but that it shouldn’t make more work for the recipient than it’s worth is a real breakthrough. They CLEANED THE KITCHEN! And served me a breakfast without anything that made crumbs or could spill. I am stunned. And happy! And 43!
On top of that when I dropped the kids off at school I realized I’d forgotten my swim bag. So I’m skipping exercise today because I’m tired and I don’t want to and you can’t make me. I might bake a cake. Or take a nap! Or even get into my shop for more than ten seconds. I miss Ian, but as far as birthdays go this one is working out just fine. It’s not even raining! I’m used to sleet on my birthday, but the sun is shining and it’s supposed to get into the 70’s today. I even heard back from an agent requesting to look at my non-fiction proposal. I’d buy a lottery ticket except there’s nothing much more I could want.
(Wait…. Maybe I’m not awake yet. Eh, even if this is just a dream it’s a good one. To everyone else, happy Pi Day!)
(Kids saying goodbye to their dad before he drove off to Kentucky. What did I ever do to deserve this family? I am the luckiest person I know, and I will remind myself of that the next time the dog throws up on the carpet.)
UPDATE: The rest of my birthday was great. I watched my kids on their scooters, baked a cake, read a book…. And at my orchestra rehearsal tonight the group played ‘Happy Birthday’ for me and I almost cried. So far being 43 rocks.
About a week ago I was feeling a tad grumpy about my birthday. The Army has managed to interfere with it almost every year since we moved to Wisconsin. It was scary having Ian in Iraq for two of them, and just irritating when he was home but had drill. Looking ahead to my birthday on my calendar when I got it at the beginning of the year I thought to myself, “Wednesday! There won’t be drill on a Wednesday.”
So of course Ian got sent to Ft Knox for the whole week to do things like SRP and PT and LMNOP and other capital letter events. And it’s a week where I have rehearsals three nights in a row and have had to find sitters.
I gave up on the idea of going to work. When Ian was last deployed Quinn wasn’t in school yet and I didn’t have to deal with the half-day pickup. Now the half-day pickup is such a wrench in the schedule, and I couldn’t figure out a decent way to run the store from 10:30 until 5:00 with pickups at the school at 11:00 and 2:20, and still feed everyone and get them to violin lessons and choir, etc. I hope my assistant is having a good time running things alone.
I had visions of getting a lot of work done on my violins since I would be home all week. That has not happened. I literally did not step foot in my shop yesterday, and the day before I cut a piece of ebony (for a saddle) down from 39mm to 36mm and that was it! At this rate those violins will be done, uh, never.
But it’s okay. Ian will be back soon and I will work again because we can share the chores and there will be a pocket of time for me to do what makes me feel like myself. There’s a huge difference between getting by for a week or two, and having to adjust to an absence long enough it may as well be permanent. The stress of always being denied the chance to do the things that interest me was hard to bear. It made me unfairly resentful of the kids and a less pleasant person. But just a week? I can enjoy being here for them and not worry that my life is on hold. It’s fine, and I’m having a good time, actually, running the house the way I like it and getting to spend more time with each of my children.
So back to my birthday. My big gift today has been feeling like I have done a damn good job raising my kids. I suffer the same guilt many mothers do about not doing enough or being there enough or any of the myriad of ways that enough doesn’t seem like enough. But my kids are lovely and have some decent life skills and I got to see that on display this morning.
When I say life skills, I mean my kids can make crepes. They would not survive the zombie apocalypse, or frankly even survive a movie trailer about it, but my kids put together a breakfast in bed that got my birthday off to the best start ever.
Aden and Mona set their alarm and got up early and told me to stay in bed.
They made crepe batter and flipped them all on their own.
They walked the dog.
They CLEANED THE KITCHEN. (They emptied the dishwasher and refilled it and wiped down the counters and cleared the breakfast table of their own plates.)
They brought me a plate of crepes on a tray that used to belong to my grandmother. They served them with honey from Germany given to us by my brother, along with a little powdered sugar and brought me water in a water bottle. There was a knife for the honey and a hand drawn card signed by all my kids.
It was pretty amazing.
Now, my children are not perfect, because that would be boring. They don’t have good time management skills and we got to school very late. There was also a moment when Aden got angry with Mona for blurting out, “We’re not making you breakfast in bed!” and I had to break it to Aden that I had already figured it out and really what I want for my birthday is for everyone to get along so she needed to get over it and forgive Mona. And Quinn was in tears for a while because when he couldn’t figure out what to draw on the card he got embarrassed and started telling his sisters to leave him alone and they were mad at him for trying to eat his own breakfast rather than help. I had to cuddle the tears away and give him a bunch of my crepes because he didn’t want to go back downstairs.
So there’s that.
But that my kids have figured out that the true joy of breakfast in bed isn’t the thought or the food but that it shouldn’t make more work for the recipient than it’s worth is a real breakthrough. They CLEANED THE KITCHEN! And served me a breakfast without anything that made crumbs or could spill. I am stunned. And happy! And 43!
On top of that when I dropped the kids off at school I realized I’d forgotten my swim bag. So I’m skipping exercise today because I’m tired and I don’t want to and you can’t make me. I might bake a cake. Or take a nap! Or even get into my shop for more than ten seconds. I miss Ian, but as far as birthdays go this one is working out just fine. It’s not even raining! I’m used to sleet on my birthday, but the sun is shining and it’s supposed to get into the 70’s today. I even heard back from an agent requesting to look at my non-fiction proposal. I’d buy a lottery ticket except there’s nothing much more I could want.
(Wait…. Maybe I’m not awake yet. Eh, even if this is just a dream it’s a good one. To everyone else, happy Pi Day!)
(Kids saying goodbye to their dad before he drove off to Kentucky. What did I ever do to deserve this family? I am the luckiest person I know, and I will remind myself of that the next time the dog throws up on the carpet.)
UPDATE: The rest of my birthday was great. I watched my kids on their scooters, baked a cake, read a book…. And at my orchestra rehearsal tonight the group played ‘Happy Birthday’ for me and I almost cried. So far being 43 rocks.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Aden the Cook (Babble)
I’m not feeling well this morning. All night I had a dizzy thing
going on. I felt (feel) a bit queasy, and every time I opened my eyes
the room was spinning around like I’d just gotten off a tilt-a-whirl.
Very weird.
Anyway, Ian decided not to go do work at the violin store today until I’m feeling more normal and told me to just stay in bed for a bit. I’m still kind of in the mindset I had when he was gone that I don’t get to rest because there are kids to take care of, so it seems odd to be just sitting doing nothing. I took some ibuprofen, I checked email. Ian told the kids I wasn’t feeling well so they played more quietly than usual.
I was glad when Mona conveniently forgot she wasn’t supposed to disturb me and came bounding onto my bed. She and Quinn cuddled up while we did “school” on my laptop. We’ve been trying to get them ready for school starting up next week, so for the past few weeks we’ve had a rule about no screen time until all of them have had a half hour of school review. We have a white board propped up in front of the fireplace and Mona works on writing her numbers clearly and writing out her full name and copying words and sentences. Aden works on spelling and writing her address and multiplication tables. (Although the most important thing I’ve probably taught her in the past couple of weeks was how to play Heart and Soul on the keyboard. She’ll get some good social mileage out of that in third grade.) Quinn can write out most of his alphabet and numbers, and he likes learning about telling time. (My favorite was the morning I asked him to write the numbers one through ten, so he carefully wrote a one, and then a ten, and said he was done. I knew to explain it better for next time.)
All my kids like these flash cards I picked up from the dollar bin with landmarks on them, although they can’t remember the Alamo is in Texas and they think Big Ben is in the United States somewhere. This morning I just typed sentences on my computer for Mona to read out loud, mostly about dogs and purple bunnies to make her laugh. Quinn typed out the alphabet of his own accord, and then everyone left again and I realized I was hungry but too dizzy to want to go downstairs.
(Mona on a typical morning doing “school.”)
And then, Aden appeared. She’s so grown up lately. I just can’t get over how tall and capable she is anymore. She’d made me breakfast in bed.
Now, Aden is a sweetheart, and she has been making me some form of breakfast in bed for years when I’m not feeling well or on my birthday or some such occasion, but she’s old enough now that it’s not just cute, it’s good. When she was three she once brought me two uncooked eggs on a plate, a fork and a napkin. Today she brought me rice crispies in milk with a spoon, a hard boiled egg on a plate, toast, butter on a bunny dish with a little knife, and a cup of water. It was just what I needed. She sat with me while I ate and we looked at pictures of cute animals doing cute things on my laptop. She said she was worried about me trying to walk down the stairs but thought I might be hungry. I told her someday she’d make a great mommy and she looked very pleased.
I’m so impressed with the person she is and the adult she’s becoming. She’s got a few habits and quirks I wish I could wave a wand and fix, but the same is true of myself so I try not to hold her to too high a standard. I love that she wants to do more things on her own and still be my little girl. She makes a really good omelette. And yesterday she and Quinn asked if they could make sugar cookies and they did everything on their own but put the cookie sheet in the oven. (I’ve even told Aden I trust her to do that, but she doesn’t want to, yet.) I could hear them in the kitchen together with the recipe book, cracking eggs and running the mixer.
Aden made cookies the first time essentially on her own when she was four. She wanted cookies and I needed to work (and Ian was deployed for the first time so he wasn’t available to help), so I had the recipe next to me on the violin bench and I would explain each step as needed and she’d run off to the kitchen. I’d tell her to do things like find a measuring cup with a 1/2 on it and fill it with flour five times in a row, and leave her to it. She followed rules like ‘no adding things to the mixer while it was running,’ and I figured the worst that could happen was a messy kitchen and some nasty cookie dough that we have to do over, but aside from a delicious smelling accident with the vanilla she did fine.
(Aden on Christmas in 2006 with her first Easy Bake Oven creations.)
(Aden a couple of weeks ago with a perfect omelette.)
In any case, I’m feeling a lot better than a few hours ago. If I have another dizzy night tonight I’ll call the doctor, but today breakfast prepared by my daughter and served on a tray that used to belong to my grandma seems to have set me right.
Aden wants to tackle pancakes next. Sounds good to me! By next year breakfast in bed might be really something. I love my Aden the cook.
Anyway, Ian decided not to go do work at the violin store today until I’m feeling more normal and told me to just stay in bed for a bit. I’m still kind of in the mindset I had when he was gone that I don’t get to rest because there are kids to take care of, so it seems odd to be just sitting doing nothing. I took some ibuprofen, I checked email. Ian told the kids I wasn’t feeling well so they played more quietly than usual.
I was glad when Mona conveniently forgot she wasn’t supposed to disturb me and came bounding onto my bed. She and Quinn cuddled up while we did “school” on my laptop. We’ve been trying to get them ready for school starting up next week, so for the past few weeks we’ve had a rule about no screen time until all of them have had a half hour of school review. We have a white board propped up in front of the fireplace and Mona works on writing her numbers clearly and writing out her full name and copying words and sentences. Aden works on spelling and writing her address and multiplication tables. (Although the most important thing I’ve probably taught her in the past couple of weeks was how to play Heart and Soul on the keyboard. She’ll get some good social mileage out of that in third grade.) Quinn can write out most of his alphabet and numbers, and he likes learning about telling time. (My favorite was the morning I asked him to write the numbers one through ten, so he carefully wrote a one, and then a ten, and said he was done. I knew to explain it better for next time.)
All my kids like these flash cards I picked up from the dollar bin with landmarks on them, although they can’t remember the Alamo is in Texas and they think Big Ben is in the United States somewhere. This morning I just typed sentences on my computer for Mona to read out loud, mostly about dogs and purple bunnies to make her laugh. Quinn typed out the alphabet of his own accord, and then everyone left again and I realized I was hungry but too dizzy to want to go downstairs.
And then, Aden appeared. She’s so grown up lately. I just can’t get over how tall and capable she is anymore. She’d made me breakfast in bed.
Now, Aden is a sweetheart, and she has been making me some form of breakfast in bed for years when I’m not feeling well or on my birthday or some such occasion, but she’s old enough now that it’s not just cute, it’s good. When she was three she once brought me two uncooked eggs on a plate, a fork and a napkin. Today she brought me rice crispies in milk with a spoon, a hard boiled egg on a plate, toast, butter on a bunny dish with a little knife, and a cup of water. It was just what I needed. She sat with me while I ate and we looked at pictures of cute animals doing cute things on my laptop. She said she was worried about me trying to walk down the stairs but thought I might be hungry. I told her someday she’d make a great mommy and she looked very pleased.
I’m so impressed with the person she is and the adult she’s becoming. She’s got a few habits and quirks I wish I could wave a wand and fix, but the same is true of myself so I try not to hold her to too high a standard. I love that she wants to do more things on her own and still be my little girl. She makes a really good omelette. And yesterday she and Quinn asked if they could make sugar cookies and they did everything on their own but put the cookie sheet in the oven. (I’ve even told Aden I trust her to do that, but she doesn’t want to, yet.) I could hear them in the kitchen together with the recipe book, cracking eggs and running the mixer.
Aden made cookies the first time essentially on her own when she was four. She wanted cookies and I needed to work (and Ian was deployed for the first time so he wasn’t available to help), so I had the recipe next to me on the violin bench and I would explain each step as needed and she’d run off to the kitchen. I’d tell her to do things like find a measuring cup with a 1/2 on it and fill it with flour five times in a row, and leave her to it. She followed rules like ‘no adding things to the mixer while it was running,’ and I figured the worst that could happen was a messy kitchen and some nasty cookie dough that we have to do over, but aside from a delicious smelling accident with the vanilla she did fine.
In any case, I’m feeling a lot better than a few hours ago. If I have another dizzy night tonight I’ll call the doctor, but today breakfast prepared by my daughter and served on a tray that used to belong to my grandma seems to have set me right.
Aden wants to tackle pancakes next. Sounds good to me! By next year breakfast in bed might be really something. I love my Aden the cook.
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