On Kitchens and Babies

So with teething and winter colds and fevers, I've been thinking about survival strategies; how life works with a gaggle of kids.  Two little ideas, new to us, that I've been enjoying lately:
--We put a rocking chair in the kitchen!  No, we don't have a big kitchen.  I do have to move the rocking chair constantly to get to the pantry, but this has been worth it.  When the baby's crying, but I can't stand to miss dinnertime, when Paul's finally home after a long day of work for all of us, I can nurse or rock the baby, and enjoy the happy company of the family at the same time.

Pretty and Happy: so content I drew a picture!

--Put the baby in the sink.  Baby has to be old enough to sit up quite competently, Mama has to be attending closely, and won't be able to do this at all once baby starts trying to climb the dish rack!
When I came up with this,  I was too tired to pop him on my back, and he was too crabby with teething and congestion to do anything else at all.  The situation with dirty dishes was becoming catastrophic.  I gave up one basin, filled the dish tub with warm water, and had a happy companion.  I gave him choice utensils and a wet rag to suck on. Once I discovered this, we started doing it all the time!

--An old idea, for us: put the baby on a back.  This is my number one coping mechanism for caring a baby while homeschooling.  So, first I take care of baby dear: nurse, feed, potty, clothe, warm.  Then baby plays. (and we can do other things!) On the floor, on a blanket, dancing to some fun music, with the cat door, a shoe, whatever he seems interested in.  When baby dearest has had it with playing, he's usually happiest if I put him on my back.

I've really mastered the technique of getting him up there, and I confidently assert that he's really secure.  (psst-- I'll bike with a kid on my back like this!)  He may complain a bit at first, but often just snuggles right in.  It's nice if I can do something that involves a little motion, to lull him a bit.  Once he's happy, I can sit down and do bookwork with the boys!

Funny and Real

This Kitchen

So remember this kitchen when we first got this house? (Same view in following two pics.)Paul wanted the kitchen to be yellow; "Gram's-making-oatmeal-raisin-cookies-I-hope-yellow. " We ended up going a little mellower, because the kitchen tends to be such a flurry of activity anyway. I still hope the pantry (thank God for the wonderful pantries in this house!!) will be that yellow-yellow when we get around to it. No hurry.There were no appliances, and the walls were rotting apart, and everything was dirty and mousy, we are just so thrilled with how it all turned out! Paul put in the cedar panelling, which was salvaged by my ever-resourceful father from someone's trash. We sanded and refinished it, and it's so nice and warm feeling. Under a few layers of plastic and linoleum were real wood floors, worn but solid. Paul put in lovely lights where there were none, in just the right places, and a great sound system for listening to all our favorite public radio stations.
The hutch and butcher block we thought of while trying to imagine how this kitchen may have first been in 1900-- probably not built in cabinetry, but simple freestanding furniture if any, and a big table? The butcher block (craigslist) is awesome for kneading, chopping, rolling, grinding, all of which happen a lot in this kitchen!

House for all seasons

Wow, everything looks so glistening in these pictures. It doesn't feel like that most days, but I hope we never stop being thankful for this house. We painted the living room yellow because we spend the most time in it in the long drear winter, and wanted the cheeriest color possible for wintertime. As it turns out (we moved in and painted in the summer) the living room gets the most beautiful sunshine in the winter because the sun is so much lower, and the trees which shade the front of the house in summer are bare.
It's odd to me how open-plan houses are all the rage because people supposedly never use their dining rooms, because one of my favorite things about our house is having a nice ample dining room. It is such a joy and privilege to have a big crowd of people over for a meal, and that's just what dining rooms are for! or course that big table is also for drawing, and cutting and pasting, and play dough, and judging by this week, storing mail and newspapers, catalogs and laundry and stacks of library books. Or--this one's new for me--nothing at all except (hopefully, as the garden gets going here) a vase of flowers.

I'm learning about myself that though it used to feel like we couldn't possibly handle having lots of people over, having people over regularly helps our life be more sane. It helps us clean up. It helps us remember what we have. And it helps us remember what's important-- friends and neighbors, not the house.

On doing dishes

There is a peaceful kind of wrapping up involved in washing dishes. You are putting the kitchen to bed, putting everything back where it goes so it will be ready next time. This can be a pleasant task to do alone, after the hubbub of mealtime. It can also be a pleasant task to share, as the occupation of washing and drying and putting away creates a setting in which companionable conversation can flourish.

Margaret Kim Peterson, from Keeping House; the Litany of Everyday Life.

The above is from a wonderful book, I am reading it through a second time, it was so full of practical good to me.
Above, Gibbie and Ezra, above and beyond companionable conversationalists, engage in mealtime sillyness.

Thrifty homemaking in The Tale of Two Cities

I used to just be a plain, dorky kind of nerd. Bookish, opinionated, rumpled. I liked to think that I became a alternative, articulate, intentional kind of nerd. Now I am additionally a homemaker. I have mixed feelings about being this. Homemaking may not help my image. I associate the word with frumpiness, doting, and provinciality. But there is also a wonderful alchemy in homemaking.
May I share some unexpected gems from one of our recent reads, Dicken's The Tale of Two Cities?
On the enigmatic Miss Pross, that vociferously loyal maid of our main characters: "From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul [her forebearers], she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella's Godmother; who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into anything she pleased."

On Lucie, the good one: "Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her."

A Cheery Table for All

Montessori, and many others tell us to make each meal special, to communicate care by setting a beautiful table even if the meal is merely a snack for a small child. To me this means, firstly, flowers. I've long imagined that the greatest thing about being rich would be being able to have flowers inside all year long. But I'm coming around on this point. There is a time for every beauty. Flowers grow in long days, not short ones. The most cheering thing on a winter table is a candle. By dinnertime, it is yet infallibly dark already. Gibbie likes to talk about the "dark, dark world out there." What we need is a bit more light.


Ideas for winter cheer at our kitchen table:
-anything colored tissue paper taped to the windows; cut stars, snowflakes, squares, etc.
-a candle. We have a favorite candle holder (wedding gift, from 10,000 villages; thanks, dear friends!). I buy candles at the coop (yes, expensive), or the thrift store (cheap!), or make our own (the last time we did that was years ago! man, it's a great winter activity!), or scrounge them from my Dad's basement (we call it the "great source and final resting place of all things", though my brother and sisterinlaw are working hard to change that!). We light a candle at every meal. Blowing it out signals the end of the meal. It's a great way for Gibbie to understand that Mama and Papa are still busy when we're catching up after work at the end of the day.
-a nice tablecloth. Hem any piece of cloth, or buy on the cheap at a thrift store. Ours need to be changed frequently! I don't worry about stains, as we have lots. Some I shake out or flip over before changing.
-cloth napkins This is an easy way to dignify and green a meal. My mom always kept a basket near the table, and we just threw them in the wash. Even using them every meal makes an insignificant dent in the laundry load of a family. No sense in buying these new, as they are the easiest thing to sew. Old clothes, like button-down shirts, actually work much better for napkins than new fabric, as absorbency and softness are key. Easy to find in thrift stores. A family can almost stop buying paper products.
-real silver I've found that real and quite beautiful silver is shockingly cheap in thrift stores. I think no one wants to deal with polishing it. (Hint: preschoolers love to polish!) I'm having a love affair with a particular teapot I found for maybe three dollars.
-books at dinner? Sure! I do try not to keep my nose in a book at the table, but we have a special book by the table and Gibbie always looks forward to reading from it. This is covered beautifully in Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt. I adored this book, though I must mention that the edition I read was from the 1970's, so I can't vouch for the newer one I linked to.
-kids help set the table At 3, I hope Gibbie is soon doing this on his own. For now, I keep the children's things in a drawer they can reach. I ask him to do a specific tasks ("please put a plate on the table", not "set the table") one at a time and do it with him if he's not enthusiastic about my request. Doing it with him has been a great thing. It doesn't make it a negative or adversarial thing at all, and has been a wonderfully effective tactic for growing willingness to help. In the summer, he loves arranging the flowers he picked in a jar.