One month, every day

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The semester is this close to being done, which means my creative energy will soon be freed up and I can return to this neglected blog. I have a slightly unrealistic goal (challenge?) in mind… what if I were to write here every day for a month to try to get back into the swing of things. My friend Elaine does it every November for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) and it's been in the back of my mind for a long time that I would like to try that too. November isn't a great month for me to commit to writing every day, but May just might be. It will be tricky to find time for it since the semester isn't actually over yet. But it is May 1st, and starting one month of writing every day should start on the first of the month, right? 

Also, I've always been a write-and-revise and then let it sit for a few days kind of writer, so this write-every-day idea would mean I'd have to write and hit publish. I'm not quite sure what that will look like. I'll probably end up boring you with the mundane details of life with three (bickering) children, and there will surely be many posts on gardening as I throw myself into our first attempt to grow a garden full of food. But here goes.  

Write and hit publish.

 

Night Owl

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A Tale of Two Mornings

5:30: Wake up without the aid of an alarm clock because I naturally wake up at this time every morning

5:35: Hit the "brew" button on the fancy espresso maker

5:40: Settle in at my desk with a hot latte, complete with steamed milk. Catch up on email as I gaze out the dormer window, enjoying the view of the meadow as the first rays of sunlight hit the hills in the distance

6:00- 7:00: Go for a nice long run and then shower without children barging in and out of the bathroom

7:00: Wake kids and start the morning routine, refreshed from a full hour to myself

 In reality, I curse the alarm clock as it bleeps relentlessly at 6:30am, hit snooze and hide under the covers until I absolutely have to get up at 7:00am. Then I painfully drag myself out of bed, dreading the cold—although, I feel just as grumpy about mornings in summertime. Also, there is no fancy espresso machine or dormer overlooking the meadow. 

I wish I were a morning person, but I’m drawn to the night hours. I take advantage of the late, quiet hours to write, bake, organize, read, sip tea, and generally enjoy time to myself; all of the things that are hard to do during the day.  I happily – and easily – stay up past midnight, undeterred by the impending misery of morning. The open-endedness of night offers a great sense of freedom. The knowledge that the time spanning out in front of me will surely outlast my productivity is a big advantage over the morning hours, when I am all too aware that a kid could (and often does) wake up at any moment, interrupting whatever I had hoped to do.

I can get up early. I’ve done it before. In high school I eagerly bounced out of bed at 5:30am in order to play tennis. It was all I cared about and I would have done anything for an extra hour on the court. The other time was the final six months of grad school, when I worked frantically to finish my dissertation. I’m not sure I really slept at all during those months, so getting out of bed to get back to my computer was more of a relief than lying in bed in the permanent state of anxiety I seemed to be in when I wasn’t working.

These two experiences triggered a super-human – but unsustainable – energy. Unfortunately, unlike a sports passion or graduation deadline, taking care of three small children seems to suck energy rather than inspire it. As much as I love my kids, the thought of waking, dressing and feeding them every morning does not drive me out of bed.

Nevertheless, I want to try to change. Our family is in the midst of a major schedule shift due to two new jobs having started, and it would be very convenient for everyone, particularly my husband, Dave, if I could magically become a morning person. Of course if I did get up at 5:30am, I would not be sipping my coffee as the sun popped up over the hills (or playing tennis or sitting down at my computer to write). Instead I would be emptying the ashes from the woodstove and restarting the fire, feeding and watering the chickens, scraping the ice off the car, making school lunches, and preparing breakfast.

But still, it would be nice if I got up earlier and less cranky to help ease the morning madness. In order to do this, I will have to go to bed earlier.

It will be a challenge to let go of my late night quiet time. I look forward to those hours all day. However chaotic and difficult the day of juggling work and three children may be, the prospect of sitting down alone at my computer while brownies bake gets me through. I need that time, perhaps not every night, but at least on a regular basis.

Therefore, if I do make this move to become a morning person, I’ll have to replace my late-night freedom. As long as I’m getting up early, I could carve out a chunk of time on weekend mornings. It wouldn’t be the peaceful quiet of night hours, but with Dave home, I could sit down alone at my computer, or go for a nice long run, and maybe even shower without children barging in and out of the bathroom. I could start the week feeling refreshed from having had time to myself.

Come summer, when school is out and the morning madness eases up, I can resort back to my natural schedule. Until then, to face early mornings, which will be difficult regardless of an earlier bedtime, maybe we should get that fancy espresso machine.

 

 

 

Spring Play

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We have finally made it beyond slipping around the icy patch of driveway on bitter cold days. Sunshine + a (hopefully) temporary lake in the yard + leftover snow + thawed ground in a warm greenhouse = hours of afternoon fun for all three kids together. We are done with the late afternoon bickering that has nearly driven me out of my mind. I can open the door and out they go - with the ability to move around the yard and play. Today they enjoyed mud cupcakes, decorated with white snow icing and pansies. 

Winter is over. And guess what? All three kids fell asleep quickly and easily!  

Spring forward…three weeks later

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A few months ago I griped about the Fall-back time change. The early afternoon darkness exacerbated the witching hour and it took us many weeks to readjust our routine. Today, I am going to gripe about Spring-forward… yes, we are still feeling the effects of the time change.

The wonderful, early bedtime that we finally achieved in order to cope with Fall-back has been compromised. When it was dark at 5pm, it could be whatever time Dave and I said it was. 5:57? Bedtime! With the darkness backing us up, the kids had no way to prove us wrong (especially since they can't tell time). But now Katherine and Clara eye us suspiciously as we try to convince them at 6:30 that it is already past their bedtime, and Alexandra pulls up the window shade as if to show us it is clearly not bedtime. It’s fun to listen to them chatter away and sing each other lullabies until their room is dark enough that they’re able to give in to their exhaustion, but by then it really is past their bedtime.

On top of the too-late bedtime problem, the extra hour of evening light also means we’ve lost our morning light. I rely on morning light to get them out of bed. Like me, they are not morning people, except on Sundays and school holidays, when they consistently wake up on their own at 6:30am. On school days, if it is dark out, they don’t want to get up – even with a 5:57pm bedtime.  During the winter months, I have to drag them out of bed. We were just getting to the point of enough morning light that 7am wasn’t torture for them. Now Spring-forward has set us back again.

I know this problem will resolve itself as the days get longer and the weather gets better. Kids who spend hours outside running free, climbing trees, and riding bikes are exhausted by 5:57pm no matter how bright it is; kids who are sick and tired of slipping around on an icy driveway and sinking into three feet of old, dirty snow in 12-degree weather are not. But for these weeks in between Spring Forward and better weather, the time change is brutal. 

Unemployment

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Unemployment

This has been the year of transition, most of it good, but some of it downright difficult. For many years my husband, Dave, and I shared the role of working-parent and stay-at-home parent. Looking back, I realize what a privileged set-up that was. Dave worked three longs days, I worked two long days, and we each had full days at home with the kids. We also worked evenings and weekends to keep up with our respective workloads, which meant we barely had time for each other. But we agreed it was worth it in exchange for the time we had with our young children and the money we saved on childcare expenses.

When we decided to leave D.C. in order to raise our kids in rural Vermont, Dave left his job to stay home with the kids and I began telecommuting full-time. Being the sole working parent was challenging for me, but we gained a much more balanced family life. We no longer had to constantly juggle schedules based on whose meetings were deemed more important on a given day. Weekends were open for gardening, long walks, or just lazing around, and Dave and I had evenings to ourselves.

Then my job ended. Suddenly, we were two unemployed parents. Of course the main concern was financial. How long could we last on savings? What would we do without health insurance? Would we have to move again, or even worse, move in with one of our parents? It took a lot of energy to keep the panic at bay. But most of the time, we were able to maintain our faith that we would find a way to make it work. The real challenge was that we were both at home. All day. Every day.

The first several weeks of our unemployment were great as we focused on the silver lining. We reveled in our free time and made list after list of projects we could accomplish around the house while we regrouped. But as reality set in, free time was devoted to job hunting and we went into a budget freeze; there would be no home improvement without any income. We felt aimless and unproductive. Not knowing how long our unemployment would last, we hesitated to make long-term plans or take on new commitments. We struggled to create a daily routine that worked for both of us.

While Dave and I are extremely compatible, we discovered during those months of unemployment that without purpose or structure (beyond feeding, clothing and transporting small children), we get in each other’s way. My typical afternoon at home with the kids involves getting everyone settled for their quiet time as quickly as possible after lunch, and then jumping right into prepping for dinner, checking email, and finally, if time allows, sitting down with a cup of tea to read my favorite blogs before the baby wakes up.

When Dave is also home, however, he has a habit of emerging from the office as soon as I start in on my rest-time routine. He wanders into the kitchen to get milk out of the refrigerator just as I need to get to the cheese. Then he moves over to the counter to lean against the silverware drawer, waiting for coffee to brew… and blocking my access to the spatula. Even after he returns to his desk, he’ll wander back to the kitchen minutes later to run his latest Amazon order by me, unaware of the fact that I am desperately trying to focus on the next step of the recipe before the sautéing onions burn. My frustration spikes and I snap, “I don’t care about a bulk order of laundry detergent and peanut butter - I just want to get dinner made. BY MYSELF!” Turns out I need my quiet time as much as the kids do.

Under normal circumstances – such as one or both of us working – Dave’s calm demeanor is a perfect match for my more intense energy. He keeps me grounded and gives me perspective. I welcome the change of pace on weekend afternoons when we relax with our coffee by the woodstove. But when Dave wanders in and out of my routine every day, our natural balance feels more like a clash.

Perhaps we would have eventually found our groove, though I imagine the stress of long-term unemployment would have made that difficult. Fortunately, jobs did turn up and we are both working again. The balance has been restored. I get to power through making dinner - uninterrupted - on my afternoons at home and Dave can enjoy his coffee break in peace. We discuss Amazon orders in the evenings. The silver lining of unemployment definitely wasn’t the freedom of both of us at home. Instead, it was gaining an appreciation for having work – not just for the obvious financial component – but for the structure and independence it allows both of us each day. 

Allowance

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I’ve always had mixed feelings about giving kids an allowance. On the one hand, I like the idea of teaching them the value of money, the concept of saving, and the satisfaction of being able to purchase something they really want… and the occasional post-purchase regret when they realize maybe they didn’t really want that thing after all. On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of paying my children to do household chores. I’d rather everyone in the family help out around the house simply because that is part of being a family and sharing a home.

Katherine is seven now and she has several friends who earn an allowance. We’ve also been having some trouble getting her to help out around the house without a fair amount of whining (her) and nagging (us). So we decided to come up with a compromise. Katherine now has a list of chores she has to do each week that she doesn’t get paid for – basic things like clearing the table after dinner, laying out her school clothes, packing her lunch, etc. If she is able to complete those without the whining or nagging, then she can opt to do several additional chores in order to earn an allowance. She has a nice little picture chart on the fridge and she moves magnets onto the tasks she’s completed. At the end of the week we can see what she’s done.

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In case you can't read it, that last one is “Make Pancakes.” One morning Katherine woke up early and made pancake batter (popping into our bedroom to ask us for the exact measurements along the way). We decided to see if we could get that to happen on a weekly basis.

Katherine was so excited by the prospect of having her own money that she made a list of things she planned to buy before we even began the first week of chores. At the top of the list was an American Doll, followed by a Rainbow Loom. To give her a little perspective, we stopped in the toy store to price these items, and then figured out how long she would have to save her allowance in order to buy them (allotting for 1/3 that will go into her long-term savings and 1/3 that will go to help someone in need). She’s decided she’d rather let Santa bring her an American Doll (we’ll burst that bubble another time), and she’ll save for the Rainbow rubber bands and forgo the actual loom. She should be getting her rubber bands around mid-May. 

Old fashioned play

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My sister sent me an article on play last week. The information in the article isn’t anything I haven't read before, but it is always interesting to see the growing evidence for the importance of imaginitive play.

Here is a brief summary of the article:

About 50 years ago, with the advent of toy advertising, children’s play suddenly began to change. Fueled in part by the mass production of increasingly specific toys (or, what I call “one trick pony toys”), play began to focus on things rather than activity, and imaginative play began to diminish. My personal favorite example that illustrates this point is the shiny red toy fire engine with sirens and flashing lights that can only be a fire engine. A shoebox with a stick jammed into, however, can be a fire engine with a ladder one minute, a sled for dolls the next, or whatever other prop the children need depending on where their imagination takes them. As the author so eloquently summarizes, the specific toys and predetermined scripts for play “shrink the size of children’s imaginative space.”

In addition to the influence of the toy industry, early education now focuses on academic achievement tests rather than allowing time and space for social and imaginative play; and at home, parents are creating increasingly structured schedules filled with adult-directed activities, leaving children with little or no time for independent, imaginative play.

Without imaginative play, children do not develop executive function skills, a component of which is the ability to self-regulate. Self-regulation is responsible for controlling one’s behavior and emotions, resisting impulses, paying attention, implementing self-discipline, etc. Imaginative play provides children with the opportunity to practice (primarily through private speech and self-policing), and thus develop, self-regulation. Not surprisingly, research shows that children’s executive function ability was better seventy years ago than it is today. 

I understand why the toy industry continues to produce billions of crappy toys (that’s capitalism, after all), but why is there such a disconnect between the information in this article (and hundreds of other articles and books that all say the same thing) and current educational and social trends? What will it take to convince society that the best way to promote cognitive development in young children is to just let them play? 

TWO!

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Alexandra turned two this week. When Katherine and Clara each turned two, it was a big event. I poured over beautiful wooden toy catalogues to find a gift they would treasure. I made and painstakingly decorated a cake. I bought balloons and planned a special day. We paused our usual routine to celebrate their birthdays. After all, “two” holds many milestones: the switch to counting in years rather than months; the end of diapers; the start of speaking in sentences; and the equally endearing and exasperating “No! Do it own self!” Two marks the last of the baby days and the beginning of little people days.

I looked forward to this move into childhood for Katherine and Clara. But for Alexandra, I put her second birthday out of my mind. On a few occasions, someone mentioned her approaching birthday (a grandparent looking for gift ideas, a friend asking if we had plans for a party) and it startled me. What? Two? Who’s turning two? Oh… Alexandra, right. I knew that. Then I’d push the thought away, reminding myself I still had time left with my one-year-old. But when the day before her birthday arrived, I had still done nothing to prepare. I didn’t even have ingredients for her cake – and I always have ingredients for a cake (you never know when you might need cake).

It’s not that I don’t look forward to a new stage of life with my children. Family skiing, all-day hikes, and afternoon outings without the fallout from ‘no nap’ are on the horizon. We are almost at the point when all three kids can pee by themselves and tie their shoes… A new era of family fun - and freedom - is opening up. I’m just not sure I’m ready for these early years to be over, even if what is to come will be just as wonderful, if not better.

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But Alexandra’s birthday arrived and there was no getting around it. Luckily, thoughtful gifts from relatives, sibling-made decorations, and a chocolate cake, albeit last minute, covered up my reluctance to acknowledge this birthday. And while I didn’t spend hours searching for that perfect gift (besides, what could a two-year-old with two older sisters possibly need or want?), I did take five minutes to pop into the local toy store to purchase a pink tutu (what two-year-old doesn’t need or want a pink tutu?). Alexandra was quite pleased with it all.

Happy Birthday baby girl!

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