My little nook

Mothers, isn't it wonderful the role we have been entrusted with? Each day we build our homes, a little nook in this ever-growing world. We create a haven for our families, a safe place for our children to run to. We foster a loving environment, a place of learning and loving and living and laughing. These four walls are all mine, for me to make what I want within them. What I let in is of my choosing, a responsibility the largeness of which does not escape me. I foster the mood, create the atmosphere, and set the standard. I have little control of the world spinning outside, but here, in my home, is a space that is all mine. I pray for the courage, knowledge, spirit, and energy to fulfill all my dreams for this house, and that that in turn fulfills the dreams of my children.

Homekeeper Challenge #4

This week I challenged myself in the area of cooking. I have done fairly well up to this point in reproducing recipes from a cookbook. I'm not the type to necessarily measure everything exactly, and sometimes vary it up a little. But I have decided that I'm ready to venture out a little further.

So, en route to creating my own recipes, this week I decided to see if I could replicate something I had in a restaurant. It was a fantastic dish called Balsamic Chicken Penne that I had at Kelsey's. I loved it so much I packaged the leftovers up and brought it home for a chef's dissection.

The result was, I can humbly admit, a delicious success. And so, as a record of my challenge this week, and for all you food epicures out there, here is the recipe:

Creamy Balsamic Chicken Penne
Serves 4

-2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
-2 red peppers, cut into 1 1/2" strips
-2 cups spinach
-1/2 red onion, cut into 1" strips
-Basil
-Penne
-Balsamic cream sauce (recipe at end)
-Shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Place chicken and 1 tbsp of basil in a pan of water. Bring to a boil, boil for 2 minutes, then remove from heat, cover and let sit for 20 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, cook 4 servings of penne or other large pasta (ie: rigatoni).
3. Make the Balsamic cream sauce (recipe at end)
4. When chicken is ready, cut it into 3" strips. Sautee the chicken, red pepper, onion and basil to taste, for 2-3 minutes or until pepper and onion are softened.
5. Boil the spinach for 2 minutes.
6. Top noodles with mixture, spinach, desired amount of sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese.

Balsamic Cream Sauce:
-1 cup balsamic vinaigrette dressing (or make your own with: 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp dijon mustard, 1 clove garlic and 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil)
-1/2 cup mayonnaise
-3 tbsp parmesan cheese
-4 tsp basil
-1/4 tsp pepper

Whisk dressing and mayonnaise. Stir in cheese, basil and pepper.

Browsing

Yesterday I had a chance to browse the main street of Orangeville. I popped in and out of a home decor store, a bakery, an art gallery, the library, chocolate shop, and last but not least, a book store. What a fabulous little retreat our book shop is. It is everything a small town book shop should be - complete with a middle-aged woman owner milling among her treasures. The front half sells new books, but the back is a second-hand collection. the bonus is that if you bring back a book you buy there, she'll give you half the price towards your next book! As our library has only a small collection, this is a fantastic alternative. I also hate the time crunch I feel when I borrow a book from the library. I usually have no fewer than 6 books on the go at any one time, and so a few weeks is never enough for me to get through something!

I spent the better part of an hour browsing through the wonderfully varied bunch of books and chatting with Veronica (the owner). We talked about the merits of historical fiction, the "drama" behind so many modern books (she likened reading any of the "Oprah" books to spending time with a girlfriend who can't seem to get it together - too much drama if you try to read more than a couple in a row!), and whether or not to read "War and Peace" (I have, and if you can stick it out through the first 100 pages and get used to the long character names, it truly is a classic for a reason.) We recommended books and authors to each other, defending our favourites with a literature-lover's passion.

In the end, I walked out with eight books! I found the "Anne of Green Gables" collection (6 books), the war-time novel "Sophie's Choice", and a fabulous one-pot cookbook. I had been contemplating the "Anne" series just that morning over breakfast, thinking about how one day I would love to read it with my daughter at nighttime (okay...no daughter yet, but maybe one day!).

Buying the cookbook is feeding another passion of mine. And the fact that it was all "one-pot" recipes - irresistible for my frenzied life right now. Many of the recipes are simple yet exotic, with exciting new ingredients and spices. Here's a sample of some dishes I'll try out over the next bit:

Fruity Lamb Casserole
Lemon and Chicken Soup
Tuscan Veal Broth
Spiced Cashew Nut Curry
Orange-Scented Risotto

Dinner's on!

Things I have learned about Caleb:

1. The order of things in his life: Toys are very important. But if there is food anywhere to been seen or smelt, the toy will be immediately launched out of sight to free up his hands. I'm fairly sure his lifelong goal will be achieved when he finally sneaks something from my plate. He loves to sit on my lap when I eat and pull my plate closer to him. But food is only number 2. While nursing in the evening, I usually sing to him. Lately, however, he has decided that music trumps food. Whenever I start to sing, he lifts his head up and lets go, smiling his wide open mouthed smile that fills his entire face with joy. It's beautiful.

2. Colin is the most interesting person on the planet.

3. Bathing is a spa experience.

4. He may skip rolling, sitting and crawling and go straight to walking. He loves to be up on his feet and is quickly bored being in one spot. Plus Colin is on the move, and survival necessitates locomotion.

5. Sleeping is not only highly overrated, but completely unnecessary.

6. He is happiest at 6 in the morning. He wakes up cooing and smiling and staring into my eyes. I think it's a ploy so that I don't move him over to the crib in his own room.

7. Oatmeal slop tastes better than rice slop.

8.White and blue are his best colours. And even when I have him in blue overalls and a shirt with a truck on it, people still tell me my little girl is beautiful. It's those big blue eyes and round pink cheeks. What can I say - I make beautiful babies.

Note to self

When everyone and everything around you is driving you crazy, remember what the common denominator is...you.

Another road

After only two weeks of the homeschool program, my best laid plans have fallen by the wayside. Colin enjoyed reading the themed books with me, and the gross motor skill activity was always fun (ie: crawling around, roaring like lions). But the actually 'learning' aspect of it bored him. The first week, when we learned the square, he kind of gave me this look that said "are you kidding me?" The same look surfaced again when we went over the number and letter of the week. The program has a lot of colouring, writing, gluing - the kind of stuff where you sit and work at a table. Colin just wasn't interested.

But I need not fear - the kid just absorbs things on his own. The other day we pulled out an old toy that has a whole bunch of shapes on it. He picked it up, and then pointed at each shape and fired off without taking a breath: "circle, square, star, triangle, hexagon, heart."

Hexagon? That's right. Hexagon. I have no idea where he picked that up.

On another day, I heard him counting. He had a deck of cards and was counting them out. "One, two, three...fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen." Now, he's been able to count to ten for eons. And we've been working on getting up to twelve. The rest...a complete mystery.

And so our homeschool program is on hold. Certainly I'll need to completely rework my idea of it. Something with a lot more outdoors, hands on, and applicable information. The kid is just too smart! He sees absolutely no point in learning "blackboard style"!

My Spirited Children

This is a bit of a personal glimpse into my house on a daily basis, for those of you who only see us when we're out and about. I share this struggle of mine, because I h ave found a bit of light shining through, and I hope that if there is someone else out there in the same position, you might realize you are not alone in this.

Strong-willed. Determined. Stubborn. These are a few adjectives that describe my oldest son, Colin, aged 2 1/2 years. Characteristics to be cherished, for sure, but they are also very demanding of my time and attention. Actually, they are all-consuming of my time and attention. And as I struggled daily with trying to cope with Colin, I constantly wondered "what am I doing wrong?" Colin's behaviour often seems reflective of a spoiled child.

For instance, he decides he wants a cookie, but he's already had his limit, and dinner is only half an hour away. I calmly explain this to him, and he explodes into an all-out tantrum. He screams, throws things, hits things, rattles the cupboard drawer until I'm sure the whole thing will come down on him. Tears are pouring down his cheeks as he repeats over and over "I want a cookie!" And it continues for the next half hour. Someone looking in might wonder if I generally give in to him, spoiling him too often, and thus his reaction would be predictable. But we don't give in to him. Never before has he gotten that cookie, and so nothing in the past would dictate that if he cries long enough he'll get what he wants.

Here's another example: Coming home from a walk, I open the front door and let us in. Colin, previously on-top-of-the-world happy from our outing, throws himself to the ground in tears. He wanted to open the door. I drag him in and try to get his shoes and coat off, but it's useless. I can try to talk to him, calm him, explain to him, distract him, but nothing will work. In the end, I take him back outside, close the door, and let him open it. The tears shut off immediately and he smiles a huge smile up at me and bounces off to play with his toys.

He might refuse to eat for three hours because I cut his sandwich in half and he wanted it whole. On the other hand, when happy, he and I can sit and sing through our repertoire of songs for the better part of an hour.

It all seems so extreme, and is utterly exhausting. And I wonder and wonder what I'm doing wrong. Surely there is some parenting technique I've neglected to pick up over the years, some secret to everyone else's well-behaved children. I've no illusion that every child is perfect, but Colin's extreme behaviour seems, well, extreme!

I always called him my "little 100% baby". Every emotion he experiences and displays is at 100%. When he's happy, he's over the moon. When he's sad, tears flow in an unending stream. When he's angry, watch out. I had long concluded that he was just going to be my little challenge in life and I'd better fast find a coping mechanism so I don't lose my own sanity.

And then I found it. That elusive book, that missing piece of the puzzle, the answer I have long been searching for. It is called "The Spirited Child". And it could be my autobiography. As I read the opening pages, the descriptions from parents of their "spirited children" brought tears of relief to my eyes. Everything from explosive tantrums, to a photographic memory to his inability to "not sweat the small stuff" to his remarkable ability to notice every detail, to the resistance to change, to his ability to push every one of my buttons at exactly the same time. I am not alone. I am not missing the good parenting gene. Colin's temperament is not as unique as I once thought. I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

After lengthy studies, the author found that a group of people (she figures about 10% of the population) are what she terms "spirited". My own 100% analysis is not far off. Spirited children have heightened sensory, making them much more easily susceptible to everything around them. So when a minute amount of watermelon juice trickled down his sleeve yesterday, it actually drove him crazy. The feeling was heightened to the point that he could feel or think of nothing else. So as he struggled to tear off his top, he wouldn't even hear my suggestion to "please wait and I'll take you upstairs after to get a new top." It had to come off and it had to be now. The author says telling him to "just ignore it" is comparable to asking you to just "hold it" indefinitely when your bladder is about to burst. You just can't think of anything else. Every emotion and sense of a spirited child is "ready to burst" practically all the time.

I was elated to finally get this book and start mining its parenting techniques for working with spirited children. (Like "let them cry it out" is useless. They will cry indefinitely.) What is wonderful to know (and very evident in Colin) is that spirited children are often very bright. They just need to be taught how to manage their extreme personalities and harness all that energy and determination for good. And I need to get used to the phrase "Colin do it!" The book also reaffirms that most parenting techniques will not work for these kids. What a relief to know that it truly wasn't anything I was doing. I was using all the advice I read and was given by friends and family correctly...it just isn't effective on kids like Colin.

One last addendum. For those of you familiar with Dr. Sears and his family, their last child (they have about seven or eight, I think!) was of this temperament. They also wrote a book about it, recording that "they had no idea a child could be this "difficult" to handle." One of eight, which is nearly that 1 in 10 that the author of "The spirited child" guessed is the percentage out there. I had a visit from a public health nurse the other day to try and get help dealing with Caleb's unending crying. After the hour long interview, she turned to me and asked "Have you ever heard of the book 'The Spirited Child'?" I nearly cried, from relief, realization, and utter exhaustion. What she said made so much sense. Caleb, too, goes from pure happiness to utter misery in the blink of an eye. When he dirties his diaper, he screams until it is changed. I can set a watch by his naptime, because exactly at 9am, 1pm and 5pm he explodes into tears and screaming that renders him hoarse, all which immediately ceases when I put him down for a nap. The Sears' family had 1/8 children that were spirited. My luck is 2/2!

It will certainly be a challenge for me, because often a spirited child demands 100% of your attention. Usually, your other more mild-mannered children would be content to amuse themselves while you help your child through whatever the issue is. For me, I often have to leave one child in a fit of screams and tears while attempting to appease the other. I just hope and pray that this book will provide me with some better techniques so that I can find balance and, maybe, just maybe, a little peace in my life!