On Fear and Love

Something new & exciting today: I’m over at On The Willows! Click here to see the post.

Culturally Deprived

(Something a little different with the photos: In keeping with the theme of today’s post, I’m sharing some of our outtakes to show that we do not, in fact, have perfect children)

Partly because I have a very sweet husband, and partly because that very sweet husband owed me just a little for recently attending a week-long conference in Ghana, I got to have a Moms’ Night Out last week. This involved dinner (at the new Thai restaurant in town! Yes, Middlebury now has a Thai restaurant!) with 7 other lovely moms. During the course of this dinner, one of the other moms mentioned that her sister had criticized her for raising her children in Vermont, because this choice meant that her children would be “culturally deprived.”

Of course, my first reaction was: What a HORRIBLE, narrow minded, judgmental thing to say!

But upon further reflection, I realized that the sister might be right. If I understand her definition of “culture” correctly, then you can certainly make the case that I — and by extension my children — am culturally deprived. Whether it’s due to living in a small town in Vermont or to having 3 small children, some evidence in favor of my cultural deprivation:

-It’s a huge deal that we finally have one Thai restaurant in town.

-I am aware that the Academy Award nominations came out recently. I do not know which movies were nominated, but I can assure you that I have not seen them.

-I have been to the theater once since we moved here, and it was to see a video version of a National Theatre of London production.

This realization sent me into a tailspin of self-justification to this sister, whom I’ve never even met. “Okay Miss Fancy Pants,” I said to the invisible sister, “maybe your kids will grow up knowing how to recognize a de Kooning painting and attending the symphony and eating Spanish mackerel tataki. BUT will they know what it’s like to look up at the sky and see all the stars? To spend summer picking berries? To swim in a freshwater lake? To visit the dairy farm that their milk comes from? To know what to do if you meet a bear? To spend hours playing in the snow and then come in and spend hours doing nothing by the fire? Isn’t THAT ‘culture,’ too?!?”

And then, just the other night at a Super Bowl party, as I scooped up Campbell who was screaming because I’d denied her a second cup of juice, a kindly looking older man said to me, “I had six kids. And you know what word wasn’t in their vocabulary? ‘No.’ All I had to do was look at them. But kids these days are different; they get away with murder.”

So I nodded and smiled and said, “Uh-huh,” and removed Campbell from the premises. But all the way home I was seething: “Okay Mr. Cranky Pants, I’m pretty sure that exhausted two-year-olds have always thrown fits. And while we’re at it, let’s see those kids of yours. Happy? Well adjusted? What’s their relationship with you like? AND while we’re still at it, how about we check in with your WIFE and see what see has to say about your discipline policy!”

Ugh. In both of these cases, I’d allowed myself yet again to get caught up in the Great Parental Judgement Game.

Of course, most of life is a Judgement Game. Most of us aren’t born as whole, secure, fully actualized people, so we fill up our empty spaces with stuff (knowledge, jobs, relationships, actual stuff) and then we look around and measure our stuff against other people’s stuff to see how we’re doing. The Judgement Game doesn’t stop when you have kids — unless, unlike me, you waited until you were a fully actualized person to have kids — it just grows to encompass your kids.

Which is problematic, because kids by nature are very flawed little people. Yes, I’ll say it again: kids are all flawed, even incompetent, little human beings. They’re supposed to be, which is why they aren’t leaving you for Harvard Law at 4 hours old. They’re born unable to feed themselves, poop in the proper receptacles, or hold their heads up. Things gradually improve, but there’s a reason why the legal age of adulthood is 18 (and, as far as I’m concerned, I’d like to consider moving the legal age to 40, because I frankly don’t feel much like an adult even now). If I’m not mistaken, the whole point of parenting is to raise these little messes into passably self-sufficient adults.

Think about that: we take these flawed little folks in our lives, and our tendency is to add them to our “stuff” category, to let them reflect our own self-worth back to us. We measure them against the other flawed little people out there, and we use the results to justify our own flawed parenting against that of other flawed parents, and thus begins the Great Parental Judgement Game.

I am as guilty of this as anybody. Or maybe I’m the only one guilty of this, and you have no idea what I’m talking about. Either way, I’m getting tired of it. Here’s why:

-Comparing my parenting choices/style/decisions (call it what you will) against those of other parents gives me too much credit for having control. Speaking only for myself, when I think about my life and my parenting, I find that most decisions weren’t really decisions at all. I didn’t embark on “adult” life or on parenting with a clearly mapped-out course; things just happened and I responded. “Choosing” to raise my kids in Vermont? We do love it here, but that “choice” had more to do with an available job offer for Erick. And I can tell you that, no matter how many parenting advice books I may read (and I’ve stopped reading them altogether, because why waste what precious little reading time I have on that?), when it comes to day-to-day life I will always revert to what comes naturally. Sometimes that means losing my temper and yelling, and then I feel bad, but in the end I’m pretty sure that it’s better for my kids to have a real person for a mother rather than a parental advice book.

-Parenting as competitive self-justification is not fair to my kids. It’s not fair because I can’t expect them to be perfect — they’re kids. It’s not fair because it makes me focus more on my audience than on the needs of my kids. If I’m playing the Parental Judgement Game, then I’m constantly looking around at other parents to judge how they’re doing, and I’m also constantly worried about how they’re judging me. Do you find that you become a totally different parent in public than at home? Some of this is appropriate, because in public there are other people to consider from a manners standpoint, but I often worry too much about how I come off to other parents. Too strict? Too loose? My kids don’t need this kind of insecurity, and neither do I. Which brings me to: it’s not fair to my kids for me to expect perfection from myself. We bandy around the reassurance that “there’s no such thing as a perfect parent,” but it seems to me that we all still keep trying to reach that illusive goal. Really, though, what is a perfect parent? No two children are alike, no two parents are alike, and we’re all a fantastic mess of beauty and muck. Even if I were to somehow become that “perfect parent,” what would that mean for my kids? What would they have left to strive for, if not to do things better than I did? What would they have to overcome? How would I ever get them to leave the house?

-Finally, this Parental Judgement Game isn’t fair to any of us. I honestly believe that nobody sets out to be a bad parent. Certainly there is a small handful of parents who may deserve that title, but I’m fairly sure that’s because they are too broken for their good intentions to win out over their pain. The rest of us are just trying to do the best we can with the kids we were given and whatever skills and handicaps we have. And generally it all works out okay. Generally your kids reach age 18 able to feed themselves, poop appropriately, and hold their heads up. Call it success or call it a blessing — same thing, as far as I’m concerned. So maybe we (I) could stop playing judgement games with ourselves and with our kids, and just show each other a little grace.

I recently put up a sign in our kitchen (found online, attributed to Plato but I can’t confirm that) that says: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Ain’t that the truth? And I’m pretty sure that it’s not the person with the most culture who wins.

NOTE: I realize that recent posts have been a little less news-y and “we went here and did that,” and a bit more reflective. I blame the winter; it’s either this or take to drinking. You may just have to get used to it, or perhaps the shallower posts will resume in the spring.

Sisters….

I am an only child. And Erick was an only child for the first five years of his life, until his brother was born. In other words, we had absolutely no preparation for what is going on in our house.

Our three girls are 20 and 19 months apart, respectively. Fiona tells me she has no memory of life without Campbell. (Which really makes me wish we hadn’t crammed so much into those first 20 months of her life. Taking a 4-month-old to the aquarium? Can you say “First-time parents?”). I’m willing to guess that, when Campbell’s old enough to express it, she’ll tell me she has no memory of life without Georgia. And Georgia will never, ever know what it’s like to not share a house with two incredibly loud and overly affectionate big sisters.

Campbell turned 2 shortly after we moved to Vermont, and that milestone was also a turning point for the relationship between Fiona and Campbell. It’s hard for me to put into words what this sister relationship is like. Perhaps those of you who are blessed with sisters could do a better job, but perhaps it’s really a nonverbal force. I will say that their relationship gets stronger every day (and louder, and more fraught with fights), that it’s one of the things that makes me happiest about being a parent; Erick and I find ourselves looking over their heads at each other and exchanging “WOW” glances almost daily.

It’s hard to imagine two people better suited to each other than Fiona and Campbell. Fiona is more moody and introspective, but sweetly sensitive to the emotions of others; Campbell lives life all out on the surface, and could care less what others think of her. Look askance at Fiona and she’ll crumble; yell at Campbell and she’ll either ignore you or smile. Fiona has a very active imagination and is scared by even the thought of evil; Campbell will tell you several times a day that she’s “not afraid of anything!” Except that Campbell is really, really afraid of doctors; Fiona loves going to the doctor. When they play princess, Fiona is always the princess, and Campbell is almost always her pet cat (or lion). BUT, they both love chocolate, and ice cream, and peanut butter, and singing, and reading, and running around in circles, and flashlights, and building pillow forts, and animals, etc etc. Here are a few examples to illustrate their relationship:

-Campbell rarely addresses Fiona by her actual name; to her, Fiona is “Sister.” I finally pointed out to Campbell that she does, in fact, have another sister, which might become confusing once Georgia is old enough to respond. Campbell looked at me blankly, and continued playing.

-Due to a combination of their birthdays and the kindergarten cut-off date here, Campbell will be just one year behind Fiona in school. This means that next year they’ll be attending the same preschool, Fiona with the 4-year-olds and Campbell with the 3-year-olds. Fiona can’t wait; she’s already telling Campbell: “Next year you’ll be a big girl and you’ll go to my preschool. You’ll be in the 3-year-old room, but I’ll see you on the playground.” And Campbell can’t wait; she told me, “Next year I’ll protect Sister at naptime and on the playground.” I’m sure she will.

-When Fiona started full-day preschool this year, I thought that Campbell (as the classically overlooked middle child) would relish the chance to have three days a week alone with me. I was wrong. By about 11:00 each preschool day, Campbell and I have some version of this exchange:

C: Mommy, where’s Sister?

Me: She’s at preschool, Cams. We’ll pick her up this afternoon.

C: Let’s go pick her up now!

Me: Why?

C: Because…I love her!

-And finally, the sleeping situation. One of the best parenting decisions we ever made was to have our girls share a room. This was partly necessity: living in the Bay Area on a graduate student’s stipend, we couldn’t afford to rent more than a 2-bedroom house — and partly philosophy: we knew from recent travels in East Africa that our girls were lucky to have beds, let alone a room/we hoped they’d learn the joys of sharing/we hoped they’d become better sleepers as a result.

Well, it’s hard to know whether sharing a room made them good sleepers, but if one sister wakes up screaming in the night, the other two do have an amazing ability to sleep through it. This soundness of sleeping is offset somewhat by the nightly bedtime party that happens after we say goodnight and shut the door; our girls probably get to sleep much later than they would sleeping alone, since they spend upwards of an hour talking, singing, and playing in bed. (For an idea of what this sounds like, imagine Kate Bush, times 3. Imagine these 3 Kate Bushes singing, for the sake of argument, “Wuthering Heights,” but each at a 1 second delay. And there you have it). This has only intensified since Fiona decided that sharing a room wasn’t enough; now she shares a bed with Campbell. So, the scene at bedtime is this: Campbell at the head of her twin bed, Fiona facing her at the foot, and Georgia standing up and peeking over the railing of her crib to see what her crazy sisters are up to. And they love it; they love, love, love it.

This sisterly sleeping arrangement is my biggest carrot and stick. If there’s too much fighting or laughing after bedtime, all I have to do is threaten to move somebody to another room, and everything settles immediately. On the other hand, just about the best reward I can offer them (besides chocolate) is the chance to nap together. I separate the girls for naps, because Fiona doesn’t usually sleep during naptime anymore and Campbell still needs her sleep, but they lobbied so hard to be able to nap together that I’ve started to allow it as a once-a-week “treat.” Nobody sleeps, but they will happily not nap together for hours.

Where Georgia will fit in to all of this, I just don’t know. What I do know is that both of her older sisters adore her, and they want to hug, hold, and carry her until she gets fed up. Georgia adores them back; her huge smile lights up whenever she sees one of her sisters, and she is just chomping at the bit to be able to join in their shenanigans. But the oldest two are so close, it’s almost enough to make us have a fourth child just to give Georgia her own special buddy. Almost.

I know these girls will grow up and fight more, and about more serious things than who gets to hold the Barbie. I know that a day will come when they’ll want their own rooms. I know that they may end up living miles away from each other. But whatever happens, I just hope that they will love each other forever. I hope that Campbell will always be willing to protect Fiona at naptime, and I hope that Fiona will always be willing to hold Campbell’s hand at the doctor’s office. Because I can’t think of a better gift as a parent than to know that your kids will have each other after you’re gone.

The Art of Doing Nothing

Another big change that happened when we moved to Vermont: I stopped working.

Those of you who have never thought of me as a heavy-hitting career woman are absolutely right, but I did work continuously as the part-time director of Project Peace East Bay from the time Fiona was about 7 months old up until Georgia was born in March 2011. (SHAMELESS PLUG: If you have money that you’d like to donate, and particularly if you live in the East Bay, give Project Peace some love. It’s a small nonprofit org that does mighty things, and is doing even mightier things now than when I was at the helm. Not that the two are related or anything….)

I was able to pull this off because Erick’s wonderful parents lived 45 minutes away and are both retired. So, two or three days a week they would drive over to Berkeley and spend all day with the girls. This continued for 3 years. It was such an ideal situation that I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. I LOVED going to work, because I got to use a part of my brain that wasn’t actively employed by parenting, because I got to interact with other adults, and because I felt like through Project Peace I could actually do some good for the community — which was good for my girls to see. And I honestly never felt guilty about leaving the house for a second, because the girls had a chance to form amazing relationships with their very own grandparents.

All of this came to an abrupt halt with our move to Vermont. With no grandparents within easy driving distance, and a new baby, new house, new job for Erick, and new community to navigate, it was clearly my season to stay at home. And I have only been grateful that we made this choice, and for this time at home. It’s been a very sweet season, although not one that I expect — or even hope — will last forever.

I wrote that preface because I’m concerned that what I’m about to say may come off as a luxury “problem” only to stay-at-home moms. (“Oh, here she is complaining, while I’d LOVE to be at home doing nothing with my kids!”) And I’ve never seen such nasty comments or unfortunate misunderstandings as those that occur in the dialogues between stay-at-home and working mothers. So I want to be clear that, as someone who has been fortunate enough to be in both roles, what I am about to write has more to do with how you spend your time while at home, for whatever amount of time you happen to be there.

All clear? Good. (And sorry for any over-explanation. This is also how I deal with the BIG QUESTIONS from our girls, like “What is love?” and “Why can’t a man have more than one wife in our country?” and “Why is Daddy having another Scotch?” I basically over-explain until their eyes glaze over and they aren’t paying attention anymore.)

So. We’ve been spending a lot of time at home doing nothing these days.

Partly, I blame the weather. Although it’s been an abnormally mild winter here in the Northeast, it has still been quite cold. Cold enough that we consider a high of 36 to be a heat wave — and I can tell you, it really does feel that way. Plus, we get about 2 hours of sunlight a day. So leaving the house, even when it’s possible, isn’t always appealing.

But partly, I blame myself. While we certainly have our regularly scheduled activities each week — playgroup. library, open gym, preschool drop-off and pick-up (yes, I count this as an activity!) — I’ve not been attempting to fill up our free time with the same enriching outings as I did over the summer. Given a choice, my girls usually vote to stay in. And since, as previously discussed in this blog, it’s kind of a hassle to get three little girls winterized and out the door, most days I’m just as happy to acquiesce.

Okay, so we’re at home a lot. But there are different ways of being at home. My ideal of being at home — the kind of being at home that I imagine all other mothers are accomplishing — involves art projects, family baking, and enriching learning activities. Like the fantastic activities listed on this wonderful website, which a friend of mine passed along over a year ago. Have I done ANY of the activities listed on that website? No, I have not. Because, whenever I propose a “quality at-home activity,” I’m either rejected outright, OR the activity devolves into a free-for-all with the girls and house covered in paint/chocolate/stickers/tape/etc., and me yelling.

What they’d rather do is pull all the cushions off of the sofa, take off all their clothes, and pretend to be princesses/lions/Barbies. And the oldest two are old enough now that they don’t even need me, except for every 5 minutes when they suddenly demand my COMPLETE FOCUS so that I can be the evil stepmother/witch/fairy in their story. That’s 5 uninterrupted minutes when I can clean something/throw dinner in the crockpot/check email (not necessarily in that order).

So, I ping-pong back and forth between “productive” work around the house and playtime with the girls, and by the end of the day I feel like nothing has been accomplished. The truth is, I’m not very good at doing nothing. I come from a long line of people who will do just about anything to keep busy. All of which means that I feel guilty a lot. Guilty that I’m either not doing enough with the girls or not doing enough around the house. Guilty that Fiona still can’t quite write the “N” in her name. Guilty that Campbell is either colorblind or truly doesn’t know the difference between red and green. Guilty that I left Georgia propped up in a corner 10 minutes ago. Guilty that no matter how fast I run, the dust balls and cobwebs will always have me beat. Guilty guilty guilty….

Until I was brought to my senses by a perfectly-timed email from my wise friend Jen. Jen has 3 kids slightly older than ours, took over for me at Project Peace when we moved (and is doing amazing things there), and is basically someone I’d like to be when I grow up. Also she surfs. All Fall we were exchanging brief and business-y emails, mostly her asking me where she could find various files. But out of nowhere – you know how sometimes you get a message just when you need it? — she inserted this little nugget into an email:

I know it sounds absolutely completely insane, but enjoy the “slow” life trapped at home with your little people. Truly, lay around with them in your PJ’s the whole day staring at grass or dirt or something. Life is a rush here and we seldom get to do those small things anymore.

I quote this email to myself almost daily. So, that’s what I’m trying to do: practice the art of doing “nothing” with my girls, which will probably add up to a whole lot of something when I look back on it. And to be okay with it, to get over the guilt, which really shouldn’t have to be a cornerstone emotion of motherhood. Because I figure that maybe if I can banish the guilt, then maybe I can actually be present in the moment and fill my guilt vacuum with joy.

The Joy of…Cooking?

When we moved to Vermont, it wasn’t just a change in location, weather, lifestyle…it was also a change in our cooking arrangements.

Let me ‘splain: When Erick and I met, my cooking repertoire involved either a) walking down the block to Burritoville, or b) opening a carton of yogurt and stirring in some granola. (In my defense, I was living in a New York City studio apartment smaller than most walk-in closets). Once we got married and acquired all kinds of nifty kitchen tools, I entertained brief visions of the delicious meals I’d cook for my husband. I even recall making gazpacho, once.

103-0318_IMG — Can you spot the cook in this picture?

Now, for virtually our entire marriage, Erick has been a graduate student. While he was a hardworking graduate student and disciplined about going into his office daily (in Berkeley I suspect this was mostly to get away from the house filled with babies), he did have a great degree of flexibility. If he left the house at 10 and returned at 4:30, it was no big deal. So, a brief time after our wedding, Erick announced, “You know, I actually enjoy cooking. All day I’m working with ideas and I feel like I have nothing to show for it at the end of the day. It’s nice to come home and create something useful. I’d like to take over most of the cooking.” I can’t remember if this was before or after I gave us both food poisoning from undercooking pork dumplings, but either way I was happy to turn over the cooking to Erick.

And that was our arrangement…until this year. Now that he has a real job — not only a real job, but a job in which he will be judged closely for 7 years to determine whether he’ll make tenure — Erick is no longer flexible. His hours now are more like 8:30-6; reasonable enough, but bedtime for our girls is at 7 (as it will be until they turn 18), which means that we need to eat right when Erick walks in the door. This conundrum became clear to me shortly after we moved here. I looked around for other willing cooks, but as I’m the only other member of the family who can currently reach the kitchen counters, the cooking duties fell to me.

But guess what? We’re doing okay. For those of you who’ve been worried about the health and well-being of our family, I will refer you to the photos in this blog. Don’t we all appear healthy? Well fed?

So, how did I do it? Here are 5 Tips For How I Found (Some) Joy in Cooking and Kept My Kids on the Growth Curve:

1. Make friends with people who can cook. Back in Berkeley, I knew a lot of REALLY GOOD cooks. Perhaps the best was my friend Celeste, who somehow managed to be an outstanding cook while working as a nurse practitioner at a Spanish-speaking health clinic and being a great mother to two beautiful girls. (Miss you & love you, Celeste!).

Because Celeste is an amazing friend, when I was pregnant with Georgia she asked me about throwing a baby shower. Now, I happen to think that by the time you’re having your third child, you’re done with baby showers. I didn’t need one more baby thing (although if Georgia had been a boy, he’d have been wearing lots of pink), but what I DID want were: 1) a girls’ night out with friends, and 2) recipes. Because Celeste is an amazing friend, she made both things happen. Here is the recipe book she put together, with recipes from my Berkeley friends:

This was one of the best gifts ever. I’ve made almost everything in it, and it’s all family-friendly and delicious. Better yet, I get to think about my friends while I’m cooking. (I especially appreciate the little personal touches they added to their recipes; for instance, my friend Laura confessed that she sometimes feeds her kids her peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, which is something I will definitely try someday!).

By the way, if you’re a friend who cooks, and you have a delicious, simple (preferably involving a crock pot) recipe up your sleeve that I do not yet have, I’m still accepting submissions. 🙂

2. Make friends with your crock pot. This is our crock pot:

We’ve had it for a while, but this year I’ve come to appreciate it on a new level. It is, hands down, my favorite kitchen tool. Why, you ask? Here’s what it’s like when I try to make dinner WITHOUT a crock pot:

It’s 5 PM. We’ve recently gotten home from picking Fiona up from preschool. Because she’s been on her best behavior all day, she’s exhausted and ready to cut loose. She incites Campbell to join her in a game that takes on different names, but basically involves putting on dress-up clothes and running in circles around the house while taking out all the toys within reach and dumping them on the floor. Oh, and screaming at the top of their lungs. They’re happy enough, so I prop Georgia up in the kitchen with some toys and try to prep dinner. Interruptions every 5 minutes or so because: Fiona has to use the bathroom, Fiona/Campbell wants a drink, Campbell hit Fiona, Fiona/Campbell injured herself, someone needs a costume change, etc. By 5:30, I give up and put them in front of a video. At that very moment, Georgia decides she’s DONE being good & quiet, and she wants her dinner RIGHT NOW! I put Georgia in her high chair, fix her a bottle, throw some Cheerios at her, and attempt to fix dinner with one hand. Shortly thereafter Erick walks in the door, dinner’s not yet done, the other two girls are getting hungry so all three girls are screaming, and I’m a wreck.

Now, here’s what it’s like when I make dinner WITH a crock pot:

It’s 9 AM. We’ve just returned from dropping off Fiona at preschool. I put Georgia down for her morning nap. Campbell plays or looks at books or eats a snack while I toss some ingredients into the crock pot and turn it to “Low.” By 5:30, dinner is ready.

Which scenario would you rather live out?

My best crock pot resource, to date, is this blog (suggested, I believe, by the amazing Celeste). Usually what I do is to search it (most often the night before) for whatever ingredients I have in the fridge.

3. Do not expect your kids to eat what you cook. All kids are different, but with very rare exceptions, here is what our girls will reliably eat: mac & cheese, peanut butter & jelly, grilled cheese, pizza, crackers, and potato chips. This is not for lack of trying; our girls were born in Berkeley, for crying out loud. They have all been offered spinach, broccoli, carrots, and all other manner of healthy and wholesome options. They just won’t eat them.

So for lunch, they pretty much get a rotating selection of things that they will reliably eat; they’re happy, and it’s easy for me. But when dinner rolls around, there’s someone else to consider: Erick. He’s a good guy, and he spends all day teaching undergraduates the principles of economics, and when he’s not teaching, he’s conducting research that deals with how to stamp out HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. It just doesn’t seem right to welcome him home with: “Hi, honey, how’s the AIDS stuff going? Here’s a PB & J!”

It took a couple of months of having my heart broken when my girls would not eat my dinners, but then I realized that I could make the most delicious meal on earth, and if it didn’t fall into one of the six food groups listed above, they’d have none of it. So I just stopped sweating it. I make grown-up dinners that Erick and I will enjoy, and this is what I serve. And I don’t cook a separate dinner for the girls, because that’s just craziness.* But I don’t fight with them either, partly because they’re girls and I have firsthand experience with eating disorders, and partly because this is just not one of the battles I choose to spend my energy on. If they don’t eat dinner, we have more leftovers for later. If they’re hungry, they should have eaten dinner. And I have confidence that they’ll make up the calories later. Possibly through consuming massive quantities of crackers, but isn’t that what multivitamins are for?

*I do break this rule when I’m preparing something fancy and expensive for dinner, like rib eye steak. Rib eye steak before my girls = pearls before swine. They get mac & cheese on those nights.

4. Practice the art of one-stop shopping. Especially if you have young kids, the worst part of cooking is having to SHOP for the cooking. I have partially solved this problem by doing my shopping in one place (Hannaford’s) at one set time (Friday morning) each week. If we run out of food before the next Friday rolls around, it’s just too bad.

One-stop shopping is much easier to do here in Vermont than it was in Berkeley. Berkeley, the beating heart of the locally-grown, organic, free range food goodness movement, had an overabundance of fresh and wholesome EVERYTHING, but it wasn’t all located in one place. By the end of our time in Berkeley, “we” (by which I really mean Erick — in our house, the cook does the shopping) sometimes had to visit no fewer than FOUR food stores per week in order to gather all of the produce, meat, and grains that “we” needed.

There’s something to be said for simplicity. In our small town, there are basically two chain supermarkets (one on our side of town, one on the other side), a local food co-op. The Middlebury Food Co-op could have been uprooted from Berkeley by a tornado and deposited down here in Middlebury (and somewhere along the way, you’d look out the window and there would be Michael Pollan riding a bicycle outside. Taking the Wizard of Oz reference too far? Okay, that’s all).

fp-q-and-a-michaelpollan608 — Michael Pollan, not on his bicycle.

It is filled with locally-grown, organic, free range goodness. And — I am about to utter blasphemy here — I do not shop there. I hope to, someday, like when all three girls are in school, but right now I can’t convince myself of the logic — or the economics — of shopping at the Co-op. Expressed in an equation, it would look like this:

Less consumer guilt < Cost of my time + cost of my sanity + more expensive food

I haven’t run that by Erick yet, but it seems sound to me. So I shop at Hannaford’s, and I do so for one reason, and one reason only: the car carts.

The car carts can keep our girls entertained for almost an entire shopping trip.

I shop on Friday mornings because Fiona is in preschool so I only have to wrangle 2/3 of our girls, and because for some reason I am always able to get a car cart on Friday mornings. (If you are from Middlebury and you are reading this, DO NOT take my car cart! I will sic Campbell on you. Also, if you have a car cart and only one child in it, I fully expect you to remove your groceries and hand over the cart immediately, because I WIN! Okay, that’s all).

Here is my shopping routine:

-Grab a car cart, stuff Campbell and Georgia into it and hand them snacks

-Using my very organized shopping list that is divided according to the various zones of the store (guess which Gong grown-up created the shopping list?) to guide my shopping, throw groceries into the cart as fast as I can (I’m always AMAZED at how many groceries a family of 5 needs each week — by the end of the trip, the front of our cart is actually dragging on the ground)

-Choose the check-out line that’s as close as possible to the lottery ticket dispenser (which has enough blinking lights to hypnotize the girls during the worst part — checking out a cart filled to dragging with groceries).

Done! As one of the girls’ friends is prone to say: “Easy peasy, mac & cheesy.”

5. Accept who you are, but don’t rule out miracles. I am more of a baker than a cook. I appreciate precise directions and sweet results (as opposed to Erick, who hates having to follow a recipe). So when I have dinner going in the crock pot, it enables me to use the girls’ naptime to bake. This way, even if my dinner wasn’t so hot, I can redeem myself with a yummy dessert that EVERYBODY in our family will eat. Play up your strengths, I always say.

Another tip: when baking, it's a good idea to get your kids to do the tasks you hate, like sifting flour.

But sometimes miracles happen. Like this Fall, when I actually invented a pretty good pot roast recipe. I will share it with you below as a reward for making it through a long post that included very few pictures of cute children. I promise more pictures of cute children very soon.

Faith’s Pot Roast (That the Gong Girls won’t touch)

3 lb beef roast

1/2 c. water

1 c. beef broth

1 package onion soup mix

1 bay leaf, crumbled in 1 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. pepper

handful of rosemary

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 onion, chopped

Throw it all into a crock pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Voila!

Final cute kid photo. Aren't you glad you read to the end?

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, GOOD GOD, LET IT SNOW!!!

Okay, folks, I have to confess that I was expecting to be writing much more dramatic weather-related posts by now. Something like: Woke up this morning and couldn’t see the sky — entire house covered in snow!

Or: Erick had to snowshoe into town today to get us provisions.

Or: Had to carry all three girls home on my back through a blizzard.

But here we are, more than halfway through January, and winter has been disappointingly manageable thus far.

Sure, it’s snowed. In fact, it started snowing right around Halloween. And sure, it’s been cold. As I write this, our outdoor thermometer reads zero and temperatures will surely be negative overnight. It’s just that the cold and the precipitation can’t get their act together and coordinate any dramatic, lasting snow. It’s like Congress is running our weather. (They can’t, can they?) Here’s the typical pattern: It gets cold, it starts snowing, a couple of inches of snow accumulate, the next day it “warms up” just enough (36 degrees or so) to melt all of the snow, then temperatures drop again, it starts snowing, a couple of inches accumulate, etc etc.

Everybody we know who’s lived here longer than we have has assured us that this has been a very mild winter. They’ve also assured us, with a knowing look, that the snow is coming. But I’m starting to lose faith.

You may be wondering: WHY DO YOU WANT IT TO SNOW?? Well, for one reason, because when it snows our yard looks like this:

Whose woods these are I think I know....OURS!

For another reason, we’re SO prepared. We have all our winter gear, our wood stove, our generator, our snow tires, our hot oil undercoating (that’s a whole other post in itself!)…we just need a chance to USE them!

And finally, back when winter was just an ominous season on the horizon, we were told again and again that “The only way to make it through winter here is to get out and enjoy it.” But it’s not so easy to get out (or get your kids out) and enjoy snowless 7-degree temperatures.

The good news is that it doesn’t take us too long to get to some snow that we can enjoy. As I’m sure you know, the total accumulation and longevity of snow is a function of altitude. For instance, since we live in the woods up on a ridge in the Green Mountain foothills, we get slightly more snow at our house than right in the town of Middlebury. Likewise, if we drive 15 minutes up the mountain, there’s even more snow and it tends to stick around after the snow at our house has melted. So last weekend we took this lovely hike on the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail.

Campbell stops to make a miniature snowman.

And, just because we don’t have much snow outside doesn’t mean we can’t have some inside! A few weeks ago, the girls and I made these paper snowflakes to decorate their room. (The best-looking ones are made from templates that I found here.)

Yes, of course their room always looks this neat. Why do you ask?

While we’re on the subject of hanging decorations, allow me a little thematic detour. It’s drab enough not having much snow around, but it’s even worse when you have to take down the Christmas decorations that have made the house feel so festive for a month. So this year, we started a new tradition. You know all those Christmas cards, the ones many of you sent us? We hang them up in our dining area as they arrive. This weekend, I had taken them all down and was getting ready to throw them away, when I thought, “It seems a shame to throw away so many beautiful pictures of so many beautiful people.” So instead of throwing them away, I cut out all the photographs (thus removing any seasonal themes), strung them together, and re-hung them. And there they are, so that every time we sit down to a meal we can look up and think of our friends and family.

Who knows? I may even leave them up until next Christmas. Just thought you might want to know that your cards live on, and that at least once every meal, a Gong Girl points up and asks, “Who’s that?”

Finally, since I’m already going off on random tangents, here’s one more: As I was downloading the photos from our camera, I noticed this one, of a blazing fire in our new wood stove:

I asked Erick about it, and very casually he said, “Oh, I just thought you might want that for your blog.”

So, for the record, there is the blazing fire in our wood stove that Erick built. By himself. Probably with his bare hands. Because he is a Real Man. (As if surviving in a house with 4 women wasn’t enough proof).

Mommy Date

One of the things that Erick and I try to do, with varying degrees of success, is to each have one monthly date with each of our two oldest girls (Georgia’s time will come). During December, this got lost in the Christmas festivities, but now we’re back on track. Fiona and Campbell got ice skates for Christmas, so I decided that for my “mommy dates” with them this month, I’d take each of them skating at the town rink. This past Sunday it was Fiona’s turn.

Most of you may not know this about me, but I really love ice skating. Back when I was in college in the northeast, I even took lessons. And I haven’t skated since then, partly because I married Erick, who has flat feet and isn’t very comfortable in ice skates, and partly because I lived either in New York City or Berkeley, where most ice skating options involved waiting for four hours with a bunch of tourists for some overpriced city skating.

But here I am, back in the northeast in a town with a rink that has open skating hours, and with two daughters who are willing skate dates.

Fiona had never been skating before. I don’t know about other kids, but our girls are still pretty unpredictable in terms of what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, “trooper-ness,” from one situation to the next. One day they’ll voluntarily hike barefoot three miles through the snow; the next, they’ll whine endlessly and demand to be carried the second we leave the house. So before hitting the rink, I gave Fiona a pep talk. It went a little something like this: “Fiona, you’re going to fall on your butt. Probably more than once. When this happens, are you going to cry and ask to go home, or are you going to get up and keep trying?” What can I say? I’m a tough love kind of mom.

So we got to the rink, and it was great. Because we live in a small town with limited recreational options, about half of Fiona’s preschool class was there, including one of her favorite preschool friends, Ruby. Ruby had been skating a few times before, so she was whizzing around in the middle of the rink, holding onto a nifty contraption that they have here for beginning skaters: two milk crates zip-tied together. Here’s the idea:

Fiona’s main objective immediately became: get to Ruby. And that day, Fiona’s “trooper-ness” was at a high level. She fell a couple of times, but bounced right back up again. She tried the milk crates, but wasn’t actually a big fan. (I don’t think her visions of ice skating had involved being hunched over a couple of plastic crates). So before too long, she was venturing out on her own, and doing pretty well.

And then it happened: she reached Ruby, turned to me, and said, “I’m okay, Mommy; you can go now.”

HUH?!?

“I’m okay, Mommy; you can go now.”

Isn’t this the moment we hope for as parents? When Fiona was born, Erick and I laid out this mission statement, which is probably not that unusual and which we often circle back to: our main objective in parenting is to get our kids to leave us. (Seriously, I have very low standards. As long as they’re self-sufficient, relatively happy, and not breaking the law, I will consider my job well done). And, barring the normal periods of attachment, Fiona has not had problems with independence, it’s just that up to this point, it’s always been me pushing her off. Sleep in your own room, stay with a babysitter, go to Sunday School, go to preschool. I really think that this is the first time that Fiona has pushed me away — and I mean that in the best possible way. (Campbell is another matter; she’s been telling us — verbally and non-verbally — to “Go away!” almost since birth). But of course, when Fiona said this to me, my first response wasn’t joy, it was shock.

GO WHERE?!?

Anyway, I went. I skated away from my daughter and joined the brisk oval of skaters circling the outside of the rink. And I have to say, it felt amazing. It was a little strange not to be hunched protectively over a child, but didn’t take long to rediscover my balance, my speed, and that feeling of soaring that I’ve always loved about skating. (And thankfully, because of the layout of skating rinks, it was also easy to keep an eye on Fiona and Ruby, who were having a blast in the middle of the rink).

I guess I’d better get used to it.

Fiona, circa 2009. "I'm okay, Mommy; you can go now."

If You Buy A House in Vermont (PART 2 of 2)

There’s a popular children’s book called “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” The premise is: if you give a mouse a cookie, chances are he’s going to want a glass of milk to go with it…and before long, offering that mouse one simple cookie has resulted in some sort of complicated scenario. Our girls happen to love this book (and all the other books in the series, which follow the same premise), and it’s always struck me as offering a fairly realistic view of life. We make one “simple” choice which touches off a series of events, and life is changed forever. So here, with apologies to “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” is what I’ve learned after 6 months regarding…

IF YOU BUY A HOUSE IN VERMONT

If you buy a house in Vermont, chances are you’re going to want a house that offers an “authentic” Vermont experience. What passes as “authentic” may differ slightly from person to person, but generally follows the words spoken by a local realtor to some friends of ours: “You don’t move to Vermont to live in a suburban subdivision.”

You will look at 11 houses during a 3-day period in March (having taken the red-eye from San Francisco accompanied by your 5-week-old daughter), and will select a beautiful house in the woods. A house surrounded by trees, with views of the Green Mountains, but from which you can still see neighbors’ houses when the leaves are off the trees. Compared to almost every other house you’ve seen, this house is definitively not a “fixer-upper.” You can picture your children running freely through its rooms and climbing on the rocks that line the yard. You will never, ever need more house than this. You may even, in your sleep-deprived state, refer to this house as your “dream house.”

If you buy a house in the woods in Vermont, chances are that on your first or second night you will hear bumps in the night. Bumps and scratching the pitter-patter of little feet that don’t happen to belong to your daughters. You will find mice droppings everywhere, and wonder why you’re surprised since you do, in fact, live in the woods. (The real woods, not a suburban subdivision that happens to feature trees). Nonetheless, you will deem it prudent to call a pest-control expert.

Bumps in the night not provided by this child...

...or this child. (NOTE: These past 3 pictures were unnecessary but were put here to appease the grandparents, since there will not be many photos of the girls in this post. Also, they're a lot cuter than the actual mice).

The pest-control expert will mention your roof, which is quaintly covered by aging cedar shingles. Mossy, 22-year-old cedar shingles that were given the okay by the inspector but which you did expect to replace… in 5 years or so. Apparently, rodents fail to see any distinction between your roof and a tree.

If you buy a house with cedar shingles in the woods in Vermont, chances are you will also begin to notice signs of past leaks. Signs that you’d failed to notice when you fell in love with your “dream house,” like the water stains on the ceiling. You deem it prudent to call in some roofers for their opinion. Over the course of several months, 6 different roofers will tell you that your roof needs to be replaced immediately, before winter sets in.

The contractor you ultimately hire to replace your roof will find 4 mice nests, one red squirrel nest, and a family of bats living over the garage. Which does explain the bumps in the night.

He will also point out that your house needs a complete exterior paint job in the spring.

The new roof! With a little view of the failing exterior paint.

If you buy a house in the woods in Vermont, chances are you will not be close enough to town to have access to municipal water or sewer. This means that you will have a septic tank under your yard, the functionality of which will keep your husband awake nights. You will get your water from a well dug 150 feet beneath your yard, operated by an electric pump. You will lose electricity for 12 hours during the first summer thunderstorm, and quickly realize that no electricity means no water. No water, with 5 people in the house, 3 of whom are young children, is not a good thing. You hear stories from the neighbors of losing electricity for over a week. During the winter, with subzero temperatures and possibly hazardous road conditions, this could be dangerous. You also hear the hum of your neighbors’ generators. You wonder why the previous owners never got a generator.

You deem it prudent to buy a generator.

If you buy a house in Vermont, chances are it will soon enough begin to get cold outside. You will want to heat your house. Because you are in rural/small town Vermont, natural gas is not an option; they don’t run the pipes through here. Your heat is called “forced hot water,” which runs off of fuel oil. Once a month, a big fuel truck pulls into your driveway and runs a pump to fill up the fuel tank in your basement. It costs $1,000 to fill the entire tank; to keep the inside temperature at 61 degrees requires half a tank per month. You do the math.

After a couple months of nauseating fuel bills, you begin to notice the smoke from your neighbors’ wood stoves. You and your husband talk to the friends and colleagues who heat their homes with wood stoves, which turns out to be just about everyone you know. When questioned, these people get a maniacal gleam in their eyes and speak about their wood stoves with the type of love usually reserved for spouses or children. Emotion aside, they all mention how wood stoves allow them to completely turn off or at least significantly reduce their dependence on fuel.

You wonder why the previous owners never got a wood stove.

You deem it prudent to buy a wood stove.

Admittedly, the wood stove is a great addition to the family. Your daughters love the wood stove instantly, name it “Woody,” and spend many hours doing things like this:

You husband feels very manly now that his duties have expanded to include the daily lighting of fires and the hauling and stacking of wood. BUT…

If you buy a wood stove for your house in Vermont, chances are you’re going to need some wood to go with it. About 3-4 cords worth…. (The total wood pictured below is 1 cord’s worth).

And that, my friends, is how your “dream house” in Vermont can become:

In case this post seems overly negative, I want to clarify that we DO love our house and are grateful for it every single day. It’s kind of like a kid; you don’t ever love changing stinky diapers, but you don’t love your kids less because you have to change their diapers — and some might argue that you love them more. Well, that’s how it is with the house, too. Or perhaps more basically, we’ve put a lot of stinkin’ work into this place, so there’s no way we’re leaving anytime soon!

6 Months In… (PART 1 of 2)

We recently passed the 6-month anniversary of our move from Berkeley, CA to Middlebury, VT. Having lived here a full half-year, I now consider myself an expert and feel qualified to spout generalizations and stereotypes concerning the differences between the San Francisco Bay Area and Central-Western Vermont. So, here goes; my 6 observations (one for every month, get it?) on life in Berkeley vs. Middlebury:

1. The weather here is crazier.

Well, DUH, you’re probably thinking. But I don’t just mean that Middlebury is colder than Northern California; we certainly expected THAT. It’s that it’s almost impossible to predict what the weather will be doing 5 minutes from now. In Berkeley, you could pretty much predict that you’d have sunny days with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s for 6 months out of the year; the other 3 months, it would rain. Here, it’s gone from the 90s to the teens; it rains, snows, sleets, blows. And one of the most surprising things is that it’s been a very mild winter so far. I will likely eat these words by February, but I’m about ready for some more snow already!

This unpredictable weather affects life in countless ways, but one that we’ve certainly noticed is that the reduced cost of real estate in Vermont is counterbalanced by the cost of the sheer amount of GEAR that’s required to get through the seasons comfortably. We could have never afforded a house that would hold our family in the Bay Area, but there we could get by with the same wardrobe year-round. Here, our wardrobe runs the gamut from the sleeveless shirts and shorts needed for the hot summer, to the snow boots, snow pants, insulted coats, gloves, and hats needed for freezing temperatures and snow. Plus the snowshoes, sleds, and skates needed for enjoying the long winter. Times 5, in our case.

With all that winter gear and 3 small children, I’ve learned to allow at least 30 minutes for getting out the door. Even so, I’m still constantly sending Fiona to preschool under-dressed. There are two paths to take when dressing your child if you move to Vermont from California: over-dressing and under-dressing. Apparently, I fall into the latter category. The other day she had to borrow gloves from the school stash because she didn’t have any. (Actually, she did have one surgical glove in her coat pocket, but that’s a long story). In fairness, it was 40 degrees, which I think is an acceptable temperature for bare hands. But apparently native Vermont parents feel otherwise.

How long did it take to get these clothes on this 2-year-old? But note that she IS wearing gloves!

2. The kids here are tougher. And blonder.

They might wear gloves when it’s 40 degrees, but the kids here are pretty tough when it comes to braving the elements. During the rainy months in Berkeley, there were entire weeks when we didn’t leave the house. In contrast, Fiona’s preschool sends the kids outside in all weather. And I mean ALL. They’re always out on the playground when I go pick her up. Last month, as I drove to her preschool I thought, “Hmmm, it’s 38 degrees with a freezing drizzle. They’re probably inside this afternoon.” Nope. There was my child, mucking around in the cold rain with a stick in the woods (yes, the school playground includes woods). I actually think this is excellent.

Also interesting is that, when we’re at gatherings of local children, our girls tend to be the token brunettes. Now, in the Bay Area, it felt like you were pretty much in the minority if your background included fewer than 2 ethnic groups; if one of these was “White,” you were even odder. But here, Fiona is one of 3 children with brown hair in a preschool class of 18. (It actually took me 2 whole months to get the boys in her class straight, because all those little blond boys look the same to me!)

3. The contractors here are waaaaaaaay more laid back.

We’re in a bleak economic period, and one might imagine that contractors in small-town Vermont are hurting for business a bit right now. Yet, invariably, this has been our experience with local contractors:

[Ringing phone]

CONTRACTOR: Hello.

FAITH/ERICK: Hello, we are considering paying you a substantial amount of money to do something to our house. Can you come give us an estimate?

CONTRACTOR: Sure, I’ll be in your area later this week and I’ll stop by.

Without fail, they will show up NO SOONER than 2 weeks later. That’s assuming you get them on the phone the first time; otherwise you leave a message and they call back 2 weeks later. And it’s another 2 weeks before they show up.

Take, for example, the contractor who did our roof. We LoVe him, he’s basically a member of our family by now, and we are planning to have him come back in the spring to do some more projects. But when he presented us with the final invoice and we totaled everything up, we realized that somehow he’d managed to spread 3 weeks worth of work over 3 months. That takes effort, like taking off the entire month of November because it’s deer hunting season.

Fiona impersonates a Vermont contractor.

4. We spend more time in the car now.

This is counter-intuitive, because we moved here from the land of the 8-lane freeway. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve driven on a road with more than 2 lanes? You guessed it: 6 months. But the difference is that in Berkeley, which is a city, there were sidewalks (and bike lanes, for that matter) everywhere, so we were mostly strapping the girls into the stroller and walking places. Here, the only sidewalks are right in town (and even then it’s spotty). We live about 15 miles outside of town, and there are no sidewalks anywhere. Nor are there things to walk to. So, to do anything – go to the park, the library, the store – we have to hustle everyone into the car and drive. Being able to walk most places is what I miss most about Berkeley.

That said, every time we are in the car, we are moving. Which is not the case throughout most of California. We’d been here a few weeks when Erick noted that you never hear a traffic report on the local radio. That’s because, barring an act of God, there is never, ever any traffic. The worst it gets is about 3:30 PM along Court Street, because the Middlebury elementary, middle, and high schools are all in a row and let out around that time. I’ve also never, ever, in 6 months, had a problem finding great parking.

beautiful-downtown — Rush Hour in Middlebury. (Not my picture).

5. I get more sympathy here.

We have 3 girls under age 4, each separated from the next by about 19 months. So sometimes things get a little crazy, like just about any time we leave the house. This was no less true in Berkeley than it is here, and perhaps even more so since our girls were younger when we lived there. But shortly after we moved to Vermont, I noticed that almost everywhere I went, people would look at us, smile, and say, “Boy, you sure have your hands full!” Often they’d do something helpful while they said this, like hold the door open or prevent a Gong girl from hotwiring a motorcycle.

This is what I live with all day. Pity me?

Nine times out of ten, the person saying this is about 80 years old and looks like they’ve probably raised 5 children while also maintaining a dairy farm. But what made me really notice all the sympathy (support?) I was getting was that NOT ONCE can I remember a stranger saying this to me in Berkeley. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’d venture to guess that it’s the culture. In Berkeley, most people are running around with their head buried in a mobile device, assuming that they have their own hands more full than anybody around them. Here, there just seems to be more time to look around, notice other people, and support them if they need it. Also, mobile reception is pretty spotty.

6. It is quieter and darker here.

The other night, I woke up with a start at some ungodly hour. There was a noise, a loud and unusual noise. It took me a couple minutes to identify the disturbance as: an airplane. Yes, an airplane was passing over our house. That level of noise is unusual here. (And bear in mind that we live about 1 mile from the “Middlebury Airport.” This airport has one runway and, as best we can tell, perhaps one private plane per week either lands or departs there).

And it’s also dark. I’ve commented in an earlier post about the general lack of streetlights outside of downtown Middlebury. However, because we have 3 young children and because there aren’t really any places to go at night anyway, the full extent of the darkness didn’t strike me until the days began getting shorter. Before moving to Vermont, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d had to use my bright headlights in my adult life; now I need to use my brights anytime I’m driving home after about 4 PM.

The view from our front door at about 4 PM. (Okay, not really -- more like 6 PM). Photo taken with flash.

So, there you have it: the very happily accumulated wisdom of 6 months as a Vermonter.

COMING NEXT: PART 2: If You Buy A House in Vermont….

Let it Snow!

It’s been an unseasonably mild winter here in Vermont thus far. Sure, it’s snowed a bit, but no more than a few inches of accumulation. We keep being reassured that the snow will come in earnest throughout January and February, so we are keeping the faith. But according to our indoor/outdoor thermometer, it’s now 43 degrees outside.

On the other hand, maybe when 43 degrees feels unseasonably warm, we’re really becoming true Vermonters.

Nonetheless, we’ve managed to have some winter fun in the past week. Here are some pictures from a hike we took in our neighborhood, and from our first snowshoeing outing.