Avivah Werner

Category: Homemaking

  • Reorganizing storage area

    It seems like there’s always another area of the house ready to be reorganized!  This time, it was our small storage room in the basement, and it was a very big project.

    We were offered a number of metal utility shelving units that I thought would be perfect to better organize that small storage room.  Not only do I keep business supplies there, it’s also the area where I keep my food storage, canning jars, canned food, etc.  Because there are so many different kinds of things in there, keeping it organized is an ongoing effort.  (And someone in my family who will remain unnamed thinks that a legitimate way to clean the main area of the house is to make piles of things, and then dump them into that room. 🙁  It doesn’t make it easier to keep in order, I can tell you!)

    When I saw these shelves, I thought how much easier it would make to keep everything in order, so we picked them up Thursday noon, and spent most of Thursday putting them back together.  (And the owner of the restaurant who was giving them to us insisted that my two boys and I come in for lunch, at her expense – ‘because they’re working so hard’.  I kind of laughed and told her that she has no idea how hard I work them, because this is nothing compared to a lot of what I ask them to do.  She told me she’d heard about other things they’ve done from my dh, and knows that’s true!  We did end up accepting her lunch offer and enjoyed it very much – but didn’t tell any of the other kids about it when we got home, since they would have felt bad they weren’t there.) 

    Before we could put them into the storage room, I had to take out every single thing that was in that area.  The mess in my basement was horrendous for a couple of days, with everything piled everywhere, until we got the new shelving in and starting putting stuff on it.  Now the basement is still a mess, but it’s a regular sized mess, and I hope to get it all finished in the next day.  The storage room looks great – the walls are lined with these freestanding metal shelving units, so now I can use the space from the ceiling to the floor. 

    I love being organized!

    Avivah

  • Crawling out of the chaos – step #1 – make a menu plan

    I heard within two days from three moms who told me they are overwhelmed and don’t feel like they’re coping well.  So I thought it might be helpful to give a starting point to work your way out of the feeling of being in a quagmire.

    First of all, don’t compare yourself to anyone else!  A saying I love is, “Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides”.  And that’s what we all do.  You know yourself on the inside, and you think what you see of someone else is what they really are, through and through.  It’s not true, and even if it would be, it doesn’t matter.  You are you, and learning to love and accept yourself as you are, for who you are, should be part of your efforts.  That means, forget being perfect and just do the best you can wherever you are right now. 

    There are probably a number of potential first steps you can take to start to putting things in order.  I’ll give you my suggestion for the first step – make a menu plan.

    I suggest this as a starting point because there are three meals a day that need to be prepared, and when you don’t have a plan for this, then you’ll constantly be scrambling to pull something out of thin air.   When the food isn’t ready, everyone feels hungry, irritable, and out of sorts.  When everyone is fed, they’re much more enjoyable to be with, and then you can get them involved in being more helpful with other areas.  Also, feeling rushed and pressured every day before mealtime rolls around is emotionally wearing, and you end up spending a lot more money on food because you’re reaching for whatever is quick and easy.   So we’ll break the cycle here, by doing something that will save you time, energy, and money.  Sound good?

    How do you make a menu plan?  For the first weeks, let’s keep it very, very simple.  Don’t overwhelm yourself by planning time consuming dishes that require several pans to prepare.  Take a piece of paper, and make a grid that has each day listed going across the top, with the first day indented about an inch or so – like this:

                Sun                  Mon                     Tues                    Weds                   Thurs                 Fri

    Okay, now that you’ve done that, on the left hand horizontal side, write the three meals you need to prepare – like this (add in snacks if that’s part of your day):

    breakfast

    lunch

    dinner

    Now make grid lines between everything with a ruler (you don’t have to use a ruler, it will just make you feel really organized and neat – I usually don’t).  Repeat this so that you have two empty menu charts on the paper (this will be enough for two weeks).

    Okay, now that you have an empty chart ready, get out your cookbooks.  Take out another piece of paper, and make four sections: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks.  As you go through your cookbooks, if something looks good to you, put in under the appropriate category.  I like to make a note of which cookbook and what page the recipe was in, because if it’s a new recipe, I won’t remember later on where I found it, and it would be time consuming and counterproductive to have to go through all of the cookbooks to find it again.  Try to list about 5 – 10 options for each meal that look like options your family would enjoy.  Also, if it’s a recipe that I won’t automatically be able to recall which ingredients are in it, I make a note right next to where I’ve listed it of the main ingredients (not every little dash of spices) so that when I compile my food shopping list, I can buy what I’ll need for the planned meals.

    Now, here’s the easy and gratifying part.  Put your cookbooks away, and with just the two pieces of paper in front of you, start filling in the boxes on your menu plan.  Fill in all the breakfast meals first – if you want to eat the same thing every day, that’s fine.  If you don’t, planning all of them at one shot helps you to schedule it so that you won’t have eggs or cold cereal two or three days in a row.  I personally think it’s just as easy to plan two weeks of menus as one, once you’re in the mental planning mode, but if you don’t, then just fill in one week’s worth of menus right now.

    Next, on to the lunch menu.  Do the same thing as you did with the breakfast menu, keeping in mind what is already written for the breakfast meal that day so it won’t be repetitive.  Once that’s finished, fill in the dinner menu. 

    If this is new to you, you might want to plan to begin using your menu in a few days, or a week from now.  If you try to jump into it without being properly prepared, you’re going to end up feeling overwhelmed and like a failure.  You’re going to need to go shopping to be sure you have everything in the house you’ll need, so if you want to start right away, then make sure you have all the ingredients you’ll need for a week already in the house, or go shopping first thing tomorrow. 

    Remember, keep it simple!  That can mean cottage cheese and bread for lunch, baked potatoes and chicken for dinner, rice and beans, canned tuna, etc – whatever – anything that takes very, very little time or effort.  You can plan for slightly more involved meals after you’ve done this for a week or two and feel like you’re starting to get into a groove.

    Now, post this on your refrigerator.  Take your list of menu options and file it away somewhere, in a cookbook if you don’t have somewhere else you’ll remember to look for it.  You’re going to add to this list over time, and can pull it out each time you make a menu plan (saves you having to take out a pile of cookbooks every week or two).

    Any questions?  If so, please ask.

    Avivah

  • What does a full day look like for me?

    I told you yesterday was a full day, right?  I thought I’d give you a general run down of what that means in my house, though it’s hard to describe the constant coming and going of all the kids and their activities.

    Saturday night, the two older girls slept over at friends.  First thing Sunday morning (ie, 6:15), ds15 went to his daily class (amud shiur).  Before he is home for breakfast, ds9 goes to his piano lesson, dd13 goes directly from sleepover to Girl Scout hike (all day long), and dd12 walks home in time for her piano lesson. 

    We had a late breakfast with almost everyone home, and as soon as that was over, ds9’s best friend comes over to bake cookies.  I retire to my quiet room to try to prepare for the party and make several phone calls. 

    I go to party and have no idea what happens between then and when I get home, other than that ds15 is in charge.  🙂  When I got home, my husband had just returned from work, dd13 had just returned from her hike, the baby was up from his nap, my dd7 and ds6 were playing with neighbors at our house, ds15 was out with his learning partner, and ds9 is selling cookies. 

    Right after I get home, my husband said he needed to run to the store for a few items, so I accompanied him in order to have some time together.  In the meantime, my ds9 who was selling the cookies was passing the home of some new neighbors.  I met the mother a week ago and told him they had a boy his age.  He decided to knock on the door and introduce himself, was warmly welcomed in and eventually invited to stay for their dinner barbeque.  He ran back to get permission (which I gave, since I really like the mom).  When he came back to their home, the visiting friend of the 11 year old sister in the new family looked at him and told him he reminded her of a girl she knew from sleep away camp.   He asked what the name of the girl she reminded him was – and when he heard it, he said, “That’s my sister!”  What a small world – the new neighbor lived in a different city, as did her friend, but had been in the same camp in NY as my daughters.  The camp is huge, and just being there doesn’t mean you know most of people there – actually, it’s exactly the opposite, you don’t know most of the people.  However, the new neighbor’s daughter was in my daughter’s co-bunk, and her visiting friend was in the same bunk as dd12.  So then they invited her for the bbq, to which I also agreed. 

    By this time, I was back with dh, ate a quick dinner, and went out to a lecture by a community rabbi to mark 30 days since the time my friend’s 16 year old son was killed in a car accident.  On the way there, I stopped at the new neighbor to invite her for lunch next Saturday (I didn’t have a phone number for her).  She glowingly tells me how wonderful my son is and how you can always tell which kids are homeschooled because their middos/character are so good. 

    After the talk, which deserves its own post but I just can’t make time to do it justice, I spoke to a number of the other people there, and then privately to the rabbi who spoke.   That was an interesting conversation; at times like these I feel someone has to be willing to suggest ideas that might be helpful which aren’t mainstream, and because I look mainstream (‘so normal’, I’ve often been told, lol) and my kids have been successful homeschooling, I feel that it’s kind of my responsibility to raise concerns with the powers that be if I have the opportunity to do so.  Not that they’re ready to hear it, but something only sounds radical the first bunch of times it’s suggested, right?

    Then I spoke for quite a while with my friend, whose son it was who was killed.  She introduced me to the mother of the boy who was driving the car (who walked away from the accident that killed her son), whom she happened to be speaking with when I came over (not that she introduced her as such, I figured it out). 

    When I got home late that night, I felt like I had hardly spent any time with the kids.  I hadn’t, hardly.  If it wasn’t for the knowledge that a day so much away from them is the exception, and I’d have the next day to be with them, I would have felt a sense of loss. 

    (Now that I wrote all of this, I’m thinking how dull it all sounds….but that’s okay, since I’m not here to impress you and I said I’d share with you a typical busy but not stressful day. :))

    Avivah

  • Creating a vision – the first step to success

    I’ve been having computer troubles the last few days, so I’m so glad my super husband was able to fix the problem and I can be back here with you!

    Last night I was thinking about something a close friend said to me.  She knows that I don’t come from a family that excelled in marital relationships, to say the least.  To be more clear, no one in my family except one great aunt stayed married long term.  There were other challenges for me growing up, but I’ve grown from them all and don’t regret a single one of them.  But my friend commented that she thinks I’m a ‘magician’, to have been able to create the life I have with no background for it.

    It didn’t happen by itself, though.  A number of people have asked me over the years, knowing only that I come from a divorced home, how I have the kind of marriage that I do, how I did it.  My quick answer is always, choose well.  Being married to a good person makes having a good marriage much more achievable.  And my husband is a wonderful person.

    But the deeper answer goes further back, to before I even began dating, when I was seventeen years old.  At that time, I decided I needed to create my own vision of what kind of marriage I wanted to have.  I could clearly see what I didn’t want to have – what every single other family member had, of the immediate and extended family through my grandmother’s generation.  I knew what life was like in a broken family, and didn’t want any of my future children to go through that.  And I knew that no one else in my family wanted the results they got, so it wasn’t enough just to want something different.  I needed to plan for something different and positive, because you can’t build a life based on what you don’t want.

    I made a list of all the qualities I felt were important for me – it didn’t include looks or physical attributes, just the internal qualities that I felt would provide a good balance to my personality.  When a teacher at seminary asked me what I was looking for and I shared my list with her, she told me it was unrealistic.  When a well known author who happened to be one of my teachers and is heavily involved in matchmaking spoke to me, he told me that my description didn’t match anything he thought was suitable for me.  A married woman I spent a number of Shabbosim/Sabbaths with asked me about what I was looking for, and when I said I wanted someone warm, she told me I had to be a warm person to attract a warm person, and she didn’t think I had the quality of warmth (she didn’t realize that what she was seeing was being reserved, not cold, but that’s another story for another day).  And others along the way discouraged me, too.  But I stuck to my vision – I didn’t create it quickly or without significant amount of ongoing thought, and I believed in it even when those who seemingly had more experience than me discouraged me.  I knew that I knew myself better than any of them, and my picture was more accurate. And when I met my husband, I knew by the second date that he was the right one, because he had everyone of the characteristics I felt were important.  And we’ve had a wonderful life together, through good times and very, very challenging times.

    Avivah

  • Breakfast time

    What does breakfast in our house look like?

    First of all, breakfast is a meal where we all take time to sit and be together before beginning our busy day.  My husband, because of his work schedule, is frequently not with us for mealtimes, but otherwise, whoever is home is there.  It’s officially supposed to start at 8:30, but that doesn’t always happen, like today (8:50).  I don’t make fancy meals – today breakfast was polenta, cottage cheese, and watermelon – but it’s always something filling and nutritious.  To me, mealtimes are an opportunity to connect with the entire family while everyone eats, not a time to eat and happen to speak to each other.  The focus isn’t on the food, but on our time together. 

    Today my oldest son read from a book about prayer and it led us to a discussion about the the importance of establishing a deep emotional connection with G-d, and the purpose of difficulties in helping us build that connection.    This is a book our family chose to read together at each meal, since it has daily selections.  My husband shared a true story that illustrated the importance of a connection, not just getting what you want, that illustrated that we desire connection more than just stuff (a rich man gave his 18 year old son a credit card with no limit, and told him not to contact him anymore since his new wife didn’t want the kid in their life).  Then we talked about how this ties into the law of attraction, what the seeming contradictions are, and how the concepts fit together.  We always try to share some Torah thoughts (sorry, can’t think of a good translation for that) at each meal.  Sometimes it’s quicker, sometimes it leads to a much longer discussion. 

    When we talk, it’s not us lecturing the kids.  It’s a discussion – someone will bring up a topic, and we all share thoughts on it.  If someone doesn’t have anything to say, that’s fine, too.  It’s pretty informal and relaxed. 

    Then we talked about the video most of us watched last night, what we liked and why we liked it.  This ended up being a discussion of family values and how hard it is to find videos that support that. 

    As the meal wound down (breakfast is officially 30 minutes, but today it was closer to 40 minutes), we give the kids a quick reminder of what they need to do after they leave the table.  That means their after breakfast chores, and what they need to do as far as their academic work. Sometimes I’ll ask each child to tell me what they’re going to be doing, and how they’re going to do it, so I know what their plans are.  If we have something outside of our regular routine planned for the day, I’ll go over the plans for the day regarding that outing or activity.  On regular days, it’s just a quick run down of what we’ll be doing that takes about two minutes. 

    Then we do a quick clean up (bathrooms, laundry, sweeping, dishes) so we can move on to the next part of our day in a pleasant environment.

    Avivah

  • First trip to the farmer’s market

    Finally, I got myself to the farmer’s market today, just a short time before they closed.  I don’t know how busy it usually is, but by that time there weren’t many vendors left.  But that was okay, because what I was seeking was good deals on produce still available at the end of the day.

    I was hunting deals, and the prices weren’t anything to get excited about.  I noticed two stands that had reduced produce, but even the reduced prices weren’t remarkable.  One of the stands’ reduced produce looked unappetizing and I wouldn’t have been interested unless they had been asking drastically less than they were.  I asked the man in charge of the larger stand about what was labeled ‘seconds’ – he said it was the same produce, but not number 1 quality.  It actually looked pretty nice, but the price was kind of high.  I inquired if he had larger amounts than the small containers on the table, and if the price went down if I bought a larger amount.  He did, and it did.  Remember, ask and don’t assume that if there’s a good price that it will be obvious to everyone!

    I got a case of tomatoes (I think he said a bushel – or a half bushel??? – I always mix up these terms – but it was 21 pounds) for $12, about .57 lb.  They are beautiful, perfectly ripe, not mushy or rotten at all.  I also bought a case of peaches (26 pounds), also seconds, for $15.  My kids were happy to see me walk in with the peaches, but after they tasted the peaches, they were ecstatic.  Seriously.  They couldn’t stop telling me how amazingly delicious they are.  They are huge, perfectly ripe, sweet and juicy (in another couple of days they would be overripe if not refrigerated, and that’s probably why he’s selling them as seconds).  I ate one and then I saw why they were telling me about how good they were – because they really are delish! 

    The problem with all of this is, I want to can a bunch of the peaches to enjoy in the winter, and my kids are protesting.  They like them so much that they want to eat them fresh.  I told them that I didn’t buy 26 pounds for them to gobble up in two days, though they think it would be a very appropriate way to eat them. 

    Since I have a busy afternoon ahead (my 9 year old and a friend are baking cookies in the kitchen right now for their new money making venture :)), I have a meal to prepare and deliver to someone with an ill mother, and a performace to take the kids to of ‘Seussical’, or something like that), and I only have 2.5 hours to finish everything I’m in the middle of and get everyone fed, I’m not going to deal with the canning until tomorrow.  But tomorrow I’m going to do something, not only with the tomatoes and peaches, but I also need to turn my attention to the 80 lb of apples we picked yesterday morning, I have another 20 lb of Seckel pears in the fridge from our pear picking that I also want to process, and one container of all the peeled peaches from my bartering venture waiting to be turned into something yummy, too.  Busy, busy, busy.  I feel like the ant who is busy preparing for the winter in the summertime.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Our daily schedule

    I completed planning our daily schedule for the coming year last week, and we’ll start to ease into it now, with the plan being that within a month, our days will be running along the timeline that I’ve scheduled. I’ve found that a gradual transition from the summer schedule of late mornings, late nights, and days that are wide open smooths the way, instead of making abrupt changes from one week to the next at the end of August. The hardest transition is going to be for me, not the kids, because the success of the schedule depends on me getting up early enough, which depends on me getting to sleep at a decent hour, something I continue to struggle with.

    Here’s the basic schedule for Monday through Thursday (Sunday and Fridays have a number of differences, and those are addressed on the academic schedule, that I still have to finish):

    7:30 am – wake up, get dressed, clean room

    8 am – morning prayers

    8:30 am – breakast

    9 am – chores (according to what’s listed on chore chart on fridge)

    9:30 – 1:30 – academics

    1:30 pm – lunch

    2 – 3 – independent reading

    3 – 5:30 pm – free play

    5:30 – clean up of main living area

    6 pm – dinner

    7 pm – readaloud

    8 pm – bedtime – baby, toddler, 6, 7, 9 year olds

    9 pm – bedtime – 12 and 13 year olds

    9:30 pm – bedtime  15 year old (he gets us earlier than the rest of us)

    10:30 – bedtime for me (I had to write this in for myself to make me feel more committed!)

    When I look at this schedule, it looks so sterile to me! I know how many things go on every single day, with each of the kids being busy with their own activities, but it looks cut and dried and dull as it’s written, doesn’t it?

    When I write the schedule, I allow more time than I think necessary for everything, because it’s better to have extra time left over than to not have enough time and then be feeling like I’m running behind the entire day.  I know, though, that almost all of the kids will finish everything they have to do academically, including their mandatory daily reading, by lunchtime.  My daughter who is entering 9th grade is the one most likely to need some of the extra time after lunch to complete her reading, which is why I officially scheduled reading time, so she doesn’t feel like she has to keep working and working when everyone officially has free time.  I think I’ll probably encourage the others to do free reading then or to listen to an audio presentation, something the 7 and 9 year olds love. (Somehow the six year old doesn’t enjoy them…maybe I need to look for more simple presentations for him, as his listening skills aren’t as advanced as theirs and he gets bored by their selections.) Those who are finished all of their work have the option to use any of the time left before lunch however they want, which usually means playing outside. 

    My 9, 12, 13, and 15 year olds all have daily mandatory reading.  I have a shelf of books that they can choose books from, each on their level.  These books usually correspond to the historical period that I want to cover, but not always.  I’m still wavering about how long to have them each read for on a daily basis.  Last year they all had to read for an hour (that didn’t include their own reading that they chose to do later on), and I’ve been thinking about if there’s any benefit to increasing it two hours for the older ones, which I told them a while back was what they should expect this year.  But now I don’t think the benefits justify making the change, so I’ve written this schedule for only an hour of daily reading. 

    During the morning academic hours, I’m available to help the older kids with their work when they have questions, but this past year have shifted the emphasis to be more actively involved with the younger kids (ages 7 and down).  Part of this time we have a read aloud that is different from our evening read aloud, and it’s geared towards the 6, 7, and 9 year olds.  Right now we’re reading the Little House on the Prairie series, again.  I read it with my oldest three, and now it’s time for the next three children to enjoy it!  The two year old often snuggles up with us, and the baby is either taking a nap, playing on the floor, or in my lap. (I love Little House on the Prarie, and my kids are relating to it differently this year than their siblings did when we read it in the past, since they relate to things that we do which are similar to what we’re reading about, things we either didn’t do in the past, or didn’t talk about so the kids weren’t conscious of it.)   

    So that’s the basic schedule of our days!  I find that as basic as it is, it gives a feeling of structure to even the most relaxed of days, and that is reassuring to everyone. I already know that there are a number of things that may shift throughout the year, but the general outline will remain the same.

    Avivah

  • New chore chart

    It’s that time of year again, when I pull out some paper and a pen and start making up our schedules for the coming year.  You might think that entering our ninth year of homeschooling, that our schedule is all worked out and doesn’t change much.  But you’d be wrong. 🙂

    Every year I reevaluate.  This includes, what I feel is important for them to learn, what’s been been working for each child and what could use improvement, how to keep the house running as smoothly as possible with as little possible unnecessary stress on my part, etc.  I look at what’s working and put more of that in, look at what wasn’t as effective as I wanted and take that out.

    Today I finished the yearly chore schedule, set to begin in a few days, in August.  It is written out for through the end of July, and will go on the fridge tomorrow.  I won’t make another chore chart for a year.  What I did last year was break the jobs up into more frequent changes from child to child, because I was concerned that they might feel overwhelmed.  For example, one child would do the dishes for the day.  We do laundry three times a week, and each day, a different child would do that laundry.  We clean the bathrooms three times a week, and each time a different pair of children was responsible for one of the bathrooms, with all the bathrooms rotated so each team cleaned every bathroom once a week.

    Well, I’ve decided that this has required too much of my energy to monitor.  And it’s annoying when someone tells me that so and so didn’t wash all of their dishes and left it for them, and they shouldn’t have to do it.  Or something along those lines.

    So my new plan is this:  jobs will rotate monthly for most of the kids, twice a month for the 6 and 7 year olds.  I seriously considered making each job a year long commitment, but it seemed too long to me, and this feels like the right balance for this year.  I include only the chores that I think need to be regularly done to keep the house running smoothly, but there are jobs like nightly cleanups, which aren’t listed because we all do them together before dinner.

    – bathrooms (clean three – I clean mine) – one child will do this all month, three times a week

    – laundry (wash, hang outside, bring it in when it’s dry) – one child for the month, three times a week

    – dishes – this is a pretty intensive job because we eat three home cooked meals daily and don’t use disposable dishes, so I’m only making it a two week commitment, meaning two kids a month share this job

    So these four jobs are rotated between the oldest four (9.5, 12, 13, 15), scheduled so that each child has one job each month (this doesn’t include cleaning their rooms, which every child is supposed to do each morning).  Obviously some months will be easier for one than another, but that’s okay, since everyone will rotate evenly through all the jobs so they’ll each get their easier months.

    – sweep (living room and kitchen once a day, dining room after each meal) – this is for the 6 and 7 year olds – they will share this job, each doing it for two weeks.

    – clear table after meals – this job goes to the child doing the sweeping for the two week duration.  I saw last year that sometimes the person clearing the table swept the crumbs onto the floor and made more work for the person sweeping, so now one person will do both and we’ll eliminate that potential conflict.

    – Set table – this is a two week job that alternates between the 6 and 7 year olds on the weeks they aren’t doing the sweep/clear table combo.

    Part of assigning chores to kids is teaching them how to do the job right.  I don’t expect them to know how to do their jobs.  My 6 year old is really not good at sweeping.  I think he likes to act like he can’t do it so he won’t have to do it.  Guess what?  I tell him he’s going to learn to do it well because if he can’t do it well, it shows he needs lots of practice.  Said with love, of course.  🙂

    Teaching the jobs can be time intensive at first, but it’s crucial to spend the time upfront clarifying your expectations and showing them how to do it.  On Friday my 9 year old was baking bread, and I thought to myself that people who tell me how ‘lucky’ I am that my kids are so helpful and competent should have seen what my kitchen looked like.  It was a disaster, with flour covering the counters, floors, some of the dishes in the cabinets above, and my son.  Sometimes even I can hardly believe how big a mess a child who doesn’t yet know how to do something can make.  But it’s all part of the learning process, and if you aren’t willing to let them do a job badly, they’ll never learn to do it well.

    So that’s the new chore chart.  Don’t think my kids greeted my comments about the change in how we’ll be doing chores this year with shrieks of delight.  They didn’t, particularly the 7 and 9 year olds.  (The two older girls will be back from camp tomorrow so they don’t yet know the fun that awaits them.  :))  It takes a lot of thought to figure out a system that will be fair and effective, and I’m glad to have this done.  Now I can move on to finishing up their yearly academic schedules, which I’m in the middle of.

    Avivah

  • Reframing lack of appreciation

    Today I made a meal for someone who had a baby somewhat recently.  For me, it was a day of one thing after another, very tight time scheduling all around, but I managed to make a nice meal for her family of 9.  And I was very glad to get her the meal at the time she needed it.  It meant readjusting the playdate time of three kids and the grandchild-grandparent outing for another because I couldn’t be where I was planning to be for them on time, and my baby being totally off his usual sleep schedule,  but I was glad to be able to do it. 

    When I went to drop dinner off at their home, the family was standing outside the yard  I pulled into the driveway.  I saw the husband climbing into his van, so I asked the mother if she could ask one of her older kids (who were standing a few feet away) to take the box that had the pans of food in it out of my van, thinking it would be the quickest thing (like about thirty seconds), and because my baby was sleeping I didn’t want to have to stop and get out.  (Have you ever noticed the effect turning off the engine has on a sleeping baby?  Mine all wake up.)

    In response, she told me to move my van so her husband could get out.  And then went back to her discussion with whoever was there, along with all of her kids.  I was a little taken aback, but I parked, got out, took out the food (waking up my baby), and gave her the box with all the pans. 

    She took it, hardly paying more attention to me than a fly.  I guess she was too busy to say ‘thank you’.  From the time I drove into the driveway and to when I pulled out, I was there less than three minutes, and I drove away feeling unhappy to have gone to all the effort and then be treated like a nuisance. 

    If you’ve ever made a meal for someone, you know how it is.  You usually make something nicer than what you make for your own family.  You spend the time, money, and effort to do something nice and you want to have some recognition, even if it’s just a verbal thanks.  I’ve made many meals for people, but I’ve never had a response like this, and I was feeling bothered to be treated as I was.

    But I try not to enjoy stewing in my own juices, so I started thinking about how to mentally change my focus.  That meant thinking about why was I willing to make a meal for her in the first place?  Because I thought she was so busy that it would take some pressure off of her.  And I accomplished that.  In fact, if she was so distracted or focused on something/someone else that she couldn’t show any recognition or appreciation to me, then it was the perfect time to give her a meal and make her evening easier.  That was a sign that she needed that meal even more than I thought!

    That thought really saved me from processing about this interaction, and I’m so grateful that I was able to mentally detach myself enough to think about her needs.  I want to be a person of joy and positivity, and it’s hard to be that kind of person if I let little things like this drag me down.

    Isn’t it wonderful how many opportunities we have every single day for character growth?!?

    Avivah

  • Sale on Bum Genius 3.0s seconds

    If you’re considering cloth diapers, or already use them, then this is a fantastic deal that will sell out fast.  And I do mean fast.  I just got the notification in my inbox less than a half hour ago and am posting now so any of you reading who wants to take advantage of this can before they are all gone. 

     I’m not going to go on about Bum Genius 3.0s, but they are supposed to be excellent diapers, usually very pricey, though.  I would have bought these to begin with if they had been selling at this price when I made my recent diaper order.  These are seconds and that means the price is 30% less than usual.  In my experience, seconds usually are very small defects (like dirt that washes out, a crooked seam).  Sales like this occur very rarely. 

    http://www.cottonbabies.com/index.php?cPath=51

    I’ve spent enough on cloth diapers recently that I won’t be taking advantage of this. I’m really holding myself back on this one – my husband wouldn’t be thrilled to say the least if I spent more on diapers when I bought so many already.  So if you buy them, let me know so I can vicariously take pleasure in knowing you took advantage of this info!

    Avivah