I know this is just a piece of torn notebook paper. I know the tape is rough and the leaves will turn. But my boy made this.
After breakfast, I had -lovingly- shoved my noisy kids outside. They were too harsh for the walls of our home so I sent them where there are no walls.–
Where they can run and jump and raise their voices. Where birds chirp quietly and bugs crawl under our feet. Where wild things live unseen.
Nash took his one-subject spiral notebook with him.–
His red notebook. His new notebook, the one that we only own because it was $0.10. His collection of blank college-lined papers which had been purposeless until paired with a mind for creation.
Nash went straight for our giant magnolia-climbing tree and sat, still and quiet in its shade. He drew. I walked outside with our precious new baby I went to the van, opened the trunk, took out a lawn chair. I unfolded it and I sat in the driveway.
Soon, my children gathered near as if they knew that we belonged together.–
No matter what has happened, no matter how annoyed we have all been with each other, no matter how much complaining we have given into, my children always know, somehow, that we belong together.
Nash found these leaves and picked them off of their plant. He held them between his fingers. He rubbed them on a page and watched the chlorophyll transfer. Then he smiled that kind of smile that speaks for itself.–
That smile that says joy, unspeakable joy. That smile that shouts, I rejoice right now, in this day and always. That smile that exudes a simple gratitude, higher than any words.
“I’m going to make a flower!” he said. “Mom, can I go inside and get the tape?” I allowed it. Well, I couldn’t stop it. He had an idea, and he had to complete it. He worked diligently to make a flower out of five leaves, and then he hung it right outside mine and Neil’s bedroom door. “Where Grace can’t get it,” he said.–
Where it is safe, I heard. Where you’ll see it, right at eye-level, I knew. Where you’ll remember.
He decorated the entrance to the place we lay our heads. His one idea, focused until completion, made with the things he saw. Completed all by himself. It’s not the most beautiful thing in the world. But really, it is.–
When an idea comes to life with child-like faith. When the process is more important than the product. When little love-reminders are placed right where we are sure to see them… where we need to see them.
It’s hard to cook dinner. The kids are running, I’m frazzled from being the only adult with 3 kids, and my morning coffee mug needs a refresher.
Over here, 3:30 is generally when it starts. This is a difficult time for me. It’s after nap time. I want to spend time with my kids, and they are anxious to spend time with me, but I can’t usually watch them dropkick the soccer ball or help them sort out their puzzle pieces or even hold a real conversation while I cook.
Part of it, I think, is that I am not a cook by nature. I just don’t love it, so when I cook, I’m full-on working. I’m thinking hard. I can’t just ease into creating a meal. When I try to do that, I usually end up forgetting to cook the potatoes or not setting a timer, and the pizza burns or the pork chops have turned to leather.
If I don’t have a plan for our meal, it’s an even harder. And since I’m just not the planning type, I usually don’t have one.
I must say that my husband is super helpful and usually willing to cook if I need him to. He actually loves to cook and is really good at it, almost always creating something memorable and mouth-watering. But he isn’t home until 4:30, and by then we usually need to have started dinner. So I try to cook most nights.
But I’m not a chef and I don’t really care what our dinner tastes like. I love to bake, and my husband has come home more than once to a counter filled with muffins, breads, and homemade soft pretzels, but no dinner. Maybe even homemade ketchup and a bag of frozen french fries heated on a cookie sheet. Maybe two entire batches of sourdough pancakes, lined on a pan ready to be stuck in the freezer, or steel cut oats soaking, for the week’s breakfasts. But no dinner. He has also more than once come home to a counter filled with cheese and crackers and a fruits and veggie platter. Luckily, we can usually snack on that stuff until my husband has some time to create a masterpiece in front of our very eyes.
I do love to get my kids helping in the kitchen, though. Once 3:30 rolls around, and I need to start cooking, I usually try to occupy them somehow. I’m not opposed to enlisting the help of the television, and I often do, but when I can include my children in kitchen prep, I try to, if even just for a few minutes before I send them on a scavenger hunt for the remotes.
Really, my kids LOVE to help in the kitchen. And it’s so good for them! We value real, homemade food and though we are not perfect eaters and we don’t always eat organically, we try to cook our own meals.
I’ve created a list of things that I’ve realized my kids can do in the kitchen. They always surprise me, you know? It’s like they’re growing every day or something, gaining new understandings every moment.
This is my kids at a Mud Cafe… the things they’re making are not edible (well I guess you could eat mud in a pinch), but this is totally training them to love the kitchen!
Of course, depending on your kids’ ages, they may need varying levels of supervision while doing some of these things. My 5 year old can do most of these unsupervised, but my 3 year old needs a lot of supervision while doing them. They still both LOVE to help in the kitchen, though.
A 5-year-old grates cheese.A 1-year old spreads hummus on the table.
I know it can be frustrating, but I dare say that, especially if you have a picky eater, their horizons will broaden each time they are allowed the freedom to help in the kitchen.
Kids who help in the kitchen have a better relationship with food. I made that up, but it’s probably true. Most of my kids get so excited when they experience new foods.
I am especially surprised when my 3-year old (my super kinesthetic boy) wants to taste things as we cook. He ALWAYS sticks his fingers where they don’t belong. Sometimes, like when we’re making scrambled eggs, or when we have pork chops in our shopping cart, this is not good. (Who wraps pork chops in such an easily punctured material as saran wrap? I want to see pork chops sealed in welded sheets of steel.)
Other times, his curiosity serves him well. Like when we’re pulling kale leaves off their stalks and he decides to just chomp down on the chewy raw powerhouse veggie like its a Snickers bar, proclaiming, “I LIKE KALE!” or when he dips his finger into a bag of flax meal, and proceeds to sing, “I love flax MEAL!” I count these moments as victories won after a years-long battle where the kid is all up in my business.
Okay. Here’s my list. Kids can:
Grate cheese
Peel carrots
Sweep (Get one of these types of things. But get yours from Dollar Tree. My kids think it’s so funny to be able to sweep up messes with their “set” and I’m not sure why they call it that, but it doesn’t really mater to me as long as they are sweeping.)
Fill our Britta water box
Push the button to grind coffee beans
Start the coffee pot brewing
Clear the table (they can at least clear their own plates and silverware)
Load the silverware into the dishwasher
Pour detergent into the dishwasher
Start the dishwasher
Put the silverware away
Stir, whisk, tap, pinch the flour, salt, baking soda, etc.
Pour 1/3 cup of pancake batter into a hot pan, supervised of course!
Flip pancakes
Put the toppings on a pizza dough
Rinse soapy dishes
Crack eggs open (My kids don’t usually help with this because it freaks me out, but they have cracked a few eggs for me, and I should probably just let them do it more often. My kinesthetic 3-year old really loves cracking eggs and today when his siblings were sleeping and I was making pancakes, he did a great job! And I even postponed my freak-out “WASH YOUR HANDS!” moment until after he had gotten a good 30 seconds rubbing his fingers in the slime and picking out the shells.)
Make taco seasoning
Make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
Cut the tops off strawberries (using a butter knife)
Open canned foods
Stir almost anything!
Do your kids help you in the kitchen? Are they curious kitchen-dwellers? How do they help? Do you think helping has made them good eaters? (I know that some kids are just picky. My oldest is our pickiest kid. He always tells me he doesn’t like what we’re having, but I think as we keep going on with our life, he’ll realize we’re actually not kidding when we tell him there is no other option to the food on the table.)
It was strange to me, too, when I witnessed two little girls rubbing each other’s earlobes at the playground. Their mom said that she does the same thing. She’s apparently always been obsessed with earlobes. She rubs them all the time without thinking, and now her children do too. She also told me that rubbing earlobes releases oxytocin.
That same night, I was sitting at church with my family. Now, you have to know something about my 3-year old. He is touchy. I know that all kids are touchy, but he is extreme. Anything, anywhere, the slimier, the sandier, the more unhygienic, the better. He LOVES grabbing the insides of pumpkins and rubbing oil on potatoes. He LOVED making oobleck (I have still not read Bartholomew and the Oobleck because our library didn’t have it when we did our “Intro to Science” week. But I discovered oobleck from Raising Little Superheros and, even without Dr. Seuss, it was a big hit). My 3-year old continues to LOVE LOVE LOVE sandboxes, water tables, and play dough, and he once opened a package of pork chops while I was in line at the grocery store, just to see what they felt like. Yuck! Right? Yeah. That’s my life.
So, I was sitting in church with my family. Knowing that my 3-year old does not sit well unless he is also doing something kinesthetic, I thought, maybe I’ll rub his earlobes. I thought that maybe he would pay attention to the man with the microphone if I rubbed his ears. Maybe it would help him to pay more attention to what his ears can do. Well, I’m not sure what happened, but he immediately sat completely still and stayed that way until we stood up. It was almost 20 minutes.
Today, I tried it again because I was reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out loud and wanted him to sit still with his brother and me while I read. And again, he was still, concentrated, focused.
He said to me, “Mom, rub my ears gently,” and my heart melted. Maybe from the extra oxytocin that was circulating around or maybe because that is just a sweet thing to say. Either way, I want to take that sentence and form a poem with it because I think it’s the most beautiful thing the world.
Do you have a high-energy kinesthetic leaner? Have you ever tried rubbing his or her earlobes to get them to focus?
