Learning is messy
When I was a young mother, I wasn't really good at mess. Mess, particularly messy children, made me unhappy and anxious. I was amazed at other mothers who didn't seem to mind messy children doing messy things in their houses. I did things with my children, but it was heavily supervised so the chaos didn't get too out of control.
While I still don't enjoy mess, I am happiest and most content when things are neat and orderly, I'm afraid it is a pretty constant in my life. Neat and orderly doesn't happen very often or last very long around here. Having twelve children does take off ones rough edges. When people tell me I am so relaxed and that is why I am able to parent all these children, I have to laugh, because the progression was very much the other way 'round. With all these children I have no choice but to do some significant relaxing or else we would all go mad. I feel as though I have moved from Fanny at Chez Panisse to Warthogs in the Kitchen. (Both of those are great books, by the way.)
I was thinking about this because today ended up being a baking day. I wasn't doing the baking, though. I was paying bills. Earlier I had posted that G., L., K., and Y. were in the kitchen baking chocolate chip cookies all on their own for the first time. I was wrong. I had thought it was those four, but it turned out to have been just G. and Y. They actually did a fantastic job on the cookies with not too much mess.
That is not to say that mess making didn't happen. When I finished the bills, this was the sight that met me in the kitchen.
The sink is full of dishes and most of the counters are covered. It's been worse, because I see some empty counter space there by the refrigerator. It was about 40 minutes of cleaning to put everything back to rights.
In my children's defense, the dishwasher was run and clean. A child had loaded it as much as possible and started it. A few of those bigger pots were left over from last night's dinner and they hadn't been tackled yet. But most of it was because my children make themselves food.
I was watching something once and a child looks in a pantry and exclaims with horror, "There is no food. It's just ingredients!" It made me laugh because that describes my house most of the time. We're filled with ingredients, but premade food, not so much. My children have become adept at turning these ingredients into what they want to eat and they do it often.
The trouble is, each child makes what they want. There is very little coordination between them, so at any given meal, there are probably four or five different things being made and eaten. And every time something new is made it also means that more dishes are also dirtied.
What do they make, these messy chefs of mine? Eggs are very popular, which is good because we have a lot of them. Omelets, fried eggs, toad in the hole, scrambled eggs, egg salad, hard-boiled eggs, poached eggs, soft-boiled eggs. My children are quite the egg savants. Other dishes I've seen concocted recently are fruit salads, tuna salad, quesadillas, regular old sandwiches, and ramen (which hardly counts as meal prep in my book). Some like to chop potatoes and make their own version of hash. Much of the time I don't actually know what has been created, I just know cooking happened by the sheer number of pots, pans, and dishes. I admit to it driving me just a little crazy.
But I also know that none of them will starve for not knowing how to cook. I think they are also more adventurous eaters because they so much enjoy creating their own dishes in the kitchen. And every so often, they will make cookies which they will share with me when I am paying the bills. It's messy, but worth it.
While I still don't enjoy mess, I am happiest and most content when things are neat and orderly, I'm afraid it is a pretty constant in my life. Neat and orderly doesn't happen very often or last very long around here. Having twelve children does take off ones rough edges. When people tell me I am so relaxed and that is why I am able to parent all these children, I have to laugh, because the progression was very much the other way 'round. With all these children I have no choice but to do some significant relaxing or else we would all go mad. I feel as though I have moved from Fanny at Chez Panisse to Warthogs in the Kitchen. (Both of those are great books, by the way.)
I was thinking about this because today ended up being a baking day. I wasn't doing the baking, though. I was paying bills. Earlier I had posted that G., L., K., and Y. were in the kitchen baking chocolate chip cookies all on their own for the first time. I was wrong. I had thought it was those four, but it turned out to have been just G. and Y. They actually did a fantastic job on the cookies with not too much mess.
That is not to say that mess making didn't happen. When I finished the bills, this was the sight that met me in the kitchen.
The sink is full of dishes and most of the counters are covered. It's been worse, because I see some empty counter space there by the refrigerator. It was about 40 minutes of cleaning to put everything back to rights.
In my children's defense, the dishwasher was run and clean. A child had loaded it as much as possible and started it. A few of those bigger pots were left over from last night's dinner and they hadn't been tackled yet. But most of it was because my children make themselves food.
I was watching something once and a child looks in a pantry and exclaims with horror, "There is no food. It's just ingredients!" It made me laugh because that describes my house most of the time. We're filled with ingredients, but premade food, not so much. My children have become adept at turning these ingredients into what they want to eat and they do it often.
The trouble is, each child makes what they want. There is very little coordination between them, so at any given meal, there are probably four or five different things being made and eaten. And every time something new is made it also means that more dishes are also dirtied.
What do they make, these messy chefs of mine? Eggs are very popular, which is good because we have a lot of them. Omelets, fried eggs, toad in the hole, scrambled eggs, egg salad, hard-boiled eggs, poached eggs, soft-boiled eggs. My children are quite the egg savants. Other dishes I've seen concocted recently are fruit salads, tuna salad, quesadillas, regular old sandwiches, and ramen (which hardly counts as meal prep in my book). Some like to chop potatoes and make their own version of hash. Much of the time I don't actually know what has been created, I just know cooking happened by the sheer number of pots, pans, and dishes. I admit to it driving me just a little crazy.
But I also know that none of them will starve for not knowing how to cook. I think they are also more adventurous eaters because they so much enjoy creating their own dishes in the kitchen. And every so often, they will make cookies which they will share with me when I am paying the bills. It's messy, but worth it.
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