Category: Home life

Many thanks to my kitchen doodads

Since I wrote about my Kindle earlier this week, I thought I should follow up with an ode to the other gadgets that get me through each day. I do a few things often and well: I read, I write and edit, and I cook and bake. That leaves me either sitting on a couch or reclining in bed (reading), sweating on an elliptical machine (reading), sitting at the computer (writing and editing), or standing in the kitchen (cooking, cooking, cooking and baking). Add in running errands, shopping, picking up kids and sleeping, and that covers a good deal of my life.

I cook most meals for my family. I like to bake muffins for breakfast or throw some pancakes on the griddle; I usually make up some quesadillas, hot dogs or sandwiches for lunches, and for dinner… well, the possibilities are endless. Thanks to my fairly recently added account on Pinterest, I’ve added on all kinds of new items for dinners. And while still on the topic of my Kindle, it has made it really easy to just take my Pinterest recipes straight in to the kitchen for test purposes, without even having to print anything out. (I always wanted all my recipes in some kind of easily accessible electronic format, and while this isn’t quite that, the Kindle has moved me a step closer to it.)

For dinners, almost any cuisine makes its way to my kitchen. I’m very lucky that my girls are all pretty good about eating almost anything I make (exceptions: none of them like scallops, the youngest doesn’t particularly like asparagus, and they don’t like any kind of ethnic fare to be too spicy), so they have eaten Thai-inspired cuisine, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Indian,  Filipino… you name it. Much of what I make involves a fair amount of prep work, mostly chopping and slicing of vegetables. (We go through a lot of onions and garlic, and during the winter — soup and stew season — a lot of carrots and celery too.) I bake bread loaves and make all kinds of bread products, whether they be “quick” or yeast-based.

Without the proper tools, the prep work involved in every night’s meals could be overwhelming, potentially leading me to just stop cooking and resort to fast food or mostly prepared food from the supermarket. Since I don’t like those options for the basic reasons of expense and health, I have stocked up on gadgets to make my work easier over the years. This week, for instance, my husband has two occasions to shop for me: Mother’s Day and birthday. I’ve made it a little simpler for him over time by requesting kitchen doodads for gifts. My most recent acquisition was my mandoline (Valentine’s Day: isn’t it romantic?). Sure, I have choppers, and a Cuisinart food processor, but none could slice potatoes or other vegetables nice and thin. So it was time to get a good mandoline.

I did a little looking around at reviews other buyers wrote about mandolines, looking first at Williams-Sonoma, and found that a simple Oxo $40 model was preferred by many of them. That’s amazingly what my husband brought home for me from Bed, Bath and Beyond.

I use it primarily for potatoes. It’s perfect for making gratins and just perfectly thin-sliced potatoes for frying on the stovetop. It’s also great for cutting french fries. In my three months of owning it, that’s been my big use, but I’ve also used it for slicing up a bunch of vegetables for a salad. It supposedly juliennes, but I haven’t had the success I’d like to see in julienning carrots. But most of the time, I don’t do much julienning, just shredding, which leads me to …

My Cuisinart.

I didn’t get this until just a couple of years ago. The main reason for that is I was able to find a very nice mini processor 15 years earlier for only $20 that fit my budget much better than the Cuisinart. That mini processor shredded and chopped pretty nicely, and I was very happy with it. Unfortunately, it finally bit the dust and I went out in search of a replacement. I found this Black & Decker, which had not just the chopping capability (most of the mini processors I found were merely mini choppers) but also shredding capacity. But when I got it home, I found that the shredding setup was lousy and it never worked right.

So I don’t recommend this one. In fact, right now I can’t recommend a particular mini processor that both chops and shreds. I just miss the old one that died after a pretty decent life span of 15 years (which is an eternity in this day and age of electronics). At any rate, I kept it because I think I couldn’t find the box or receipt or something. And it does work very nicely for quick chopping of items like nuts, onions, garlic and celery. In fact, I think it’s much more effective than my big Cuisinart.

So since the mini chopper didn’t work for shredding, and sometimes I just really need to shred large quantities of carrots or cheese, I got the Cuisinart. I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit for those uses, and it’s been nice to finally have a full-size food processor that can puree/blend. It’s been great for a number of uses I just had to do by hand or figure out how to do with some other gadget before I had it. Note: don’t try to chop in the Cuisinart. It simply doesn’t work. When I first got it, I made a nice Mexican layer dip with beans and guacamole and salsa, and I tried to “chop” my garlic and onion in there for the guacamole. What I got was pureed onion, not chopped. And it was far too much for the avocado to handle. It was like onion dip instead of avocado dip. Nasty. But I’ve made some recipes that are based on quinoa or beans instead of wheat (for gluten-free friends or just for a kick), and pureeing the beans or cooked quinoa in there, along with the other items in the recipe, has worked fantastically. It’s made for that. I’ve also used it to puree the plums from our tree to make jam. Perfect.

I also had a little non-electric chopper I use kind of alternately with the electric mini processor. This one’s an Oxo; before I had a model from Pampered Chef. Both work fine. The PC one just broke after a while, and this one, while still working after a couple years, won’t adjust to lock so I can clean it more easily anymore. So it’s a pain to wash.

It is very effective on the same kinds of things: onion, celery, garlic, nuts. Main difference is how it’s set up and that it uses hand power (if you’re feeling aggressive or annoyed, just bang on that a few times and you’ll have gotten out your anger AND chopped your food very finely). It also allows you to chop right on a cutting board rather than having to pick up the items and put them inside of a machine’s bowl.

Now, the workhorse of my kitchen counter is my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

I was very fortunate to get this one for only about $140. I got a basic model at Wal-Mart, and my mom worked there at the time, and at Christmas she would get 20% off one item. She let me use that discount to buy this, so after its initial reasonable price and the discount, I was only out $140. But it’s definitely worth $200. I use this every day. Before I had this, I thought I’d always be content with a hand mixer, but then one day I tried an amazing recipe for a decadent chocolate cake I found in the Oprah magazine. The buttercream filling requires beating for 10 minutes, and drizzling a sugar syrup into the filling while it’s being beaten. It’s very tiring with a hand mixer. That was kind of the last selling point for me to get that Kitchen Aid, and I’ve loved it ever since. I use it for cookies, cakes, and doughs. It’s very handy for making pizza dough. The recipe I use requires kneading for 5 or 10 minutes, so I just get it going and let it knead while doing other stuff. (I will say that I never use this for my homemade bread. It just needs real hands working it hard. But this is one of the few things I do knead by hand still.)

You can probably tell just how fond I am of these gadgets. And I have more … I just won’t go into detail about every last one of them. (The ice cream makers probably deserve a post of their own.) In this age of busy-ness, and the stage of my life in which I have four children at home, who are off to different places and activities, and in which I have all kinds of projects of my own on top of that, having these amazing time-savers is wonderful. It means a lot to me to serve healthy, yummy, homemade meals to my family, and these electronic helpers are my little kitchen elves.

Enough

I think about the idea of “enough” so often that I considered using it as part of the name of this website. In the end, obviously, I didn’t, but the concept comes to my mind frequently.

I’m not the type of person who wants more things. In fact, I’m usually working to get rid of things. Years of moving have taught me to pare down wherever possible. (I’m not a minimalist, however: I love my kitchen gadgets, and I use them. That’s a topic for another post.) I’m satisfied to keep a computer for seven or eight years or a TV for 10 or 15 years, even if they’re getting snazzier, wider and thinner. I have some clothes I’ve worn for years; I have a sweater I just adore that I bought in high school (guess it’s stretched out over the years…). So “enough” doesn’t apply to stuff. Well, it does, actually: I can say with confidence I have enough stuff.

No, “enough” applies to actions. I worried in high school if I had enough on my list of activities to show my dream university I was fit to enter. (I did.) Mostly, I’ve worried over the years if I’ve done enough. As a mother for about 16 years now, I think I worry the most if I’ve done enough for my four daughters, who are truly the most precious gift I’ve been given. I have generally been of the opinion that children will do best if given plenty of free time to find their own way, to keep themselves occupied and use their imaginations and their own inner resources. I haven’t scheduled them in lots of activities or sports or lessons. I haven’t spent all of my free time finding ways to keep them busy or happy. Even knowing that this strategy seems to have worked pretty well for them so far, I have moments of wishing I could just do more or be more for them because they are so amazing, so talented, so delightful. Because they are my only offspring, and these years I have of them living at home with me are my only chance to raise them: I just get this one shot. Because they deserve everything I can offer, everything the world can offer. Again, not stuff, but opportunities.

I’ve given my girls time. I’ve read with them, countless hours curled up on our beds, usually at bedtime, with countless books, many of which are now well worn, pages slipping out of their bindings, bits torn off corners. As they’ve gotten older, I’ve just sat and listened to them talk, telling me about their days, about their friends, about all kinds of thoughts swirling in their heads. I’ve not generally considered that a sacrifice, especially now that I have a high-schooler. She in particular has so much to say, so much that’s entertaining and interesting, at turns humorous and sweet. I cherish these tete-a-tetes. We’ve had “the talk,” we’ve talked about life and the big things, about faith and family; we’ve also talked about all the hilarious things that boys do and all the tasty morsels she ate for lunch. It’s been a pleasure; it’s been a treat.

Perhaps it’s a direct result of that time I’ve spent with them that I feel the urgency to do more, to give my girls the world. I’ve seen inside their souls and seen all that is possible, and I want to give it to them. Now that my oldest has realized how much she enjoys dance, she’d like dance lessons. But when would we fit those in among the band concerts and rehearsals or church activities or that extra class she’s taking in the evenings? Or as I see how much is lacking in our educational system nowadays (thanks to legislation, lack of funding and the bad economy, you name it…), I wish I could home-school or supplement with some somewhat structured lessons of my own. Oh, there’s so much I wish I could do.

But time limits me. Energy certainly limits what I can give. My budget limits me. My own needs, weaknesses and limitations keep me from being able to give all. (If you read about my struggles with my mental health, this will seem even clearer.) The number of children I have limits how much I can give to each, in some ways (I can’t be two or three places at once, sadly). But those things don’t limit how much I love.

At the same time, I know when I think about it seriously that my limitations are just part of life, even part of my children’s lives. They live in the same world I live in, where you can’t get everything you want, where you can only do so much, where the people around you aren’t perfect. No one should be handed everything on a silver platter, now or ever. Life isn’t perfect. There are always disappointments, always choices to be made between two or three good things. Giving my children everything would be doing them a disservice.

So I know in my head that I really am doing pretty well by my girls, that they are happy and well-adjusted, that they truly feel loved and secure. It’s just I struggle on some days when particular things crop up that I wish they could have or do. I wage a battle in my mind and — eventually — conquer my feelings of “not-enough” with the knowledge that they are happy, that they are loved.

I also struggle with that feeling of doing or being enough outside of my small family sphere, with the wide world around me. Every day, I see people and organizations that desperately need help, that need money, that need volunteer hours. There are children all around the world who need food; who need clothes and shelter; who need a strong, loving parent. And I don’t have to look far to be aware of those children. Teachers I know have those children in their classrooms. My daughters have these children as peers. Every time my oldest, in particular, mentions to me how grateful she is that I cook healthy food for her, that she has a comfortable house and plenty of clothes, that she has two parents in her home who love her, it’s because she has been reminded at school that all too many other kids don’t have those things. And my heart breaks, it just starts opening wide and trying to send feelers out to all those other children who don’t live in my home, to show them that someone cares. Oh, how I often wish I could parent so many other kids. Practically, however, I know I’m at my limits with the four I have right now.

There are so many worthy organizations out there that I could give time to. It’s hard to limit myself to just a few. Even as I say yes to one, I know there are many others I simply must say no to. It makes me feel bad to have to choose, to say no. It breaks my heart. The need is great so many places right now, especially, with our economy the way it is, but the need is always great in terms of hearts that need healing, souls that need to be nurtured.

I can only keep reminding myself of a story that I’ve heard a few times over the years. A man goes walking on a beach early one morning and finds a young man on the shore, bending down and picking up starfish and throwing them into the ocean. He keeps bending to the sand, grasping one starfish at a time, and throwing. The beach is just covered with starfish, who are likely going to die if left where they are, washed up on the sand. It seems a ridiculous endeavor, this picking up starfish one at a time and throwing them back. So the man asks the thrower, “Why? Why do you bother? You can’t possibly save them all. This won’t make a difference.” The young man’s reply, as he threw yet another starfish wide into the ocean, “It made a difference to that one.”

That’s the philosophy to which I cling in those times my heart breaks because I can’t possibly save the world. There are so many people in need, so many causes that are worthy. But I have to tell myself, what I do matters to “that one.” I just read about Mother Teresa’s similar thinking: “If you can’t feed a hundred people, feed just one.” I am making a difference to the four children with whom I’ve been entrusted. I hope to make a difference to the women I’ve been assigned to watch over in my church’s visiting teaching program. I hope to make a small difference in what I write here, that if what I say helps just a few readers, I’ve spent my time wisely. You, my friends, are my starfish. I wish I could rescue all the starfish lying on the beaches of the world, but I’m throwing back one at a time.

I watched this video for the first time yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope that I can just make one person’s burden lighter each day because I’m willing to share. Enjoy this beautiful, inspiring message.

 

Ann Romney and moms who ‘don’t work’

Well, the latest crazy statement by a political commentator has made its way through the blogosphere today. Since it is such an integral part of my life, I feel compelled to comment.

Here’s the basic info: Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, said Ann Romney wasn’t qualified to talk about women struggling in the economic downturn because she “hasn’t worked a day in her life.” Naturally, this opinion has ignited the ire of many women, stay-at-home moms or not. Rosen made this comment while trying to make the point that because Ann Romney hasn’t held a job in the paying workplace, she can’t be qualified to have an opinion about economic issues that affect women, and can’t be a useful advisor to her husband. First, I must point out that it isn’t necessary to be the one in the family holding down a paying job to be concerned about how the economy is going and how it affects your family, no matter how much money your primary wage-earner makes. Second, and the real ignition for the fire, the comment then belies Rosen’s derisive attitude toward women who choose to stay home to raise their children.

I always find it a little absurd that women who are generally of a liberal slant, who shout about the need for women to be able to “choose,” such as about their own reproductive lives, then turn up their noses at women who make a different choice than they would in family matters. “Choice” implies that there are varied options available, and that it is an individual’s right and privilege to decide among those very different options. It also implies that any of those options are ones that should be respected by others. But in our society today, if a woman chooses an option that others frown on, that woman is often derided and called “old-fashioned.”

I am a mother of four, and my daughters’ ages are in a wide range, almost 16 down to nearly 5. I have two teenagers, an elementary schooler and a preschooler. They have very different needs and schedules and temperaments. I chose from the beginning of my reproductive life to be a mother who would stay at home with her children, and I have held to that. Over the course of 16 years, I have worked part-time out of the home (15 or 20 hours at the very most) for perhaps 3 years total, when financial realities have indicated that my income would be necessary. Right now, I work from my home office on the computer for pay for maybe 5 hours a week. The opportunity to copy edit online has been quite welcome, has added a little extra income, and has kept my skills fresh. I feel blessed not to have to leave the house to do it. I also have various projects I do in the hopes of earning pay from them in the future and/or because they are intellectually and creatively stimulating and satisfying. I also feel blessed that I have the freedom to be able to pursue these projects.

There is no doubt that our economy right now has forced many families, two-parent or otherwise, to make decisions they wouldn’t otherwise have made. Both parents might have to work outside the home; single parents have to work. Wives may work and laid-off husbands stay home with the kids while they continue to search for employment again. It’s not a happy time. Even in brighter economic times, families made decisions that were either “modern” or more “old-fashioned,” according to their needs and wants and interests. Sure, I’d like to see more women able to stay home with their children, at least not working out of the home 40 hours a week, because I personally believe it benefits the kids when that situation is possible. But I know how it feels to just be home with the kids ALL THE TIME. Getting out of the house to a job where you’re appreciated, patted on the back, given breaks and more immediate gratification than a 20-year-long project is definitely an enticing prospect. And a paycheck? It can mean college tuition for your kids, a car that isn’t 15 years old and in the shop every other week, or just a reflection of a job well done that other people in society relate to and recognize. But mothering at home full time? No paycheck, no regular gratification, no guaranteed breaks, no good reason to put on a nice blouse and makeup.

But we still live in a society in which women are just not that great at respecting each other’s choices. Hilary Rosen is just a case in point. Why can’t we just admit to ourselves that we’re all very different and have very different backgrounds, life experiences, needs and wants, abilities, interests, weaknesses, and capacities? Whether we as women are married or not, have children or not, we are going to see the world in very different ways. We also aren’t just polarized to one “side” or the other: we might be working full time but wanting to stay at home; we might be staying at home with kids but really wanting to get out into the workforce. Or we might be working outside the home part-time or working from our home offices. There are a variety of flexible options available so we don’t have to be “one side” or the other: full-time workers or full-time stay-at-homes. (At the same time, our society definitely needs to figure out ways to make more truly flexible options available to both women and men to support families and children.) So we can’t expect everyone to make the exact same choices we do.

I know it took me ages to get used to being the mother of an infant, then a toddler and an infant and then more. It just made me crazy to be at home 24/7 with a very demanding little human being. I wanted to get out and work, do something for me. Even now, the demands of a home and husband and four daughters of varying ages can at times be super-stressful and overwhelming. And my own expectations of what I’d like for my daughters, what I’d like to be able to do for them, are usually more than I’m possibly capable of fulfilling because of time and energy limitations. I can’t possibly be in the high school band boosters and the elementary school PTA and the middle-school PTA and work from home and do my projects and volunteer in church and be in charge of other things and write a book and make muffins every day for breakfast and four-course meals for dinner and shop for food and clothes and do laundry and clean. I can’t be two places at once, which sometimes comes up with four kids. Choices must be made, and they’re rarely easy ones. It’s all about balance and constantly reprioritizing and rebalancing.

At the same time, despite how different we all are, I know that any mother, working outside the home for any number of hours or not, faces similar concerns and struggles to keep balanced, to keep all her balls in the air. So why in the world should we criticize and demean and make nasty comments, rather than using those energies to support each other in our choices and figure out ways to make our society better for everyone? Let’s let “choice” mean something.

Mothering deja vu

I must have a tendency to brace myself mentally for certain outcomes. When I was preparing to enter college, I had just graduated high school as valedictorian, with stellar grades and test scores and lots of admiration-worthy activities and awards on my university applications. Even so, I already knew that I would no longer be top dog when I got to school, so I kind of worked to switch over my mindset and expectations from being the big fish in a little pond to just an average fish in a very large pond. It worked, apparently; I didn’t feel a need to be top of the class anymore, and I found I was generally comfortable not having that pressure any longer. I finished up college with about a 3.5 GPA and was pleased with that. I did a few activities and extracurriculars and largely made sure to take plenty of time to have fun and enjoy my time at Brigham Young University, in part because I’d been dreaming of going there my whole life and probably in part because I’d not been able to relax and have fun in high school.

Going into parenting, I think I also steeled myself to NOT have certain expectations. I especially did not want to expect my children to look like me or act like me or have the same interests. (Perhaps my husband is going to snicker at this statement, considering how I spend so much time reading with them, but in my heart of hearts I believe it’s true.) I didn’t want them to feel pressure to be a certain way or to live up to expectations that were not their own dreams and interests.

Having said that, I am now finding myself mildly shocked when I find out that they are doing things I did or expressing interests in some things I was interested in long ago but no longer do much with. This morning gave me two opportunities to reflect on my own earlier years.

One is something odd and not even an interest, just a somewhat strange behavior. My oldest was leaving early this morning to go on a long-weekend trip with her high school band. I didn’t really plan to wake up to see her off, but since I did end up opening my eyes at 5:30 a.m., I drifted downstairs to hug my girl and bid her adieu for a few days during which I know I’ll heartily miss her presence. She was making herself some eggs, as she frequently does (a trait she did not get from me; I rarely ate breakfast foods for my morning meal growing up: I preferred leftovers), and she told me, “It was the strangest thing. I started cooking these eggs last night at 12:20. I thought it was 5:20, so I got up and started getting ready. Then I looked at the clock and realized it was only 12:20. I don’t know if I was sleepwalking or what, but it was weird. This morning I wondered if it had been a dream, but I opened the fridge and saw the eggs, and I knew it was real!” I said, “Did I ever tell you I used to do that same thing?” No. “Well, when I was a freshman, I woke up and did that same thing a few times; I would start getting ready, then eventually look at the clock and it would register in my brain that it was only 3 a.m. and I’d go back to bed. One time I washed my hair before realizing, and since I didn’t have a blow dryer and it was the middle of the night, I tried desperately to get it to dry by lying over the heating vent.” I told her that after a few times of that happening, I started to take a moment when I first woke up to REALLY look at the clock to make sure I noticed the real time. Eventually I stopped doing that.

It was just an odd feeling to have my daughter experience the same strange phenomenon.

Later this morning, at a more reasonable hour of the day, I trooped off to the county office of education building to watch a large group of elementary school students gather to participate in the “Poetry and Prose” performances. It wasn’t a competition, but it felt a bit like one; the children were all put into small groups and sent off to rooms with judges who gave them feedback on their recitations of poems. My fourth-grader decided a few months back that she’d like to be involved, so she’s been working on a poem (Shel Silverstein, of course) to perform. (Unfortunately, I have not been as involved as I would have liked, with everything else I’ve had going on; it’s right up my alley, and I could have been helpful to her. This I regret.) Sitting in that room watching her and about 10 other students perform their poems was eerily deja-vu for me. For four years in high school, I participated in the speech team, going to competitions around the state giving speeches and performing snippets of plays either individually or with a partner. What was unnerving was seeing all the same theatrical affectations I used to sit and watch in one classroom after another, four years in a row, for most weekends from October to March. These kids were younger, but it was the same stuff: unnatural, exaggerated gestures that had been taught them and rehearsed and affected speech rhythms that sound somehow “professional.” Some of the kids were genuinely, naturally talented, and it was fun to watch them. But even some of those kids had been coached too much so they were just a bit unnatural. The judge ate it up. And that reaction just got to me like fingernails on a chalkboard. I hadn’t felt that feeling in 20-plus years and it came back to me in a flash: that annoyance at watching those kinds of too-rehearsed performances. Sure, anything like that has to be practiced over and over to be good, but a really, really talented actor or performer makes it look natural, as if they never thought about what they were doing or how they would be moving or saying things. And here these adults are turning these impressionable young kids into unnatural performers. Argggggghhhh. I honestly wanted to run away screaming and never look back.

But this same daughter has just this week told me she’d love to get into acting, and she confessed a few days ago, “I want to be a STAR.” So if she wants that, I’ll help her. But we’re going to stay away from the people who would introduce the far-too-exaggerated stuff into her repertoire. I think it’s time to start looking forward to next year and talking about how to make things entertaining but natural.

At any rate, it’s not just the fact that my girls have now, against all expectations, done things I’ve done; what’s interesting are my reactions. I was amused and surprised by my oldest’s nocturnal preparations, and at my 9-year-old’s activity I was just viscerally kicked in the gut by memories of how I felt at speech competitions. It’s amazing how memories can be so strong, the emotions attached so vivid, after being buried for decades.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised; after all, a decade ago, I did write a whole book about how my little girl was reminding me of moments from my childhood. How life comes full circle still astonishes me, though, and it will again and again while I live it.

Every day with her is special

In honor of World Down Syndrome Day, I’ve decided to post in honor of my own special child, Marissa, who’s 13 1/2. I’ve written a bit about her already, but this post is specifically about my fun little kid.

Fourteen years ago, I found out I would be giving birth to a child with Down syndrome. I felt very blessed to know ahead of time that my baby had this extra chromosome. I’m the type of person who likes to be prepared, so it was nice to have half of my pregnancy to learn more about Down’s and just be ready to have a child with a disability. For me, what made it particularly nice was that her birthday was like any other baby’s birth: a day of joy and welcoming, with lots of photos, phone calls, snuggling with the new little one. If we had been surprised by her extra chromosome that day, I am sure a hush would have fallen over the room and there would have been feelings and reactions other than just pure joy and excitement over a new addition.

Marissa was the sweetest, most content baby I’ve had. She was happy to sit in a car seat or bouncy seat and just sleep or lie awake and watch me and smile back at me. She is still a very happy girl, no matter what. She has moments of frustration or anger or sadness, but they’re so fleeting it’s almost as if they never happened.

We’ve been very blessed that Marissa hasn’t had any health problems, no heart surgeries or anything that we’ve had to monitor. Over the years, she’s had a variety of therapies and extra services through early intervention programs and the school system, and she’s done really well. In fact, for a long time I could practically forget there was anything “different” about her. She walked right before she turned 2, and she has always talked fairly well and mostly clearly. She loves to read and does a great job sounding out new words. She just seems unbelievably bright to me and to others.

It’s now that she’s a teenager that I am more often reminded that she isn’t really in the same peer group as kids her age. She’s always been very small for her age, and the older she gets and the taller and more developed everyone around her gets, the more that distinction is pronounced. She is the size of an 8-year-old and behaves much like a 6- or 7-year-old, really. For a long time, she’s been quite happy playing with her younger sister who’s 4 years her junior; now she seems to be just as content to play with our youngest, who’s almost 5.

She was strictly in a regular classroom at school for some years, up until about 4th grade, when it seemed a better strategy to put her in a class with other students who had some learning disabilities of various kinds. She still gets to interact with her peers in p.e. or in art or computer classes now, but she has a better opportunity to have learning tailored to her needs in a special class. And I’m happy with that, mainly because she gets plenty of attention and seems quite happy with her class.

Marissa is eager to help and do nice things for others and she loves to hug. That actually can become a small problem sometimes because she’ll hug anyone, even someone she’s never met, and we have to keep reminding her not to do that.

At this stage of raising her, I’m honestly most concerned with her biological changes; she’s slowly starting to grow into a womanly shape (even though she’s still really tiny height-wise), and that means she’ll soon be experiencing other womanly changes I’m not sure how to address or warn her about as I did with my oldest. It’s all kind of a trial and error situation, raising her, but that can be said for any kid, I suppose!

There are tons of resources available out there now for parents of children with any disability, and there are many wonderful places to find information and support if you have a child with Down syndrome. The difference between what’s out there now and what was available just 14 years ago boggles my mind. The internet was barely around when she was born, with not nearly as much information as it has now, and my city library was where I turned for some information when I had my amniocentesis. I found a book that had a little useful stuff, but I think I was just looking for some photos of cute kids, and then I didn’t really find any. Now, there are some wonderful sites and resources that feature gorgeous photos of beautiful children and youths with Down’s, and it does my heart good. This organization, Band of Angels, apparently was around in 1998, but it wasn’t as easily found as it is now, and it just has beautiful photos. When I meet someone with a new baby who has Down syndrome, I either buy one of their products to send or tell the parent about it. It’s just reassuring to see other kids with Down’s given the adorable-photo-shoot treatment. I found it comforting, at least, when I learned about it.

In the first months of her life, I was actually given some books and tons of pamphlets and packets of information about Down’s and different resources available and services and ideas of things I could do to give her a stimulating environment and help her develop. Honestly, I barely read any of them. All that information is simply too overwhelming. When you’re just trying in those early days to get some sleep when you have a baby waking up at night for feedings and diaper changes, that’s the last thing you have energy for: reading and researching. And then as she grew, we had some good support systems referred to us, so I didn’t feel the need to go searching for a lot more.

I think it’s that way parenting any child. There’s always more you can do for them, but never enough time and energy. So you just do the best you can to make their life happy, fulfilled and enriched. Now, I just hope and plan for her to have opportunities as she finishes up with the school system to be able to live semi-independently and have some kind of work and a good support system and network of friends. I want her to have a happy life, just as I want for my other three daughters. And she seems well on her way. Marissa is one happy teen.

Happy world Down syndrome day.

House of order

I have decided that I could probably become a professional organizer if I so chose. But I don’t choose that, so I am strictly staying in the amateur leagues. I go on tears of ultra-organization in my house periodically. Over the course of a couple of months in the fall, I must have gotten rid of 15 medium-sized boxes’ worth of stuff. Well, probably more. And that’s after I’d already gone through and gotten rid of a bunch more stuff in the spring. And that was after going through and getting rid of stuff after we first moved in to this house 3 1/2 years ago, and that was after getting rid of a ton of junk before we made the cross-country move here. I keep asking myself how it’s possible that I have all this junk if I keep getting rid of it. Does it sneak back in to the house like the ants we keep killing off? Or like our female cat, who keeps insisting on going back out? It’s a mystery.

I must admit that I impose order on everyone in my house, my husband and daughters all. I have brought in some boxes from the garage and plunked them down in the office and/or bedroom and instructed my husband that he must go through them and sort and organize them within a short amount of time. He grudgingly obliges. I tell my girls it’s time to sort through their rooms and piles of accumulated stuff every six months or so. When they give me drawings or other doodads, I duly admire and ooh and ahh and then remind them that I will recycle most of them but keep a select few in their special folder. Otherwise, we’d be swimming in pencil and crayon artwork, drowning, really.

I’ve been reminding my husband and daughters, “_____ doesn’t belong there. Please put it where it lives.” Everything must have a place to live that makes sense for its use and for our need for it, and I insist on it going back to its domicile as quickly as possible after our temporary need for it has ended.

When I get better organized, I always must show off my new setups. For instance, I did this last week with most of the electronics cords and little gadgets that had become tangled up in the small canvas bin they had previously occupied:

As always, I was pleased as punch with the result and made sure my husband had seen it, and that my 15-year-old, who’s old enough to really appreciate these things, had seen it as well. “Doesn’t it look great?” I asked like a child with a freshly-drawn piece of art for the fridge. “It looks so neat and tidy now, doesn’t it? So much better than before, right?”

I cleared out a drawer in my office credenza that previously was a holding bin for stuff I didn’t know what to do with and used the divider that came with that drawer and another drawer, which I didn’t really need to divide. I had thought about using a store-bought utensil divider or something similar, but this worked just fine in the end without a trip to the store. Yay, me!

I also thought I’d add in here my fancy-schmancy way of planning meals. Well, about a third of the time. I decided to print up a list of dinners I make on a regular basis. I put several line spaces between each and made each dinner item in big print. Then I laminated them, cut them into little rectangles, and put magnets on the back. I put them into zip baggies (I decided it would be easier season-wise to separate soups into a different baggie) and placed them in a drawer in my kitchen. I had a small whiteboard that’s magnetic, so I (try to) plan a week’s meals at a time by just going through my baggies and sticking meal magnets onto my white board. Then I can get an idea at a quick glance of what I plan to make for the week, what to shop for, etc. I think it’s pretty clever. Here’s what it looks like:

My husband likes to stop by garage sales when he passes them on a Saturday errand. When he brings things into the house, I have a hard time not snapping at him. “What?? I just gave away a bunch of stuff to the band rummage sale, and you’re bringing in more junk?” I moan. A couple of weeks ago, he managed to get a few things that were fairly useful, but he also got a board game we will likely never use; I just got rid of about five or six we never used. Argh.

Don’t mess up my neat house. Darn. Too late.