Frilly tea party girls!

Hello again. My tea party-picnic habit is catching on around here!

Yesterday my girls and I did another family picnic at the park for breakfast. This time our picnic was at 8:45am - ish, well before our scheduled 10 am play date there with dear friends. While I was packing up the picnic at home Elena, age 2, suggested that we pack enough hot cross buns for our friends to have, too. I was so proud!!!

Again, it was lovely to sit in the quiet morning and have an al fresco breakfast with my little ones, with all our vintage linen and my china cup. As I poured my tea I thought of my own dear grandma, who is now in Heaven, who always packed a thermos of hot water and a tea bag to bring with her when she was going out.

After our breakfast was over and we were playing on the playground with sand toys, bubbles, a ball and the swing set, it was wonderful to watch our friends as they picnicked with the snack we'd packed them. The mother and 3 daughters made a lovely tableau - daintily eating hot cross buns while sitting on our red and white checkered picnic cloth, in the shade of an olive tree.

Then this morning, little Elena invited me to have a tea party with her on the living room floor! She had spread a baby blanket on the rug and had her china doll-sized tea set out. "Mama, come have a a tea party with me." she beckoned. "What kind of tea is it?" I humored her, wondering what sort of answer my 2 year old would come up with.

"English breakfast!" she announced cheerily, holding up her tea pot.

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather.

You can bet that I attended that tea party right away, after giving her a big hug and telling her how much I love her. Oh, I almost cried I was so happy.

Tea time with our little girls

Took the sweet little girls on a picnic in the park for breakfast today! It worked beautifully, I'm so pleased. I used a real basket, along with some of my great-grandmother's crocheted table linens, a quilt I made and a red and white checkered cloth that is sooooo classically picnic-y. It was so delightful. Brought along scones, a jar of jam, fruit and yogurt, a thermos of hot tea, and a real teacup and saucer, each swathed in tea towels for safety. It all worked so well, and as it was just me and my daughters, nothing felt show-offy or awkward.

Lately I have been feeling lonely for fellow tea drinkers, nostalgic for tea times shared with good friends who understand (that is, as Anne Shirley would say, kindred spirits). Kindred spirits who do not think it pretentious or irritating to use cloth and china even on a picnic.

--in case you are new to my own story, I am new-ish to my current region and am thousands of miles away from my New England tea drinker family and friends!--

Somewhere along the line I began to feel sad about not being near those friends, and then I decided that I should just go ahead and have tea parties with my own little girls. Even if they do only drink from sippy cups, and even if we are in the hot desert where everyone seems devoted only to cold drinks.

Today I found great freedom in simply packing up our wee picnic breakfast just exactly the way I wanted to, and eating it with the girls in the park. If we had been meeting anyone on a play date I would have felt like a show-off with such a basket. But since it was simply a family affair, I didn't have to consider the perceptions or reactions of others, and I was free to do things in exactly my own way, which was an incredible relief. God makes everyone differently, of course, and I think He made me to do things with frills. For me, it isn't showing off, its just the way I am.

Madeline and Elena were blissfully unaware of any of my over-processing, and they greatly enjoyed the novelty of eating breakfast at the park.

There was a Highland Festival at the park this morning, so during our breakfast we were serenaded by distant bagpipes, and lots of kilted musicians and Scottish enthusiasts strode past us. It was marvelous.

Houseguests: Preparing for them, then enjoying them

Enjoying company is a little easier for me these days. Now that I avoid overhostessing, things are better. There is still a tremendous amount of energy required to prepare for house guests; even a generally clean household needs a few extras before guests can comfortably be absorbed into the home.

I feel like I have read a lot about Christian hospitality and how our attitudes are supposed to be welcoming and how we are to show love to travelers and friends by opening our homes to others. We read in the Bible about how the early church met in homes, about how Chloe (wasn't it Chloe?) opened her home so believers could meet, learn, and worship together. And then there was that couple in the Old Testament who had Elisha over to eat and sleep often on his travels through their village. As I prepared for house guests this time, I thought about that couple. They really were not just fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants hospitable, they were organized. As you recall, they built Elisha a room onto the side of their house, so that he would have his own special place to stay whenever he needed it. Wow. Now that's hospitality.

Hospitality is hard, at least for me. People don't talk about this aspect of hospitality, at least not while I'm in earshot. Maybe no one wants to seem unfriendly, so they gloss over all the upheaval hospitable behavior can cause. We need to be hospitable anyway, because God told us to be. While I was preparing for guests, here are some things I did:

-Planned our flexible menu and grocery shopped accordingly.

-Baked some breakfast treats that are fast "before rushing off to the 8a.m. church service" food options for everyone.

-Talked with my toddler about our guests to prepare her.

-Moved our potty training area to a guest-free zone.

-Put a welcome sign up on the door of the guest area, along with some welcoming toddler masterpieces.

- removed often-used items out of the guest room, in our case this consisted of baby care and baby clothing items

- gave the guest room an extra dusting, sweeping, and overall freshening-up.

- Washed the quilt and linens on the guest bed and brought the air mattress out of storage.

- Washed the guest bathroom really well, after removing all the children's bath toys and towels from it.

-Set out fresh towels and new bars of soap and extra TP.

-Prepared the dining area for guests.

So while I did all that, over the course of the week which led up to the arrival of the guests, I thought about how truly hard it is to do all of that in addition to keeping up with the needs of our household and our family. Because that little list I just wrote doesn't cover any of my usual must-do housekeeping activities, and all of those household cycles (laundry, dishes, meals, childcare, joyfully repeat) continued throughout all that preparation.

And people ask homemakers what we do all day! *smile and chuckle*

Anyway, the act of opening our homes to others requires work, organization, creativity, and then when the guests come we need to show them patience and kindness and attention (yet not overhostess, of course) and enjoy them.

It seemed like a great deal of the preparation involved physically removing our own things from the guests' space, anticipating what their needs would be, and providing for them accordingly. It felt like an object lesson, like I was learning that hospitality is putting someone else's needs first.

So now the guests have been with us a couple of days and I'm realizing that despite the enormous

amount of work, it is so great to have 2 new personalities in our daily routine. They have transformed our household into a place with a lot more laughter and a lot more goofing around, it is really enjoyable. The visit is a treat for all of us. I am glad they have come.

Now I'm off to go prepare for a company dinner and a company breakfast while the little ones nap.

"How do you spend your day?" the trouble explaining homemaking

It happened again: another person asked me a variation of the question "what do you you do all day?/ how do you spend your time at home? / how can you stand so much time at home? etc. etc." This time the question truly was asked in the nicest possible manner, with absolutely no judgement or meanness.

I remain baffled and shaken up by it, though, because it was asked by a pretty good friend with whom I have a great deal in common. We're both Christians, about the same age, we have the same number of children (who are even the same age), and we live in the same city. We have been getting together each Tuesday morning at the park for a play date with one other family and have been having a picnic snack mid-morning.

And today conversation amongst us three mothers led to lunch food ideas - "what do you usually give your kids for lunch?" she asked, looking for ideas for her own routine, no doubt. I mentioned that yesterday we had leftover dinner food at lunch: fish, broccoli and baked potato. Boring, balanced, tasty, easy enough to just reheat and eat. Trying to keep the conversation going I politely asked how she usually handles lunch. She pointed at the picnic spread of portable sandwiches, fruit, crackers and water and said that they have this every day, that they never have lunch at home, they are always out and always have something pretty similar to what she had packed. I was stunned. "You never eat lunch at home?"

Never. Eat. Lunch. At. Home. The picnic lunches she packs are perfectly healthy, that wasn't what stunned me, it is just baffling to me that she can prefer to be out of the house so much on a regular-like-clockwork sort of basis.

Conversation progressed and we sort of compared (in a very friendly way, no animosity or argument that I sensed) how we each function.

My house and life would be a wreck if I were not home most mornings and afternoons - the continual cycles of household cleanliness, food preparation, child care rhythms all keep me utterly occupied. Rarely in my life now do I get to indulge in the lovely sewing projects or recipe experiments that I used to do, and that in a future season I will once again do. Right now, with my about-to-turn-3 yr old and my 11 month old my life is a lot more about keeping my head above water and keeping things fairly clean, so that we can just get ourselves happily to the next meal, the next bath, the next outing, the next nap time. I don't mean to express those thoughts in a desperate way.

But! I was stunned when my friend said that after they do their morning routine of getting dressed, breakfasted, and getting the kitchen cleaned up, she and the kids are completely bored by 8 or 8:30am. So they pack a lunch and go out - to a different playgroup, children's museum, library story time, Bible study group or park for each day of the week!

Curious about our routine and about how we do not live like that, she posed that dreaded question which i already mentioned. I then felt my brain seize up and my words refused to flow at first. I thought of my online homemaker blog friends (bless you, fellow happy homemakers! I am so encouraged by you and wish we all lived in the same neighborhood!) and wanted to phrase my words/explanations to her in a loving, inspiring way that would help her.

And I hope I did help, though I suspect I didn't. I mentioned that my girls play well independently, even Baby Madeline, and are always busy with something, and that I feel that my homemaking activities are never really done, so I am always busy, too. I shared all of what I just shared with you, readers, and I also mentioned that as a Christian I think of homemaking as a calling, and I mentioned Titus 2's admonition for women to be keepers at home. This is an important job, and if we don't do it, it will not get done. However, we were more focused on the question of how to fill the day, rather than whether to be homemakers or not, so bringing up Titus 2 felt a little off-subject.

So here we are back home from our morning out and now the little girls are napping. Although I have 5,000 things I need to see to instead (see note) I just had to blog about this, because i have no other outlet for such an ordinary-yet-extraordinary conversation.

Note:

Things I need to do:

defrost meat for dinner

clean both high chairs

Take dry diapers out of the dryer

Empty dishwasher

scrub the bathtub

take a stack of cardboard boxes to the garage

sweep the dining room

carpet sweep the living room

mail 2 letters

update the grocery list, while finalizing next week's menu in anticipation of house guests

prepare 2 loads of laundry for 7pm when I can once again use the washing machine

get to the filing my husband asked me to do

do the ironing

and if I were to go on and write out all my other tasks that need doing, goodness gracious, we would all be here forever. When someone asks me what I do all day, or if I am bored with things (who has time to be bored? and who can get bored with 2 adorable little girls to care for?), I get rattled inside and don't quite know how to unrattle myself.

How do you respond to such questions? And how do you share, in a loving manner, how to become content at home? I would looooove to hear how other homemakers handle such things, or how you stay/become unrattled.

Update, on Wednesday morning:

Ok, so I shared my concerns with my husband last night. And he listened. But he just calmly asked me why I was so dismayed by that conversation, and continued to ask me variations of "why" until I began to feel .... like maybe I'm just crazy? Are there other homemakers out there who understand me here, or am I the problem? I could really use a little encouragement.

Loaves and Fishes Thoughts

For months now, I have been feeling wordless, or at least inarticulate when I try to write anything. Letters, journal entries, notes - - all have been few and short. All my energies instead have been funneled into my roles at home.

I remember how Jesus took the little boy's wee lunch of the loaves and fishes and multiplied it to feed the masses. I'm going to be praying that He will do similar miracles with my small amount of energy these days: take it and multiply it so I can bless my family with good wife-ing, mother-ing and homemaking. Dear Father, Please stretch my energies and multiply my efforts so I can fulfill my role here and be the girl You want me to be. It is so much easier to read about homemaking and mothering than to actually do good homemaking and mothering! I need your help, please. Amen.

Bible reading at home with children

Hello friends!
By the end of summer, I thought to myself "hm, I guess I took some time off from blogging!"

Well, I hope you are all doing wonderfully. I guess I needed some time off from this.

Lately, I have kept my study Bible open on the dining table, and have been picking it up and reading a few Psalms out loud with the little girls each morning.

Elena, who is 29 months now (!), listens with interest, and at the end of a Psalm usually smiles and says: "Another one!"

This warms my heart! wow.

So, the other day I read a Psalm, and then another, to which she replied, shaking her head "That not a good one." !! What should my response have been? I contained myself and did not laugh as hard as I would have liked to, but wow, that struck my funny bone.

Now that she knows our routine, Elena will point to the open Bible and ask me to read some to her.

I'm glad that I read about the way Ruth Bell Graham had her Bible open on the kitchen counter as a young mom, and she would snatch a verse here and there in spare moments. This new household ritual of ours, reading a few Psalms together each morning, is really wonderful and wonderfully easy.

We have long been in the habit of having Bible time from the children's several Bible story books, but this is great having some readings from the actual Bible.

Traditional Marriage Roles are Working!

This week I have been finding great refreshment in the roles that my husband and I agree to fulfill in our home. It has always been one of my greatest desires to have a home that is a haven.

The home in which I grew up was very clearly not a haven.

So I know, in a special way, how important one is. (Though let me clarify that there are all different ways to learn how important a haven-like home is!).

My husband is the breadwinner and I am not. I am the homemaker and my husband is not. He does the outside-of-the-house tasks, and a very tiny few of the inside tasks. I do not do the outside-of the-house tasks.

This agreement of ours to embrace traditional roles works SO well. We each know what our own daily and long term tasks are, and we nearly never trip on one another when it comes to who is expected to do what.

Before we got officially engaged we talked about what we hoped for in a marriage and in a home, and honestly, I was quite intimidated to bring it up - this fact that I wanted to be a full time homemaker even before children. I didn't know anyone young who lived like that. But I knew that I was called to do that. Phew. He wanted that, too! In fact, he was thrilled that I wanted that.

I get tense when I hear about couples who are trying to go into marriage without this sort of plan. But I know of no tactful way to warn them....I am not perfect, we are not perfect, I'm not in a position to tell others how to live their lives. But we can show others by quiet example how well this works, right?

When the husband is not prepared to be a provider and the wife is forced to work outside the home, my heart aches, and their home is not what it could be. But this is so normal a situation, even within the Christian community, unfortunately.

Deep sigh. I have been thinking on this lately, as some of those I love are caught up in such situations.

At one of my bridal showers all the young ladies gathered around me and laid hands on me and prayed for our marriage, and prayed that our home would be a haven. This was very moving, and those prayers have certainly been answered.

Let's pray for families!

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who settest the solitary in families: We commend to thy continual care the homes in which thy people dwell. Put far from them, we beseech thee, every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperence, patience, godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy wedlock, have been made one flesh. Turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents; and so enkindle fervent charity among us all, that we may evermore be kindly affectioned one to another; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

From the Book of Common Prayer, p 829.