Happy Halloween

On Sunday the children carved their pumpkins. Phaedra's as the biggest, but it had mold inside. Sylvie scooped it out for her, then Phaedra decided Sylvie could just have it. Ezra's definitely reflected his age; it was more creative and had big enough openings to shed a fair bit of light. Phaedra's also had pretty big openings. Sylvie's had six faces that let out hardly any light at all; she was delighted!

 

 

 

 

 Tonight, they each put together their costumes with only minimal input. I'm not really the helpful sort in this department, and no one liked my idea of going as a laundry hamper.

 

So, Ezra went as an IRS agent; Jason got him some faux tax forms to hand out that taxed people candy. He made the briefcase out of a canning jar box and gorilla tape.

Phaedra went as a librarian. The glasses are some of Jason's. She felt that with the glasses way down on her nose she looked like her Grammy. That's "Little Women" under her arm.

Sylvie went as a witch. She likes anything that requires odious amounts of face paint. She wanted very much to look scary.

Jason took them trick or treating; they like for him to take them. Sylvie explained to Librarian Rose this morning that if I take them, they only get to go to two houses. Jason said there were not very many people out, and that not that many houses had a light on. I wonder if the weather scared people.

Peace Points

My beloved third child needs the world to respond to her; she needs to know if you like what she's doing, whether she does it better than anyone else. She will ask for, insist on, and demand attention from most anyone she feels comfortable with. If she really loves and trusts you, when all else fails, she will pinch, yell, jump, poke, do ANYTHING to get you to notice her. For the record, we are not a cold, distracted family; she just entered the world needing more attention than the other four of us can steadily give.

Her yearning for attention has resulted in some pretty negative interactions with her siblings, particularly Ezra. I have watched and tried to stay out of the way, believing pretty firmly that they will come to a workable solution for both of them. Seven-and-a-half years in, I've decided that there are too many negative patterns between the two of them, and I can see similar patterns extending into more of her interactions with all of us. It seems high time to do something.

Two weeks ago, I introduced the idea of "peace points"; these are tied to behaviors that either create or undermine peace. Being overly sensitive does not calm our environment, breathing into your sister's ear is disruptive to everyone, unobtrusively helping with another's chore makes life better for the entire family.

Each child starts the week with ten points. At the end of the week, if all three children have eight or more, they may each spend $1 on candy. If any child has 10 points, that person may have $2. (Candy is a hot commodity in our house; it's one of the upsides to deprivation in childhood.) Points may be regained, as well as lost. The trick here is that each child is dependent on the others to reap the reward, and they all actually like it when all of them have the same treat. They will each advocate for the others as the week comes to a close to make sure everyone has as many points as possible.

And finally, I see Sylvie trying to measure her responses to annoyances, like someone quietly enjoying a book or wanting her to put her shoes away. I see her trying to frame her wants and needs in a friendlier way. I see Ezra trying to be tolerant instead of provoked. I see Phaedra tempering some of her passive pettiness. The whole system is kind of a bother, because I am the banker of points, but two weeks in, it seems worth the effort.

Another Chicken Harvest

We bagged the chickens today, sending most to others' freezers, and tucking twenty into our own. The birds came in at a good weight, averaging 6.5 pounds. The first year, they averaged 6 and last year they were only 4.5.

The first year, we did not kill them until 13 weeks. They did not seem to gain much that last week, so we decided to kill them earlier the following year. Part of the deal is that once they get a certain size, they really eat a lot, so you have to compare what they might gain to the cost of feed.

Last year, we tried a different food that was not specifically formulated for maximizing growth. We also killed them at about 11 weeks. That was one depressing harvest, as we killed chicken after chicken that were so obviously smaller than the year before.

This year, we fed them "grower" food, and we supplemented with all of our waste milk. The past two years, we really didn't have much milk to spare for chickens. Since most of our milk is going into butter this year, and we're not sharing with a calf, that left gallons of skimmed milk for the chickens.

About a month ago, I helped a friend kill his chickens. His were a different variety, one that is more manipulated to grow big and fast, and I knew they would be bigger than ours. Still, I looked at them one week, and we both thought they looked a little small; the next week when we killed them, they averaged 8 pounds. I had a bit of chicken envy, and I upped the amount of milk our birds were getting.

A couple of weeks after that, a friend killed her chickens, which were a breed similar to ours, and hers all came in around 5.5 pounds. Now, maybe that sounds plenty big, but there is another meal on a six pound chicken; that half pound of meat really does make difference. Also, when you're putting 6 pound chickens in the freezer, none of the grain costs seem to matter; whereas when we sold 4.5 pound chickens at a price per pound that had counted on them being 6 pounds, it was painful. My friend's experience made me worry about whether ours would be big enough on execution day.

We picked up the chicken rig the evening before, and we felt pretty good about getting everything going, as we had used this setup the past two years. Well, harvest morning, we could not get this scalder to light. Jason worked and worked with it; he took the propane tank and had it topped off just in case that was the problem. Our friend showed up to help, and he worked on it. We got a huge pot of water heating on a propane burner, and still Jason and our friend tried to figure out the problem with the scalder. They actually had a good idea of the problem, but we were already two hours into our harvest and not a single chicken had been killed.

That's when Sylvie let all sixty chickens out of the fence.

Finally, chickens were rounded up, water was at temperature, and we were off. The rest of the day was uneventful. We realized that the scalder was nowhere near as important as the plucker and killing cones. We spent roughly 4 hours doing in 60 chickens; our friend, as well as Ezra and Phaedra learned how to eviscerate, Sylvie learned how to clean gizzards. It was quite a team operation.

Unfortunately, there were no free hands for a camera, so I'll try to describe the one thing I wished I had a picture of. At about 3:00, I looked at Jason, and he had chicken blood all down his neck, splattered across his face, and all over his clothes as he grimly set about killing the next chicken.

Popular Shorthand

My siblings and I share a repertoire of cartoon references that serve as conversational shortcuts. Ours is extensive due to the inordinate hours we spent in front of the television, but it even helped with my peer group in college. You know, we COULD sit at Quackenbush's discussing whether Tom or Jerry was the 'bad" guy; we were of course far too cerebral for that conversation.

I am realizing that this is something I am denying my children. They will be a little odd the same way I am when someone talks about football or more recent tv. I mention this because I feel a ridiculous pride in not having a television, but I also see that there is a social cost. I think of this girl in college who was just a bit off, and at the time, people attributed it to her not having a television when she was growing up.

The good news is that they do have peers in the same situation, and maybe, depending on where they choose to live, they'll have some sort of television-clueless cohort.

We also have started bringing a few things into their lives. Ezra, in particular, sees recent movies, and as the girls get older, they will, too. Jason keeps us in touch with newer music, although still not top 40 stuff. (How I remember listening to Casey Casem on a weekend mornings so I would know what band to like now!) As we get farther along this path, we'll have to continue to pick and choose. I know I'm supposed to say that all this popular stuff should not matter; it's their characters I should care most about. But I remember how much more I enjoyed life when I began to understand what it was my peers were interested in and wanted to talk about. Belonging, or being able to choose to belong, is an awesome tool. We are herd animals; even if we do not want to move with the herd, we should at least teach our children how to recognize a few landmarks.

Domestic Goddess

I was recently with another woman who has a completely different skill set from me, and I found myself comparing the two of us, and wondering whether I measured up. I like doing comparisons like this, because it helps me remember where I want to be, find a new way to go, or congratulate myself on what I'm doing. It also occasionally makes me feel like a failure.

The funny thing about this particular comparison is that it brought up thoughts I have regarding some of best friends as well. I started thinking that maybe I could only feel truly that I had become a domestic goddess when I regularly did almost everything each of these woman do. The list got pretty hilarious the longer I thought about it, and I encouraged my friends to chime in when they had something to add to the list.

So, here's my list; add your own items in the comment section if you feel I've overlooked something.

1. Homeschool.
2. Growing at least 50% of the food a family eats.
3. A tidy, presentable house at all times.
4. A bathroom your mother wouldn't mind using.
5. Each child always  having a homemade item to don.
6. Fresh, matching pajamas at bedtime for the children.
7. A well brushed dog.
8. A garden that's a delight to walk through.
9. Chickens are a must.
10. The chicken coop must be pristine- especially the nest boxes.
11. The chickens must USE the nest boxes if you're really a domestic goddess.
12. A pantry full of home canned and lactofermented goodness.
13. Fresh baked something every day.
14. Every meal must be a peaceful occasion. 
15. No sandwiches- unless all sandwich items were lovingly prepared by you.
16. Domestic goddesses do not have to own or shear sheep, but from roving to sweater, they must know the way.
17. Each family member must have a sweater from your labors.
18. Your yard must be beautiful.
19. The children's rooms must be inviting.
20. Daily mopping.
21. Homemade yogurt.
22. A happy spouse.
23. An empty laundry room due to all the laundry being ever clean and put away.
24. A calm answer to every child who ever makes any request.
25. Always ready.

Feminism

I remember being about eight when we were once driving home from church, my mother seething. This happened pretty often, and we three children sat silently, wondering which of us had misbehaved so badly during the service that she felt she had to drag us out of church. She took a deep breath and began to talk to us about what women do.

Her voice shook as she explained exactly why she worked. She told us how she was not happy staying home; she elaborated on how difficult it had been when my brother and I, only one year apart, were babies and my father spent so much time working. She mentioned other families in the church in which the mothers did stay home, and how for some of them, it worked well, and for others, the women simply suffered and looked gray. She talked all the way home, trying to make us understand how no one answer works for every woman, and how women need each other. She wanted us to understand that the women who stayed home were not the enemies of the women who worked, but they were all the same people trying to find the best solutions for their families.

I also remember my mother often saying how she would crawl into a warm bath with a razor blade if she ever found out she was pregnant again- not a coat hanger mind you, but a razor blade.

There's a Breeders song that goes, "Saw it on a wall, motherhood means mental freeze. Freezeheads!", and I wonder about the neighbor ladies I knew as I got older.  Her best friend was a mess and not our neighbor, but she was like my mother. They could talk for hours about entertainment esoterica or the Hapsburgs or czarist Russia. My mother only saw her a couple of times a year, but she's the only woman, besides my aunt, I remember my mother spending quality time with. Those neighbor ladies watched soap operas and and seemed rundown by their lives. Maybe my mother was fleeing that as much as her three demanding children.

I remember sitting beside my mother in the car one morning when she had taken a day off from work; she was a little sick, but really, she had planned a day just puttering around the house. Between her commute and her handicap, she was too tired at the end of most days to tackle housework, and weekends were not long enough for any real project. Mostly, our house was pretty filthy, but occasionally, she would take a day and deal with some area or another. This particular day, I turned up sick as well. We had just dropped my siblings off at school, and she was headed back home. She said, "I know you're not all that sick, but I figured you needed the day with me."

And there it is; I just needed my mother.

I stay at home because I wanted her so badly. Staying at home has increased my questioning of what I was taught about feminism. I think my mother's speech in the car that morning defines what I believe. I like to think more women know this now--we cannot have it all, and we've given up trying. We know we have to pick.

Her generation also shook the foundations of authority, giving me the breathing room to figure some things out for myself. While she believed fully in experts, she somehow instilled a mile-wide streak of doubt in her children.

That doubt led our family to homebirth and nursing and cloth diapers, things many in her generation had really moved away from. It led to home schooling and homesteading. My life is probably pretty far removed from what my mother might have imagined for me; she might have chastised me for wasting opportunities her generation fought for. Still, I know she believed what she told us in that car that long ago Sunday. I know someone had deeply hurt her for what she had decided was best for our whole family, and I know she would understand that my decision might not look the same but is based on that exact foundation.

Playing Dolls

Ezra had no interest in dolls until Phaedra was big enough to play with them. For those of you who are tutting at all our culture does to deny boys this beautiful expression of caring for ourselves and learning to nurture, trust that Ezra had plenty of opportunities and gentle encouragement to play dolls. Sure, there were occasional forays; I have a sweet picture of him when he was almost three nursing a baby doll in a sling fashioned from a play silk. I think this had more to do with imitation than with playing at nurturing, because it never seemed to develop into the same sort of play that his backyard engineering feats did.

Phaedra chose to sleep with a doll around the time she turned two, and this doll still resides in her bed, with a threadbare face and mittened hands. But sleeping with a dolls and playing dolls are not really the same. I had hoped she would play dolls, and Ezra would join her, and they could both try their hands at nurturing. There was some doll play, but it never seemed to grab either of them. They spent more time telling stories and swinging and building with blocks. Phaedra definitely likes dolls, but she does less pretending with them, and more maintenance, like making clothes and smoothing hair.

Now, Sylvie really plays dolls. She dresses them and carries them places and worries sporadically about their feelings. She always hopes someone will be fooled that she's carrying a real baby.  She cajoles Ezra and Phaedra to play with her, and she always wants them to play dolls. Sylvie is the one that keeps a storyline going, so that everyone will just stick to dolls.

The problem is that Ezra is the most likely to say yes, and his babies are always so poorly behaved. To me, it looks like doll rebellion. His dolls always wake the others from their naps; they refuse to be potty trained or dressed nicely. They pinch the other babies to make them cry. Sylvie announced that Ezra is banished from doll play until his dolls can act right. (I love this stuff!)

So, the other day, Ezra is quietly and pointedly crying behind me as I'm washing dishes, and I ask the question he's silently begging me to ask, "What's the matter?"

His tears fall faster as he explains that Sylvie is excluding him. I look out the window and see the girls playing peacefully; I reflect on all I know about my plastic grandchildren; I ask Ezra if he knows why he's being excluded.

There's a powwow and then,

This lasted a solid hour. I always wonder when this moment will be the last like this I'll see.