Letters from Pemberley

Derek’s out in Phoenix for work, and this is what I woke up to:

And this is what I took 3 hours putting up by myself last night (with lots of phone help from my dad!):

And this is what happens when you leave the box of Cheerios out:

And this is Tommy at the Kohl Children’s Museum with our friend Caroline:

Tommy really loves his music, and he’s figured out how to change CDs and work his CD player.  After a couple of tumbles off his stepstool, we moved the CD player off the dresser onto the floor and moved the CDs out of his dresser into the compartment in the step stool.  Now he has his own little music corner where he’s been sitting and listening to “Waltzing Matilda” all morning!

My old college chum Alicia introduced me to Cheryl Medelson this fall, and I was so impressed with this book that I bought half a dozen copies for Christmas presents.   Home Comforts is like having your mom and grandma write down all the housekeeping tips they never told you or told you but you forgot.  The author is a lawyer (!) who loves to keep house.  Not in a Martha Stewart artsy way (because my house is never going to be like that–I don’t have that gifting), but in a practical, this-is-why-we-do-things-this-way way.  She explains the basic science behind cleaning and safety procedures, gives sample routines for keeping your stuff nicer for long, and inspires readers to think of housework as a means to making your home, well, more homey.  And it’s scintillating reading. 

Keeping house, Mendelson explains, is a lost art.  With the “liberation” of the 60s and 70s came a whole generation who was never taught how to keep an organized, clean house.   Burning bras took precedence over the art of laundering delicates.  And even if women stayed home with their kids in the 80s and 90s, many of them lost the explanations behind the housekeeping habits that their mothers or grandmothers had.  I grew up never airing my bed because I honestly had no idea why my grandma did it.  Now I know that fresh air fights the growth of dust mites (which make us sicker and break down our mattresses and pillows faster with their waste and dead bodies).   In almost every chapter, I felt like I had an aha! moment that just helped explain to me some aspect of homemaking that had me confused, frustrated, or disgusted.  One of the best topics of an early chapter is “neatening,” the habit of putting things away whereby you never let your house explode out of control.  When you’re done eating, put your dishes directly into the dishwasher.  The extra step of sitting in the sink or the counter is needlessly overwhelming to a tired mommy at the end of a long day.  (I don’t seem to remember that the author has a dishwasher in her tiny NY apartment–I’m applying her principles to our own lifestyle.)  When you’re done reading a book, put it back on its place on the shelf.  If you’re still reading a book, leave it out–projects in process are part of what makes your home homey and lived-in–but have a place for it (end table, etc).  At the end of the day, make the kids pick up their toys and put them away so that you’ll start the morning with a clear living room floor.  Get the idea?  Now that we have our small group here every week, I feel the pressure to have the home picked up.  But if Derek and I have been good about neatening as we go throughout the week, I don’t have to spend hours on Wednesday in a panic hiding piles of stuff in a laundry basket in my bedroom. 

There could be two pretty opposite responses to this book.  One person could read it and feel overwhelmed by the seemingly unachievable standard she gives.  Looks like negative amazon reviews are saying that.  Or another person can love it as a reference and as inspiration for how to make keeping house more streamlined and consistent.  I’m in the latter camp!  For those who are overwhelmed and have this picture of the author dragging her beds outside into the sunshine every afternoon and hand bleaching the counters every evening, I have to admit that I used to think that about clean houses, too.  Derek’s mom is an excellent housekeeper, and I definitely felt out of place the first couple times I visited the Mullers because everything had a place and I was afraid to put a towel or pillow in the wrong place!  I have to laugh now because I am extremely comfortable there, partially because I know where everything goes, and because there’s not clutter or chaos stressing me out.  I think I’ve become more of an everything-in-its-place person about toys than my in-laws!  Now a really messy house is oppressive and stressful and a clean house is welcoming and relaxing.  I also don’t feel obliged to do everything on Mendelson’s list right now.  And while my house is generally picked up, I still panic before Bible study to get things really picked up and cleaned.  But I’m trying to incorporate one of her tips into my routines each month.  I’ve started washing all bedding in hot water (to kill things living in it–warm water does nothing, so if you’re afraid to wash in hot, you might as well do cold), airing our beds (pulling the covers down when we get up and making them when we come up to get dressed after breakfast), filling my washer up with water before I add the clothes to let the detergent dissolve better (I’ll switch stuff to the dryer and clean out the lint trap while I wait to add clothes to the washer), doing my chores on a weekly schedule (especially limiting laundry to two days a week–extremely freeing for me because if I don’t get the dress shirts done on Mon, I’ll start with them on Thurs but don’t spend every other day wondering if there’s stuff I need to put in the dryer), and running the dishwasher every night and unloading it first thing in the morning (because I’ve trained Tommy to put his dishes right in the dishwasher now, so it has to be unloaded by the end of breakfast!).  That last one is my big project for Feb, in fact, so feel free to ask me if I’ve unloaded my dishwasher today!  I figure that I can spend a month working on each new habit, so it won’t be overwhelming, but in 5 years, I’ll have 60 new and better housekeeping habits. 

I highly recommend this book!

I’m so grateful for Tommy right now.  I’ve been feeling quite discouraged in the past few days over how imperfectly I’m parenting him and how far he has to go, but I do want to praise him when he does something well!  The battles over making him pick up his own toys have paid off, and this week, whenever I’ve asked him to put his books back on the shelf or his duplos away, he’s done it.  Really well.  On Wednesday our day was crazy and Derek had a dinner meeting, so I had to clean the house and feed the kids and put them to bed alone while preparing to host our small group by myself at 7.  I asked Tommy to pick up the living room, and I went in there to find it spotless.  I was so emotionally fried by that point that I just started crying.  God knew that I couldn’t do everything by myself, and he gave me a little not-yet-3-year-old helper to help me get the job done.  I have been making a point to tell people about this in front of Tommy because I want him to know how proud I am of him!  So if you see him in the near future, make a point of telling him I told you!

When Elizabeth’s banana got everywhere, we decided it was bath time!

“At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed.  It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.”

–Marianne Dashwood, age 16

My students and I have to laugh at Marianne as we discuss her this week–surely 16 is too early to know everything about life!  But it’s funny…at the ancient age of 27, I’ve recently realized that I am changing my opinions on several things I thought I would.  A wise older woman told me before Tommy was born that parenting is a journey of compromising your ideals.  At the time I was self-righteously sure that this comment was a weenie’s way out!  I had thought through things (at the mature age of 24) and knew what I was doing–I had no idea what my friend really meant.  Three years later, Derek and I are still committed to the fundamental goals–raising our children to love God, for starters.  But some of our ideals were unrealistic and ill-informed.  The reality of life–and some of the difficult situations we’ve faced since having kids–means that I can’t be the supermom I had constructed in my mind.  I want to have a perfectly clean house, decorate like my most creative girlfriends, have company over every week, cook gourmet from-scratch meals, teach online English classes, be involved in my church and in the community, cultivate deep and lasting friendships with a variety of women, practice my crafty hobbies, stay intellectually challenged, breastfeed each child for a full year, get back to my pre-pregnancy weight after every child, teach Tommy French, Latin, and Greek by age 3 (just two weeks left to get that one done!), oh…and be there for my kids whenever they need me (let’s not think about homeschooling 6 kids eventually).  So maybe I’m a little overambitious!  It takes constant discernment, not auto-pilot, to decide each new year how to parent, how to live out our Christian faith in the place God has us at the time, and how to be involved (or not involved) with those around us.  Lately I’ve been convicted that I need to go back and apologize to older, wiser people–my mom being the first one on the list–whose wisdom I ignored in my immature overconfidence.  And I’ve realized the need to sit at the feet of older, more experienced women in the church, not just other young moms who probably are still growing in discernment, too!  (But Kristen, we still need to discuss kid poop several times a week, so don’t stop calling me!)  In all humility, I’m still figuring out this Proverbs 31 thing.

Tommy (at the dinner table): Put.  Mommy, what is that noise?  I did hear a noise by my bottom, and it went “Put”.

I’m looking forward to 20 more years of this…

This weekend we got together with the Simpsons and Talcotts again–this time, in Grand Rapids.  I only got 3-4 hours of sleep each night and was dead last in all 4 (or 5?) of the games we played, so I’m kindof in recovery mode.  We got some great pictures touring the fire station and getting ready for church, though!

Yesterday was lots of fun–Elizabeth attempted to crawl several times…

…Tommy actually fell asleep during Quiet Rest Time (on his Bible, no less!)…

…and today both kids have been cheerful and helpful as we ran a zillion errands before heading to the Simpsons’ this afternoon, made two batches of muffins (Whole Food’s 365 gluten-free muffin mix is highly recommended by Tommy) for the weekend, and generally got stuff done all morning!

I was so excited to realize at lunch time that Elizabeth is getting her first tooth!  I saw it just under the skin in her gum as I was feeding her, and I was quite surprised that she hasn’t been fussy.

Welll……

It’s definitely cutting through now (as in the past hour).  My little girl doesn’t wake up screaming from a nap for no reason.  Tylenol and Hyland’s teething gel have yet to set in.  I feel a bit of something now–I think it’s coming tonight or tomorrow!