Surprise! What To Expect When You Are Not Expecting: A First Foster Placement

I wrote this post right in the midst of having our first long term foster placement. I didn't publish then because it all felt so new and I wasn't sure if I was qualified to talk about it. Several years later, I am happy I found it so I can publish it now.

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Just when we thought it wouldn't happen, when we were debating whether it should or not, when we were really super comfortable with life... It Happened.
A foster placement.
A baby.
A really little one.
Surprise!
I have been practicing the transition to three children on and off for a while with respite care, so that's not so bad. There have been good surprises like a newfound maturity in my youngest daughter as she takes up the mantle of Big Sister. There have been bad surprises like when the bathroom sink started leaking, the girls were fighting, and I was trying to change a diaper with a social worker at the door all at the same time. Keepin' it real.
But mostly the surprises have been kind of superficial. I'm not ready to be deep yet. I have a baby. My brain is fried. I thought that because I wouldn't be recovering postpartum things would be easier. I won't kid you: It's easier, just not in the areas and levels I expected.

Expectation: I'll have more energy.
Reality: For a few nights I was so sore I couldn't sleep from doing all of the squats and arm curls a baby brings! And anyway, not breastfeeding means you actually have to get up and wake up at night. On the other hand, not having all those crazy hormones and having had a big human pushed out of me means my husband is still attractive to me, so... yay!

Expectation: I'll take it slow once the baby is born.
Reality: My house has never been this clean on the regular since ever. Having social workers over constantly really puts the fire under me. Plus no one comes to help you recover or bring meals. And instead of getting a pass from doing things, there's a whole round of extra appointments for the baby: I reference the above statement about the frequent visits of social workers. Still, I didn't push a human being out, so I'm in a better position to handle it.

Expectation: Some people like bottle feeding better. Maybe it'll grow on me!
Reality: Nope. Still nope. You know how they always say to drink a glass of water when you sit down to breastfeed? I was good about that with the girls, but bottle feeding takes me two hands, and I am incredibly dehydrated. I think that's what has shocked me the most. I thought I would be better at self care. So that's a goal.
P.S. In retrospect I also missed the quiet gentle bonding of breastfeeding, and overall I think the baby missed it too. This is not to say that bottle feeding is bad, or that you can't bond, but that I did notice a difference having done it both ways several times over.

Expectation: I didn't really know what to anticipate with my children's reactions.
Reality: There is a degree to which it is stressful for them to share mommy with another person, and we didn't really prepare them for that the way we would have if I had been pregnant. There was nothing obvious that signaled that change was coming! For the most part they have been really happy and really helpful with the baby. At the same time, their fuses are quite short. Tears are coming easily, and misunderstandings abound. I may have been accused of evil step-motherhood a time or two. It's been important to celebrate their new roles, reinforce what routines we can salvage, and acknowledge the changes that are hard. I am praying that a few weeks will find us with a new, less tearful normal.

Expectation: Dance will need to go on hold for a while.
Reality: Yep. Night time feedings are kicking my butt, but I have plane tickets to dancy things, so miraculously a-dancing I will go, at least once this month. Once a month is probably doable right? [Side note: I must say doable often, because the girls sort all undertakings into the categories "Doable" and "Not-Doable."]
P.S. I ended up dancing at least twice a month throughout babyhood. Toddlerhood is kicking my butt though!

Six Things I Learned From Fostering

A few years ago I wrote about why I feel fostering is important here. I stand by every word.

We did respite care for a while, and then were placed with a baby boy whom we have since adopted. Our home is now closed to fostering as we focus fully on the children we have. I feel like this process has taken all of my personhood for a while. It's probably a good sign that I feel like I can talk about it now.

So in retrospect here are a few important things that I wasn't expecting about the foster journey.

Redemption is hard. I knew that beforehand in the way that I knew my bedroom might smell like a man when I got married and shared my room with a man. It seemed like “maybe” it would smell which through mental gymnastics really means “maybe not!” or that it might be romantic and musky, or that the pungent masculine aroma might have to do with sheets not being changed often enough. But no. It’s not a housekeeping issue, and it’s not romantic, and it is a certain part of living with a dude. 

Redemption is hard, and I don’t mean maybe. Redemption in this case is about choosing to take the consequences for possibly generations of bad circumstances and bad choices off of a child and taking it on yourself. Competence won’t hurt, but it doesn’t get you off scot-free. Like the terrain of a Bear Hunt, you can’t go over or under or around it. You have to go through it, and it’s messy. There's no "maybe not." It isn't romantic. No one is filming you stroking a cherub's hair in the sunset. It's just hard. To the degree it is hard it is also deeply good and right and necessary. It is enlightening, and I feel like I better understand the redemption that comes through Christ as a result of slogging through our own little mini story. 

Doing the “right thing” doesn’t always feel like the right thing. When our son first came to us he seemed pretty well cared for, and people who knew his mother had some positive things to say about her. As much as she had made some choices I questioned, she had also made some I could really get behind. I was filled with horror. What if I was playing for the wrong team, depriving a mother and child of one another? What if the grand act of selflessness people were lauding me for, to my confusion, was actually destructive? I finally concluded that I hadn’t been the one to make any of the decisions involved except to open my arms, and my job was to love this child as hard as I could while the decision makers weighed his next move. That wasn’t the end of feeling wrong though. Each time I had to weigh my bio children’s needs against that of a newcomer's, each time I had to evaluate how to interact with a birth mother, each time I was asked to take another child and had to say yes or no, there was no angels-trumpeting-Mayor-presents-you-with-the-key-to-the-city-parade-worthy kind of “Yes! This is right!” feeling for any of the choices. We have just had to use our heads, use our training, and try to give every person involved neither more nor less than what they truly need. 

People are much more supportive about fostering than about adoption, and the key is finality. People think that fostering is harder than adoption. The number one thing I hear is “I couldn’t open my heart to a child and have them taken away.” The uncertainty is what really tugs the heart strings. So many horror stories circulate about relatives coming to claim a beloved foster child at the 11th hour before adoption. Signing up for that sounds crazy to many people, like volunteering to get your heart broken. In contrast, the narrative with adoption is revealed by the phrase people use, “Forever Family.” It sounds just like hot chocolate and Christmas carols. People think when an adoption is- listen for that language -Finalized, it’s over and everyone is safe and everyone is happy, and we celebrate by going to Disney for a week, roll credits on the family photo of us in front of Cinderella’s castle. 

In reality the adoption journey is no more completed in a courtroom than a marriage is complete at the altar. 

At the end of the day, in the situation of a foster child being placed outside your home you can say after much struggle “I did my best and I hope they are okay, but it is out of my hands.” There is a lot of grief to that.

There is another kind of grief that people don’t rally around as enthusiastically when you realize that you must continue to do your best every single day into the future and redemption is hard and you don’t know where the energy will come from. You signed up for it. Suck it up! It sounds like whining to say “This is hard, this is harder than fostering” but for us at least it has been.  

There is always grief: My theory is that post part depression is about hormones but also about grief. I got PPD symptoms with foster children too. Grief when new children come and your schedule and family dynamics change. Grief about sharing stuff, grief in saying goodbye to free time. Grief when children leave. Grief over the too-quiet. Grief wondering where they are, and calculating how old they are this year. Grief is a part of life. Grief means you have loved. It makes the shadows no lighter to know this. 

There is joy. I wish you the mega-watt joy of introducing a foster child to something they have never experienced before, like a real theater movie, or putting together a Lego, or cooking as a family. Many foster children have never been sung to. They want to hold your hand crossing the street and read a million stories just to sit in your lap. Some will accept literally any affection and positive interaction they can get. Especially as a respite provider you can basically be a fairy godmother of positivity. There is no one else knocking down doors to spoil these children and it means a lot. 

The joy of social workers and judges really took me by surprise. They see the worst humanity has to offer every day. They see addiction and mental illness and blood curdling abuse, they deal with mystery fluids in their cars, and acting out in public. They are trying the nearly impossible task of finding adoptive families for teens with juvie records, and that’s all just part of the job! Then while they are trying to do their jobs racist people berate them for working with families of another color, and people wonder aloud why they do what they do, or whether they could make it in a “real job.” But seriously. The family court judges preside over the official affairs of generations of a family so they have been watching the equivalent of a ten car pileup of life choices for years. Everyone has tears of joy when something goes right for a little one. It is the most beautiful thing.   

Three Year Old Tantrums– Making Peace

Three year old tantrums are like tsunamis. You don’t know how big the cataclysm will be until it’s on top of you, and you can’t stop it once it has started. You just have to be prepared beforehand and get to higher ground. 

As my daughters have moved from the developmental stage identifying themselves with me to seeking individuality and choices, the transition has been rocky and full of temper tantrums. As much as I would like to point fingers and blame their tender youth, I myself am not always the example of maturity I wish to be. I try to let myself off the hook because I am not a yeller, but I’ll say it before someone else rats me out: Bull-headedness and snarling are patterns God convicts me about regularly. Oh God, you multi-tasker, you! Using me disciplining my kids to discipline me! 

So here we are with long, massive meltdowns in very public places, but that doesn’t even matter because I happen to know you can still hear that little voice shrieking inside the house from down the block. Thank God we don’t live in an apartment at this point!

As I said, there’s no stopping it: The element of surprise is impotent. Punitive action and reasoning are equally fruitless. It takes a good 20-30 min. before distraction is an option. Mostly tantrums just have to be forestalled before they start. 

Sure, I know that means eating real meals at regular intervals. Of course it means getting regular sleep. Gee, thanks, parenting sites. I'd never have thought of that on my own!

The key for me was realizing what my daughter was trying to accomplish with her tantrums. On the surface they seem whimsical –in a bad way– but for her it is all about feeling like her rights were trampled on and having no recourse. Her solution might not be the same as your child's solution because her reasons may be different than your kid's. But if you think it may help, read on! 

What has really helped is having a family peacemaking strategy. The work of making peace is not best done by the clear-headed outside observer. It has to start in the heart of the person who is angry and sees the wrong. We have found my daughter's temper escalates when she sees no recourse for due process and justice.

My idea and my children’s ideas of justice don’t often coincide at first, but having a calm, consistent road to travel together makes a difference.

Here are the tools I want to give them: A desire for justice, capacity for mercy, a chance to cool down, a template for respectful discourse, empathy, and experience with un-begrudging compromise. The terrible thing is that this list doesn’t describe my heart of hearts! My own desire and practice are far from perfect, so this is for me too. 

My efforts at cool down time and respectful discourse had so far been blown away in the blast of living fury that is my second-born, so I needed a new strategy. We tried a Peace Table ala Montessori, and it is working surprisingly well! The idea is to have a neutral place for conflict resolution and the promotion of peace. The genius of it is that it gives my kids an avenue for positive action, not just violent protest. 

Supplies: On the table we have a rose in a shallow bowl- not a long stemmed flower in a vase, because vases are easier to knock over, and long flowers can be turned into cart whips by furious children– and a battery operated candle. 

Step 1: If someone in the home is feeling upset or experiencing conflict they can present the involved person with the rose, and it is part of the social contract that they go to the table together to resolve their difficulty. 

Step 2: Whomever is holding the rose has the right to speak, and anyone else has the privilege of listening. 

Step 3: The rose is passed between them until they resolve the matter. 

Having physical tools to hold as protocol for the intellectual/emotional process of conflict resolution is grounding and reassuring for them. It keeps them on track. There is a Montessori book to introduce this activity, but role playing was enough, and in fact, quite revelatory for us!

The purpose of the battery candle is that it is an extra task and treat for the angry child to turn on, allowing for a few more split seconds of cool off/distracted time. Every instant counts! Also they are mesmerizing and cheap at the dollar store! Another advantage to having a dedicated space for this is that it is proactive. Choosing from a small selection of activities from the table is a self-directed action. I see cool down time-outs as preventing anyone or anything getting hurt, but the angry child sees it as punishment or banishment, which compounds the drama. I want them to grow up knowing that they don’t get positive or negative consequences for how they feel, but for what they do with the feelings they have. Mature people find activities that de-escalate themselves when they are angry, but sometimes we stop kids from de-escalating by mandating things that make them angry. Once again, anger is fine, being destructive and rude is not. They have to be dealt with separately. 

When I said that role playing was revelatory, what I mean is that I discovered a reason my explosive child has a short fuse: Her fuse is not that short, it’s just that her sister is a pyro. As I found myself trying to negotiate a pretend argument for the rights to a toy I don’t even care about, I discovered that my oldest drives a really hard bargain, and she denies others acknowledgement that they have a real case. While she looks level headed and peaceable to authority figures, she looks like a tyrant when you are standing eye to eye. It raises the point that making peace is everyone’s job. No one is exempt. The burden of it can’t only fall on the people who burn for justice. Acknowledgement and sensitivity are really important. Without empathy the person who is wronged just comes off as a complaining troublemaker, and that is unjust too! As a mother it is tempting to focus my efforts on the child who is most publicly embarrassing, and who inconveniences me most, but my job is to help both the explosive child, AND the kid who casually plays with emotional matches. One is no less important than the other. 

 The spiritual component is something we are working on as well, but not in the tsunami moments. Jesus said that when you try to feed pearls to swine, they turn around and eat you. Raise your hand if that’s happened to you when your kids are angry! I find my relationship with God, my prayer life, and the help of Scripture invaluable, like pearls, but when my kids have a hunger for justice they don’t appreciate moralizing.   

Becoming peacemakers is a life-long, not week-long evolving process. Additionally, peacemaking is not just about resolving conflict, but about developing an eternal perspective, deepening one’s walk with God, developing love, practicing patience, and self-control. As my children master the peacemaking skills we started with, I expect to swap in other activities at the peace table. 

Here are my ideas: 

• Calm-down glitter jar,
• Music player with Scripture songs,
• Books about peacemaking... any suggestions? 
• Stones with applicable Bible verses on them,
• Tactile celtic knot tracing activity to introduce labyrinth prayer aides,
• Recorder for work on taking deep breaths, and 
• Puzzles for taking time to cool down.

The end of this story hasn't happened yet, but we have gone from 2 huge tantrums a day to 1 or 2 short ones a week. My daughter has been swallowing back the fearful rage and seeking healthy things like cuddling and talking about it since we have a plan. The rose is something she can present to parents too, and be certain her appeal is heard. The table also gives us a benchmark for the minimum of what is required to work something out. Often I would see my older daughter sulking about something her sister did. She always claimed to have tried to work it out, but I wasn't sure. Now I can tell them "If you haven't invited your sister to the peace table, you haven't tried to work it out. If you aren't willing to do that, you can sulk in your room, but not in our space." Very effective! 

Little Big Challenges

I'm typing one handed with a baby on my lap amongst other hinderances, knowing what I want to write, and also knowing I don't have the time to write to my quality satisfaction.
This is life.

It's easy to show my process when life looks pretty and put together, and harder when I have more time to think than act. This is a really crucial point in my work, I think. I've never felt more assured about direction, more certain of my mind, more confident in my work, or more supported by the people who count in my life. If only I could get into the studio!
In my twenties I was really honing my technique, I just didn't know what to do with it. Now I'm motivated, but the same little people who are arranging transformative life experience are also the main reason I can't get a move on. Here's to taking the scenic route!

 

Getting Unstuck

This popular meme summed up the creative process in 6 steps:

1. This is awesome.
2. This is tricky.
3. This is crap.
4. I am crap.
5. This might be okay.
6. This is awesome. 

You know it's true. In the past 2 weeks I find myself hanging out in the vicinity of steps 3 & 4 wondering if all the collagesI have made  –which are so many more than these–  were all flukes!

That's just how projects go sometimes, and the best thing to do is go for a walk, soak in the tub, have a dog pile/tickle/cuddle extravaganza with my kids, sing Shake It Off karaoke style (go big or go home), and tell ridiculous jokes.

Here is the one I cooked up:
Q: Why did Cinderella's soccer coach bench her?
A: Because she is always late to the ball, and half the time she loses a shoe!

Here is one my daughter shared in the style of a knock-knock joke:

Her: Salmon!
Me in a stage whisper: What do you want me to say?
Her: Whoa!
Me: Whoa!
Her: Wait. I'm a salmon, not a horse!

So there you have it.
Now time to get back to work, because the main thing is just to keep showing up!


 

Little Cooks in the Kitchen

This week is all about the kitchen. On the creative side, I have been wood burning kitchen wares like crazy. Some of it is special order, and some is on my newly revived Etsy site.

 
    If you see anything you like that's not on my site, you can shoot me an Etsy message to inquire about special orders. (I love special orders!) What is really keeping us in the kitchen is that the girls just discovered that cookbooks can fill their weekly library requirement of non-fiction books.
We have done a lot of eating from this Disney cookbook. I was fully prepared for it to be horrid as so many cookbooks are, especially licensed ones, but it is actually fairly healthy and delicious because you can't mess up Creole cooking and soul food that much!

    The cookbook pictured below is Fairy Tale Breakfasts, from the Fairy Tale Cookbook series by Jane Yolen. The stories are great, because it's Jane Yolen, and it inspired the girls to try their hands at cooking "Eggs in the cradle" by themselves. I just turn on the stove for them.

    This, in turn, sparked a conversation in our church community group. Do you let your kids cook? At what age? My mother and grandmother had me sitting on the counter from the time I was tiny, measuring and stirring. I didn't think twice about having the girls help as soon as they could hold things. They have never cut or burned themselves, they have always been careful. I can fully see why some kids are safest outside the kitchen, but for us it's a precious daily ritual. I let them start cutting soft things like mushrooms when they were younger, in addition to stirring and licking. They have graduated to pancake flipping, measuring, and spreading peanut butter and butter– a surprisingly tricky business.
    They never stir things like soup that have hot steam, and they stay away from the oven. Knives are with supervision only.

    What are your kitchen rules? Do you handle kids in the kitchen the same way you grew up, or have you tweaked things?

 

Support Languages

"I feel so alone in this. It's bewildering."
It didn't matter what the issue was: It could be anything, but that's what my husband and I were telling one another recently. Intellectually we knew we were in this together, but it felt like we were not. Ambivalent is the word we kept coming back to, because while we felt loved, each of us felt the other spouse was not particularly invested in things that really mattered to us. What was maddening was that we really do care! It just wasn't getting through.

Does that feel familiar?

It did to us. It reminded us of Dr. Chapman's books The 5 Love Languages and The Five Languages of Apology. The idea behind the books is that individuals weigh some expressions of emotion more than others based on personal needs and experiences. Dr. Chapman cites 5 categories for expressions of love: Quality Time, Acts of Service, Physical Touch and Closeness, and Words of Encouragement. I've never met anyone who didn't need quality time, but additionally, to show affection I am a snuggler. As a words guy Daniel turns into an all-out cheerleader. Of course the way we show love is also how we crave it, so we have worked hard to become more fluent at making one another feel all-out adored, and to honor the less familiar expressions. That's why we were so surprised by this disconnect.  

So we came up with a new phrase: Support Languages.

Daniel kept saying "But I have shown up to everything! I’ve pitched in! What more do you want?” and I was wondering “I have kept up to date on every detail of this! I ask you about it every night! How could you think I wasn’t interested and supportive?” As it turns out, Daniel was needing some Acts of Service, and I value an inquisitive listening ear.

Is this really different than love languages, or have our needs and habits shifted over time to neglect some forms of support? I don't know. In some ways it doesn't matter as long as we add this new question to our marriage toolbox: "What kind of support would be most meaningful to you right now?"

Wood Burned Oars

Done! I intended to hang them in the hall, but I really love them propped in a corner. They make good props for maritime adventures involving cardboard box boats on rug-ged seas. Someone asked me why I made these... 

The only reason is that they exist and they should be beautiful. Happily, beauty finds its reason in God and needs no other! 

Button, Button, I've Got the Buttons

For as long as I can remember I have been sorting buttons or watching my mother sort buttons. I have fond memories of individual buttons with personalities. The yellow and white striped block that reminds me of cheese is a favorite, and I remember the stories of buttons as I see them: The brown engraved quadrilateral  from my mother's old coat, the red dinosaurs from when cutesy animal shaped buttons were a thing.
When I was very young my mother had her deeply personal stash of buttons in a brown Currier and Ives tin with a sleighing scene on it. When we needed one we would shake out all the buttons and find something suitable. Then the buttons my great grandmothers and great-greats had saved through the Great Depression and earlier found their way south in glass jelly jars, strung on safety pins, and looped onto snarls of cotton from before the advent of polyester filament sewing threads. They were like proud but shabby refugees and political asylum seekers narrowly escaping estate sales and dumpsters.

Every button from every shirt had been saved alongside upholstery buttons popped off of sofas, wooden toggles from wool coats, heavy powdery handfuls of mother of pearl, and the royalty: timeless Czech glass, and elderly rhinestones working free of their glued settings.

The late 80s and early 90s not being a time to slum it in vintage, my mother also purchased bagged lots of bright plastic buttons and bells she crocheted onto the edges of crew socks she sold for extra cash.

We sorted and sorted.
We sorted those buttons by material: Wood, leather, horn, shell, and plastic.
We sorted them by color.
We sorted them by the number of their holes.
We sorted them into Ziplock bags.

In my tweens my family moved to a house with a laundry room full of drawers and cabinets. With joy we sorted the bags into drawers. Over time getting a button became a kind of smash and grab affair. The plastic bags, which had grown dusty and semi opaque, were no longer closed properly and the contents of the drawers started to mingle.

I moved away for college and started my own personal stash of buttons neatly threaded on tough nylon thread and kept in cotton wool lined vintage jewelry boxes and tins. Then one day it was time for my parents to turn over a new leaf and move. Did I want the buttons? Of course.

They came to me in their plastic bags stuffed into a box and liberally besprinkled with paillettes and seed beads. While I was pregnant with Thacia it seemed like a good idea to sort them so that I wouldn't have to do it later with an infant about. Ah, the naiveté of first time motherhood! I did get a great many of them sorted, but I swear the buttons multiply in the dark. Every time I think I have finally sorted the white buttons I find another huge bag to compare with the drawers of buttons already strung, and the happy congregation of singletons.

Since October I have been setting up my new studio space very slowly. I had a spot carved out in the basement and it was just too dark for me, so we played musical chairs with the house, combining the living room and dining room together to make a creative space in the former dining room. It is awesome, but that is a side note. As we brought another load of stuff out of the basement space this weekend I looked at the ranks of drawer sets and tackle boxes that hold my legacy of buttons in some semblance of order. I wonder if this is the year they will be conquered, and the last of the plastic bags emptied? As Daniel points out, I've never been closer!

I'm a little more organized in some respects than my mother, so my children probably won't spend as much time up to their elbows in buttons.
Will they have relationships with these buttons like I have, or will the buttons just be a utility for them? What new stories will we make together as we add my great grandmothers' buttons to our new creations?      

A New Compost Box

There’s nothing that tells the neighbors “Pay us no mind, we are a normal family” like spending a cold, windy, and wet weekend building a 8' x 4' x 3.5'  timber structure and covering it with chicken wire in an urban setting. Yep, we are average like that. Daniel and I have been outside constructing a huge new compost system and I can scarcely contain my glee. 

Because it is moist here for much of the year and there are literally tons of plant matter everywhere, the art and science of hot composting isn’t very necessary in verdant Delaware unless you want to make dirt fast! People just make little piles of leaves, the earthworms and sow bugs come and eat it, and boom! Beautiful dirt. 

Still, I want to master it. The formation of top soil has to be much more intentional in the southwest where I am from. Heat, drought, and poor soil make growing conditions tough for plants and trees. Trees are what bring the moisture though. Rainforests aren’t just growing in a wetter area, the mist rises from the trees. I dream of composting and creating healthy ecosystems on a massive scale paired with plough-free farming and thoughtful construction to reverse the desertification of the southwest.  

Um. Anyway, as I said in my last compost entry I needed a new solution to handle all of our leaves and whatnot in one place, so we built a box with 2 bays and covered the frame with chicken wire. I put all of the old compostables into one side of the bay, and I am putting all new leaves and scraps I rescue off the curb in the other side, hence the bags of leaves I haven't put in yet. It didn't take long to see that the compost was active because it quickly reduced volume by half, heated in the middle, and if I dig into it it's looking a lot more like dirt. I can't tell you how exciting it is to dig in past the frozen surface and see steam rising! 
There are 2 great things about the new placement I didn't anticipate but I enjoy: 
You can't see that the new box abuts the back porch, but it is amazingly convenient to lean over the porch railing to put in scraps and stir things up. 
Also, the basement bathroom is frigid this time of year, but with compost now insulating the wall so it's much nicer to visit the loo. Maybe we should build another for the other side of the house? I'm kidding Daniel, I'm kidding. 
Unless you really want to. 
'Cause we totally could.
If you wanted.

Just like that, composting is fun again!

Snow Day

Everyone loves a good snow day, except for me yesterday. What a cold front, huh? I was grumpy about lots of things yesterday, including, but by no means limited to: Finding hats, snow pants, mittens, tights, sweatshirts, and fuzzy socks. Sometimes you've just got to send everybody out to play while you take a hot bath.

Today I was ready to earn my Fun Momma badge back and we went out to play– but this time I knew where everything was!

We whipped up some snow cream, which my mom used to do when I was a kid.

Here's my recipe:

• 8 cups fresh, clean snow
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Stir vigorously.
Serves 6

This isn't the first snow of the year for us, but my family used to celebrate first snow with a day off,  a pot of hot soup, board games and a jigsaw puzzle. There was a family in our church who threw a big pot luck party the night of the first snow where all the food was white. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water for Chile Blanco!
How about you? Do you have any beloved snow traditions?

Value Quilt

The  Value Quilt is finished!
Thanksgiving Day is a great time to do hand work if you don't have to be in the kitchen– which, thanks to my super family, I didn't this year. The food sure tasted better because I didn't have to cook it!

The night I put the new quilt on my daughter's bed my youngest was keenly jealous. She wanted a quilt too. I tucked her very happily into the crib quilt she usually ignores. I have to admit I was feeling gratified by all the appreciation for my work.

Then of course big sister decided she didn't actually want to sleep with her new quilt on her bed. She wads it up and throws it to the floor in the night.
These pictures are a grand fiction.

Little sister followed suit, of course, when I tried to tuck her in the next night. How could I even think of tucking her in with a quilt? Silly me.
I am hoping they like things I make for them by the time they are 40. That seems doable.

When did you start appreciating handmade things? I remember staring by the hours at the patterns in afghans and quilts made for me by the time I was 5 or so. I hope this will be a comfort and fascination to my daughter like those blankets were for me as a kid. Maybe next year, right?  

Compost Troubleshooting

You probably know by now how much I love compost, and how strangely silent I have been on the subject. That’s because I haven’t been having much success with it lately, for reasons not entirely under my control. In a funny way this is valuable experience because I knew exactly what was going wrong in each case as it was happening. Hopefully this can answer questions for the beginning enthusiast wondering “What in the world is wrong with my compost?” 

I have worked with 3 different systems since this spring: 

• A visit to my old bin left with my parents in Texas, 
• a successful, inexpensive, though messy looking cardboard box/pile situation necessitated by a medium sized home bin getting too full, and 
• the aforementioned undersized box. 

LOSS 

When I left Texas last fall I gave my parents 8 double trash bags of compost and my beloved bin. Though they weren’t full, the bags were back breakers because they were full of moist dirt in various stages of decomposition! My parents did not spread the dirt, but put it back in the bin. When I visited in September my mother asked me to move the bin to another spot. When I checked on it there was a much smaller volume of material in the box, and the compost was no longer heating for many reasons. To start off, there was a whole bunch of finished dirt in the bottom taking up valuable space. It was ready for earthworms to finish things up. Secondly, the right conditions were not maintained for heating the new compostable materials. Let’s review those conditions quickly:

1. There must be a great volume of appropriately stacked compostable materials. It’s hard to be specific about how much that is. My mental image is that our compostables need to add up to be at least the same size as a small armchair.  
2. The compost needs to be quite damp. Many people caution you not to get the compost too wet, which seems wise where I live now, but in Texas I watered my compost a little almost every day. The advice that compost should be like a wet sponge is meaningless in the southwest. If you stick a wet sponge outside, it’s dry in an hour there, whereas on the east coast it might take days! The bonus counterbalancing the water use is that the healthy dirt you are making will help retain water in the soil for your plants in the long run. 
3. “Wets” like food and fresh plant matter and “dries” like paper and leaves need to be alternated, always with wets under dry. Food scraps, grass clippings, and manure should be dug into the active part of the pile, covered with dry materials to sop up the excess liquid, and buried in older compost for a pile that smells like dirt, not rotten food. 
4. Add manure, urine, or fresh grass clippings regularly to boost the nitrogen content. Every time I add wet material I add nitrogen. The following measurements are neither precise nor scientific, I just want to convey amounts that work for me in estimates that are easy to picture. If it is manure I use a heaping handful sized amount- though I don’t use my hands! If using urine, a brimming cereal bowl full would be about right, just not in a cereal bowl! An armful of brand spankin’ new FRESH grass clippings is great. I find that burying grass clippings in the pile is most effective so they don’t dry out.    

When those conditions are not met, if you throw yard waste or food scraps in there they just sit on top going bad and luring vermin in search of a snack. I dug into the pile and was astonished panicked by the mass exodus of cockroaches of all sizes and descriptions.

It was like Men in Black II for a few long seconds. I am still a little traumatized. They flew into my hair, guys. Don’t let this happen to you!

When people advise not to throw oily, animal based, or wet food scraps into your bin lest it attract vermin this is why. This is not to say that you should not put food in your compost. You can, and it is a responsible thing to do. Nature can make mulch by heaping up leaves, but it takes water, nitrogen, and proper handling, or a whole lot of happy worms to actually make compost. Otherwise you are just feeding the local wildlife. 

I spread the compost that had been sitting for a year on a sandy bed in my parents back yard and layered the rest back into the bin with strict care instructions. I try not to dwell on how it’s going without me! 

WIN

My black plastic compost bin was overflowing for reasons I shall later state. Then our tree was in a big rush and lost all of its leaves at the end of August. I had nowhere to put them, but no way was I going to bag them up and put them on the curb! 

My best option seemed to be a compost pile, as in, pile the compost. To get a pile of anything to actually compost you need to pile it high not wide. I find that my pitchfork is essential for this. Also, I cheated. I got a big cardboard box and set it up with both ends open like a chimney on the ground. Then I filled it with whatever I needed to compost that wasn’t fitting in my other bin: food scraps, yard clippings, and newsprint sale circulars to name a few. I made sure to keep it damp. As the ‘post piled up I slid the box higher up, and everything lower down stayed in the square shape. Obviously I wasn’t turning it, and that’s okay! To keep it active I used urine or manure every time I added kitchen scraps, and... it worked!

The top of the pile was loose leaves, the middle of the pile was broken down, heat marked, and barely recognizable. The box was gone. The bottom was gorgeous, rich, black earth full of earthworm casings. It could have used several months more of sitting to decompose the leaf skeletons, but it smells like sweet success!  

LOSS

I saved the worst for last. Spoiler alert, there were rodents and carnage involved. Everything is bigger in Texas. The compost bin I purchased when we moved to this house was smaller than the one I had before. You’d think I could just look at it and tell, but it had been more than 6 months since I saw it last. I noticed the size discrepancy because the compost wasn’t heating up properly, I was starting to throw scraps in the trash can because the scraps were going septic in the bin, and then when I went to visit my old bin– oh yeah, and a few other people I love– I realized the old box dwarfed the new one. 

Then I saw a mouse. 

Then I saw mouse poop. 

Lots of it. 

A new system flew right to the top of my honey do list! 

When I dug into it there was almost dirt at the very bottom, and at about 2/3 of the way up the bin. Other than that it seemed like a great way to mummify old newspapers and cardboard. As I excavated, things I had buried months ago turned up in mint condition. 

Clearly this compost wasn't decomposing. Basically the box was just shielding all of the compostable materials from the elements so that they couldn’t compost. Brilliant. 

Also it was harboring 8-10 mice and about the same number of cockroaches. Thank goodness mice and cockroaches are also bigger in Texas! It wasn’t too alarming since I had a pretty good idea what was coming.   

I killed 2 mice by accident and 2 on purpose. The rest made their escape. By the way, may I borrow a cat? The mice had made a warm, dry little nest in there. At least they shredded some paper while they were at it! The thing is, a compost bin should be the opposite of comfortable for furry woodland creatures! It should be a damp biologically active cauldron of stuff mice don’t have any interest in. The main problem was the small size which did not allow enough volume, and somehow with the way things were layered, water wasn’t getting all the way through. 

Experimenting with Free Motion Quilting

Lately the tail is wagging the dog a little as far as the blog is concerned. I enjoy posting tutorials and printables: things that other people can share and replicate. At the same time, when I am focused on those things it is hard to enjoy big, complicated, or un-photogenic projects. I am still doing some, but they just stress me out and receive low priority treatment!

So let me tell you about this project. It is neither complex nor ugly, but it is big. What possessed me that last year right in the middle of packing boxes I started sewing a quilt top? It was very simple and it only took me a few days to make the twin size top. It is made with this tutorial called Value Quilts  because you sort everything into lights and darks. You step away and it magically turns the clashy fabrics into something greater than the sum of the parts. I heard about the concept from Wise Craft.  It showed up last November in this picture as a curtain cum stained glass window in our empty apartment, but other than that it's been shuffled around from town to town and room to room waiting for me to quilt it.
I have done free motion stitching before, but with lines to guide me.

Here I am allowing the prints to tell me what they want to be. There are quite a few solids. I don't have a modern quilt stash, I have just received other people's old stashes and make what I can of them. So with the solids I just have some fun and see what happens.

I am about half way done. I really enjoy the childishness of these needle drawings which are clumsy and naive in a way I really can't be with a pen and paper anymore. I am allowing myself to get really caught up in the tiny detail because I feel like it is helping me fine tune my skills a little bit.

When I zone out and don't plan too hard, a quilting style of my own feels like it is starting to try to emerge. The square above feels like a good example of that.
I look forward to getting it done, but I am also enjoying the process.

How To Make a No Sew First Aid Kit

Well this is exciting! An easy no-sew project is kind of rare around here, and this is straight up crafty. That's right. I whipped out the hot glue gun.
Our first aid supplies are usually just jumbled into the medicine cabinet, but it really is a good idea to have kits for the car and the house in case you are on the go or it's the baby sitter trying to fix up boo boos instead of you.
At the same time, this is a generic covered box, and you could make boxes for all sorts of things: A treasure chest for kids, a place to corral little baby things like binkies and booties, a spot to keep keys and wallets, a Brio train box... you get it.

Supplies:

• Empty baby wipe box,
• Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks,
• Tape measure, 
• Felt to cover the box. As a ballpark figure I needed 24 1/2"x 6" and 6 3/4"x 9 1/2", but your measurements might be different.
• A scrap of accent fabric bigger than the lid of your box, 
• A scrap of leather, Ultrasuede, felt, or anything that doesn't unravel,
• Scissors,
• Pins– optional, 
• Steam iron– optional.

Directions:

1. Remove the stickers on the outside of the box. I mildly regret forgetting to do this the second time around. 

2. Plug in your hot glue gun. While you are waiting for it to heat, measure the box and cut your fabric:

• Measure the circumference + 1/2" is the width of your fabric, and the measurement from the lip of the box to a little past the halfway point is the length. Cut from felt. My measurement was 24 1/2"x 6".
• Measure the length and width of the lid, disregarding the curved corners. Cut from felt. My measurement was 6 3/4"x 9 1/2"
• Add an inch on each side to the measurement above. Cut from accent fabric. My measurement was 7 3/4"x 10 1/2"
• Cut 2 pieces of leather 1 1/4" x 4 1/2" for cross. 

3. Squirt glue all over one side of the wipe box, and press your felt into it butting the long edge of the felt against the lip of the box. Repeat for each side, neatly overlapping whatever is left at the end. 

4. The bottom of the box is wrapped like a package. Turn the box over and cover the bottom with glue. Smooth the short sides in flat first, followed by the lapped side, finishing up with the last side. Glue down any spots that got missed.

5. Squirt glue over the face of the lid. Don't worry about the edges yet. Smooth the felt into the glue. Now glue and press down the edges leaving the corners for last. Glue the corners and press in whatever excess if left. Trim all the edges up with scissors to smooth them out.

6. Smooth your accent fabric over the top of the lid leaving excess on each side. Pin it to the felt in a few places to hold it steady. With the underside showing as in the photo above, give each edge a few blasts of steam with your steam iron to crease the fabric and show where you will be folding under.

7. Fold back half of the accent fabric, squirt glue over the felt staying away from the edges, and press the accent fabric down into the glue.

8. Next fold the edges on the creases and glue them down, followed by the corners. You may need to trim some of the excess off the corners and/or use something sharp to push the corners under before gluing.

9. Glue down the small strips into a cross shape on the center of the cover.

Done! Easy peasy. Making this box is much simpler than figuring out how to take an attractively styled picture of it. As it turns out, first aid is only glamourous on television!

Stock Up:
Pick out some items you find practical for your kit. Here are some ideas scoured from the internet. 

General

• Adhesive cloth tape
• Antibiotic ointment
• Antiseptic solution or towelettes
• Ace wrap
• Band-Aids in various sizes
• Breathing barrier
• Cotton balls and cotton swabs
• Disposable non-latex gloves, at least 2 pair
• Duct tape– You can stick it on the inside of your box and peel it off later as you need it.
• Gauze pads and roller gauze in various sizes
• First aid manual
• Instant cold compresses
• Petroleum jelly or other lubricant
• Plastic bags for the disposal of contaminated materials
• Safety pins in assorted sizes
• Scissors and tweezers
• Soap or hand sanitizer
• Sterile eye wash, such as a saline solution
• Thermometer
• Toilet paper or wipes
• Triangular bandage
• Suction bulb for flushing out wounds

Medications

• Activated charcoal (use only if instructed by your poison control center)
• Aloe vera gel 
• Anti-diarrhea medication 
• Antihistamine
• Aspirin and non-aspirin pain relievers
• Calamine lotion
• Hydrocortisone cream
• Personal medications that don't need refrigeration
• Syringe, medicine cup, or spoon

Emergency Items

• Candles and matches
• Emergency phone numbers: Family doctor, pediatrician, local emergency services, emergency roadside service providers, and the regional poison control center. 
• Medical consent forms for each family member
• Medical history forms for each family member
• Sunscreen
• Waterproof flashlight and extra batteries
• Emergency space blanket

Can Pumpkin Cupcakes Cancel Out Hard Weeks? Still Testing...

Here’s a little “secret”: When my blog is silent it usually means I feel like I am flunking life. In this case I know it is not true, but it feels true because life has been chock full of stuff I am not good at. There is definite progress, but it hasn’t been easy! 

Case in point, the only thing I have made successfully in the last few weeks are these heavenly pumpkin cupcakes with chocolate cinnamon buttercream frosting, and these pineapple flower toppers. I can't communicate how good they are except to say that my husband who only eats chocolate chip cookies is contemplating requesting these for his birthday instead. I haven't the heart to tell him that pumpkin cupcakes are not done in April. He just spoiled me with two pairs of really cute shoes though, so I'm going to give him what he wants, regardless of seasons! I only have this little iPhone pic of the cupcake because it was a birthday party and I was pulling it off at the last minute. Oh, I also tried making these darling chick rolls, and... uh... they turned out Halloween appropriate. Not my finest baking moment!

My workspace and laundry have been in the basement, main housekeeping duties on the ground floor, and the bedrooms and toys upstairs. This was a great improvement on some other living arrangements we have had recently, so I wasn’t complaining, but living equally on 3 floors had me feeling like I was living 4 lives: The housekeeper-keep-things-running life, the good mommy life, the creative life, and the adult with interests other than picking up shoes and Legos life. I was spasming with exhaustion and popping B12 like an addict when Daniel suggested rearranging the house: The dining room and living room are now happily sharing space, and my studio accoutrements are filling up the former dining room now. I’ll be darned if life didn’t resolve into a single, natural, peaceful rhythm once the dust settled! It just hasn’t been long enough to have a routine yet. I am really hopeful about this. 

Meanwhile, I attended my first big blues dancing event. The classes were great, but the DJs for the social dances brought out disappointed rage in me I thought was reserved for politicians! As it happens, choking back anger limits my dancing. Needless to say I am missing some dancing friends and DJs who could make this all better. Do I need to become a DJ?

Then I spent the past week doing the last bit of paperwork and baby-proofing for fostering. Neither of those things are hard, Just time consuming. Did I mention the girls have croup? 

This weekend I wanted to bust out of this rut and I tried to just get into the (new!) studio and make something- anything! Spinny winter dresses for the girls are urgent, and I took the challenge. I can just hear Heidi Klum ripping it to shreds on the runway in my mind. It was a cute sketch, but executed from fabrics I had lying around: an un-childlike color combo, a bad print for a child, flowing fabric when stiff was called for... it was turning into a medieval princess something or other. Ay yi yi. I wanted to scrap the whole thing and start again with new fabrics, but my little real life judge decreed that she likes it and I have got to make it work. On the bright side, I guess that saves time? I may have an idea for saving it from the landfill, but I haven't had a chance to try yet. 

And now we are off to enjoy some of this fall sunshine! May your days be full of joy and your nights full of peace dear friends!

How To Polish Silver with Ketchup

The Reader's Digest for November 2013 just recommended using ketchup to polish silver. Non-toxic is always my first choice, so I thought we should try it.

We donned our fairy tutus and turned it into a fun messy activity with paint brushes. It was a novel experience since you cannot usually commission your preschoolers to polish silver for you.

I quickly determined that my 2 year old needed her own little private artist's palette of ketchup as she used the paintbrush as a spoon! I did not want her eating the tarnish-laden ketchup.

Thacia and I soldiered on, however, and this is the result after rinsing 15 minutes later:

 
The before photo is a little deceiving because in addition to the yellow cast it was also fairly dull before, whereas the photo makes it look shiny. You get the idea though. Transformation!
The verdict: It works!
Hold on a minute before you toss your heavy duty polish though, because we did some candlesticks too. Here's what they looked like before:

 

And after:

Yep, same picture because they didn't change a bit. These candlesticks say they are silver plate, but they look more like pewter from a distance.
What do you think of ketchup polish? Is it worth a shot?