Back to the Botanic Gardens

Getting ready for another adventure

Yesterday, we had a lovely trip to the Chicago Botanic Gardens.  This time, with an old friend of Poppa's and her daughter.  The girls were incredibly taken with the older girl (of course!), and everybody had a fantastic time.

And now?

Photo spam!

Fountains, probably the most exciting thing ever done with water.

Bonsai- also known as, Toddler Sized.

Running around the Rose Garden

More fountains!

Roses everywhere!

Chasing butterflies!

Gargoyle in the English Walled Garden

Rolling down a hill

I didn't remember that the garden was filled with stairs...

Examining spiders in the Japanese Garden

My monkeys

Another fountain?!?!  No way!!!!

Seriously exhausted toddlers.

March of Summer (in haiku)

They might in fact actually be fairies.

While there were tornadoes ripping past my hometown and through the southern parts of my current state (Illinois, not blind panic), here in Chicago we had... summer.

That's right.  For the first half of March, it was downright balmy in the windy city.  We had eight straight days of record breaking highs.  And not just record breaking, record SHATTERING.  A week ago, it was ninety degrees.  In Chicago.  In March.

So what did I do with my kids?  I took them outside.

I kept wanting to turn on the sprinkler in the back yard, but... who knew how long it would last?  What if it froze again?  Not worth the trouble.  So the girls had to be satisfied with playing in the grass and the sun.

Oh, the horrors.

At any rate, I don't consider myself a particularly good photographer.  But I do love taking pictures of my children.  And they certainly make it easy.  So here, for your enjoyment, is my photo spam.  Captioned in haiku.

Because deficient though I usually am in the realm of photographing my children, I am a master of poetical brevity.

glowing in the dusk

my sweet queen of the back yard

surveying her realm

knows what I'm doing

forgetting about the fit

she threw over lunch

two angels in white

dirty knees, chestnut ringlets

sand between their toes

sunlight in her hair

she tires of me watching her

"mommy, I coming..."

always mommy's hats

too large, too great, too heavy

always mommy's heart

How SuperMommy Does Thanksgiving

Last year's Thanksgiving Dinner at Casa SuperMommy: Turkey (my first whole bird!), sweet potatoes, more turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, risotto, veganized risotto, Three Sisters, and a basket of biscuits and corn bread.  And of course a bottle of wine.

Truth be told, I'm sad that we're not going to be with my side of the family for Thanksgiving.

Don't get me wrong, I love my in-laws.  I truly do.  I enjoy their company, I have a ton of fun, and of course it's always good for the girls to see their grandparents- either side.  It's just that...

Everybody has their own family traditions.  Everyone has "the way that you do things."

My husband's family is, in many ways, very traditional.  They're about as midwestern American as they come.  Friendly, heartland people.  Meat-and-potatoes people.

And my family?

My mom was writing a world cuisine, completely vegetarian cookbook for most of my childhood.  Thanksgiving was her opportunity to showcase everything that she knew about American Food.

And by "American Food," I don't mean burgers and fries and deep fried butter.  The way my family, led by my mother, has always done Thanksgiving is to cook foods that could have been made by American natives.  That the non-Pilgrims would have brought to the feast.  Assuming that those natives were vegetarians.

Nothing on the table isn't indigenous to the USA (well, there are cheeses who's cultures originated abroad).  There's succotash with lima beans and corn, there's sprouts with chestnuts and maple, there's homemade corn bread crumbled into stuffing, wild rice, cranberry sauce and spinach stews, there's roasted sweet potatoes, butternut squash risotto, pecan pies, pumpkin pies, apple pies... and then there's the Three Sisters.

The legend of the Three Sisters is that they are vegetables that care for each other.  Unlike European farmers, Native Americans farmed by planting all of their crops together, very densely, in small plots.  One acre would provide a plethora of vegetables, in a gigantic mass as opposed to nice, tidy rows.  The three sisters are squash, corn, and beans.  You see, the corn stalks provide poles for the beans to climb.  The squash keeps the ground clear, allowing the corn to remain spaced and get enough sun (and the squash crowds out some bean-hating weeds).  The three together even keep from excessively draining the soil of nutrients like nitrogen.

So we have something we just call, "Three Sisters."  Beans, corn, and squash.  The way I cook it, it's a day and a half long affair.  I makes the house smell alternately savory and sweet, and then just plain like Thanksgiving.

For my first Thanksgiving with my in-laws, I'm making the Three Sisters and pumpkin pies.  Out of pumpkins.  Not that canned nonsense.

I honestly don't know what to anticipate for dinner.  If it's anything like Christmas, I expect a turkey, some potatoes, corn bread, and gravy.  And cranberry sauce, I'm sure.  But I'm not expecting a lot of vegetarian fare.  And what vegetarian fare there is, I'm not expecting it to be... well.. anything like my mother's.

The fact that my mother isn't cooking a Thanksgiving dinner at all this year isn't a lot of comfort.  I was kind of hoping she could bring me leftovers.

So here, for your family's enjoyment, are two of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes.  Three Sisters, the way I make it, and Butternut Squash Risotto.


Three Sisters

Day One:
4c dried beans- assorted
2-4 quarts water
1.5 tsp salt
14 black peppercorns, whole
2 cloves garlic
1 large onion- halved
2 carrots
2 stalks celery- leaves attached

Rinse the beans carefully, discarding any stones.  Place in large stock pot with 2 quarts of water while you prepare the vegetables.  Discard any beans that rise quickly to the surface.

Bring pot, with all ingredients, to a boil.  Boil for one hour, adding water as needed to keep beans covered.  Stir occasionally.  At the end of the hour, turn off the burner, cover tightly, and allow to sit 8 hours or overnight.

Day Two AM:
2-3 acorn squash, halved
2 tbs butter
1/2c brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp powdered ginger

Yesterday's beans
1 onion- halved
2 cloves garlic
1 carrot
1 stalk celery- leaves attached
1.5 tsp salt
2-4 quarts water

Pour out the water from the pot of beans.  Remove vegetables.  Discard onions, garlic, and celery, but reserve carrots.  Place them in the fridge for later.

Rinse, and return to pot.  Add vegetables.  Bring water to a boil, and simmer for 1 hour.  Remove from heat.

Place the acorn squash on a baking sheet.  Divide butter, sugar, and spices into squash halves.  Bake at 400 degrees F for 30-40 minutes, occasionally brushing butter over the inside of the squash.  Remove and allow to cool.


Day Two PM:
Beans from before
Reserved carrots
Cooked squash
2c frozen corn
3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 heirloom tomato, yellow and red if possible- skinned
1+ tbs coarse salt- I prefer black (from Hawaii, so... technically Native American?)
additional brown sugar and cinnamon to taste

Drain and rinse beans again.  Reserve carrot, throw out other vegetables.  Put in large mixing bowl.  Add corn.  Add peeled, chopped tomatoes.

Remove squash from rinds.  Cut into 1-2" chunks.  Add to bean mixture.  Mix thoroughly, and add any additional sugar and cinnamon.

Place in large baking/casserole dish.

Cut reserved carrots into thin rounds.  Cut tomato into thin slices.  Use sliced carrots and tomatoes to decorate top of Three Sisters, with one tomato slice in the middle, and concentric rings of carrots/tomatoes radiating outwards.  Take coarse salt, and sprinkle liberally on top.

Bake at 350 for 35 minutes, or until tomatoes have formed almost a crust.

Serves 6-8.  And a heck of a lot more on Thanksgiving when plates are overflowing with other goodies.



Butternut Squash Risotto

6-8 c broth
5tbs butter, divided
1 onion, finely chopped
3-4 c butternut squash- balled with melon baller but not yet cooked
2c long grain rice
1c dry white wine
1c grated Parmesan
2 tbs fresh rosemary
salt and white pepper

Heat broth, and keep at a low simmer until required

heat 4 tbs butter in a very big pan.  Cook squash and onions and rosemary for 5 min.  Add rice, and cook for another two minutes.  Add wine, and stir gently until absorbed or evaporated.  Add broth, and simmer gently for 20 minutes, uncovered.

Add remaining ingredients and remove rosemary.  Add salt and white pepper to taste.

Garnish with Parmesan and a sprig of rosemary.

The Evolution Of A Mother Activist

Jen of The Evolving Homemaker

I'm very pleased to have a marvelous guest blogger today- Jen of The Evolving Homemaker.  From her "Be The Match" crusade to her love of tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches, she is absolutely a woman after my own heart.  (Please read her "Be The Match" post on the bone marrow registry, and my post about blood donation if you haven't already.)  Did you know that Thich Nhat Hanh co-authored a book about food?  Because I didn't.  And that's just one of the many things you can learn simply by visiting her.  Enjoy!




The Evolution Of A Mother Activist

When I first became a mother, I was a mess. Completely overwhelmed with the magnitude of it all, a preemie, followed by 21 days in the NICU, followed by a year of being completely unsure of what I was going to do with this little person they actually let me take home from the hospital. I was a wreck.

But then one day I was watching Oprah, an episode about the Democratic Republic of Congo. I was jolted off the couch and into action by the stories these women told of gang rape, the murder of their husbands and children, the use of women as sex slaves, the mutilation of their bodies. I cried and cried. Lisa Ling called it, “The worst place on earth to be a women.”

Soon after I started the crusade to bring the Run for Congo Women, started in Portland, Oregon to Denver, Colorado. At the same time I began to get heavily involved in politics, volunteering for a group at the time that inspired mother’s to become active in the fight for the rights of children worldwide. I lobbied our representatives, I went to political rallies to try to talk to the future Vice President, first lady, and more, to voice my concern for the women in Congo. I brought my kids to everything.

Then the election happened and I discovered that I had hit the dreaded wall of....burnout.

What would become of my mamavism? (mothering and activism) Would I have any value to the world if I became JUST a Mom? What would happen to the world, the women of Congo, if I became unable to be a spokeswoman for those that were suffering? Would society look at me and think I was valuable or a castaway? Another mother who tossed away her potential to be a Mom. It was tough for me.

But there was also a nagging voice in the back of my head as I partook in all of these endeavors. I had the sense that I wasn’t being all that great of a Mom. That my mind was always distracted. I often wondered if there really was a way to be a ‘good enough’ stay at home mother and still engaged outside the home in changing the global conversation. I am sure there is for some women, for me I was finding it more stressful than helpful.

So I stopped.

And then I began again, except my mamavism looked radically different than it had two years before. Instead of constantly looking outward in what should change, I began to look inward. I realized that world peace can’t happen if I cannot keep my peace with my own children. I began looking into urban farming and growing my own food. I explored living a simple life, reading books like The Simple Living Guide and Your Money Or Your Life. We decided to home school our children to give them opportunities to think outside the box, to learn things they are passionate about along with their A,B,C’s. I want to spend my time supporting local economies and building stronger communities, while also making scrumptious healthy food for my family from scratch.

Mamavism takes many different forms. This is what it looks like to me these days. Focusing on living locally, learning new home skills like canning, knitting, and gardening, all which will change the face of our national culture away from blind consumption to teaching a generation that will probably need to return a bit to the earth for the survival of humanity.

We can each do what we can to get off our couch and engage in making the world a place worth leaving to our children. It doesn’t have to come on some grand scale, although it can, mamavism can take the form of a million little choices every single day.

Chaotic Routine

It's okay, sometimes I can't handle the cuteness either.

Since our girls are in the middle of their late-in-the-day nap, I'd like to take a moment to walk you through a week over at Casa SuperMommy.  So that all of you, my lovely readers, know what it's like to live over here, and how much I miss you.


Monday/Wednesday: 

• At 4am, M gets up, gets ready, and heads off to work.

• Around 8:30am, my children begin to wake up.  Ideally, at this point I've already taken a shower, but for reasons that will become apparent as you read on, this isn't always the case.  I start a load of laundry, heave a heavy sigh, and start calling Our Mary Poppins to make sure she's on her way over.  Which she always is.  I cram half an imaginary breakfast into my gullet, I double check all my classwork to make sure it's prepared, and I fill up my water bottle.  Just as the girls begin to wonder why I haven't gone in to prepare them for the day, Our Mary Poppins arrives, and I slip out to class.  It's much easier this way- if the girls see me before I take off for class, it's a nightmare for everybody.

What kid doesn't love a sprinkler?

• La clase español!  While I learn to conjugate verbs in various tenses, my daughters eat breakfast and play with Our Mary Poppins.  Sometimes, I linger out of the house before heading home, grabbing a few things from the grocery store or stopping by the post office.

• I return home, shortly before nap time begins.  My manic children are delighted to see me, reinvigorated by my presence.  I switch the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer, start another load, and spend a happy hour or so rolling around on the floor with the girls.

• Then it is nap time.  While the girls sleep, I get started on the next day's Economics homework.  Assuming that the children aren't busy torturing each other their weary mother.

• The girls wake up, I switch the laundry over again, start another load, and SI "helps" me put the laundry away.  This ends in tears once it becomes clear that my children are starving to death.  I feed the girls lunch, and begin preparing dinner.  Thank heavens for the electric crock pot.

• After lunch, to the back yard!  I weed my garden (which is thriving!), and the girls play in the kiddie pool, or in the sprinkler, or just run around.  We're planning on getting them a sandbox as soon as we can find the time.

Bathing Beauties

• If M is coming home that day, he arrives and we have a lovely family dinner.  If not (and "not" is exponentially more likely), I bathe the filthy children, read them a story, and affect bedtime- now set fairly firmly at 8:30pm.  During the next hour, I contemplate my homework and sit down.  With my eyes closed.  And maybe a nice glass of cold water.  Once M gets home, he scarfs down some of whatever I made for dinner, flips the laundry, and then heads to bed- ideally before 10:30pm.  I stay up, and work on my homework.  This involves playing a lot of online Scrabble.  I go to bed at about 2:00am, exhausted but at least sort of in command of the principles for class discussion in the next day's Economics session.

 Tuesday/Thursday:

• M gets up at 4am, gets ready, and heads off to work.

They're very helpful in the garden.

• At approximately 8:30am, the girls wake up.  I get them up and dressed, feed them a nutritious breakfast, and then sit them in front of the television for about an hour while I clean up, read my email, and shake myself fully into consciousness.  After this hour, I bring the girls out to the back yard to play.  I work in the garden, or on my super secret project, and the girls "help."  This inevitably leads to filthy children.

• Nap time.  DD realizes that I've been around all morning, and begins to cry.  This is because she knows I will be gone when she wakes up.  I soothe her, I suppress my raging guilt, and I use nap time to finish my Economics homework and start dinner.  The girls begin to wake up around 5pm, and Our Mary Poppins arrives to affect the same, "Now you see me, now you don't," routine that marks our M/W/F mornings.

• While I study Isoquants and Indifference Curves, Our Mary Poppins feeds the children their dinner.  She bathes them and puts them to bed,.  M gets out of class the same time that I do, and we arrive at home at nearly the exact same moment.  After a quick catch up conversation, a harried bite to eat, and a heavy sigh, M goes to bed (ideally around 10:00pm) and I get started on my Spanish homework.  At approximately 2:00am, I go to bed.

Friday:

This book is our "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooey"

• M gets up at 4am, gets ready, and heads off to work.  Around 8:30am my day begins- just as Mondays and Wednesdays do.  And just as on Mondays and Wednesdays, I go to class and Our Mary Poppins takes care of the girls.  But unlike Mondays and Wednesdays, Fridays are FRIDAYS.

• After work, M comes home.  Even if he's worked an eleven hour day (not unusual for a Friday), he's still home mid-afternoon.  And the the girls get to see him and play with him.

• We sit down and have a real, honest-to-goodness family dinner.  We light the Sabbath candles (SI's favorite part), we eat, and we bathe the girls, and we put them to bed. 

• M and I stay up, either because we're going out (and Our Mary Poppins has graced us with two visits in one day), we have friends come over (which they do often and happily, for which we are extremely grateful), or we cuddle up on the couch and watch a grown-up movie.  Like "The Red Violin" or "Anchorman."  We actually go to bed together.

Saturday: 

Family time in the back yard

• We go out with the girls to visit friends, or to catch up on grocery shopping, or just play in the yard.  Nap times get shuffled around, bed time frequently gets postponed.  For some miraculous reason, the girls frequently let us sleep in until ten or eleven in the morning.  But best of all, we get to spend most of our time as a family.  We actually get to enjoy each others' company.  It's the best part of the week, without a doubt.

Sunday:

• Unfortunately, no weekend lasts forever.  Sunday is marked by furious studying on both my part and M's.  We tend to take turns hiding out in the bedroom or taking the children away so that the other can get their work done.  Inevitably, there is work left over.  M goes to bed early, he tries desperately to go to bed BEFORE 10pm, and I stay up until 2am doing my Spanish homework.

And that, lovely readers, is what I've been up to.  And I miss writing terribly (which is why I'm doing it now instead of working on my copious amounts of homework).  But the semester is half way through.  I have dozens of little green tomatoes growing bigger and more aromatic, I have a bell pepper the size of a plum, and my children have constantly scraped knees and dirt under their toenails.

Watching Popeye cartoons on the 4th of July

It is summer, and it is glorious outside.  And I am amazed at how fast it has gone.

For the long 4th of July weekend, we did essentially *nothing.*  For three days.  It was more wonderful than you can possibly imagine.

Yet despite the constant stress and chaos, things are great.  We're all very happy, we're all crazy about each other, and somehow M and I keep finding little ways to show each other how much we appreciate everything the other is doing.  Be it a surprise dinner or a pint of ice cream (we both tend to show our affection with food).  And, thanks to the constant motion in which we find ourselves, we both seem to be losing a little weight.  Which is kind of nice.

Our house is a wreck, we're always behind on laundry, and we actually run out of food stuffs on a regular basis.  We're just too busy to grab a gallon of milk or another carton of eggs before we actually run out.  Our Mary Poppins has started stocking up our fridge when we're not looking.

Four more weeks of this, my lovely readers.  Four more weeks, and then I can return to our regularly scheduled format.  I can write all about the profound happiness and horror of our lives, and return to a
much more stable part-time educational status.  I'll be able to get back to being the kind of mom I want to be- the kind of mom who's top priority is my kids, but who is simply doing other things as well.  I was not meant to juggle this many roles.  And to you working or education pursuing or otherwise insanely busy nd stupendous mothers: Kudos.  And Oy Vey.

But until then, I have some more wonderful guest posts lined up!  I will not abandon you entirely!  And know that you are all in my thoughts.

Makin' with the Smarts

Becoming SuperMommy is all smart and ready for school!

Hello lovely readers!

As you may not be aware, my summer semester just started.  Oh, and it's a doozey.

That said, I think I've found a nice rhythm.  Gardening, cleaning, crafting, studying, and going to class, all balanced precariously on the presumption that I am capable of maintaining this sort of pace for eight whole weeks.

We'll soon find out!  Thank goodness I live with a Spanish tutor (I love you M!), thank goodness my daughters have decided that summer is for sleeping in, thank goodness I have friends who will babysit for free, and thank GOD that I finally figured this semester out!  For a day or so, I honestly thought this summer would completely derail my graduation.

All this to say that... I probably won't have much time for blogging this summer.  I'm sorry my lovely readers, but it's true.  Nap times and post-bedtimes are now relegated to the realm of mis clases.  I must study and do my homework instead of writing about life around Casa SuperMadré para ti.  (Yes, I'm taking Spanish.)

But I have new glasses!  See?  Now I look extra smart!  And that means that I will WIN THE SEMESTER!

Coming up (when I've got the chance): all about our summer rhythm, which is lovely.  And about gardening (yesterday I almost finished prepping most of my garden!).  And about how our life is, like you, most lovely.

Many thanks, and I'll be seeing you soon!

Maximizing and Mellowing

SI and DD with a beach ball Memorial Day weekend

I didn't have big plans for my vacation.  I had small, reasonable plans.  The sort of plans I thought I could absolutely keep.

I was going to get my plants out of their pots and into the soil.
I was going to TRY to clean my house.
I was going to start potty training again.
I was going to finish the half-dozen sewing projects- mostly baby gifts and birthday presents- I had waiting for me.
I was going to cook dinner.  Every night I was home.

Oh, how those plans went awry.

The weather completely foiled me.  If I had put my tomatoes in the ground, they would have died.
Cleaning my house is impossible.  I should have remembered.
Potty training requires time, and my clever plan to just let the girls run pantsless was, like my gardening hopes, dashed by the inclement weather.
My sewing machine didn't technically explode, but let's just say it's still in the shop.
SI got this eye infection that might or might not have been symptomatic of an awful bug that I caught, and then DD caught, and then M caught, and then Grandma caught, and then Grandpa caught...
I did not cook dinner every night.  I am the only person to blame for that particular failing.  Well, me and the bug.

And now this is my last week of vacation.  Five goals for my month off.  Five goals completely unmet, thus far.  But it's not too late.  I have five days left.

Today, cleaning the house.  Today I will clean and clean and clean until my elbows are completely encased in their proverbial grease.  Then I will hang out with Great-Grandmommy and Great-Granddaddy (my grandparents haven't seen the girls since their birthday!), and make dinner.

M and the girls playing with the beach ball

Tomorrow, thanks to the sudden and dramatic turn of weather towards pleasant and garden-loving, I will put my freakin' tomatoes into the freakin' soil.  And the girls will run in little circles around the back yard.  And it will be lovely.  And then I will make dinner.

On Friday, hopefully, the machine will be back from the shop.  And I will turn all of the cut out pattern pieces co-mingling on my sewing table into stuffed animals and tummy time mats.  And then I will make dinner.

On Saturday, I will tend my garden, re-clean my house (no doubt all the mopping I do today will be thoroughly un-done by then), and put finished baby gifts into the mail.  And then I will not make dinner, because I'm going to a wedding shower instead.

On Sunday I will do the routine mending that's been piling up- a patch here, a hem there, that sort of thing.  And I'll enjoy hanging out with my whole family.  And then I'll make dinner.

And then Monday morning, I'll go back to school.  And my home will quickly return to its current disastrousness, and the mending will pile up, and the weeds will threaten my peppers.

Instead of a leisurely month of sewing, gardening, cooking, and cleaning (believe it or not, ALL activities that I enjoy), I had a hectic month of storms, illnesses (M is STILL sick), and Ikea (that'll trash a house).  I'm following this with a short week of chaotically squeezing my "recreation" into minimal hours so as to make them as much like work as possible.

The fact of the matter is that my life just plain doesn't revolve around me anymore.  I'm not sure it ever really did, but I definitely got that impression.  It seemed to me that my life was a matter of my wants and needs.  I had long accepted that nobody else's life revolved around me, but I thought mine did.

DD is very cool

And it doesn't.  My life revolves around three other people.  I'm afraid the cat hardly factors into the equation.

My life is a series of events that are directed at the management and care of my children and husband.  I'm sorry, dear friends, this is why I almost never see you.

I don't often do what *I* want to do.  I'm much more likely to be folding diapers or mopping green eggs off the floor than I am to respond to your Facebook pokes.  (Seriously, Rachel!  Who even still does that?)

I've been saying since last summer that I get it- that I don't ever get to have another vacation.  Because no matter how far away from my kids I am (and I'm not particularly interested in being that far away from them) I'm still on the job.  I'm still on call.  And even if nobody calls me and everything is fine, I'm going to be worrying.  Because I can't leave Mommyhood at home and just be a 20-something wacko singing Dover at a Rock Band party.  I'm a karaoke-ing weirdo with a cell phone on vibrate and in close enough contact with my skin so that the moment it buzzes I can stop mid lyric and check to make sure that my offspring haven't swallowed dishwasher detergent.

Simple things that I associate with mothers- a clean house, a garden, finished projects, a family dinner every night- I'm beginning to discover that this isn't something that just happens.  You have to get to the point where it's possible.  And toddlers aren't exactly helpful.  Right now the only reason that I have the moment to blog is that my girls think Sesame Street is pretty much the best thing in the world.  Next to me reading them that Noah's Ark book ad infinitum.

SI is very cool

You need time to build to that kind of routine.  It doesn't just fall out of the sky.  I can't expect my kids to suddenly act like reasonable people just because they're essentially verbal and mobile.  If anything, that just makes it harder.

In another three years, I imagine I'll be able to do those things so much more easily.  I'll be able to say, "SI, would you like to help me tear up this lettuce for the salad?"  Or, "DD, would you like to help mommy cut out the fabric?"

I'll be able to ask them to play nicely for an hour while mommy works.  I'm not saying they'll do it, but there's a decent chance.

Right now, asking them to go play somewhere else throws them into a panic.  The sort of panic that I'm going to leave the house without them- horror of horrors!  Right now, I can't count on a solid hour of time to do absolutely anything.

And somehow, I still keep forgetting that.


I know I said this last year, but NEXT summer things will be easier.  And it might just be.  But then again, it might not.  There might be all sorts of other obstacles to my domestic success that I hadn't considered.

DD and SI in dresses Aunt Genocide brought from Mazatlan

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  Well, that's how I feel about my attempts to achieve perfect domesticity.  It's just terribly unlikely.  but at the same time, it's NEVER the same thing.  Every day my children are different, changed.  It's a hard thing to explain, but every week or so I'll look at them and think to myself, "Who the hell are YOU?  And what did you do with the baby that was here last week?"

I wonder if my parents think that when they look at me.

M and I are definitely planning on more kids.  Right now we're in agreement on two more- one more biological and one more adopted.  And I know that each new child is going to come close to resetting the progress I've made to being, as I silently refer to it, on top of things.  I need to take a good long look at my life, at my parents lives, and just accept that I'm never going to be on top of things.  Things are just going to keep rolling me under, taking over.

Things are in charge.  I'm just running damage control.

I can't control what happens to our family.  I can't control whether M's tumors start to grow again, or whether we'll have more children or it will turn out that we can't, whether our educations will end as we've planned, whether we'll be able to get better jobs, whether we'll need to move or we'll be able to stay in the lovely home we've made.  I can't control when my kids will bring home nasty bugs that will spread to our nearest and dearest in turn, or swings in the economy that turn our worlds upside down.

I am just plain not in control of anything.

SI and DD moments ago

Except for my broom, and my mop, and hopefully by the end of the week, my sewing machine.  I can set these little goals.

I can control what food I feed my family, even if it is takeout once a week.  I can control a tiny plot of land behind my building and fill it with vegetation I can eat.

I can even control my children, to a certain extent.  Right now they're sitting on the floor beside my desk, eating Cheerios.  They've completely forgotten about Sesame Street.

I just need to stop being so hard on myself for utterly failing at them.