I just turned on The Sound of Music for everyone1, a reprieve for semi-sick, cranky kids on a thundery, humid, afternoon. While my children are being beguiled by Julie Andrews2, here are five things rolling around in my brain:
I thought about making this a “what’s saving my life” post, and if I had done that, the number one thing on that list would be Walmart+. As a rule, I am good at executing a meal plan and figuring out grocery shopping. I managed when we were 55 miles from the grocery store (pregnant! during Covid!) for a whole year. But ever since we got here it’s like that part of my brain broke. I cannot make it turn back on. I did recently find the dry erase marker to write a meal plan on the whiteboard, so we’re making progress, but it’s slow and stilting. I’m in a weird limbo where I still can’t quite remember which stores are where, and when to visit them to avoid beach traffic, and every single chain around us is foreign to me except for Walmart and Costco (which is far enough away it takes planning to get to). All this to say, I had a brief moment of guilty, “I shouldn’t need this right now” right before I renewed the membership with a promotional deal. Right now it’s totally worth it to have groceries show up at my door. It’s not just that we’re figuring out new daily routines, or figuring out where to put furniture, but that absolutely everything is new. New grocery store, new midwife, new library, new people, new church… so whatever small thing I can do to reduce a little of that mental load right now is worth it. Once we get some scheduled activities that are more predictable, it will be a bit easier to tag on a grocery trip with them, but for now grocery delivery is helping my brain not to explode, and my family to stay fed.
Speaking of food, I’ve got two related thoughts. The first is an update to my snack woes — my frustration with non-stop snack requests from my many children. I’m happy to report that we’re making some progress here and I think it is a combination of two things. The first is that I’ve been making a concerted effort to make larger breakfasts with more protein. Things like having eggs with the toast or hot cereal, or a heartier baked oatmeal etc… and then trying to bulk up our lunches too. They like quesadillas with corn tortillas, but the dairy free “cheese” isn’t exactly filling, so I riffed on this recipe the other day and everyone was less hungry. The second thing that’s helping is putting up with more whining and sticking to my guns when it comes to when snacks are an option (once, and after 3:30 pm). The moral of the story is that protein prevents crankiness in all members of the family3, and kids legitimately need eat a lot of food when they’re moving nonstop. I should know both of these things, but they both translate to more work for me. Making a solid breakfast requires some forethought and planning, especially since they’re often all up before4 me and I’m really non-plussed by kids clamoring for food before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee. I’m realizing that if we want to eat the amount and type of food that will keep all these people full, it really will require me to cook for most meals. The sticking point here is that if I’m the only one cooking I get frustrated by how much time I’m spending in the kitchen. So, if my kids need more food, and I don’t want to go crazy, I’ve got to start getting them in the kitchen to help. The main roadblock here is that much of my cooking is done without a recipe5, which leaves me stuck with needing to write it down, or find some way to communicate what I normally do. Sigh. I am my own worst enemy sometimes. For now we’re starting with breakfast items like baked oatmeal, rice pudding, and whatever else I do use a recipe for. In the meantime, I’ll be working on figuring out how to quantify my eyeball cooking. If you’ve got good suggestions for how to let go of control in the kitchen and regain sanity, let me know.
While everyone was feeling under the weather, the one fun thing I did was clean all my furniture6. Hear me out… upholstery cleaners are like vacuums, but BETTER. Do you know how satisfying it is to suck many years worth of milk stains out of your beyond repair couch and chairs? It turns out they are not beyond revival and I should have done this a while ago. We couldn’t really justify new furniture when we’ve still got tiny children to destroy it, but some of it was looking so sad. I got this one, and it’s my new favorite toy. My only complaint is that I’d like to find a cleaning solution without Febreze in it. But man, it’s therapeutic to watch all that dirty water get sucked up.
I ran across this quote in
’s LMLD post from last week.It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility.
It’s from G.K. Chesterton’s The Well and the Shallows which I have not read, but it struck me, especially after some of the reading and discussion I’ve been having lately, so I wanted to know more. I found a more complete version of the portion of text from which the quote comes, and was struck by how very Wendell Berry it sounded. I am not aware of whether Wendell Berry has talked about sexuality, but the parallels that Chesterton draws between the realm of sexuality and that of land stewardship were pretty interesting:
Now it is not unnatural that this unnatural separation, between sex and fruitfulness, which even the Pagans would have thought a perversion, has been accompanied with a similar separation and perversion about the nature of the love of the land. In both departments there is precisely the same fallacy; which it is quite possible to state precisely. The reason why our contemporary countrymen do not understand what we mean by Property is that they only think of it in the sense of Money; in the sense of salary; in the sense of something which is immediately consumed, enjoyed and expended; something which gives momentary pleasure and disappears. They do not understand that we mean by Property something that includes that pleasure incidentally; but begins and ends with something far more grand and worthy and creative.
Thoughts? Have you encountered this passage before?7
While we’re on the subject of fertility, I have noticed that something happens to my drive to create during pregnancy. I’m not the first one I’ve heard say this — it’s like there’s an energetic shift. I just know that I’m less motivated to start new projects and have less ideas rolling around in my head than even when I have a baby up at all hours of the night. It’s a difficult shift to describe, but this isn’t the first time it’s happened, so I thought I’d just start the conversation. Is this a thing? I wonder sometimes if there’s only a certain amount of creative energy that someone has. You cannot deny that cooperating with God to grow a child is an immense amount of energy, but I get frustrated because I don’t think it should have to impact how my brain works8. I find that while I’m pregnant it is often not a matter of not having time, but not having the desire or ideas to use the time well. It’s just a strange experience because I don’t quite feel like myself. I don’t feel bad per se, but just a little… muted? I’d be curious to see if any of you mother creatives have experienced similar shifts.
That’s all for tonight. The rice pudding just dinged in the oven, my cereal bowl9 is empty, and I need to get to bed in hopes of kicking the dregs of whatever this bug is. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed your first week of “real” summer, though if the temperatures are any indication most of us are feeling like it’s been summer for quite some time…
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Lately:
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Reading: I can’t say I would necessarily recommend it, but I finished Britney Spears’ memoir. It’s not great writing, but it is very honest. Mostly it just made me really sad. I sort of lived under a rock during her heyday, but remember following along with some of the drama as I got into high school and college and went through an unfortunate tabloid reading phase (driven by an equally unfortunate elliptical/stairmaster phase). Maybe being a celebrity is just too much for anyone to handle. Why do we choose people to idolize anyway? And is it possible to idolize someone without at some level also wanting to devour or destroy them in a way? Does it always turn into consuming people?
Cooking: This baked oatmeal is a hit, and a good make-it-the-night-before breakfast option. Otherwise a change of plans in our grocery shopping meant we were scrounging a bit. I’m always surprised by how much food we actually have when we have “no food” and should remember that postponing the grocery trip by a day or two is a great little budget hack (that might result in whining from kids about reduced snack options).
Listening: I enjoyed this episode about back pocket meals, and this one about seasoning. It’s a new to me podcast so I’ve been digging through the archives. The podcast title is genius though, “Didn’t I Just Feed You?” Mostly I’ve been listening to my children. They are noisy.
They’ve listened to the soundtrack of course, but we’ve actually never watched the movie
For the sake of transparency, this is how it will actually go. I’ll speed write a draft for 30 minutes while the baby periodically whines at me and the kids are *sort of* occupied, then I’ll be interrupted by the 3 year old waking up from his nap to ask for a snack, then it will be time to start dinner, then I’ll mostly finish and edit it on my phone while I’m nursing the baby down, then again after I send it to my email for the preview (best editing hack ever — it looks different as a preview draft in the inbox and I always catch something). And then it will get scheduled :)
Which I should know, as a self proclaimed Protein Influencer™️. But, it’s hard enough to get myself to eat protein, let alone make sure everyone else is eating it, and then the grocery bill goes up. But I think the snacks might be more expensive than the protein?? Maybe?
I would love to be that person waking up before the kids but it’s not happening right now. The baby’s still nursing and I’m tired, so I’m taking sleep wherever and whenever I get it. Maybe I’ll get there in a month or two. Maybe.
I’m either modifying a recipe I found online because it works, but not without substitutions for 1/3rd of the ingredients, can’t remember which online recipe I used last time, or cooking by eyeballing quantities, none of which is easy to hand to someone else and say, “here, do this!”
Okay, the real reason I got this out was because someone wet the bed, and our current bed situation is several stacking cots (they’re pretty nifty and preserve a lot of floor space for playing, as well as being easier for the kids to maintain). The only issue with them is that they’re hard to wash because there’s no mattress protector. But the upholstery cleaner worked like a charm, and now my one beef with the cots is resolved.
I did a deep dive into some of the actual brain science stuff a while back because I was so frustrated, and there really are some significant brain changes. I wrote about that here
Ridiculously priced pregnancy craving. No regrets.
I absolutely love the Sound of Music, so much so that I wrote a whole post about how much I love it 😅
I have found the same pattern with creativity and motivation in both my pregnancies. First trimester I’m exhausted and nauseous and I just keep my head above water, second trimester I get a little bit of energy back and feel more “like myself”, third trimester I find my focus really shifts inward, I get a strong desire to retreat from the world and it’s busyness. I find I have energy for things like meal prepping but very little for other projects. I find I’m a lot more creative postpartum and if anything try and take on too much too soon.
It must be a boy thing to be so hungry all the time. My girls aren't as active and don't ask for food much at all. But I have a baby son now so we'll see the difference!
I was blown away by how creative I've been postpartum but during pregnancy I was just way too tired and my brain was MUSH. So interesting that this happens! I like what Kaitlin said - that maybe it's God's way of telling us to slow down.