Dear Alex & Olivia

Dear Alex & Olivia,

I used to be really good at writing regular posts to you guys. Then again, you were both younger and, well, in Alex’s case, not moving around. The fact that I haven’t been writing is actually a testament of how busy you guys keep things around here.

Olivia, you are growing up and it’s happening way too fast. I feel like earlier this year you were still sort of in the older toddler stage. In the last few weeks especially, you seem to have exploded into a full on little girl. Your face has lost it’s baby chub and thinned out, and when I look at you I can imagine what you’ll look like 10 years from now. You are already beautiful, but I have this feeling we’ll be wanting to cage you because the boys will be following you everywhere.

In the past few weeks you’ve decided that making the house look “pretty” (as you call it) is actually fun, so you’ve taken it upon yourself to tidy up. This means getting the broom and sweeping, wiping the table, cleaning up toys and stuff, and even learning how to wash the dishes. Granted, you tend to use half a spray bottle of surface cleaner on the table and the dishes aren’t quite  clean, but it’s a start. And, it’s a start that we will not discourage! I know we’ve got many years ahead of us where getting chores done will be like pulling teeth, so we’re going to enjoy the enthusiasm while it lasts.

 

You’ve taken on the responsibility of being a big sister on full force, which is good considering that when I was pregnant your typical response when we’d ask you about the baby was, “I don’t want to talk about it!” Sometimes you instigate things, but most of the time you try really hard to look out for and help your little brother, and that makes my momma heart melt.

You’re learning to read and write and it’s so fun to watch you discover the wonderful world of words. I love that I see your confidence soar when you figure out what a word says and know that you read it all by yourself. I’m so proud of you!

I think the biggest thing that drove home the fact that you’re growing up happened just two days ago. It was early and you walked out of your bedroom and said, “Mom, one of my teeth is wiggly.” You’ve had this fascination with losing teeth lately because a bunch of your friends at school are sporting holes in their smiles, so I thought you were just joking around – until I checked it out. I almost started crying. I wasn’t ready for that. The nail in the coffin came a few minutes later when we realized that you actually had two loose teeth. I don’t think I’m ready for you to start having “grown up” anything on you or in you, but ready or not, here we come! Since then it’s been fun to see how excited you are about this new thing and to talk to you about how it all happens and what to expect. In those conversations Daddy and I realize that not only is your body growing and changing, but that your person is too. We can have conversations with you and explain things and you get it. And it’s so fun!

As you grow up I think the weight of the responsibility that we have as parents is more and more apparent to me. This is a big job we have before us. As a mom, I want to show you what it means to be strong and confident, even when I don’t always feel that way myself. I want to teach you the traditional things of being a wife and a mother, but also show you that you don’t need to be limited to those things. I want you to learn that being feminine is a good thing, but that you can be strong too. I want you to see that you are beautiful, which means I need to be okay with who I am so you can have a good example of what that looks like. I want you to know how to love, so Daddy and I need to always be working at showing the two of you how to do that. Sometimes we’ll fail miserably, but I hope that we get some things right. You need to be able to share your thoughts, feelings and ideas which means I need to be willing to listen and just let you be, even if I might disagree or feel pulled between stopping for a few minutes and doing some other task. I hope you’ll be willing to give us a lot of grace along the way, because this parenting thing is hard.

Alex… In the past month or so I feel like we’ve stepped into a new phase with you, and I’m so glad. Don’t get me wrong, this whole baby thing is great and all, but you and your sister were entirely different baby experiences. Where she was chill and relaxed and willing to watch the world go by, you have been more needy and louder and busy. The last 6 months or so have been kind of draining, but I feel like we’re falling into a new rhythm and it feels good.

You’ve started trying to communicate in earnest, and it’s been so fun to see you go from babble to attempting words. It amazes me how fast your vocabulary is growing. For a while you were speaking equal parts Creole and English and we were waiting to see which one would be more prominent for you. In the last couple of weeks English has raced ahead and every day you surprise me with a new word. The best part is how excited you get when we understand you. Often you’ll say something waiting to see what we do, and when I repeat it you start to giggle and break out in a huge smile. It’s nice to have fast affirmation that we’re on the right track.

It’s interesting for Daddy and I to see our different personalities reflected in you. I wondered how that would play out. Daddy worried that you would be very intense like he was when he was your age, but so far you’ve shown yourself to be a great blend of the two of us, while being your own little self too. You need the physical contact that Daddy needs, and yet also need that with some quiet time after waking up, just like me. Daddy can jump out of bed and be ready to go, but not us. Nope, we need a few minutes to get our bearings before we’re ready to face the world. You like routine, like me. You are very mechanically minded, like Daddy. Watching you figure things out is like watching Daddy work through a problem. You love to eat all kinds of vegetables – definitely not like Daddy, thank goodness.

You’re becoming more independent. You’re getting more and more content to play by yourself and will go outside for hours at a time. You love to have stories read to you, but they aren’t just words. You are taking in everything on the page and associating it with what you already know. You watch everything going on around you and imitate, which is so fun. You love to be in the center of the action. When I mow the lawn you get excited, because it’s a machine, and you’ll sit and watch from a safe distance. When the mower comes near you, you run away to safety again. You love going for a ride anywhere, whether it’s in the wheel barrow or one of the trucks. I wish I would have taken a picture of your face when Ryan let you sit in the white truck while he drove it across the yard. It was obviously one of the best things ever. When I get out the mixer you come push a chair up to the counter just so you can be close to the action.

You have a wonderful sense of humor. For a while you decided that blowing zurburts on any bit of my exposed skin was fun. The more I laughed, the more you did it. When we say, “Smile like Grampa!” you make smile and scrunch up your eyes and look exactly like Grampa Jerry. You love to laugh. We recently had a pizza and movie night and watched 101 Dalmations. Several times you were cracking up, even though the rest of us couldn’t figure out what was so funny. You like to play dress up, whether it’s wearing your Super Alex cape from Auntie Andrea, or your sisters tutu. You are smart. I’m not just saying this because I’m your mom. You really are. Already we can see you reasoning through certain things. We can give you instructions like, “Go to your room and get your shoes” and you do, and if they aren’t in your room you know the other places to look.

Daddy and I have had to learn the art of relaxing with you too. You see, you’re a climber. You climb on everything. The car, the counter, the ladder to the roof or guard tower, motorcycles… you name it, you’ve probably tried it already. We’ve come to learn that you don’t do something that you aren’t comfortable with. And, that it’s okay to let you fall sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not going to let you fall off the roof, but it’s okay to let you learn that there are probably things you shouldn’t do. So far you haven’t done any major damage, so I’m going to chalk that up as a win. All in all, you are a fun little man that keeps life very busy.

I just want you guys to know how much we love you. Just the other day Daddy said, “You know, if we do this right, we could end up having a lot of fun as a family.” You guys bring us a lot of repeated sentences, fatigue and frustration, but that’s minor to the amount of joy, fun and laughter that you also bring to the table. It’s so fun watching you become little people and I find myself wondering what you’ll be like down the road.

~Love Mom

My Mom Journey: Raising Kids Cross Culturally

I missed last weeks post. Sorry. Life kind of got away on me.

This week I want to talk about what it’s like to raise kids cross culturally. When Chris and I got married, we knew we would be bringing kids into the picture at some point, and I’ll admit that I had some reservations about it. Most of that stemmed from the fact that I was still living with a foot in both worlds, so to speak. I was in Haiti, but I hadn’t quite let go of Canada either. I still haven’t and won’t, but it’s different now. While I miss and love Canada because it will always be home and the place that I grew up, I love Haiti too and this is our home, the place that we’ve established our marriage, our family, our lives, our routines – everything. We go “home” to visit, and then miss “home” and can’t wait to come back and get into our norm again.

Bringing kids into the picture makes you think about the choices you make when you live the kind of life that we do. You question if you’re making the right decision to be here and wonder if your kids will suffer for it. Will they end up being freakish and not able to relate to people from your home culture? What about safety? Schooling? Cultural issues. It’s hard and mind boggling, and I’ve realized over the last 5+ years that there is little that I have control over, that we have control over, and that God has called us and placed us here. We need to use wisdom, the wisdom that he provides, as well as trust in the fact that he has entrusted these kids to us and will help us to raise them while being obedient to the call he’s put on our lives.

So how does it play out in all the day to day stuff? What do we like about raising kids cross-culturally? What’s hard? What do we worry about?

What I Love About It:

I love that Chris and I get to truly be partners. Because we live and work on the mission site, he’s around throughout the day. He may go out to run errands, or spend time in the work yard, but he’ll pop in the house and get Alex from his nap or change a diaper or things like that. On days when he’s gone for the day, it’s just that – he’s gone for the day. He’ll be around the next day, and we try to balance that so that I can still have time to get my work done while he might take on more of the household/childcare stuff for a few hours. Before Olivia’s adoption was done I took a few trips out of Haiti while Chris stayed in country with her. Frequently people would ask me how Chris was going to handle the “extra responsibility” of being on his own with her. Truthfully, we never looked at it that way because we shared all aspects of parenting and child rearing. He had been doing everything that I did right alongside me from the time we brought her home that there was no issue. I LOVE THAT.

I also love what Chris being around all the time has done for our kids. When we go “home” on vacation people frequently tell us how confident and settled our kids seem. Chris and I know that a large part of that is that they have two parents that provide consistent leading. My daughter knows her Daddy loves her – he gets to reinforce that every day, repeatedly. I know my son looks up to his Dad because I see him wanting to do the things Chris does, whether it’s putting on shoes and socks to go outside and work, or hanging out to read a story – and he’s like that because he can follow his Dad around all day and learn from him. We can present a united front, rather than one of us carrying the discipline burden simply because we’re the parent that’s there more. That consistency is so important.

I love that our kids are going to grow up with a wider world view than I grew up with. I grew up in a small community, which I still love to this day, but I didn’t really think about the world at large. I assumed that what I was living in was normal for the majority of the world. It wasn’t until I got into my late high school years and early college years that I started to pay attention to things outside of North America, yet it was limited. It wasn’t until I came to Haiti for the first time in 2003 that my eyes were opened. Still, though, it wasn’t until I moved here that I realized what I had grown up in wasn’t the norm - it was the exception. We want something different for our kids. I’m happy that they’ll be growing up in a way where they’ll understand from an early age that not everyone eats a good meal every day, and that people all around the world get sick and can’t afford to go get medical help. Those are hard lessons – but they are reality. As parents, we also hope that by growing up in this kind of life our kids will want to devote their lives to something that is bigger than themselves, wherever that might be. Maybe it’ll be back in Canada or the US, but they would be doing it with a very different perspective than if they grew up in the culture of comfort that I did.

I like that the pace of life and expectations for raising children here are very different from what we would be experiencing back home. While there might be a lot of things that I disagree with in Haitian culture as far as child rearing goes, there are some valuable things too. The family is important and children are considered a blessing. I think my North American upbringing emphasized that, but I see my home culture moving away from that gradually and becoming more self-centered. I’m not being critical – just sharing an observation after stepping out of it. I like that there is an expectation that parents discipline, even if we may have different views on what that looks like. Respect is important. Being in community with people is important. Sometimes these are hard things because they’re uncomfortable, and we have to filter through them and pick and choose what works for us as a family. Other times I’m so grateful that we can sit deeply in it and that our kids will have the opportunity to learn about things like giving and hospitality in a way that we may not be able to teach them back home.

I like that we are away from the pressures to perform. There is so much of this back “home” in the sense that parents these days feel like their kids need to be in so many activities and making top grades and excelling and being pushed and having all the right stuff that I think most parents feel like they’re constantly running, and sadly I think most kids are not learning how to just “be”. While our work day starts early, I love that Olivia is home from school and our work day is over by 2:30 pm. We have time to do other things, or nothing at all. Yes, now that Olivia is older I wish we could put her in something like a dance class, but the motivation isn’t because that’s what’s expected of us as parents in order to actually be considered a good parent - but because I know she would LOVE it. I don’t want us to ever be one of those families that is running from one thing to the next. Thankfully, Haitian culture moves on Caribbean time, so the expectation that things happen quickly only comes from outside pressures. This means that we move slower here and our lives just sort of meander along. Yes, there are times that get busy, but there is always a calm time following where we can recuperate. We can eat breakfast together each morning, and we eat supper together each night. We have routines through the week and yet we still have lots of time to do things on a whim. As parents, we have the time to let our kids be who they are. They have time to learn how to have an imagination. Olivia will spend hours coloring and playing outside, and we hear things like, “Someone was chasing me!” only to look around and remind her that she’s in a fenced yard to be met with a giggle and, “They were chasing me in my head!” I think being removed from a lot of those pressures to perform or doing the “right” thing also makes Chris and I better parents. We can see the areas that really need our attention, we can step back when we need to, we can rest, we can spend more time with our kids in the ways that they need – and not be feeling like any of that is hard or extra work because life is so busy.

What Is Hard?

Raising kids in another culture IS hard! For so many reasons.

First, I think our support network is a lot different. If we were back “home” we would have family, friends, a church community, other community resources etc. Here, we’re away from family and friends. We can tell them bits and pieces of life here, but they don’t see all the ins and outs and often the challenges are hard to explain or have understood. It’s not that people don’t care – quite the opposite – it’s just harder. Our support network is made up of other missionaries and even locals like Yonese, but it’s different from what we would have back home. That can be hard and I miss it.

We don’t get much time away. I think it’s healthy for a marriage to have time away together, whether it’s a few hours or a few days. Because of where we live we don’t have people that can jump in and give us a “date night” who live close by. Driving at night here isn’t often recommended, so a lot of people are hesitant to go more than across town. That leaves us with few options for child care. Ryan has been a blessing in this area since September and has watched the kids a few times so we could go out, and we’ve started asking Yonese in from time to time, but it’s hard. I’ll admit it, we look forward to being “home” because we know our kids can be at the grandparents and we can do something as simple as going out for coffee together just to get a break.

In general, life is just harder. It’s more emotionally taxing and it can suck up a lot of your time too. You don’t have the same conveniences available (which can be a really good thing!) so you have to do things from scratch, or you have to put a lot more time into planning things out. Having these drains on you day in and day out depletes your energy. Energy that we might otherwise be happy to pour into our kids. It doesn’t mean our kids are neglected – quite the opposite. It does mean that parenting often feels harder than it does for us when we’re “home” because everything else is sucking your time too. I remember being back in Canada on sabbatical after O’s adoption was done, and how much easier it was to parent her because we could give her more time and energy and didn’t feel exhausted all the time. Knowing that has helped Chris and I to make decisions and set boundaries that give us more balance as a missionary family, but it’s still hard, especially while the kids are young.

What Worries Me?

We have different worries than we would in our home culture. Here we worry about things like what we will do if there’s every a major health issue, to the point of having to talk through a plan of action, which hospital we’d go to etc. We’ve had to have conversations about what to do in a kidnapping situation and how to avoid it.

We don’t worry about “baby proofing” because our house is concrete from top to bottom. Instead we worry about not leaving machetes and tools laying where Alex can find them, and sometimes we really fail at this because no matter how ahead of the game we try to be, he’s always one step ahead of that.

We’ve had to learn to be less worried about certain things, like the fact that our son climbs onto everything, and accept the fact that God will provide what we need when we need it – if we need it (and we hope we don’t!). There is only so much we have control over here, so we’re trying to teach our kids from an early age what they can do, what they can’t and to deal with whatever lands in the middle.

I worry about things like how my adopted daughter will get treated by her friends at school because she has white parents, and I wonder how my white son will do in a school where he will be one of the few non-Haitian students. Will that be hard for him, or will he do okay because he’ll have absorbed more of the culture than any of us by the time he starts? None of these things are things I can control, but rather will have to navigate as they come.

I worry about the conversations my kids will overhear and the skin they will have to develop because of this life we’re called to live. Haitians can be verbally brutal to each other and to foreigners and I’m not going to pretend that this won’t affect us and our kids. It already has. We can only have open, honest conversations with our kids about the fact that people are broken and that brokenness can come out in ways that cause others hurt.

I worry about how our kids will adjust to life when they go off to college or university. How do you transition into a world you’ve only visited? We’re going to need to talk to parents of third culture kids who have gone before us and learn from them. Again, nothing I can control right now.

I worry about the relationships my kids will have here. In general, it’s difficult for kids or expats here to have genuine friendships with Haitian kids simply because of the cultural and economic differences. They can establish friendships on many levels, but it can be challenging to be the “haves” in the relationship and it throws typical peer dynamics off. We’re hoping and praying that our move to Kan Marie and living in the community will afford our kids ample opportunity to grow up in a community where they aren’t just known as the kids of the “blan”.

I know I’m only scratching the surface here and I could blog about this for days, but it’s raining for the first time in weeks, it’s cool, and I have a head pushing up under my elbow so it’s time to go.

~Leslie

Making Things Grow

On Friday Chris and Ryan loaded up a bunch of trees and took them out to the new land to plant. This may seem like a small thing, but for us it’s not. For Chris it’s not. Our journey to the new land has been one that’s taken over three years, and it’s one that I’m so thankful for. Chris has been planting trees and nurturing them, giving some away, and starting others during this time. The whole time he has been thinking about the future of the mission and the fact that these trees would eventually go to the new site - wherever that was! 

Now we have a place to put them and I can’t even really describe how that feels. Probably surreal at best.

On Friday he planted an assortment of fruit trees along the back fence line, and Saturday morning we took the kids out and planted the last two that didn’t go in the ground on Friday. It was early and we visited with neighbors that walked by on their way to their fields down the path from the land. It was nice to hear how happy everyone was that we were planting more trees. I think farmers have more of an appreciation for this kind of thing than those that don’t farm.

Michelet has slowly been clearing out the brush on the land and we have a massive “compost” pile. The first time I saw it, it was about 12 feet high. Now that the leaves have compacted it’s shrunk down and the branches are left. Chris told Michelet to take stuff out of the pile that he could use for making charcoal and to cut down any other brush to do the same. Normally we don’t encourage people making charcoal, but that’s because they usually cut down a perfectly good tree to do it. In our case he’s using stuff that would otherwise get burned because there’s no where to haul it off to. It’s good for him and it’s good for us. I remember looking at the land the first few times we visited. it was so overgrown with grass and garden type things that you couldn’t see from one corner to the next. Now that it’s dry and Michelet has been clearing things we can get a vision for what can be.

Aside from the buildings, Chris and I are already dreaming about things like grass and plants. Getting all of the plants and flowers that we have from Cory in the past month has just opened up this excitement in us to make the place beautiful. It’s so fun to have a blank canvas to work with too!

I know that some people might think it frivolous for us to be thinking about this. Some people might think that we should focus more attention on ministry type things. Some might feel like having a nice property isn’t necessarily a good thing.

I beg to differ.

After living here for as long as we have we’ve come to learn a few things. Mostly, we know we’re in this for the long haul. Chris has already been here for over 11 years, and I’ll be celebrating my 8 year anniversary in the fall. That seems crazy! I remember when I thought 3 or 4 years was long-term, but now we find ourselves in the category of people who are already defined as long-termers. We regularly find ourselves passing along lessons learned to new people on the ground, hoping they’ll be able to avoid some of the hard things we had to go through. That feels strange in the sense that it hasn’t felt like that long. After being here as long as we have, thinking 20 years down the road doesn’t seem so scary anymore. In reality Alex will maybe be a year into college or university.

We’ve learned that balance is a much needed thing with living here. When we were newer on the ground, and young newlyweds, it was easier to spend more time focused on ministry stuff. Now that we have kids and we’ve been married for almost 7 years we realize that those things (marriage and kids) need as much, or sometimes more, of our attention if we want to be here for the long term. We’ve seen a lot of people let things get out of proportion and their marriages and family relationships suffer, and in return their ministry suffers. They burn out and don’t know how to recover. We came close to that because of some of the things we’ve been through, but thankfully were able to step back and get help. Since then we’ve recognized we’re of better use in the calling God has placed on us if we are nurturing our relationships with each other and taking care of ourselves.

One thing I’ve noticed is how few missionaries and expats have hobbies outside of their ministries or jobs. Yes, it’s hard to do certain things, but I think a larger part of it is that they either feel guilty for wanting to do those things, or have a hard time setting boundaries around their personal time. I think we need to be sensitive to the extra things God puts on our hearts, like helping out in times of need for example, but we also need to remember that Jesus set the example of getting away and doing things that were healthy so he could better minister.

For Chris and I, getting out and working in the garden is something that nurtures our souls. I, admittedly, haven’t done much around our current place in a while, but Chris has actively been working on his roof garden for years. Recently I’ve taken on some of the yard work for exercise, and I’ve been enjoying it again. Working in a garden gives us a front row seat to see God’s creation and a life cycle. It’s fun to step back and see that work leads to something beautiful that everyone can enjoy. God created plants to nourish our bodies, both nutritionally, but also at a soul level. That beauty was created for us. He created the relationship between man and plants, because it was good.

There are other things that we see too.

First, I want our workers to have a place to relax on their breaks. They work hard, all day long. Where we are now most of them can go home for half an hour if they want. In Kan Marie they won’t be able to do that, so they’ll most likely hang out at the mission. We’re strategically creating places that are shady and nice where they can relax and rest and I like that. We want that for them in the same way that we want better bathroom and shower facilities than what we can give them now. We want them to know that they are appreciated and that we put thought into things, with them specifically in mind.

Secondly, when we host training classes we welcome students from all over Haiti. They get to take one week away from the lives they live to learn something that could be life changing for them and their communities. They get a break from things, in a life that can only be described as hard in most cases. They get to sleep on a comfy bed (most Haitians sleep on the floor), eat three meals per day and visit with other Haitians. We want a place where our students can not only learn and work, but also relax and enjoy their time away. Haitians hardly ever get to take “vacations” so any chance to travel through the country is a big deal. We see that, and want an environment that is nice for them to be in.

Thirdly, when friends and family or Vision Trippers come see us we know they aren’t just coming to learn about Clean Water for Haiti. Most are taking time off work or school, using their vacation days, to come be with us and learn. We don’t take that lightly. Haiti can be overwhelming and a lot to process. We want a place where our visitors can relax and rest and process, all while learning about what we do. We don’t want the place to look like a resort, but we want them to see what Haiti can look like. It’s not all muddy water and poverty. God has created a lot of beautiful things that can exist here. We want them to see that side of Haiti too.

Fourthly, we’re excited about trying new plants and trees. We don’t really have any space at our current place to plant new fruit trees without having to take something else out. Some of the varieties that Cory gave us have never been grown in our area before. We love the idea that we might be able to grow things and introduce them to the community. Chris is especially hoping that his dragon fruit plants will start to give fruit because it’s something that would be ideally suited for Haiti’s climate and dry seasons. One fruit that we tried at Cory and Kris’ last weekend is a cousin to star fruit, but is really sour just eaten off the tree. Ryan liked the flavor and brought home a ziploc bag of them. Afraid they would go bad, we asked if Yonese could make juice out of most of them. When she did, and sweetened it, it tasted like green apple juice! It was a total surprise to all of us and Yonese asked if she could take seeds because she liked it so much! She said it was something that people would be really interested in if they could buy it in the market.

Lastly, over the years we’ve seen how some of the things that we love to do, like cooking and gardening, have blessed others that are serving and working here. Most of the foreigners we know are living in more urban settings, and don’t have green space like we do. Time and time again friends have thanked us for the time they get to spend at the mission, whether it’s for a meal or staying overnight to get away for rest, because it gives them a break from being in the grind of ministry and community. Haiti is a hard place to live and work, and it can be hard to find places where one can go to really rest. Our board has recognized that this is part of our unintentional personal ministry to others here, and they strongly encourage us to do that for others, which we love. We want to be able to continue that at our new place.

Yesterday I was feeling a bit sick, so I spent most of the day on Pinterest looking at “tropical gardening” and getting inspiration for what can be. Isn’t this amazing???

Found on Pinterest. You can ignore the deck chair in the background, I was focused on the plants :)

I call that our 15 year plan! The thing is, I know that grass can grow quickly if you do it right, and I know that most of those plants become large fast. That’s what’s fun about gardening here. What you grow back home as a tropical house plant becomes this large, amazing plant here in it’s natural climate. A philodendron, for example, as a houseplant has leaves that are a few inches long. Here in Haiti we’ve had them grow a foot and a half or bigger. It’s amazing!

Something else that Chris said on the weekend struck me. He pointed out the fact that we aren’t as young as we used to be, and that reality was settling in for him. He’s going to be 40 next year, and this year I’ll be 35. He admitted he doesn’t have the same energy he had 10 years ago and that he doesn’t want to spend his time on the same things. He wants to think about what we’ll enjoy doing for fun 10 years from now. Having a garden that we can work at is fun. Over time we can plant things that will require less and less maintenance, rather than more. Also, as our kids get older they can help with the process. Olivia has recently decided that she likes helping tidy up the house. As I’ve been mowing the lawn the past few weeks the thought occurred to me that in the next few years Olivia will be older and able to start helping with things around the yard more. My mom, and her mom before her, helped to establish a love for gardening and I want my kids to have that same experience. They already like to muck around outside!

I’m just so excited about this next phase and about the challenge of making something beautiful.

~Leslie

Over the Hills and Through the Woods!

Saturday morning we got up early  to head out on a little road trip. After a yummy breakfast we piled in the car and Ryan hopped on his motorcycle and we started making the journey across the island to the north of Haiti. Our plan was to visit friends we’ve known online for several years, but had yet to meet face to face, with the exception of Cory who had stopped by about a week and a half ago for the first time.

I had never been past Goinaves in the 7+ years that I’ve lived here, and it’s been years  since Chris took a trip up north. Back then the roads were horrible and it could take 5-6 hours or more to do the drive. Since then they’ve done a lot of road work and with the exception of a few places the roads were fine. We were able to do the trip in about 3 hours with a few stops along the way.

One thing I love about Haiti is how much the landscape changes from zone to zone. Our area is barren compared to most other areas in the sense that it’s mostly short grasses and scrub brush, if there is any. If you go north of St. Marc you arrive in the Artibonite Valley, which is where most of Haiti’s rice is grown. In areas where they haven’t irrigated the land is very arid. I do think it’s important to mention that when the island of Hispaniola was found, it would have been covered in trees and jungle type growth. Looking at Haiti now, at least in our area, it’s hard to envision that. But, when you have the opportunity to see other areas where large trees are still allowed to grow and under brush isn’t cut back it’s a tropical paradise. It’s sad to look at the terrain in our area and know what it could look like, if only the trees were kept or replanted and protected.

The dot of light is Ryan on his motorcycle following us.

Early morning sunshine.

I love this moment in the drive where you crest a hill and the Artibonite Valley sprawls below.

The Artibonite River in Pon Sonde.

The start of a very busy market day. Two hours later and it would have taken us about 15 minutes to get through here.

In the Artibonite you pass miles of rice fields…

As you get into Gonaives the land changes again. In 2004 Gonaives was badly flooded and the flood left a lake where cacti used to live. The lake has finally dried up and shrubs are starting to come back, and the grass is growing. The last time we drove through there people were still fishing out of it.

North of Gonaives you start to see bigger trees. The Mapu tree is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. They have some significance in voodoo, so while you might see limbs cut off a Mapu tree, you never see one cut down. Because of this they’re massive. One time Chris and I were in an outlying area of Gonaives and we came across a Mapu tree that was literally about 10 feet in diameter! I have a picture of Chris somewhere standing next to it. In order to get a good picture of the tree I had to stand way back, and Chris looks like a dot. The Mapu trees will grow mixed in with old mango trees, trees that drip with fruit. It’s amazing!

The road over the mountains is literally that – a road that goes over the mountains. You climb and climb and climb through a maze of switchbacks and curves as Haiti’s mountain ranges lay out before you. In Creole there is a phrase -  ”Apre morn gen morn”. Loosely translated it means “After mountains there are more mountains.” It’s so true. You can look at the side of a hill and think that’s the highest range around, but when you get to the top you see miles of hills and mountains stretched before you going off into the horizon. I have honestly never seen anything like it.

At the top of the climb you come to the place where the road forks. Go one way and you’ll head to Marmelade, which we’ve heard is beautiful. Go the other way, and you head to Cap Haitian. We went the other way :)

You’re only at the top for a few seconds and you start to go down the other side. There is one spot where you are literally at the top of the range and looking down both sides you see miles and miles of valley below you, filled with it’s own smaller ranges. It baffles me to think of who originally cut these roads.

Looking at the road to come…

Apre morn, gen morn.

Smoke from charcoal pits filters up.

Going down, down, down you start to find yourself in green. Big trees, high grasses, flowering bushes – it’s so lush and fresh. After going down the switch backs and past small communities the road starts to climb again. This time the climb isn’t as severe, but climb you do.

As we started to come down the other side of the second climb I looked down to see a river finding it’s way through the green jungle like landscape. It caught me by surprise, because rather than being the brown river that is the Artibonite River, this was clear fresh water that tumbled over boulders and wove through the valley.

At the bottom of our decent we found ourselves driving parallel to this beautiful river. Children played in it and ladies sat in groups washing their colorful laundry. It wasn’t full of garbage and wallowing animals, and I thought to myself, “This is the Haiti I want people to see, because Haiti is so much more than what people see when they get off the plane.” The truth is, many never get past Port au Prince and it’s surrounding areas. If you only see one thing, you think that’s what defines a place, right? Haiti is so much more complicated and beautiful than that, though.

The Fauche campus.

We got to Limbe and headed down the road to Fauche (foh-shay) to the Wesleyen campus where they live. Again, it’s a beautiful area. It gets hot, but the large trees and greenery make for a different kind of hot. I think it was cooler than our place, partly because it’s more north, but also because of the greenery. It’s amazing how much heat a large tree can cut out.

We really enjoyed our weekend with Kris, Cory, Eli and Anna and hope we’ll get to see them when they make trips down our way. There’s a big difference in spending time with people that have been in country for years and spending time with people who are only a few years in. Kris was also a missionary kid here so we heard all sorts of interesting stories about her time growing up in the country and how different things were back then.

Cory is an agriculturist, so Chris and I had fun walking through his “garden” which is really a loose term because it’s pretty huge and sort of trickles down one side of the property. He has a nursery area where he starts his plants or babies his cuttings, then finds new homes for them. The variety of things he’s trying out is mind-boggling. When he stopped by for a quick visit a couple weeks ago he brought us almost a pick-up truck box full of plants and trees. Yesterday we left with a trunk full of cuttings and root balls! Chris really enjoys trying out fruiting trees, so he and Cory had fun talking about what would work in our area and what to try. It was also fun for us to get to try some of the fruit from the things that he gave us, like ever bearing mulberry! People often ask us what we miss food wise, and when it comes to fruit, we both miss berries! They need cooler dormant times, and Haiti just doesn’t have that. But, this mulberry is great for hot climates like Haiti and is delish! We ate them fresh and in pancakes, and you can use them to make jam!

One of the other fascinating plants that Cory gave us is Miracle Fruit! Miracle Fruit is this berry that you eat that heightens your taste for anything else you eat after it, for about 20 minutes. Sour things can become sweet and sweet things become more sweet. We found one ripe berry on their bushes, so Chris, Ryan and I split it and had a tasting party before we left. I already have extra taste buds, so food tends to taste more intense for me naturally, so I was curious. Wow! The sour stuff was fun, but I noticed the biggest difference on a slice of mango. It was so syrupy sweet I could hardly finish it! It was fun, and I can’t wait until our bushes start giving fruit and we can let our workers try it. That’ll be a fun day! :)

Miracle Fruit!

Most of what Cory gave us yesterday are flowering plants, which I’m so excited about! We have lots of green things at our place, but not much that flowers. We now have about 10 different kinds of hibiscus and other things like ginger, anthurium, peace lily and several varieties of heliconia. Have I mentioned I’m excited???

One of the Hibiscus varieties.

Another Hibiscus variety we got. There’s also a peach one like this, a giant coral orange one, the standard red, a deeper red, a pink with light streaks, a peach with burgundy center… so many!

Cory getting some “help” from Alex. We already have the giant leaf plant that’s over Alex’s head growing in our yard. Cory is digging up some of the plant on the right for us to take home.

The drive back was just as pleasant as the drive there. We made a quick stop to buy some mangos just before we arrived back in Gonaives. There’s one area under a bunch of big old mango and Mapu trees where ladies line up along the road and sell their fruit.

These Mapu trees are still very young, probably only about 15 – 20 years old.

It was a fun get away!

~Leslie

My Mom Journey: Meal Planning

Have I ever mentioned how much I love food? Seriously. For some people, food is just something that gives their body energy, and from a weight gain perspective, I’m jealous of that. For others, others like me, food is an experience. God decided to give me extra taste buds in my mouth (fact!) which gives me heightened taste receptors. I can be called a “super taster”, if you will. Because of that thing foods either taste super good, or super yuck. There are fruits here, for example, that can be tart and sweet at the same time. Chris and Olivia love them, but when I eat them, I pucker up and shake my head no. Too intense!

Because of things like my super taste buds, if I’m going to eat something, I want it to be yummy. Also, cooking is something I enjoy doing – most of the time. Feeding people is one of my spiritual gifts! Just kidding. But, in reality, I love that something I enjoy doing can not only nourish peoples bodies, it can nourish their souls too. All of our missionary friends get excited when we have them over for dinner because it’s a treat for them, even if I make something simple like spaghetti, and I love that we can love on our friends this way. One time our board of directors even made a comment about the fact that it was really a part of Chris and I’s ministry to the other missionaries in our area and that they loved that we did it (which is great because the mission covers most of our food budget!). I loved that they saw the value of it and encouraged it.

That said though, the whole process of cooking here can be challenging. It requires planning – lots of it. Most of the produce in Haiti is sold in the open market, and there are certain days of the week that are “market day” in each area. On those days marchands will come from all over to sell what they have. On non “market days” there are still people selling, you just don’t find the same variety that you would on a “market day”. In our area Thursday is our big market day, so each week we send Yonese to go get all of our fresh produce. We can get quite a good variety in our area, though some things you can only find in Port au Prince. Aside from fruit and veggies, we also get our eggs and fresh milk from the market, and most grains like beans, rice, flour,corn meal, sugar etc. We can also get these things in the stores locally, and often due if we’re running out before market day, but it’s less expensive to buy them in the market.

Other things like condiments, meat, cheese, etc are bought in the local small grocery stores. We used to do a big shop about once a month in Port, but since the beginning of this year one of the local grocery stores has been bringing in a wider variety of things and will even order meat in for us that they don’t sell in the store on a regular basis. Because of this we hardly ever have to shop in Port anymore, which is a huge time saver. The trip up to the grocery store itself could mean an hour in traffic each way.

Even if I need something from the store, it’s a 20 minute drive each way. We try to use our trips to pick Olivia up from school to do any shopping in town that we need to do, but again, that takes planning.

So, how do I put it all together so that life is actually simpler, rather than more complicated in an already complicated situation?

I meal plan!

I started doing this several years ago and it helped us immensely in so many ways.

First off, I really don’t love trying to figure out what to make for dinner at 4 pm. We get up really early and our work day starts at 6 am, so by the time late afternoon rolls around my brain is done for the day. Trying to figure out what to make for dinner with what I have on hand sucks. So I stopped doing it.

Secondly, food here is expensive. By meal planning I can buy what we need, not just random items that may or may not get thrown into something else. I realized we would have things we would eat regularly, and the things that seemed like a good idea at the time would either sit on a shelf, or die in the fridge. By meal planning I can buy what I know we’ll use and that’s it. Because the mission pays for our food as a small stipend, we want to be as effective as possible with how we spend that money. There’s always room for improvement, and I’m always looking at how we can not only eat healthier, but also cheaper. Meal planning has been a huge help in this department.

How do I do it?

I try to keep things pretty simple. I actually meal plan a month at a time, rather than weekly. This just works better for me because a week here can get busy and then I realize that I haven’t done it and things all fall apart. By taking about an hour once a month I can plan the whole month and its all ready to go.

I start by using a blank calendar page. Computer programs like Publisher have blank templates that you can use, or you could just make a simple table with enough boxes for 5 weeks and print it off. The one I use right now is actually a little calendar notepad thingie that I found in a dollar store. No dates, just days of the week.

I start by writing in the dates. After that I make little notes about anything special, like days where I know we’ll have visitors. This is important for me because when we have people in I have to cook a higher quantity of food, and I need to plan for lunches which is something I don’t typically do because we just eat leftovers or scrounge for something else. I also cook differently when we have people in. I learned several years ago that while I might want to cook something special, it’s often more of a time suck, and our days are already full with hosting duties. Keeping things simple during those times means it’s less meal prep time for me, I have more energy and the time I’m not using for cooking is time I can actually spend with our guests. Also, by keeping meals simple there are opportunities for people to help me out in the kitchen, which provides more time to connect.

After I note all that stuff I write in three things each week: Ryan Cooks, Leftovers and Chris Cooks.

Yep. The guys each cook one night per week. This wasn’t something I asked or demanded. When things started getting busier Chris asked if he cook take one night of cooking for me, and I said yes. I don’t care what he cooks, I just love that he does it. Usually it’s something simple like baked potatoes. But the important thing is that I don’t have to do it. When Ryan came we found out that he enjoys cooking and he offered to take one night per week. Ryan does Tuesdays and Chris does Fridays.

Leftovers…

Yes, I actually schedule a leftover night each Wednesday. We started to realize we were throwing out too much food because we weren’t eating it all. Aside from cutting down on how much I was cooking, I decided to add a leftover night like I had seen on organizing blog. Because Thursday is market day, we do leftover night on Wednesday. This helps us clean out the fridge and then I can see what we really need as far as produce, etc. Sometimes there aren’t many leftovers in the fridge, so occasionally I have to come up with a quick dinner idea in its place, but I’m okay with that. This morning, for example, I looked in the fridge to take stock, and while there are some leftovers, there aren’t enough to make a meal for 5 so I’m going to whip something else up – but I’ll be using up a bunch of the veggies in the crisper before they go bad to do it. I also know that we’ll eat up the leftovers that are there in the next two days just by feeding the kids lunch.

So, when all of those things are added in I only have to plan four dinners per week. On the side of my fridge I keep a list of all the meals that we enjoy eating so I don’t stagnate and just cook the same things over and over. A couple months ago I went through my cookbook that I have where I can add recipes in. It’s a just a photo album divided into sections. I took out anything that I a) knew I hadn’t ever made, or hadn’t made in a very long time, probably because it wasn’t a hit; and b) anything that I knew I would have trouble making here either because of time investment, ingredients, or because someone in our family just doesn’t like it. No sense in keeping something I’m not going to use when something I will use could be in that space. I made sure all my recipes were laminated and organized. Things had gotten a bit crazy because I just kept printing things and shoving them in the front cover. After I cleaned up the book, I updated the fridge list.

On my list things are divided into sections by the meat involved. Things that need ground beef go under one section, regular beef under another. Chicken dishes with rice are in one section and all other chicken dishes in another. Pasta, fish, soups and other ethnic or veggie based dishes in their own categories.

When I plan meals I like to spread things out and try to do chicken once a week, some type of beef another night, and even aim for a meat free night when I can. On a meat free night I might make soup and bread or something bean based like rice, beans and tortillas. Or it might be grilled cheese!

Once I have everything done on my paper version, I transfer it to the white board calendar stuck on my fridge. This way it’s out where everyone can see it, and I can change anything that needs to be changed if needed.

For planning purposes I also have a white board on the other side of our fridge that I took a permanent marker to. I divided it in half with a simple line, and on one side at the top I wrote “Market” and on the other “Store”. Now, I can look at the coming week and write down the things we need to buy. If it’s fresh stuff, grains, milk etc it goes on the “market” side. Other things that we need to get from the store go, you guessed it, on the “store” side! With three adults cooking through the week and people coming and going I got tired of forgetting things on my list when I went to shop, so I put the board up and the house rule is that if you know it needs to be replaced, either because it’s running low or it’s completely out – it goes on the list. It’s helped so much! We were having some magnet issues in the past couple weeks and I was getting annoyed because it wasn’t staying where I had put it. I was feeling out of sorts and unorganized so yesterday I did something about it and life is all better again!

I do want to mention that I like to keep a regular stock of what I would call “pantry essentials” on hand. For me it includes things like all my regular baking supplies, tomato paste (pasta sauce, pizza sauce etc), basic condiments, coffee, a couple different kinds of pasta noodles, oil, vinegar, and spices. Again, because going to get groceries is at least a 20 minute drive, and somethings aren’t available in our area, I stock up. For example, if I know I need flour, which comes in small 5lb bags, I’ll buy two – one to refill the plastic container in the kitchen and one to refill. I hate it when I feel like cooking or baking something and then run out of an ingredient half way, so I try to avoid that because I can’t just run out to get what I need to finish up. I do go through periods where I realize we have certain things piling up, like I did last week, so I then make an effort to use those things. For example, I had two and a half bags of oatmeal, and decided to make granola. Typically I wouldn’t have used that much oatmeal to make a batch of granola, but when I started I realized I was out of oat flour, so I whipped one and a half bags up in the blender to make my oat flour. All good!

The other reason I keep certain things on hand is because I want to be able to whip up a quick meal if we end up having company. As I mentioned, I cook differently when we have visitors. I pre-portion things like chicken and beef, so when we have company of maybe two extra people I might decide against chicken because for us right now a pre-portioned bag is 8 pieces (4 thighs, 4 drums) and 16 pieces of chicken is way too much chicken for 7 people! In that situation I might decided to make a pot of spaghetti with salad. We always have stuff for salad on hand, and I usually try to keep the makings for spaghetti on hand too. It’s just an easy meal that I can do on the fly. By having certain things on hand I can be ready for something spontaneous in a place where most things require a lot of planning and work.

I want to say something else about meal planning, and that’s the fact that it helps sort things out when you have a pick eater. In our house I go by the same rule that I grew up with, which was that you ate what was put before you. My mom tried to account for certain things, like my brothers hate of certain veggies, but for the most part we ate what was before us, even if we didn’t love it. I want to raise our kids with the mindset of trying something before you decide if you don’t like it, and to be polite when someone else prepares a meal for you. I don’t force them to eat things they don’t like other than taking a couple bits to be sure they don’t like it. Olivia used to be less picky than she is now, so typically I make her take a bite or two then leave it. Sometimes she ends up liking something that she thought looked gross, and other times she doesn’t. Chris is my really picky eater. He would live on meat and potatoes in any form if he could. When we first got married he wouldn’t hardly touch most veggies. How does a person meal plan for that???

Well, I remember that Chris is one person in our family. While I like to cook things that he likes to eat, I also try to balance that out with what the rest of us like. And, I make balanced meals. Many nights we have salad with whatever main dish we have. Usually I make up a big bowl of salad and we eat that until it’s gone. While I know Chris doesn’t like cooked veggies, it doesn’t mean that I avoid them. I figure he’s an adult and he knows how to use a fork, so he can pick them out, and he does. When I’ve expressed my frustration with trying to cook for him he’s (thankfully!) told me to not worry too much about it and just let him pick things out. So I don’t and he does. I’m proud of Chris too, because while he never used to eat salad when we first got married, he does regularly now. And while he only used to eat one kind of dressing on it, he eats a whole bunch of different things now.

My point is that meal planning allows you to account for your family’s preferences. If you know that one of your kids just wont eggs in most forms (like Olivia) then you can account for that. O had some bad experiences with getting sick after eating scrambled eggs, which were a staple for her when she was small. Now she hardly ever eats them. But, we’ve made her try other kinds and she found she loves hard boiled eggs and poached eggs. If I’m making breakfast and it involves eggs, unless I can plunk a boiled or poached egg in front of her, I don’t bother cooking eggs for her and just make sure she gets a piece of toast and something to give her some protein, but she’s only getting that because I’m making toast and other stuff for everyone else, not because I’m making a special meal for her. I used to worry more about what my kids ate, but then started paying attention to their food choices. Alex eats almost anything, and loves most veggies and fruits. Olivia might not love eggs, but she eats a variety of meat and will ask for salad. I think when the choices are healthy on a regular basis most kids will choose healthy foods in the balance that their bodies need.

I think we also need to be knowledgeable about what’s in our food. This is an area where I need to put more time in, but I’ve realized that while I might think about certain vitamins being in veggies, for example, I don’t think about the fact that some have calcium. My brain thinks dairy = calcium, so I used to worry when Olivia didn’t want to drink much milk. Then I realized that our water has a high calcium level, and she drinks lots of water, and she likes some of the veggies that have calcium in them as well as things like cheese and yogurt.

Now that I’ve been meal planning for several years I’m finding that rather than focusing on how to figure out what we’re going to eat, I can spend more time and attention on finding healthier or homemade options for things. Often people ask us what foods we miss from back home, and our typical answer is “nothing”. There might be something that a specific restaurant makes that we love, but for the most part I’ve figured out how to make the things that we did miss. I missed having tortillas, so I learned how to make them. And you know what? Even when we do have access to tortillas and they aren’t too expensive, I don’t buy them because mine taste better. I like knowing what is in our food, and I like making things from scratch. Recently I had people bring in canning jars and the few supplies that I’d need so I could do things like can sugar free mango jam when we had lots of mangoes, or canned tomatoes when tomatoes were in season. I loved being able to open one of my jars rather than a processed one when I’m cooking.

I hope this is helpful in some way. When it comes to meal planning you really need to find what works for you and your family. Some people need and want to plan every meal of the day. I don’t, so I don’t do it. Some people like computerized versions. I’ve tried several options and I keep going back to my paper and dry board version. Some people like to do a week at a time. I don’t want to have to do it that often, so I don’t. It has to work for you. And, it might take a while of trying things out to develop your system. Mine has literally taken years, but now we all rely on it. If things have been busy and I haven’t updated the plan yet I feel confused and unorganized and Chris often notices and says something about me not having updated the meal board yet. I realized that he likes to know what’s coming, and that makes me happy :) I like that I don’t have to think and can just look at the board that morning and know what needs to come out of the freezer or what other prep needs to be done. I don’t fee frazzled.

Question: Do you meal plan? If so, what works for you and what doesn’t. How does it affect things like your shopping and budgeting? 

~Leslie

My Mom Journey: Encouraging Responsibility

I think as parents one of the greatest challenges that we have is teaching our kids how to grow up well. It’s a constant process of teaching them how to speak, act, think, live… and it can be exhausting because you know that if you back off, everything can just fall apart and you might end up starting at the beginning again.

I also think part of the challenge is knowing when your kids are ready for the next step. When it was just Olivia it felt easier to step back and assess things, then adjust, whether it was discipline or expectations. Having two kids in different stages leaves my head feeling like it’s ready to explode most days.

We have to regularly remind ourselves that not only are our kids not the same age, they also have entirely different personalities. What worked for Olivia at a certain age doesn’t necessarily work with Alex, so we’re always having to look at things and make changes where we see the need.

When it comes to disciplining our kids we’re learning that one of the biggest obstacles in the process isn’t the kids - it’s us! It can be exhausting to go through a day where you feel like you’re herding caffeine high hamsters. They’re all running around in different directions and not talking or at least not using real words and what seems reasonable or normal to them doesn’t even hit on the average persons “normal” radar. Some days I just want to sit on the couch and let them destroy the house because that seems like it would be easier than repeating myself over and over. But, then I remind myself this is the hard work of growing people.

And, friends, that right there is the key point.

As parents the real goal isn’t to make our kids behave or become responsible now, it’s about asking ourselves what type of people we want to see our children be when they’re in their 30′s or older. What kind of character traits do we hope they possess? How do we hope they’ll treat others? How do we hope they’ll conduct themselves when issues of integrity are put before them? When they have to make hard decisions or go through hard times?

That’s what all this craziness is about. We’re growing people here, folks!!!

Lately we’re going through one of those phases where we realized we needed to step back and reassess, then change what isn’t working any more. The kids are just in a different place than they were six months ago. They need different guidelines and challenges.

With both kids we’ve realized that, because of our own exhaustion around the whole issue, we’d let discipline slide a bit. We were being too slack with Olivia in the sense that we were giving her too many warnings and chances, and she wasn’t taking us seriously enough. With Alex, he’s finally at the stage where he’s understanding his actions have consequences and doing something he has been told not to do will warrant discipline.

This past weekend we decided to turn the train around and start being more firm again. Because Olivia is old enough to have a conversation with we were honest and just told her that we’d been letting her get away with too much and that we could see she didn’t respect us when we told her to do or not do something, so there were going to be fewer warnings and requests, and more expectation that our instructions would be honored. We know that Olivia is a child who thrives on praise, so we encouraged her in the fact that we know she’s a big girl who is able to make good choices, and that we’ve seen her being obedient and respectful. For her, a few short days of re-establishing where the lines are is enough to steer her in the right direction. She will go from being a kid who acts like she didn’t hear what you said to voluntarily tidying up the kitchen (seriously, this is what she did on Saturday morning, for fun…).

Alex, is still too young to have a logical conversation with, so obviously other ways of letting him know what’s what are needed. We came down hard on him with not letting him get away with stuff we were outright telling him not to do. As in, “Alex, don’t touch,” only to have him look at us and see the wheels turning as he decided whether he would touch or not. By being firmer with him sooner we’re seeing him take the warnings more seriously.

The root of this is teaching our kids responsibility. Responsibility for themselves, their thoughts, their actions, etc.

In our home, another part of these lessons of responsibility is around the fact that we expect everyone in our home to contribute to helping it run well. We all benefit from a happy home, so we all need to actively be part of that. As adults, Chris, Ryan and I share cooking responsibilities and clean up the kitchen and other main areas. Yonese is obviously a huge help too.

Alex isn’t old enough to have any major responsibilities, but we are trying to teach him things like helping to clean up. Small requests like putting clothes in the kids hamper are fun for him because he’s coming at it from the, “Hey Mom, look what I did!” perspective where he’s super proud of himself for what will later be expected of him. Obviously we encourage that! I’m going to tell him he did a good job if he listens or does something that will later lead to a good character trait. It’s like a game for him and it’s a game where we all win. He wins the praise from Mom and Dad and we win knowing that these are building block for the future.

Olivia is old enough to take on more responsibility. Over time we’ve come to expect that she cleans up the kids toys, and that they go where they’re supposed to. I’ve been able to walk her through the right places to put things, and when she chooses to do a thorough job, she does put things where they go. If she’s being a bit lazy, I remind her and make her fix it. She knows her clothes go in certain places, her books in another, and toys in another. She helps set the table when we ask, and is slowly getting more and more responsibility over taking care of her stuff. She also knows that if she does something like leave a Barbie in the driveway where it gets run over, like she did last week, that’s it. We aren’t going to get her a new Barbie – she’s going to keep playing with the old one that has road rash on it’s butt because she was negligent. They’re all small building blocks, but we know in the long run they’ll help her become a person who (hopefully!) is respectful and who takes responsibility for herself and her things.

Question: How do you encourage responsibility in your home? What areas are hardest for you as a parent/spouse? What works well for you/your family?

~Leslie

 

My Mom Journey: The Little Things

See, I told you I suck at this regular blogging thing! :) My planned Wednesday post is now being done on Thursday! At least for this week.

So, this week I want to talk about the little things in life and around our home. The little things that either grind or bring a sense of sanity, because I think they play together.

Last week I shared about the 15 minute sweep that I do in the mornings now. Honestly, I had no idea how much this would change my day, and really, it’s a little thing that takes very little time. But it makes a big difference when I walk by the kids room and see the beds made, or go in our room and see the bed made and nothing on the floor. We aren’t slobs, but we do live in a small space with two young kids. Last night I asked Chris when our kids would stop destroying our house multiple times each day, then realized that may never happen.

For me, it’s usually the small things that grind on me. They can cause me to get frustrated and annoyed, and then I take it out on everyone around me. At the core of this for me is that I was raised to respect people’s time and effort on things, so when I or Yonese clean up and someone, no matter how tall they are, comes along and leaves a wake of destruction it leaves me feeling like all the work was wasted and not respected. And yes, I have communicated this many times, and it is getting MUCH better.

I’m learning that the small things can make a big difference in how our household functions. These are some of the things I/we do or have done:

• I meal plan, and have a white board calendar on the fridge where we can all see it. It’s an easy way to check what we need for the week as far as groceries go, and to see who’s on dinner that night because Ryan and Chris each cook one night a week, which I LOVE!
• We do leftover night on Wednesday. It’s a small thing, but big because we clean out the fridge before Yonese goes to the market on Thursday. This means I have a way better idea of what we really need as far produce, eggs, milk etc goes. I usually take everything out that’s considered “leftovers”, put it on the counter and then everyone makes their plate and we heat things up in the microwave.
• We have another whiteboard on the fridge that has a line down the middle with one side designated “Market” and one for “Store”. Because we buy our fresh stuff on Thursdays, anything in that category goes on the Market side. Anything needing to be bought at the store goes on the Store side. If you use it up, you write it down. It’s made shopping so much easier.
• Because we have a small space I look for or build furniture that is very functional. You’ve seen pics of our coffee table on here. It has a trundle box underneath for the kids toys. Later in life we’ll probably store games and other stuff like that there. It makes for quick pick up, and we can push it closed for some space from the kids stuff. It’s easy for even Alex to pull out so he can play.
• I’ve been slowly going through stuff in our house and giving away what we know we aren’t using. I still have some big projects, like the storage room, but I’m not stressing about it. I regularly go through my clothes and get rid of things that have bleach stains (a common problem here) or that I know I haven’t worn in a long time. We have a rag basket in the bottom of our linen closet, so things like bleach stained or holey t-shirts go there to be used for cleaning or projects around the mission.
• We’ve been giving away our baby stuff as we’re done with it. People keep asking us if we plan on more kids. Nope. We’re done and very happy about it. I know that I’m personally done with having wee littles simply by the fact that I am so happy to be getting rid of all of the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years. I love that Alex’s crib no longer stores stuff underneath. I love that hopefully in the next year we’ll be moving him to a big bed and we can pass on our crib. I’m just ready to have two little people.
• I have a clipboard hanging on my wall next to my desk that has a stack of papers on it. Each sheet is the same – one for each month, or for when they get full, which it’s not yet. The sheet is separated into two sections – Personal and Mission. In each section is an area for “Projects” and an area for “Wish List/Order”. When I think of a project that I want to do around here I write it down. If I think of something that would either make life easier, or that we need to order, I write it down. My brain is full all. the. time. This helps keeps things sorted.

These are just a few little things around our house. I know there are more, but for the sake of time I’ll stop there. I think the important thing is that I’ve started going through a process with myself. When something is bothering me I start asking a series of questions:

1) What’s really bothering me about this? Figuring out what’s at the root is key. Maybe it’s not that there are bottle caps on the counter, again, but rather that I feel taken for granted. That’s a feeling, not a situation. And feelings need a different course of action.

2) What can I do about this? If it’s a recurring thing, is there something we need to change in our home to stop it from happening over and over again? Typically it would mean looking at the situation and deciding if a simple change would fix it, or if the issue is more in depth.

For example. I get annoyed that the kids books and toys are always scattered everywhere in their room. We are working at making Olivia clean up before bed. BUT, a while back I also realized that there was too much stuff that we were expecting to fit in the available space – a whicker shelving unit. So, I went through and took out 1/3 of the books and put the rest in a small laundry basket in our storage room. I try to rotate them every couple months. Less books means less books on the floor and around the house! Phew.

Toys? I regularly go through what is there, and what’s in the toy box, and see what the kids are actually playing with and what they aren’t. Alex is still young enough to be discovering toys, so I give him a bit more grace. Olivia is a pack rat. She likes to keep garbage. I wish I was exaggerating on this one, but I’m not. Yesterday we were in the van on the way home and she found a broken car phone charger. As in, it was missing an end. She asked if she could keep it. I find all sorts of crap in her stuff. When I do a cleaning I am merciless with bits of crayons and garbage. I know that she’s not using it and doesn’t even know it’s there because it’s always down at the bottom, in the nooks and crannies. The truth is, I hate bits and pieces and things that end up all underfoot. I try to group toys back together if I can, but if I can’t and I know the kids aren’t playing with something – it goes. I’ve gotten past the sentimental side with a lot of things and just remind myself that we don’t have much space. If a toy is in good shape, we pass it on. If it’s just a piece of junk, it goes.

If the thing that will help improve the problem is organizing things better, we do it. If it’s designating responsibility, we do it. Sometimes it means changing things up or in many cases in our house, getting a different piece of furniture that will help solve the problem, like our coffee table, dining room table, bed… All of those things have helped improve annoying issues in our home, and it makes life easier to live.

3) Can I really do something about this? I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve had to realize that sometimes, no matter what I do, there are no easy solutions. Some things are out of my control. I can’t control people. I can ask for their help, and set boundaries of my own, but in the end we all make our own choices. If bottle caps on the counter bugs me, I can tell my husband and let him know that picking them up is a way of loving me because it sends a message that he respects my time and energy. But he has to choose to do it. I can’t force him.

Having small kids means that there are certain things I/we just have to live with right now. Olivia is old enough to be taking more responsibility around the house. We make her clean up her coloring stuff (the thing she’s always doing now) and she knows that if she doesn’t take responsibility for those things, they’ll go. She has to clean up her room. We make her help set the table. She has to pick up her clothes and put away her shoes.

Alex is a different story. He isn’t old enough to get that stuff yet, but we try to teach him things like closing the door after he comes in or out. 50% of the time he does it. He can go get his own shoes if it’s time to go outside. He’s understanding that certain things aren’t acceptable and won’t be allowed, like throwing things. As he gets older, he’ll be in the same boat as Olivia. Until then, I recognize that there are things I have no control over in our home. I can either let the toy mess gather and gather or I can do a quick tidy a couple times each day and enjoy the clean peace in between.

Question: What little things make your home run better? What areas are hardest for you? What have you changed over time to make things more livable for everyone in your home?

~Leslie