Hannah is cooking!

Boy, when people ask me how I can handle having FOUR!!!! children, I almost can’t refrain from laughing.  Four is so much easier than one or two, or even three were for me.  Weird, but true.  (A large part of the fact that it’s easier to have four is that I don’t have four in four years, or five years, or even six years.  I’m sure that would be harder.  I don’t mean any disrespect to people who have a hard time with four kids.  It’s just not that way for our family.) Part of this is that I have more experience, but lots of it is because I’m not the only entertainment around here.  I’m not the only one who can watch the baby while someone showers.  I’m not the only one who can play with the baby while dinner is made or schoolwork is done.  I’m not the only one who notices when she takes that piece of – well, I can’t tell what it is, actually – off the floor and puts it in her mouth.

And now, I’m not the only one who can make food.  Hannah learned a while ago to make biscuits.  This skill comes in handy.  She has now progressed to being able to put them into the oven and take them out again.  Recently, she made cupcakes on her own for the first time.  Tuesday, she made split pea soup and dinner rolls (yeast rolls!) for dinner.  Yesterday she made teriyaki sauce.  She’s got a muffin recipe that she’s made several times, and she’s tinkering with it, trying what happens if she uses apple juice for the liquid versus rice milk. 

What can I say?  This is awesome!  Not only because I reap the benefits of her cooking – I certainly do! – but also because I love to cook and am having a great time watching her coming into her own.

“Mom, can I make the cookie dough?”  Sure, Hannah!

“Mom, I made Simeon’s oatmeal for breakfast.”  Great, Hannah!

“Mom, I want to make the Sunday school snack when it’s our turn to bring it.”  Absolutely, Hannah. 

Also, I’m so glad that I spent all that time letting her help in the kitchen.  It’s not really convenient to cook with children.  I mean, it’s NOT CONVENIENT.  It usually takes longer and makes the kitchen messier, and it often tries my patience.  However, if I had booted Hannah out of the kitchen when I was making things (which was certainly tempting on many occasions), I don’t think she’d be the enthusiastic budding chef that she is today. 

Michael has taught the kids the term sous chef, and they’re always enthusiastic to be the sous chefs for me, for Michael, and now for Hannah.  It’s great to see her patiently allowing Simeon to pour ingredients into whatever she’s making, helping her siblings learn the things she’s learned. 

When we first had Hannah and decided to let her help in the kitchen, it was in the hope that she’d learn both to cook and to love cooking.  It’s great to see our patience paying off. 

And Hannah’s happy, because it means she has a whole new genre of books to read:  cookbooks. 

Tess is walking!

Tess took her first steps about 10 days before Christmas.  She took a few steps here and there since then, but still figured that sitting and yelling the name of whoever she wanted to pick her up was her best bet for getting where she wanted to go.  (And she wasn’t really wrong – yelling, “HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” was much more effective for Tess than it is for me!)  This past week or so, however, she’s begun to recognize the benefits of moving faster with free hands across large spaces.  It’s pretty cute. 

She also loves walking and holding hands.  So we get to see lots of her holding hands with her siblings as she walks around.  She dances with them, too – totally sweet.  She’s perfectly happy to grab hands with visitors for a walk, as well, which has made many of our friends (and cousins) very happy. 

Of course, walking leads to other things, like realizing that the toilet is just the right height to put one’s hands into…because Mom forgot what having a toddler is like and hasn’t demanded that the bathroom doors be kept closed at all times.  But we won’t talk about those things.  At least not today.

Teachable moments

aren’t always about things that you actually want to teach. 

Hannah:  Mom, there are two squirrels in our back yard, and they’re mating!

Simeon:  What?!?  Where?  What’s mating?

Sometimes life is surreal…

Hannah is instructing her younger siblings in the different ways to react to attacks of large wildlife – bears, cougars, etc. – and getting her information from a landscaping book…

Helping out

Long time, no post!

There’s a lot to catch up on.  The last few weeks didn’t lend themselves to a lot of time on the computer, so I haven’t been keeping up here…as you could tell. 

Which doesn’t mean that we haven’t been busy, of course.  One day in that time, I set out to dig out one of our window wells.  We have several, because the basement has some windows.  This particular window well had gotten more full of dirt and stones than was good for it…or really, more than was good for the basement.  When it rained, water was able to go over the sill and down the basement wall.  This is not a good situation, so I planned to dig it out. 

I encouraged the kids to come outside, of course.  It wasn’t raining – good time to go outside.  As soon as the tools came out, though, I had LOTS of interest.  I thought they might be interested, but I didn’t realize just HOW interested they’d be.

In fact, after the first two shovelsfull, I didn’t shovel at all.

The girls took turns pushing Tess around in the stroller when it wasn’t their turn to dig.

I did some other yard work – weeding, pruning, etc., occasionally taking a break to use the big shovel to loosen up the dirt and rocks so they could dig more.

The kids had a great time!  They counted the shovels each got so as not to have one get an unfair extra turn.  And the other day, as we were pulling into the driveway on our way home, they asked, “Mom, when are we going to get to dig out the other window wells?”