Today on the walk home, the kids decided that I wasn't listening to them and I had to go into a Sit when we got home, and I wasn't allowed to get up and they would do all the work and make dinner. Hm. Sounds like quite the punishment for a mother, doesn't it?
Hibiscus kept telling me "I'm gonna cook it, I know how for cookin' it, and I am not lyin' you, I am NOT lyin' you!" I finally had to ask her why she thought I was so suspicious about me thinking she was lying to me! (I think that was too many pronouns and she couldn't quite figure out the question, though!) I don't usually let the kids near when I'm cooking, not because I think they can't do it, but because with a tiny house and a lot of children, I'm afraid someone is going to end up stabbed with a knife or getting pushed into a burner. But they cooked a little bit with Gramma, and I think everyone is getting calmer than they were, so I let them have a try.
The cooking part was pretty sweet. They decided to make noodles and vegetables, and I set them up at the table so they weren't all on top of each other (and the stove). They picked out carrots, tomatoes, green beans, and Swiss chard, which isn't exactly what I would have grabbed, but whatever! I moved my ipad over to the corner of the table to stay in my appropriate sit while keeping an eye on them, and "secretly" made the pasta and cooked sausages. Hibiscus and Emerson dedicated themselves with great enthusiasm to washing and chopping the vegetables, while Buttercup sat there, snapping beans and eating them. And everything else Hibiscus chopped. It is one thing to snack on vegetables while mama chops (which she usually does), but I had to keep moving the bowl to Hibiscus's other side so Buttercup didn't devour the entire dinner before it made it to the stove! Besides, I thought Hibiscus would throw a fit if she looked down at her bowl of painstakingly chopped tomatoes and found it empty!
Emerson worked very hard on the carrots, which were very dense for a little boy with a dull knife. Hibiscus made much quicker work of the tomatoes, and she remembered to wash the greens properly -- one at a time, not just a quick splash on the whole bunch. Hibiscus carefully poured the things one at a time into the pan, although she REALLY wanted to start with the tomatoes and not the firmer vegetables that needed a longer cooking time. Both of them were intent enough on their work that they accepted my direction about how to do it properly, such as not stabbing things with the point of the knife. Hibiscus became a scientist about poking vegetables with a fork to see if they were soft enough to add the next ingredient, while Emerson carefully chopped dill with the scissors and cut up three cheese sticks in a bowl. "But they don't go IN the sauce," he insisted. "They'll be right here in this bowl and you can put them on TOP if you want."
No one stabbed their sibling. No one impaled themselves. The younger kids were busy enough with the vegetables that only Hibiscus stirred things on the hot burner, and since she wasn't on Manic Insanity Mode, she actually is old enough to stand on a stool and stir sauce without randomly falling into the gas flame. There were no trips to the hospital, or even the first-aid kit. So in that sense, dinner was a success.
But it was an hour and a half late. Anyone with young kids probably knows what a problem that means, but as I have said, I keep things really consistent, and that means dinner at the same time, so it's a REALLY big deal. The main problem was when I made them do their before-dinner chores, like they have to do every day, because I don't make exceptions about our routines. That is, short of aforementioned emergency hospital visits, which do come up on a regular basis, it appears.
There is general chaos with kids running in all directions, but surprising little of the things on the table are jumping into their hands and disembarking at their correct locations. Hibiscus feels like it is necessary to put a can of rocks on her head and "do" her chores while balancing it. I tell her to stop, because she's going to drop it, and we'll have rocks all over the house, and she'll have to clean them up. She glares at me and says she won't drop them, and then she grabs the can and runs off. I turn around a minute later and she has the can on her head again, and this time, it promptly falls off and rocks go everywhere. She gives me a shocked look. I say "I told you that the can would fall off your head, and now it fell off your head. Pick up the rocks, and then you still need to clear the table." I don't say things like this because I like to rub in that I was right; I say them because she honestly has no idea of cause and effect, and she really REALLY doesn't realize how her behavior causes any reaction in the world. She thinks that everything that happens, someone else does TO her. But we are making progress, because she does pick up the rocks instead of making the argument (violently) that the rocks put themselves on the floor and have nothing to do with her and there is no reason for her to clean them up, because she doesn't need to do chores and would rather play anyways -- which was her position, although not in so many words, for the first few weeks of family life. Actually, as she cleans up the rocks, I hear her muttering, "Mama said the rocks fall down, and the rocks fall downed."
There is a flurry of arguments about going outside to clean up the outside toys, since it is getting dark. Each child does a lot of whining and complaining, and some time when the other one is making a bigger fuss, runs out and grabs one or two small things. Then when I tell them to collect the rest, they announce haughtily that THEY have been working hard and already done their share, and the rest is up to the other sibling.
In the meanwhile, the darkness is actually falling, and the Hibiscus gets REALLY upset about going outside alone. In the duskiness, they finally get booted out together to make one last trip.
Back to inside chaos. Hibiscus goes back on her stool and announces that she can't clean up, she is busy doing her WORK of stirring the sauce, she's BUSY. I have long since put the finishing touches on dinner and turned the stove down. I tell her that's not her job right now, and when she ignores me I lift her off the stool. She screams. Then she dedicates herself to sweeping the floor, which has a lot of vegetable bits but is not really necessary in order to serve dinner. I'm not sure if she's purposefully avoiding doing what I'm telling her to do to prove she can do things her way, or because sweeping the floor sounds more fun than clearing the table, or because by this point she has the attention span of a moth, and the broom was the nearest lightbulb. She gets things kind of swept, and as she works on the other side of the table Buttercup gets the small broom and the dustpan, and sweeps it back all over the room again. Hibiscus turns around and throws up her hands in frustration and tries to explain to Buttercup why not to do that, while Buttercup sets to work on Hibiscus's next pile. (I think Hibiscus is starting to realize that I don't just enjoy putting Buttercup in the wrap to make her cry; she really does make getting things finished very difficult!) I offer to put Buttercup up on my back, but both older children protest, so I leave her. I think they are feeling a great deal of solidarity after sitting together with their joint effort of vegetable chopping.
Meanwhile, there is a little bit of cleaning and clearing happening, slowly. Emerson has mostly been working at his tired and distractible pace, but gradually making progress, and not making much fuss. I have helped them with the dinner part of the mess, but I am refusing to do anything about the few items left on the table, because that's their chore every night, and they really are capable of doing it. Hibiscus starts into the old argument that this-and-such isn't hers, and that one is mama's, and she didn't make the mess and she's not going to clean it up. This is another difficult lesson about being in a family; we help each other out and we work together. This one is even more difficult for her then realizing that she has made a mess herself and needs to clean it up, but she's been doing much better in the last few weeks. She puts a few things away with bad grace and some banging -- and I later find them piled on the bed, which is not the point of clearing the table!
I was helping Buttercup help with something which did not actually make the mess worse, and I find Hibiscus back with the broom, but after a couple wild sweeps she starts dancing around the room with it. Believe it or not, we have actually encountered the issue of waving brooms and umbrellas and mops and other large objects around above our heads in the living room, and we have a policy about it: brooms go on the floor, or they go away. Or someone will get hurt. I remind Hibiscus about this policy, and she screams and darts away from me.
And promptly WALLOPS herself on the head with the broom.
Because I was in the vicinity, she wails that I beat her head with a broom. I might have touched the broom to start to take it from her, but all the force was hers, and it is WHY WE DON'T WAVE BROOMS AROUND IN THE FIRST PLACE.
For the next fifteen minutes or so, I potty Buttercup and set out dinner while Emerson sets the table, and Hibiscus screams bloody murder. She finally decides that Emerson is getting to do a fun table-setting job, or she is getting tired of sitting around screaming, or she remembers that she isn't going to eat unless she does some work. Our dishes are all stored in two very large sliding drawers under the cabinet, which is nice insofar the kids can reach and be in charge of everything for setting the table. Hibiscus looks for something in the drawer, and doesn't find it immediately. She bangs the drawer, and then bangs it again, and then starts to swing her whole weight back and forth on the drawer to get more bangs.
I tell her to stop immediately or she'll break something, and fall. (And for those of you who might point out that I should stop talking and just go enforce the point, I had my hands full on the other side of the room, and things like this happen much more quickly than it takes to describe them.) She says she won't stop and she won't break anything and she won't fall. I am a little out of patience (cough cough, just a little!), and I say quite firmly that I TOLD her that the rocks would fall, and they fell, and I TOLD her that the broom would hit someone, and the broom hit her, and would she STOP BANGING THE DRAWER ALREADY BECAUSE IT WILL BREAK.
She actually stops.
At some point, we actually ate dinner. It was pretty good, or at least it was fine; I didn't really care by that point. Emerson didn't eat any of the sauce he had helped to make (that theory is totally bogus when confronted by the pickiness of my son!), but he did eat the six green beans he had prepared for himself. He didn't even put any of his carefully prepared dill on his noodles, although he was very just about distributing the tiny chunks of cheese. Hibiscus was horrified that she couldn't see any tomatoes in the sauce despite cutting up lots of tomatoes, and didn't quite believe me when I try to explain how tomatoes kind of melt, especially when clearing the table takes an hour or two and the tomatoes are cooking the whole time.
Isn't it wonderful when the kids have the motivation to take over some of their mother's chores, and mama can put up her feet while the kids prepare a simple dinner?
Maybe in another year or two. Or three. Five? I think if I really want assistance, I need to wait until Buttercup is old enough to just do the whole thing herself!
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