Daily Life During the Endless Christmas Break

I haven't written much since we've gotten back from Kenya.  Obviously, some of our days have been very busy with errands.  Would you like to hear how our other days go?

The kids still wake up at their usual time, especially bright-and-early-Buttercup.  They've generally been going downstairs and playing on their own for a while and letting me sleep in, which is a nice treat, since it seems like on the other days I have to get up super-early to get everyone to our morning appointments.  They go and play on the iPad mostly, I think, which is not my ideal parenting choice, but it works right now.  They are obviously not completely absorbed in the screen-time, though, because the living room is always a mess by the time I come down!

After breakfast, they play and play and play.  I do some useful and some not-so-important things on-line, and attempt to work through some little household chores, which never seems to make much of an impact on the state of the house.  I try to wash the dishes, but so far my record is two days in a row.  (I had a chance to break it today and get the third day, but I am writing this instead. Oops.)  We don't have many dishes, which means if I don't wash them every day, then I just have to pick things out of the dirty side, and wash them in the other side, and set the table with them.  This actually works perfectly well, and the pile of dishes never gets any bigger!  Or I try to move forward with the puzzle that is getting laundry done.  Or clean the bathroom where the kitty poops. Or sweep and mop the floors.  I get the kitchen done regularly, but the other floors are harder because I have to get the toys off of them first, which never seems to happen.

The kids play all kinds of things inside, and they play all kinds of things outside.  There are lots of things that are difficult for these children, but they are excellent and first-class play-ers.  We have hardly even gotten out many of their toys, because they keep so busy (and so messy) with the simple ones that they have.  They have legos, cardboard blocks, a set of clip-together blocks, crayons, some trucks, and a big bag of stacking/sorting/color cups, and about one doll each; that's really about it.  And then the endless supplies of pillows, water bottles, scarves and wraps, baskets, carseats, hats, laundry, patio chairs, and other household items.  The amount of creativity, exclusivity, thoughtfulness, busyness, and general mess and mayhem that they can create out of these materials is absolutely spectacular.

When we get hungry, I make some lunch, and I have been trying to feed them lots of fruit and not too many carbs, to compensate for our errand-day food.  Then after lunch, the older kids are supposed to have quiet time, and Buttercup takes a nap on my back.  (Once this week she told me she was going to have her nap in bed, on her pillow.  I had an internal sigh of "oh, is she growing up," we read a book together... and she sat up and jumped and giggled and threw pillows.  And went back up on my back, where she fell right to sleep.)  Emerson spends Quiet Time in the living room, and Hibiscus in her room.  This is back from the days when we only had two rooms, so in order to keep them from getting all tangled up in playing together, it was the only option.  It isn't quite as reasonable any more, since there are multiple rooms in this house, and, for instance, they could each go into a/their bedroom.  But when the ball is rolling, it rolls.  Emerson is used to spending Quiet Time in the living room, so I don't fight it.

Quiet Time is a relief for Emerson, and very difficult for Hibiscus.  Emerson loves to play together, but he also loves to stop and concentrate.  Hibiscus thinks being alone is a form of torture, and tries to think of any possible excuse for getting out of it.  Lately, this has involved spending all her time at the window, looking for people to watch and then talk to, and she starts having yelling conversations out her bedroom window.  Which is not Quiet, and it is not alone-time either, which are the twin points of Quiet Time.  I told her she could be social after quiet time, and right now she needed to shut the window and just play something.  Yesterday she had come down yet again to tell me something or show me something or ask me something, and started whining about going back upstairs again.  I empathized with her, "it's really hard for you to spend time by yourself, isn't it?"  She made big puppy-dog-eyes and agreed violently.  She obviously thought this was the preliminary to "I can see you don't like it, so you don't have to do it any more."  Unfortunately, that sentence does not exist in our house.  I said something more along the lines of, "it's important to learn to be by yourself and do things on your own.  Since it's so hard for you, that's why I'm helping you practice, a little bit each day, until your being-alone muscles get strong and it's not so hard."  Cue renewed meltdown.

We have returned to this conversation a couple times since, with me pointing out that she will learn to be by herself.  Her description has become more clear, and "hard" is not adequate.  "Being-alone time is BAD," she tells me.  "It is BAD to be alone, it is yucky yucky, and you are a bad mama to make me be alone and I feel YUCKY and BAD."  Well, that makes the side of righteousness stand out pretty clearly, doesn't it!

I am not giving up.  I consider the possibility that it might be the prejudice of my inner introvert, but I simply think that everyone needs to be comfortable both being with people, and being by themselves.  In Africa that is not a value, and it is possible that you could survive in this culture never being by yourself.  But at the same time, a lot of the social issues that I hear about are direct peer-pressure ones, and to resist peer pressure, you have to be able to walk away from your peers.  If you think being by yourself is just plain YUCKY and BAD, I doubt that you would be able to stand up to your values in the face of being alone.  And in America, people indeed do things independently.  Even if it's just writing a term paper or something, sometimes you need to be on your own.  And eventually, most middle-class young people end up leaving their friends and families and starting off life on their own.  I think spending an hour a day playing by yourself gives you the capability of choosing that as a young adult, instead of just being afraid of being alone.

At any rate, all the rest of us need our alone time, and even more specifically, our non-Hibiscus time.  Even when the kids have been playing happily together, you can see a wave of relaxation wash over the younger kids when, by mid-afternoon, Hibiscus has entirely left the room.  And most of the time, by mid-afternoon, the play is not so happy.

After Quiet Time, I've been trying to get us out for a walk in our neighborhood.  And we have some incredibly simple dinner, because I never feel like doing more, but also because after playing and Quiet-ing and walking, there isn't time left in the day for much cooking.  We were practically making grilled cheese sandwiches an entire food group, before we finished that block of cheese, and now I'm worried about running out so I'm trying to not open the last couple small packets.  Sometimes we get more exotic, meals like rice and hot dogs and carrot sticks.  I have not successfully made "food and soup" in weeks.  Hibiscus complains that she misses the soup (meaning ingredients mixed together), but oh well.

And then we get ready for bed, with all that drama.  And those are our days.  They are not spectacularly constructive, or social, or much of anything.  But they are not too unpleasant, and each one gets us closer to school-and-routine starting... and eventually, maybe, possibly, to the day that we will eventually go home.