The peacock chase
Good evening y’all. I hope you’re enjoying the sounds of winter as much as I am enjoying the sounds of summer, well, most of them. The sprinkler is clicking away down in the garden, the frogs are singing and the pressure cooker is bubbling away finishing off the beans I am canning. The cicadas are actually so loud they hurt my ears, I sometimes feed them to the chickens as revenge. The sound of mosquitoes buzzing in my ears is something I would happily sacrifice, if there were a way. I can imagine winter is much quieter. With my earache and sore throat, I might prefer being stuck in side with the windows closed next to a fire crackling. Strangely enough, I find that living on the other side of the world, I still get sick when my sister in Wisconsin is sick. That’s true sisterly love, don’t you think?
Some days I wonder what my parents did to help my sister and I get along so well. We probably fought for center stage as children as well, perhaps I forgot that part of growing up on purpose. Jacinta and Genevieve enjoy each other’s company, but Jacinta really feels the need to show up Evie’s new tricks, as if we don’t notice her enough. It’s understandable, as Genevieve is learning a lot of new “tricks” right now. She can now wave goodbye, clap, click, and is getting her sixth tooth! We marvel at her and blow raspberries on her cute belly. I think Jacinta senses our joy in watching Evie. Although she’ll tell you she doesn’t want her belly kissed like Evie does, she yearns for the soft tone, the awe. So she shows us her tricks on the couch, over and over, insisting that we watch. She then notices that we umm and ahh a bit less excitedly, and feels as if Genevieve has won. She doesn’t seem to realize that we’re marvelling at her interest and efforts in reading and drawing letters, the way she retells stories in books to herself when she thinks no one is listening, and the way she plays hide and seek with her friends. Maybe she’ll get it some day.
Over the past few weeks Jacinta has turned over a few new leaves. She has ripped off my mask as the lovely mummy she lives to please. I am a rule enforcer, one she loves when I play games and needs when she gets hurt but one she needs to contradict and escape when I’m doing necessary housework. She makes grand decisions just for the sake of having an opinion like, “I don’t like green.” She won’t draw with green or wear it. She was given a new green umbrella and refuses to hold it. She takes Genevieve’s yellow umbrella out on the swing set though and keeps the sun off her on the see saw!!!??? She said that green went on vacation and is never coming back. This is strange. If she asks for comment on her art work, I always say the wrong thing. If I marvel at her tricks, she corrects even my praise. After she grows tired of my company, she’ll ask with frustration, “Where’s Daddy? Where’s Pop?” Today she said to me very seriously, “OK, I’ve had some time with you. Now I’m going to Daddy.” Thanks for doing me the honor dear child.
On the food front, things have changed drastically. Since we all eat so differently in this house, it’s hard to make Jacinta eat what I think is best. She realized that there were options for everyone else. Although she is only three years old, I am giving her options. I held on so hard to the Steiner philosophy that giving very young children too many options just burdens them with unnecessary worry. It turned out that that hard line gave me unnecessary worry, thinking that I was failing because I couldn’t conquer my daughter’s will. She now chooses her clothes and has a few more choices in eating. She had ham bits in the Chinese food over Christmas and liked them. So I offered her ham on the pizza I made the other night. She excitedly accepted, exclaiming, “Oh Yes! I’ll pick the ham bits off and eat them!” (We used to pick them off and put them aside, not because eating ham was evil but merely because we didn’t eat pig.) One thing I am proud of is that in our vegetarianism she never learned judgement, just that we all eat different things. Now she can choose to eat some meat with no guilt. I was actually very of proud of myself for even offering the ham, it wasn’t even organic or nitrate-free. I have stopped trying to make her eat cooked veggies, but give her a pittance of raw veggies on her plate. I’m trying to believe her more when she says she’s hungry, but it is so hard because she says it so often and her belly is so round!
Jacinta’s less interested in cooking, but will jump in if it looks like she might get something out of it. Cooking is becoming more of an activity that prevents me from playing with her than an exciting thing we can do together. The other night I made a meat spaghetti sauce and I couldn’t help myself. I grated up a few veggies from the garden and put them in the sauce. She removed every bit of grated carrot and zucchini, leaving them on the side and finishing the rest of her plate. At the end she gave me a snotty look and said, “I eat everything when you give me things I like.” I didn’t reply. In the past few weeks Jacinta has stopped eating fish, avocado, carrot, egg yolk, quiche, banana, and a bunch of other good foods she claimed to love. Cooking used to be such a joyful thing. I enjoy cooking for people who enjoy and appreciate my food, but not this. Rather than showing my unbelievable frustration, I try to ask kindly what the reason is that no longer likes each food. She doesn’t know. But for a few days there she was telling me that she needed a “lolly,” (candy) because she was really hungry and couldn’t wait for anything else. Who is this child? A daughter that I love who is growing up and asserting herself. Oh my. So what’s the answer? I have no idea, but I’m trying to enjoy putting simple, starchy food on the table for Jacinta and hoping that this won’t last too long. I cook quick and lovely zucchini dishes for Genevieve and myself to cheer me up and revive my palette. Jacinta got a Candy Land game for Christmas. I play this with her and remember the joy of candy canes and gumdrops from childhood, and try to enter her world. This is good fun therapy for me, certainly it is I who needs the help, not my child. She learned to say “sorry,” after a year of agony. She says it willingly now. Stubborn souls do eventually learn, Jacinta and I can live to tell.
I am a second child, lucky me. I guess that means my parents had worked out some of the kinks by the time I came along. Perhaps that’s the price we pay for never having had them all to ourselves. Genevieve may not notice how we’ve improved, but maybe she’ll contemplate it when she’s 30. For the time being, she is very busy doing other things without much time for contemplation. Although she does think, I have seen her. A few nights ago, she was sitting on the floor happily playing with a cow. She looked in the bathroom, saw something and power crawled straight in to get the rubber frog. Seconds later she crawled straight to the couch with the frog in her mouth to get a shiny red container. She put that in her hand and crawled back to the original spot on the floor. She then proceeded to drop the frog into the container and pour him out over and over. This was the first time she placed an object into something, rather than taking things out of containers. Genevieve has also learned that we chase her if she goes out our door into Pop and Grandma’s lounge room. She really likes to be chased so now when she crosses the threshold she turns around with a coy little smile. She waits to be pursued, then picks up the pace and power crawls. Often she has one thing in each hand and another in her mouth, never empty-handed this girl. Evie has grown tall enough to reach the desk in her bedroom, a wonderland full of paper, scissors, glue, beads, etc. Once she makes it there, she grabs as much as her little hands can hold and turns around to see what you’re going to do about it. Other than being a chance to marvel in awe at creation, parenting also seems to be one big test. It’s the one of the world’s most direct way of testing us, forcing us to act, and continually asking, “what are you going to do about it?” Worse than getting an F for failure, on this test you get to live with the effects of your decisions forever through their behavior. On the other hand, you get to celebrate the good decisions and your children’s innate beauty and gifts knowing that you had nothing to do with a lot of their personality. Right now, it’s hard not to blame myself for Jacinta’s stubbornness regarding food and that’s okay. It’ll make us both grow.
Speaking of growth, the garden is crazy. The weeds are bountiful, as are the beans and cucumbers. I actually put a box of them out on the road to give away, not many takers though. Inspired by my step-mom I decided not to weed but just throw newspapers on top of them all. The decision was made, no action yet though. I’ll need a massive quantity of newspapers now. We did get down to the garden this week, mostly to play though. We played basketball with a beach ball, ate lots of cucumbers and a few strawberries, told stories and played in the sprinkler. One evening I went down and spent a luscious hour alone digging out the last potatoes, weeding and preparing a terrace for its next planting, kidney beans. The next day after Evie fell asleep in the pram, I bought compost and mulch from Jacinta’s “shop,” worked it into the soil and we then planted the beans. I’ve decided beans might be a better goal to grow than a bunch of vegetables that no one likes. The next day Jacinta and I took down the new clippers and her little scissors and gave the terrace garden a hair cut. We trimmed the mint and hung it up to dry. She happily harvested purple beans and snipped random herbs. Another day I got the inspiration to work on the chicken pen so we had morning tea with the chicks while I patched up holes in the chicken wire for a fox/snake/dog proof roost. We spent an hour in there, Jess and I with pliers and fruit. Evie was on the ground exploring, but amazingly enough, not grabbing at the chicks.
In addition to the gardening we had a very social week, having friends come to us or going to them almost every day. These are holidays. I’m actually amazed we got anything done this week. The house suffered though. By today I lost it and had to clean up the piles accumulated in every corner. I even canned six jars of purple beans and we went to the beach. One day some friends came for morning tea, Jacinta missed her friends after being away in Canberra and needed them to help her break in her swing set. While the children were having a great time outside, the adults and babies were enjoying the peace inside. Then came the peacock that Lily feared, so she wouldn’t play outside. I had a great idea, “Matt, will you go chase away the peacock so Lily will play outside (and let us have a child-free conversation)?” So off he went, to slip half way down the hill injuring his right knee on the way down. Laughing at himself, he hobbled up to find Jacinta crying because she wanted the peacock to stay. Matt ended up healing his poor knee, wincing in pain for the next few days with comfrey leaves wrapped round to speed the healing. It has been five days and he’s just now getting the strength in his knee to do physical labor again. Bloody peacock (bloody in the British sense, we didn’t hurt it, really. It’s too pretty!). Matt actually loves the peacock, even did a bit of research on them this week.
With a messed up knee Matt accomplished a lot inside: website work, a new scanner for his Too Many Photos business, reading, watching cricket, and playing with the girls. Watching cricket one can do while working as it doesn’t take much attention to follow. It’s a wonder: Genevieve can crawl and play for long periods without taking any notice of me, but when Matt, Keith or Mary walk in the room, she chases them down and crawls up their legs. This little display of affection is always a nice break from computer work for Matt when he comes out for coffee, as is Jacinta’s plea to “Please read me a story.” She would listen to tens of stories a day if we would read them to her. Matt is racing to finish a 400 page book before he interviews the author, Riane Eisler for his book in a few weeks. Unfortunately Riane’s book Sacred Pleasure probably wouldn’t entertain Jacinta and Genevieve would tear it to pieces. Besides that, Matt and Keith worked on the spa one last time, filled it up, discovered another leak and decided to get rid of the spa. But until it loses all of its water, it is our pool. The days have been hot so Matt has been playing with Jess and cooling off in it. Genevieve joined in once, but now she has pink eye. She doesn’t seem unhappy, but it’s not a way to start the New Year.
Last night we rung in the New Year at our friends’ house and stayed up past midnight for the first time in years. This is one holiday that I knew in winter and really love in the summer. The children didn’t really know or care about the whole concept, but played and ate their hearts out. Chicken chasing, hide and seek, sparklers, trampoline wrestling and jumping, exploring the yard with flashlights, even jumping on the trampoline with flashlights in the dark (you’d think the adults had drank too much but we hadn’t, just thought it would somehow be okay and it was)! They ended the evening at about 10:30 on mattresses watching a movie. Henry and Genevieve crawled around, played with toys, munched, sat on laps, watched the big kids, finally crashing by 8pm. Henry likes pulling Evie’s hair and perhaps enjoys her reaction: the saddest weepy little cry every time he does it. As for the adults, we ate, drank, played with the kids, walked in the garden, but mostly just sat and enjoyed adult conversation, marvelling at the children’s newfound ability to play contentedly on their own. Right at midnight, it started raining, a good way to mark the New Year.
So, here we are in 2008, wow. What will this New Year bring? What will we bring to this New Year? I haven’t sat down and thought of any resolutions, but writing this journal always brings me to new understandings by the end. I felt that turning thirty somehow granted me some more humility and human understanding. I can only hope that this journey continues and that I can open myself up to more wisdom from my children, friends, family and Mother earth. I hope you are enjoying the first few hours of 2008 and that you find some time to dream and chase your dreams in the New Year.
Happy New Year!
Peace,
Shana
P.S. Excuse the increasing length of this weekly letter, it has become a spiritual practice, the only time in the week I take to meditate on life. I will not be hurt if you’d like me to take you off my mailing list. Four pages is a lot to read, yes. I have to compete for airspace with my daughter by day, so by night, I have a lot to say
Some days I wonder what my parents did to help my sister and I get along so well. We probably fought for center stage as children as well, perhaps I forgot that part of growing up on purpose. Jacinta and Genevieve enjoy each other’s company, but Jacinta really feels the need to show up Evie’s new tricks, as if we don’t notice her enough. It’s understandable, as Genevieve is learning a lot of new “tricks” right now. She can now wave goodbye, clap, click, and is getting her sixth tooth! We marvel at her and blow raspberries on her cute belly. I think Jacinta senses our joy in watching Evie. Although she’ll tell you she doesn’t want her belly kissed like Evie does, she yearns for the soft tone, the awe. So she shows us her tricks on the couch, over and over, insisting that we watch. She then notices that we umm and ahh a bit less excitedly, and feels as if Genevieve has won. She doesn’t seem to realize that we’re marvelling at her interest and efforts in reading and drawing letters, the way she retells stories in books to herself when she thinks no one is listening, and the way she plays hide and seek with her friends. Maybe she’ll get it some day.
Over the past few weeks Jacinta has turned over a few new leaves. She has ripped off my mask as the lovely mummy she lives to please. I am a rule enforcer, one she loves when I play games and needs when she gets hurt but one she needs to contradict and escape when I’m doing necessary housework. She makes grand decisions just for the sake of having an opinion like, “I don’t like green.” She won’t draw with green or wear it. She was given a new green umbrella and refuses to hold it. She takes Genevieve’s yellow umbrella out on the swing set though and keeps the sun off her on the see saw!!!??? She said that green went on vacation and is never coming back. This is strange. If she asks for comment on her art work, I always say the wrong thing. If I marvel at her tricks, she corrects even my praise. After she grows tired of my company, she’ll ask with frustration, “Where’s Daddy? Where’s Pop?” Today she said to me very seriously, “OK, I’ve had some time with you. Now I’m going to Daddy.” Thanks for doing me the honor dear child.
On the food front, things have changed drastically. Since we all eat so differently in this house, it’s hard to make Jacinta eat what I think is best. She realized that there were options for everyone else. Although she is only three years old, I am giving her options. I held on so hard to the Steiner philosophy that giving very young children too many options just burdens them with unnecessary worry. It turned out that that hard line gave me unnecessary worry, thinking that I was failing because I couldn’t conquer my daughter’s will. She now chooses her clothes and has a few more choices in eating. She had ham bits in the Chinese food over Christmas and liked them. So I offered her ham on the pizza I made the other night. She excitedly accepted, exclaiming, “Oh Yes! I’ll pick the ham bits off and eat them!” (We used to pick them off and put them aside, not because eating ham was evil but merely because we didn’t eat pig.) One thing I am proud of is that in our vegetarianism she never learned judgement, just that we all eat different things. Now she can choose to eat some meat with no guilt. I was actually very of proud of myself for even offering the ham, it wasn’t even organic or nitrate-free. I have stopped trying to make her eat cooked veggies, but give her a pittance of raw veggies on her plate. I’m trying to believe her more when she says she’s hungry, but it is so hard because she says it so often and her belly is so round!
Jacinta’s less interested in cooking, but will jump in if it looks like she might get something out of it. Cooking is becoming more of an activity that prevents me from playing with her than an exciting thing we can do together. The other night I made a meat spaghetti sauce and I couldn’t help myself. I grated up a few veggies from the garden and put them in the sauce. She removed every bit of grated carrot and zucchini, leaving them on the side and finishing the rest of her plate. At the end she gave me a snotty look and said, “I eat everything when you give me things I like.” I didn’t reply. In the past few weeks Jacinta has stopped eating fish, avocado, carrot, egg yolk, quiche, banana, and a bunch of other good foods she claimed to love. Cooking used to be such a joyful thing. I enjoy cooking for people who enjoy and appreciate my food, but not this. Rather than showing my unbelievable frustration, I try to ask kindly what the reason is that no longer likes each food. She doesn’t know. But for a few days there she was telling me that she needed a “lolly,” (candy) because she was really hungry and couldn’t wait for anything else. Who is this child? A daughter that I love who is growing up and asserting herself. Oh my. So what’s the answer? I have no idea, but I’m trying to enjoy putting simple, starchy food on the table for Jacinta and hoping that this won’t last too long. I cook quick and lovely zucchini dishes for Genevieve and myself to cheer me up and revive my palette. Jacinta got a Candy Land game for Christmas. I play this with her and remember the joy of candy canes and gumdrops from childhood, and try to enter her world. This is good fun therapy for me, certainly it is I who needs the help, not my child. She learned to say “sorry,” after a year of agony. She says it willingly now. Stubborn souls do eventually learn, Jacinta and I can live to tell.
I am a second child, lucky me. I guess that means my parents had worked out some of the kinks by the time I came along. Perhaps that’s the price we pay for never having had them all to ourselves. Genevieve may not notice how we’ve improved, but maybe she’ll contemplate it when she’s 30. For the time being, she is very busy doing other things without much time for contemplation. Although she does think, I have seen her. A few nights ago, she was sitting on the floor happily playing with a cow. She looked in the bathroom, saw something and power crawled straight in to get the rubber frog. Seconds later she crawled straight to the couch with the frog in her mouth to get a shiny red container. She put that in her hand and crawled back to the original spot on the floor. She then proceeded to drop the frog into the container and pour him out over and over. This was the first time she placed an object into something, rather than taking things out of containers. Genevieve has also learned that we chase her if she goes out our door into Pop and Grandma’s lounge room. She really likes to be chased so now when she crosses the threshold she turns around with a coy little smile. She waits to be pursued, then picks up the pace and power crawls. Often she has one thing in each hand and another in her mouth, never empty-handed this girl. Evie has grown tall enough to reach the desk in her bedroom, a wonderland full of paper, scissors, glue, beads, etc. Once she makes it there, she grabs as much as her little hands can hold and turns around to see what you’re going to do about it. Other than being a chance to marvel in awe at creation, parenting also seems to be one big test. It’s the one of the world’s most direct way of testing us, forcing us to act, and continually asking, “what are you going to do about it?” Worse than getting an F for failure, on this test you get to live with the effects of your decisions forever through their behavior. On the other hand, you get to celebrate the good decisions and your children’s innate beauty and gifts knowing that you had nothing to do with a lot of their personality. Right now, it’s hard not to blame myself for Jacinta’s stubbornness regarding food and that’s okay. It’ll make us both grow.
Speaking of growth, the garden is crazy. The weeds are bountiful, as are the beans and cucumbers. I actually put a box of them out on the road to give away, not many takers though. Inspired by my step-mom I decided not to weed but just throw newspapers on top of them all. The decision was made, no action yet though. I’ll need a massive quantity of newspapers now. We did get down to the garden this week, mostly to play though. We played basketball with a beach ball, ate lots of cucumbers and a few strawberries, told stories and played in the sprinkler. One evening I went down and spent a luscious hour alone digging out the last potatoes, weeding and preparing a terrace for its next planting, kidney beans. The next day after Evie fell asleep in the pram, I bought compost and mulch from Jacinta’s “shop,” worked it into the soil and we then planted the beans. I’ve decided beans might be a better goal to grow than a bunch of vegetables that no one likes. The next day Jacinta and I took down the new clippers and her little scissors and gave the terrace garden a hair cut. We trimmed the mint and hung it up to dry. She happily harvested purple beans and snipped random herbs. Another day I got the inspiration to work on the chicken pen so we had morning tea with the chicks while I patched up holes in the chicken wire for a fox/snake/dog proof roost. We spent an hour in there, Jess and I with pliers and fruit. Evie was on the ground exploring, but amazingly enough, not grabbing at the chicks.
In addition to the gardening we had a very social week, having friends come to us or going to them almost every day. These are holidays. I’m actually amazed we got anything done this week. The house suffered though. By today I lost it and had to clean up the piles accumulated in every corner. I even canned six jars of purple beans and we went to the beach. One day some friends came for morning tea, Jacinta missed her friends after being away in Canberra and needed them to help her break in her swing set. While the children were having a great time outside, the adults and babies were enjoying the peace inside. Then came the peacock that Lily feared, so she wouldn’t play outside. I had a great idea, “Matt, will you go chase away the peacock so Lily will play outside (and let us have a child-free conversation)?” So off he went, to slip half way down the hill injuring his right knee on the way down. Laughing at himself, he hobbled up to find Jacinta crying because she wanted the peacock to stay. Matt ended up healing his poor knee, wincing in pain for the next few days with comfrey leaves wrapped round to speed the healing. It has been five days and he’s just now getting the strength in his knee to do physical labor again. Bloody peacock (bloody in the British sense, we didn’t hurt it, really. It’s too pretty!). Matt actually loves the peacock, even did a bit of research on them this week.
With a messed up knee Matt accomplished a lot inside: website work, a new scanner for his Too Many Photos business, reading, watching cricket, and playing with the girls. Watching cricket one can do while working as it doesn’t take much attention to follow. It’s a wonder: Genevieve can crawl and play for long periods without taking any notice of me, but when Matt, Keith or Mary walk in the room, she chases them down and crawls up their legs. This little display of affection is always a nice break from computer work for Matt when he comes out for coffee, as is Jacinta’s plea to “Please read me a story.” She would listen to tens of stories a day if we would read them to her. Matt is racing to finish a 400 page book before he interviews the author, Riane Eisler for his book in a few weeks. Unfortunately Riane’s book Sacred Pleasure probably wouldn’t entertain Jacinta and Genevieve would tear it to pieces. Besides that, Matt and Keith worked on the spa one last time, filled it up, discovered another leak and decided to get rid of the spa. But until it loses all of its water, it is our pool. The days have been hot so Matt has been playing with Jess and cooling off in it. Genevieve joined in once, but now she has pink eye. She doesn’t seem unhappy, but it’s not a way to start the New Year.
Last night we rung in the New Year at our friends’ house and stayed up past midnight for the first time in years. This is one holiday that I knew in winter and really love in the summer. The children didn’t really know or care about the whole concept, but played and ate their hearts out. Chicken chasing, hide and seek, sparklers, trampoline wrestling and jumping, exploring the yard with flashlights, even jumping on the trampoline with flashlights in the dark (you’d think the adults had drank too much but we hadn’t, just thought it would somehow be okay and it was)! They ended the evening at about 10:30 on mattresses watching a movie. Henry and Genevieve crawled around, played with toys, munched, sat on laps, watched the big kids, finally crashing by 8pm. Henry likes pulling Evie’s hair and perhaps enjoys her reaction: the saddest weepy little cry every time he does it. As for the adults, we ate, drank, played with the kids, walked in the garden, but mostly just sat and enjoyed adult conversation, marvelling at the children’s newfound ability to play contentedly on their own. Right at midnight, it started raining, a good way to mark the New Year.
So, here we are in 2008, wow. What will this New Year bring? What will we bring to this New Year? I haven’t sat down and thought of any resolutions, but writing this journal always brings me to new understandings by the end. I felt that turning thirty somehow granted me some more humility and human understanding. I can only hope that this journey continues and that I can open myself up to more wisdom from my children, friends, family and Mother earth. I hope you are enjoying the first few hours of 2008 and that you find some time to dream and chase your dreams in the New Year.
Happy New Year!
Peace,
Shana
P.S. Excuse the increasing length of this weekly letter, it has become a spiritual practice, the only time in the week I take to meditate on life. I will not be hurt if you’d like me to take you off my mailing list. Four pages is a lot to read, yes. I have to compete for airspace with my daughter by day, so by night, I have a lot to say
posted by Matt & Shana & Jacinta & Genevieve Henry at
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