Fun Monday: Raising 5, Feeding 5

Fun Monday for today, hosted by Mariposa, asks us two questions: Where did the name of our blog come from, and what is our favorite or most common dish.

OK, so the name of my blog comes from the fact that I am raising five children. There, wasn't that fascinating? Well, I guess there is a teensy bit more. When I first started blogging (not that long ago, just this past September), I was feeling like I stumbled on this amazing world of blogs and every where I turned, I was suddenly noticing blogs. So I started blogging with the name "Here a Blog, There a Blog, Everywhere a Blog, Blog." Kind of long, kind of obvious. I didn't really like it.

Then one night my husband, who has given me lots of good ideas for this blog, suggested the name "And I'll Raise You 5." I immediately liked it and changed it. Since lots of what I write about, and most of what I think about, and most of how I spend my time is related to those five little gems, it seemed fitting that the Blog Name should reflect them somehow.

And I will admit that there can be an ever-so-slight edge, a slight sassiness to the name. We have heard more than our share of comments - some polite, some impolite, some curious, some nosy, some inappropriate, some well-meaning but intrusive anyway -- about the fact that we have five kids. We would never in a million years say to someone we didn't know well: "So, why did you decide to have just one child? That's amazing!" And while I am aware that five children are rare and that it is amazing to some people, I have experienced some weariness as a result of having to listen to people's full range of reactions to my large, young, beautiful family.

And I had a great picture of all five of them -- that I cannot find anywhere. Argh.

* * *

As for what my favorite dish is...or what my family loves. That's a tough one, because, as I've posted before, my family is hard to feed and I usually feel like I'm not doing such a good job at it. We don't have a dish that we all love. Someone is always complaining about whatever I prepare; fun for me, eh?

So I'll answer for me. My latest favorite is something I call taco casserole. It is YUMMY. I first came to know it after Tallulah was born, and a friend brought dinner over for us. It was this delicious casserole, and I've made it several times since. The first time I had it, it was made with ground beef, but because of health issues in this household, I usually make it with ground turkey.

This recipe calls for browning your meat in taco seasoning. Again, because of health concerns, I can't use the taco seasoning you can buy in a packet. WAY too much sodium for my husband, whose blood pressure is high. We are constantly watching the sodium intake around here. So I found a GREAT taco seasoning recipe on America's Test Kitchen website. Here's what you do:

Ingredients:
• Meat seasoned for tacos (see ingredients and instructions below)
• pasta
• corn (canned or frozen and thawed)
• black beans (canned)
• tomatoes (canned or fresh)
• Shredded cheese

Don't ask me for quantities -- use about one can's worth of each...

First, make your taco meat:

Beef Filling
2 tablespoons vegetable oil or corn oil
1 small onion , chopped small (about 2/3 cup)
3 medium cloves garlic , minced or pressed through garlic press (about 1 tablespoon)
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
table salt
1 pound 90% lean ground beef (or leaner)
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons vinegar (preferably cider vinegar)
Ground black pepper

Heat oil in medium skillet over medium heat until hot and shimmering but not smoking, about 2 minutes; add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 4 minutes. Add garlic, spices, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add ground beef and cook, breaking meat up with wooden spoon and scraping pan bottom to prevent scorching, until beef is no longer pink, about 5 minutes. Add tomato sauce, chicken broth, brown sugar, and vinegar; bring to simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, stirring frequently and breaking meat up so that no chunks remain, until liquid has reduced and thickened (mixture should not be completely dry), about 10 minutes. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper.


Next, while the meat is cooking, make pasta; I usually do elbows. They are about the right size and shape for this dish.

Once the meat is ready, and the pasta is cooked, combine seasoned meat, pasta, black beans, corn, and tomatoes in a casserole dish. Top with shredded cheese. Bake in an oven at around 350º until the cheese melts.

I don't know what it is about this dish -- I think it's the apple cider vinegar and the brown sugar, plus all the yummy seasoning -- but this is truly comfort food for me. I'm sure part of it has to do with a truism I learned from my husband: Food really does taste better when someone else cooks it. I first had this dish cooked by someone else, and it just hooked me.

My picky children won't eat it, past the taste I make them have of each dinner I serve. And when I cook this dish, I don't mind so much, because it means there will be more leftovers for me.

Happy Fun Monday to all!

Fun Monday: I Can't Show You What Isn't There

For today's Fun Monday, AOJ and the Lurchers gave us this assignment: Continuing in the spirit of "being interested in people," I would like to know, or see, what's on, in or under your bedside table!

Well, I can't show you what isn't there. I have no bedside table. Yes, I know, weep for me now, it's quite sad.

We've tried a few different configurations of our bedroom, and the only one that allows for the two dressers we need, plus a bookshelf, without having our bed right up against a window -- because we live in California and Californians don't put their beds near windows if they can help it because we do not want shards of glass to fall upon us during an earthquake -- is also a configuration that does not leave enough room on the sides of the bed for tables. My husband has the bookshelf within arm's reach, so he can put his books, his glasses, his bottle of water there.

So what do I have on my side of the bed? About 1 foot of space between me and the bedroom door. In other words, I'm easy access for nighttime wanderers, of which we have many. I don't blame my husband for this; we picked sides of the bed so long before we had kids that I just got the luck of the draw on this one. But being where I am, I hear EVERYTHING coming from the kids' rooms and I'm the first parent they reach when they somnambulate around at 2AM. Big fun.

So IF I had a bedside table, I would keep on and in it the things that end up tucked underneath my bed when I am too tired to get up and put them on the dresser. They are:

• at least two issues of the New Yorker, with all of the cartoons read and at least two articles having been started. Rarely finished.
• the book What to Eat, by Marion Nestle, because I really want to read it but never do.
• whatever book I really am reading, which currently is So Long, See You Tomorrow.
• the socks I took off right before I got into bed last night. And the night before that, and the night before that.
• usually one children's shoe. The one I spend way too long looking for before I remember that the foot in question unshod itself in my bedroom and somehow managed to leave just one shoe behind.
• a soccer ball. But then, you'll find soccer balls in almost every conceivable nook, cranny and corner of this house.

Someday, I'll have a bedside table. Either when I find one I like that will fit in a one-foot space, or when we hit the big time and move to a house that really does fit a family of seven. Maybe when I do get one, I will finally feel like a grown up. Probably not, though: the minivan didn't do it...the mortgage didn't do it...back-to-school night didn't do it...not even labor and delivery have done it.

So you'll have to tell me: Does a bedside table confer adulthood?

Fun Monday: A Way Out of Chaos

I knew what I would be writing about as soon as I read this week’s topic. Ann at For the Long Run was clear: "For today's Fun Monday, I want to hear about a web site that's changed your life." There really is only one website that fits that description for me. I also knew I would be slightly embarrassed to write about it, because there’s a part of me that thinks this site is completely nuts. Like loony-bin, over-the-top, OCD nuts. For the record, I'm pretty sure I could live without this site, and I wouldn't nominate it for a McArthur Genius grant. BUT – it did change my life, so here goes:

The website that changed my life is Flylady.net. For those of you unfamiliar, this site is for folks who find themselves living in a household of clutter and chaos, with no apparent way out. That, unfortunately, was me a year and a half ago. Flylady has a whole system to help housekeeping-challenged people like myself from becoming headlines that read: “Woman Buried Under Laundry Pile: Lost for Three Weeks.”

When you sign up with flylady, you start receiving emails that basically teach you how to organize your home and the rest of your life. Her mantra, or one of them, is “You can do anything for 15 minutes.” Which, I have found, is true. Not only is it true, but it is also true that you would be surprised by how much you can get done in 15 minutes. Here’s how that has changed my life.

My small, crowded house is usually a big mess. With five small kids all getting into toys, books, art supplies, dress-up clothes, games, etc., by the time dinner rolls around, we don’t let anyone in the house who doesn’t have extra insurance. How does this usually make me feel? Like a big, total, complete loser who cannot control a damn thing. Or at least, that’s how it used to make me feel, BF (Before Flylady). Now, I know that I can set my timer for 15 minutes and blast around my house putting things away, and that at the end of that 15 minutes, things usually look very, very different, and I feel like a person who can make things better. On a good day, I do this 15 minute blitz three times: once right after breakfast and the kids have gone to school, once right before or after lunch, and once sometime between 4 and 7pm, depending on our schedule. On a less than good day, I do it once, in the evening. My kids also do 15 minutes of cleaning up on most days. 51% is most, right?

There is much more to the Flylady “thing” than just the 15 minute deal. In fact, there’s TONS of stuff…some might say a ridiculous and overwhelming amount of stuff. I get emails reminding me to put my shoes on in the morning, asking me what I am having for dinner that night, telling me to go to bed, and on and on and on. But the flylady people are good about reminding their members that if the emails don’t work for you, just delete them, or set your membership preferences to fit better into your life.

One of the biggest ways I have benefited from Flylady was by following her suggestion to have a morning routine and an evening routine. These help me enormously. I have spent most of the past nine years being woefully sleep deprived, and my normally scatterbrained personality has become positively swiss-cheese like…my memory, my thought-processes, my brain itself is full of holes. Here is some of what I am juggling:

1. Well, let’s start with the five kids. Mind-boggling amount of work right there. Between feeding and dressing them each day (read: endless grocery store runs and endless laundry), making sure their homework is done, getting them to practices, games, and playdates, . . . all while hoping they won’t hate me when they are adults . . . it’s a very full life.

2. Keep up with the house. Seven people, 1245 sq ft. Way too many shoes, books, coats, backpacks, and towels. And mail: way too much mail.

3. Help Rick run our garden design business. I do the scheduling, some shopping for plants and such, invoicing, returning calls to clients…a real mish-mash of stuff, whatever is needed.

4. Work as a freelance graphic designer/editor/project do-er. I have three main clients, and a smattering of other small projects at any given time. I am overly familiar with what’s on TV at 2 am, since when I finish working I am usually too keyed up to go to sleep and end up watching all kinds of strange things late, late at night. This isn’t always a bad thing: I finally got to see The 40 Year Old Virgin this way, and I haven’t laughed that hard, that late at night, since college.

With all of that, plus bills to pay, friends to stay in touch with, and God knows what else in any given week, I was at a point where I NEEDED someone to say: “OK, now put your shoes on. OK, now make your bed. OK, now drink some water.”

Flylady threw me a lifeline. Gave me some simple things to do to make a difference in my house and my life. Oh, and it’s all free: free to join and free to participate. They do have a shop on the site that sells products to help you organize yourself, but I’ve never bought anything there, and have always found other ways to do the things they suggest. The site is not primarily about selling stuff; they don’t push their products too much at all.

The funny thing is, if you looked at my house right this minute, you’d never be able to tell that I’ve had any help at all. It’s 10pm and the sink is full of dishes, there are piles of laundry in the kitchen – some clean and waiting to go upstairs, some dirty and waiting to go out to the garage, from where I type I can see a wide area of the living room floor covered with what looks like cheerios, bits of toast, and other food-related crumbs, Christmas detritus is still piled in a couple spots un-touched since December 25th (although most of my decorations are at least down, in their boxes, and in close proximity to where they belong). EVEN STILL, even with the chaos that surrounds me right now, I’m way better off than I was a year or so ago, because I know that I can get this place whipped into shape fairly easily, in 15 minute chunks of time if need be, and that a little bit of effort really does make a big difference. So I can sit here writing, sipping the wine my lovely husband brought me, and waxing eloquent about this nutty site called flylady.net, knowing that it’s a damn good thing, for me and for my family, that I found this site when I really, really needed it.

Go view the other Fun Monday blogs for today; the list is at Ann's!

Fun Monday Ornament

Today's Fun Monday is brought to us by kaytabug, and here is her assignment:

In the spirit of the season I would like to see your favorite Christmas tree ornament. Not to be confused with the WHOLE tree. I want you to zoom in and show me one or a few(you know I can't choose just one!) of your favorite ornaments. If you don't decorate a tree, show me your menorah or dreidel, Kinara, or Yule Log. I want to see your favorite decoration for this holiday season.

* * *

Once upon a time, there were two young people who were very much in love and had recently gotten engaged. They were carefree, full of hope and anticipation, giddy...clueless.

One of my favorite Christmas ornaments captures the clueless joy of my then-fiance and me perfectly, and I must thank my wonderful mother-in-law for making this ornament and giving it to us.



I love looking at this ornament and laughing at how much I didn't know then, and wishing for a little of that innocence today. Twelve years and five children later, we are no longer that clueless. We have been through miscarriages and labor. We have endured mind-numbing sleep deprivation. We've had our share of financial challenges. We've lost members of our extended family, one at far too young an age. We've changed many, many diapers. We've been to Back to School Night three times now. We've cleaned up after sick children (just tonight, in fact! Rick actually hosed off some bedding in the street tonight...it was just too much stuff for the washing machine.) We've looked at each other in quiet amazement that yes, in fact, all five of them can cry, whine, complain, and yell at the same time. We've looked at each other in quiet and not-so-quiet amazement that this child performed Shakespeare! This one drew a beautiful picture of Mary and Joseph on the road to Bethlehem! This one eats steak, and salmon, and raw garlic, and spicy salsa, and sweet and sour soup! We've raised these five kids each and every day of the last several years, and been through all of the highs and lows that we all get to experience as parents.

We are older and wiser now, not so giddy anymore. But now we get to be something better than giddy: now we get to be that kind of happy that is deep and tired, hard won and hard kept, sometimes shabby like the Velvetine Rabbit, always abiding deep in our hearts. And we are still achieving this kind of happiness. We've still got the teenage years ahead of us to really test our mettle.

Who knew that happiness was scrappy and messy? Not those two kids in the ornament picture. But when I look at that picture, I realize that this is the very lesson I am learning every day, and I smile because I miss those early days and because I wouldn't change places with that girl for all the gold in the world.

Fun Monday: I'm A Novice, so Bear With Me!

I have noticed that everyone else linked back to our gracious host, and included her text of the assignment this week. A day (almost) late, I am doing the same now:


Today’s Fun Monday host is Robinella. Her assignment is this:

“In honor of exhaustion, color and self-love, I present you with this week’s assignment. I want you to dig through your blog files and show us your best effort. Why you consider it your best is up to you. C’mon, you know you have a favorite - show it to me one more time”.

Fun Monday: One of My Favorite Posts

Today I am participating in a fun blogging thing called Fun Monday. The idea is that one blogger hosts, and picks an assignment for others to do if they choose to participate. The assignment this week was to pick a favorite blog post and simply repost it. This is the first time I've done Fun Monday, and it's nice to start on something simple! So here, without further ado, a reprisal of one of my favorite posts, from my not-yet-well-established blogging habit.

Just Another Fun Filled Day

Monday morning: Get up at 5:45 to make it to the grocery store when it opens at 6, because there isn't enough "lunch box" type food in the house for the school day. Stop on the way out the door because the baby has woken up. OK, so feed the baby first, drop her on the bed with dad, and off to the store. Think vaguely about what to make for dinner...give up on that one. Expend brain cells trying to balance nutritious lunch items with items the children will actually eat. Give up on that one, too.

Get home, make coffee, go to the dryer to get the uniforms out for the kids. Discover that the uniforms are still waiting to be transferred from the washer to the dryer (we can talk about whose fault that was later). Hastily pile the uniforms in the dryer; look at the clock: 50 minutes until we leave for school, 45 minutes to dry if we're lucky. Back to the kitchen; make school lunches and realize that I actually bought enough food to feed 3 classrooms instead of three children. (Will come in handy for the rest of the week...)

Get children up. Feed them the frozen waffles I uncharacteristically, but thankfully, impulse purchased. At the last viable moment, hustle the kids into dry (or dry-ish) school uniforms; stifle any complaints about damp socks. Pile everyone out the door and let dad take them to school for once. Back in; change the 2 year old and 1 year old. Clean the kitchen. Speed clean the rest of the house (ie., set the time for 20 minutes and do as much as possible in that time and then CEASE ALL CLEANING.) Call the doctor to make an appointment for the 1 year old (likely ear infection) and the 8 year old (should we have taken him to the hospital for stitches for the gash on his head when a metal basketball hoop fell on him last night? or was the butterfly bandaid enough??). OK, appointment scheduled for much earlier than hoped for...shower REALLY FAST while baby cries in her crib and the two year olds "plays" with her. Pack diaper bag, shoes for the 2 year old (who won't put shoes on unless she's in her car seat), remember the bill that has to be mailed, don't forget wallet, cell phone, sense of humor. Pick up 8 year old from school and go to the doctor. Yes, the baby has an ear infection (as if the incessant screaming and ear pulling wasn't enough confirmation); and yes, we should have taken the 8 year old for stitches. Great. No mother-of-the-year award for today, I guess. Make mental note to add money to the childrens' therapy fund.

Take the 8 year old back to school; off to Costco because we really can't exist without the following depeleted items in our home: coffee, parmesan cheese, a Y2K supply of cinnamon. Run through Costco with the 2 and 1 year olds. Off to the pharmacy to fill the antibiotic prescription for my adorable little screaming mimi. Get there right after the pharmacist has left for lunch. Decide that pharmacists should not be allowed to eat.

Home in time to pay a couple of bills on line, make a couple of phone calls for the family business, put away the perishables from Costco.

Back in the car to see if the pharmacist has decided to stop eating long enough to fill my prescription. Answer the phone while in the drug store, only to learn that the 5 year old Kindergartner has a fever of 102º, and can I please come and get her? Pick up the prescription, head to the school. It's close enough to the end of the school day, so bring everyone home at once to start the kids on their afterschool routine:

1. Put away your lunchbox; change your clothes and hang up your school uniforms; put your backpack on the vent in the hallway.
2. SNACK TIME
3. Homework Time
4. Playtime
5. Dinner
6. Chore
7. 15 minutes of clean-up
8. Shower or bathe for either boys or girls (depending on day of the week)
9. Quiet activity time
10. BED TIME

While making dinner, keep stepping over the 2 year old, who has fallen asleep smack dab in the middle of the kitchen because she missed her nap today. Somewhere beteen dinner and bedtime, perform nurse duties as follows:

• Give the 8 year old head wound some ibuprofen;
• Give the 102º fever some tylenol;
• Give the 1 year old antibiotic for her ear infection and tylenol for the pain (because a muzzle isn't appropriate for such a small child).
• Give the 2 year old ibuprofen for the multiple bruises on her leg, sustained when she catapulted backwards off the couch and landed on the wooden castle.

Clean up the dinner dishes while the kids do their 15 minutes of clean up. Divide bedtime reading duties with husband. Set firm boundaries: 2 stories tonight, then teeth brushing and bed! Four stories later, enforce the teeth brushing bit. Coerce, cajole, and physically force children large and small to GO TO BED.

Pop open one nice cold Lagunitas Ale and fall on the couch.

At 9:15, before surrendering completely to exhaustion, congratulate the 2 year old who has emerged from her room, wandered into the living room, pointed proudly to her nose and announced: "Look! No boogers!"