The diabolical plan to get our boys to eat vegetables

We've been struggling to incorporate fresh produce in our lives. It seems like I get a bit out of practice during the winter months so we've devised a cunning plan. Eli and Jonah aren't big vegetable fans unless they're picking right from the garden. Eli does like carrots. And they both like apples and salad, but what I hear most is requests for cheese and bread. So we had to make the vegetables something fun.

Josh has been taking the Trader Joe's Very Green supplaments for a while now and we decided to try making a green drink instead. He likes to use recipes, but I'm much more of an experimenter. The nice thing is that you can't really go wrong... depending on how much space you have left in the blender.

We usually start with an apple and a handful or two of spinach and kale, frozen berries and juice or water. We've also tried celery and pineapple and carrots and avacado. Banannas are good but overpowering and so is the celery. This sometimes is helpful though. The avacado makes it really smooth and if worse comes to worse add vanilla yogurt.

Last night Josh decided to throw a handful of the very green vitamins in and it ruined the whole thing. I was so mad. The entire smoothie tasted like vitamins and reminded me of my days during pregnancy which I would rather not remember. I resorted to adding mine to the yogurt. Jonah on the other hand as seen in exhibit "a" didn't care a bit.

This is what happens when you try to repair the broken blanket fort with one child and leave the other one unattended for 3 minutes with a chair pulled out from the dining room table. Be sure to put down your smoothie and forbid them to touch your drink. At least he's eating his vegetables. HA HA HA it was all part of our plan!

We make a path by walking

So we're talking about studying your children as if you were going to be graded on them, as if they were a subject in school. We were asked to think about our favorite subject in high school or even elementary school. It didn't have to be the one we got the best grade in. It had to be the one we were passionate about. One said honors english, one said reading, one said geometry another p.e., one said it wasn't so much a class but being a part of the ASB, and another said being a part of the church youth group. I said of course art.

As the conversation developed it became obvious that each person's favorite subject directly led to their personality and most often vocation as an adult. It got us thinking about how we learn, how we are motivated, and how we pursue things of interest. We then were reminded that our class was our child. The subject is not math or history, but this little or not so little person. How will you approach learning this subject? Who is the teacher? How are we graded?

First I thought of my homeschooling experience in high school where we were required to write a syllabus before the course began. I always was frustrated by this because I wondered how I could write a syllabus on something I knew nothing about. It involved investigation, asking questions, drawing on multiple sources and research. Then you could start the class. Parenting doesn't offer you a syllabus, or a text book. Everyone makes that cliche joke about not leaving the hospital with out the operations manual after you have a baby. Honestly it isn't very funny. It's just annoying. As a parent I feel like I should have the answers. I wanted my parents to have the answers. I want to be handed the syllabus. I feel like I should be the teacher, but I am not. I am the student.

So who is the teacher? Who teaches you who your child is? Certainly not them. They don't know who they are. They are developing and changing daily and longing for someone to speak identity into them. A scientist doesn't set out to observe a specimen in hopes that all their questions will be answered by the specimen. They rely on their experience, their ability to ask informed questions, to confer with colleagues and to refer to other sources and observation to derive a hypothesis. They are partners with the specimen in an investigation. Ultimately as parents we do have a textbook on our children. It is our children. They are our textbook. The only catch is we don't have a table of contents or chapter summaries. It is being written in real time. It is being written as we watch.

One parent said, "I'm reading chapter 17 right now. I loved chapter 7 and 9 and in chapter 11 something amazing happened, but I haven't got a clue on how to understand this chapter. I could decide that if I get a 60% on chapter 17 it is still a passing grade, and looking back on my cumulative GPA it might not hurt me too much, but then what if I keep deciding that? What if I end up being a 60% parent?"

We are students of these books, but we are also very close with the author. We know the author has an outline. The author has an expertise and a finished product that He is working towards. The author is our teacher. He is the designer and the creative director. He gives us resources in each other in other adults in our kids' lives and he gives us His spirit.

Another exercise involved identifying traits in our children that we would like to foster and develop versus trying to just build their resume. As I read through the 7 pages of characteristics complete with definitions and Bible references to back them up, I thought 2 things.

1. I may not be able to discern these things by chapter 3 and surely not by chapter 1.

2. I really need to ask myself what traits listed here do I see in ME that I want to foster and develop.

Modeling always comes before teaching. Whether we want it to or not, it does. This terrifies me because I am so wired to do instead of be. I long for my kids to know that they are known. They are honored and celebrated for who they are and not what they do. Sometimes those lines get fuzzy and I suppose that is in a later chapter cause right now it doesn't seem to be quite so pressing.

A friend of mine shared a saying with me. She said, "We make a path by walking." I suppose that is what parenting is; observing in patience as your child's book is written. Being attentive to shifts and changes and following the narrative like it is your favorite subject. Stories aren't interesting unless they have conflict. Stories aren't interesting if you know the end before you start. Stories aren't stories unless there is someone listening.

This might have done it. 6 months of non- posting and neglecting my blog may have actually alienated all my of readers. That's right all 4 of you are gone now, so I can write again with out censoring and wondering what ... will think of this .... blah. blah.

I haven't written in 6 months because for the last six months I have had a lack of insight and inspiration. And then from a far off dusty place, I hear the voices of my college professors echoing through my conscience saying that a true artist works through the dry spells and forces their hand to keep working. I begin to feel pressured to live up to my own expectations as well as the perceived expectations of my future memoirist but under the weight of the pressure I cave and recoil and recede.

I have been trying to read a little bit each day, between the diapers and laundry and lesson plans and now have some one else's insight that I would like to share. I'm a bit rusty so forgive my preface.

First a quote:

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness. --- Aaron Copland

Next a passage from Cannery Row:

They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy every thing lovable about them. Mack and the boys are the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces. In the world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed up men scream at them and call them no goods, come to bad ends, blots on the town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no goods and blots on the town and bums and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

---John Steinbeck