A Day in My Life, Part 2

If you missed it, you can read Part 1 here.

Midday

I join my 5 and 7 year olds to help them with folding the small mountain of kitchen linens threatening to overtake our sofa. We use mostly cloth napkins and dish towels rather than paper products, in reds, yellows, greens, and oranges. Bright colors for all of the wee people here I suppose.

Once the drawers are full of linens, I begin doing some teaching with my 7 year old, and we are still working on proper pencil holding. I regret not starting her with cursive first, and am thankful she wasn’t further along in ball-n-stick than she was. Her handwriting is becoming more and more fluid, and the death grip on her pencil is beginning to, finally, relax. I think those loopy-loo’s that always come so easily to my toddlers should have been an obvious hint to which style of handwriting they are better able to utilize, but I was too smitten with “how the schools do it” rather than really watching and listening to my own children.

I send the boys outside to go pump their legs with cross-country bike riding (it’s all gravel and meadow and plenty of dirt), and to bring in any more eggs they can find in their coat pockets. I also ask for the starter trays from the greenhouse because I’m moving much slower and figured I could plant seeds a bit at a time on my back porch instead. But, really, I just needed them to go burn off some energy.

After unloading a few blue and brown eggs, my 5 year old boy clambers red-faced to the kitchen table. And while he and my daughter are working and chittering with each other, I sit catching up on some reading, picking at curriculum, a magazine, a recipe. The older kids are either picking at schoolwork or preparing for art lessons, and Ruby is banging away at the play kitchen. When my little students finish up their math and spelling, I read to them from the Jesus Storybook Bible and the Christian Nature Reader and send them on their way to play. Ruby runs after them in glee.

Our “maybe we can come” friends show up, and my 14 year old starts an art lesson with the youngest of the children, a collage of a butterfly’s life from egg to flutter. We’ve been using Atelier for years, and the results are always pleasant. My smiling friend helps herself to a mug and picks a bag out of the tea drawer, mi case es her casa. We chat, and unapologetically eat seriously delicious cinnamon rolls with our hot drinks. And yes, we share those with the children, all twelve of them. But the bowl of leftover frosting we keep for our own spoons.

The other children in time do art lessons as well, and it is interspersed with either outside play in the sunshine, or music lessons from the teacher that arrives during this time. The whole house and yard is full of happy eating, painting, music making, outdoor mud splashing, and toddlers vrooming their cars and dolly strollers all over the wide planked wood floors. Of course there are cries of hurts, bumps to kiss and peepee accidents to deal with, too. Here is my 9 year old’s painting, one of her most “happy days”: when she and I flew to California together for a quick family visit.

The sunshine is still beckoning me outside, so my friend and I go for a walk down the long woodsy dirt road. A half hour later, we return to visit my dairy goats, and I peer into my garden. The shallots are starting to come up already. I’ve never grown shallots before.

My goat girls are so sweet, they love to snuggle. Here are Smores and Dancer. I had to keep them at arm’s length to get this photo during our snow. While my friend and I are in the musty barn, we talk about livestock of all kinds, fencing, dreams. It is comfortable and warm in the stall, and the boys next door bleat for lovings too. I glove up to pat my buck and also stroke my wether’s growing beard, telling them both yes, they are *so* handsome.

Inside, the large stockpot of chicken soup is hot and as my friend and I correct the seasonings and cut bread slices, the children clean up art supplies and make room for eating. The clanking of spoons and white porcelain bowls upon the table add to the scuffling of chairs, and all at once, silence. We all give thanks, and eat. The broth is completely satisfying, bits of chicken and rice deliciously warm and good for the soul, too. It is 2:00 in the afternoon.

Blessings,

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