May I Have a Personal Chef Please?

Unfortunately my migraines have been really bad lately. This is unfortunate for myriad of reasons, not least of which is how hard it is on my family when I am not available to them. Thankfully, we have a wonderful support system with a great community of people who are always so willing to help whenever and wherever they can.

One of the ways people often offer to help is by making us meals. Anyone who has ever had a baby, or been ill, or suffered a loss, and had someone bring their family food, knows that it is one of the biggest blessings in the world. I am of course, very grateful when some dear friend comes and takes my very noisy children out of the house, while I hide in a dark room, but a meal has a way of blessing all of us, especially my husband, reminding us that we are not alone.  

All of this is true, and beautiful but it got me thinking.

 What if you didn't have to cook dinner every night?

 For so many of us, the three most dreaded words of our day are "what's for dinner?"  My four-year-old usually asks me this by 6:45 in the morning, just so that she can immediately respond with "But I don't want that for dinner," or "but why didn't you say corn dogs are for dinner?" 

The planning, the shopping, the prepping, the actual cooking, it's all exhausting and tedious. The ruts we find ourselves in, the insurmountable attempt to find a balance between cooking something that is good for your family, but not something they will groan about, pick at, or throw up. Then there's the financial wizardry required to do all of this on a budget, to keep protein in their diet but not spend all your wages on meat. Organic or not? Grass fed, home grown, gluten-free, sugar-free, taste-free...the possibilities are endless and they all require time, money, and energy you don't have. 

Perhaps one day, I'll make myself more useful and pass on a few of the tricks I have learned about planning meals and managing a grocery budget (it would be a pretty short post). But today I just want to comment on how glorious it is when I don't have to cook dinner!

I love to cook as hobby; I love to hostess, and feed crazy amounts of people, but that's a totally different ball-game. When you host, your guests are grateful, you justify cooking decedent, time-consuming dishes, you make time to make it fun. It is not the same when you are making spaghetti for the screaming masses, and all of them start crying when you put the "red stuff" on their noodles, saying all they want is butter. Or when they start hinting at the possibility of puking up their broccoli, which you took special care to try to make more palatable in the hopes that this time they would eat it. 

So it's settled. If I were extremely wealthy, and money were not an object I would forgo shopping sprees, still drive my luxurious Ford Econoline 12 passenger van, and pool all our resources to justify my own personal grocery shopper/ meal planner/chef and only cook when I felt like it. Think of all the time you would have? Think of all those moments throughout the day as time marches on and you have that nagging voice in your mind reminding you that you still haven't decided what you're making. Think of the most arduous part of every day, that witching hour when homework needs to be done, and anyone under 3 starts screaming and crying and saying your name incessantly, but with no real need being articulated.  Now imagine that you are managing all of that without having to think about dinner. Suddenly, it's not quite as absurd. I totally understand why people with expendable income, and small families eat out all the time. Granted I want the lovely scene around the dinner table, and I am grateful that my kids are in the habit of setting a table, eating with manners, as a family unit, cleaning up together and so forth, but the nitty-gritty of it is so exhausting. This is why a personal chef is the perfect answer. You're still at home, they still acquire all those lovely skills but all you have to do is show up. Maybe you'll even know for sure if all the kids washed their hands. 

For now I will just enjoy the last few meals coming this week and be grateful that we are rich with friends who are selfless and giving, who do more than feed us, they spare me the drama of making dinner! 

An Oldie but a Goody

I am coming off a brutal five-day stretch of non-stop migraines and needless to say have fallen a little behind in housework, groceries, discipline, homework, personal hygiene....well, you get the picture. 

I have a new post I'm working on, but due to the previous admission I do not have time do finish it right now, and today, thanks to a very good night sleep, I have had a very productive day so far, which reminded me of a post I wrote a couple years ago. 

So in an attempt to keep my readers, and maybe make you laugh a little bit, even if you've read it before I thought I would re-post this: 

    My youngest baby is 7 months old.  Usually, by this time my babies are sleeping soundly through the night (something that has always annoyed many of my friends).  But this little guy just doesn't want to sleep more than 3 or 4 ours at a time!  I think there are a combination of factors contributing to our little problem: I haven't been as diligent scheduling him as I was with the others and allow him to nurse all the time; we are so much busier than we have ever been; the 8 of us live in a two-bedroom house and by default he is still our roommate.  Or maybe he doesn't think he gets enough attention during the day so he figures if he keeps me up at night we'll get more quality time (not a bad survival technique for a sixth man).

               After more than a week of waking up every 2 or 3 hours I found myself less than cheerful.  That's actually a huge understatement, I have been grumpy and mean and depressed, unmotivated and overwhelmed.  I started thinking postpartum depression was hitting me really late, next I convinced myself I was pregnant again, which I of course obsessed about until 2 pregnancy tests assured me that was not the case.  Then I had a night where I got 7 glorious uninterrupted hours of sleep!  Suddenly, the world was a better place, I was kind again, everything looked better, sounded better, smelled better!

              This got me thinking: Everything is better when you are sleeping; allow me to give a few examples:

                   Screaming Toddlers Fighting Over Every. Little. Thing.
With Sleep:  You gently diffuse the situation, distract, encourage or join in the play and quietly teach them to play together. It drives you crazy but you find yourself praying through the frustration and getting past the moment.

Without Sleep: You unsuccessfully resist the urge to join in the yelling; you rip toys out of hands and threaten to throw every toy they own in the trash, or you lock yourself in the bathroom just to gain enough composure to go back and deal with the situation in a way that will not inspire your neighbors to call CPS.

                   Dirty Dishes, Piles of Laundry, Dirty Floors
With Sleep: You tackle a little at a time throughout the day, finding you have energy to approach each task with cheerfulness, and can even leave a few tasks undone in order to play with the children. You come up with games to get the kids involved and at the end of the night it doesn't look so bad; it's not clean but it's livable.

Without Sleep: You cuss at your husband in your head for not helping you more (even though you know he helps a lot); you scrutinize over every piece of laundry convinced that your kids threw it in the hamper without even wearing it; you feel like a complete failure and convince yourself that your kids will grow up needing countless hours of therapy, and be clinically diagnosed with OCD as a reaction to what a pig sty their house was growing up.

                    Natural Family Planning (Your Sex Life)
With Sleep: You thank God for the beautiful gift of marital love; you marvel at how kind and good it is of God to give you a cycle you can track and you feel optimism when you think about your future with all the kids God wants to give you.  You find you don't recoil when your husband touches you, and you think about how much better sex gets the longer you are married.

Without Sleep: You get dressed as fast as possible, in the bathroom or closet, making sure your husband doesn't see you naked because even though you can't imagine he could find you attractive right now you're pretty sure he would want to have sex if he saw you.  Your husband looks at you with that familiar glance and you want to scream "you want part of me too! All I want is to watch TV or read a book without someone needing something from me for five minutes!" You can't make heads or tails of your stupid cycle and you cry thinking about the possibility of having another baby and resolve that the only sure way to avoid this is to Never. Have. Sex. Again.

                    Body Image

With Sleep: You're never completely happy with the way you look, but you feel good about the progress you're making losing the baby weight, or maintaining the weight you are.  You are making good food choices and working out and you figure you're doing your best and you're grateful for your health.  You look at your stomach knowing it will never again regain it's former glory but thank God that your children are the reason it looks the way it does, and you know it was totally worth it.  

Without Sleep: You cry every time you have to put something on that doesn't have an elastic waist and imagine how much happier you were before these little creatures completely destroyed your body (even though you know all you could think about was how much happier marriage and family would make you and you didn't care if it meant you couldn't be skinny anymore).  You figure you're going to be fat forever, and will probably just get pregnant again in 5 minutes so you might as well eat that third brownie, or make the really cheesy enchiladas for dinner again because somehow the smell of them in your kitchen makes you feel better. You compare yourself to every other woman you know and convince yourself that you are the only one who really needs to lose weight and that God must hate you because you have the metabolism of an 80 year old. 

I think I've made my point.  So for all the sleep deprived mothers out there, know you are not alone and for God's sake go take a nap!