I had a lot of possible titles for this post…”Out of gas”, “Hitting the brick wall”, “Not having fun”.  It hit me at the end of last week:  that this is it.  Mondays with Anna and Theo.  Tuesdays with all three little ones.  Wednesdays with Anna.  Wednesday nights with all the little ones while Jeff teaches a late class.  Thursdays with all the little ones again.  Fridays with Anna.  Weekends, our “all-together” days, a chaotic melee of children, laundry, and an attempt by the adults to catch a nap or two.  This is the new normal.  But it doesn’t feel normal yet, it feels cluttered and overwhelming and just plain hard. I know that I have it very good and very easy compared to most mothers in the world.  I know that I am very fortunate to be able to have a couple of days a week alone with my baby without my older children (although I worked hard and saved to make that financially possible).  And I am sure that someone looking from the outside in would say that I’ve been doing well on my own with the kid(s).  But despite my best efforts I often don’t feel like I am doing a good job.  It feels like at least one someone is always crying or whining, always hungry, always bored, and/or always, needing to go to sleep.  And some of that time, that someone is me.  The constant needs of everyone, including myself are wearing me down.  It all seemed doable for a few weeks; you can do anything for a short amount of time, but when it hit me that my “break” from this new normal wasn’t going to come until I go back to work, in June, I felt like I hit a wall.  I am not particularly sad.  I am certainly not depressed.  I am just acknowleging that parenting three children ages five and under is really hard.  I also want to enjoy the time with my children – I like my children – not just count the hours until Jeff comes home and congratulate myself that we all survived the day.

But here is where this post turns from complaining to action.  Two years ago I would have simply thought to myself “Of course, this is hard, you have a two month old, stop whining and it will get better in a few months on its own.”  I would have heard everyone saying “You’re doing great!” and interpreted that to mean “I think you are doing great, so there must be something wrong with you if you are feeling overwhelmed”.  As soon as I started feeling the force of that brick wall bearing down on me I told Jeff about it.  I then told my sister and  couple of friends and they listened.  We’re making lots of changes.  Some of the changes are small – like me making sure that I get an afternoon snack.  (I have a tendency to turn into a three year old when I am hungry and it isn’t pretty.)  We’re giving Theo a bottle of milk in the morning when he starts to melt down – the kid has basically had a moaning, sobbing meltdown at about 10:30 am ever since he gave up his morning nap a year and a half ago!  Despite a morning snack, cuddling, and reading stories, the meltdowns were just getting worse so we tried giving him some of his beloved “milky” and lo and behold a beautiful calm has descended upon the house during the mid-morning. And I really don’t care if he takes a bottle until he goes to kindergarten.  And speaking of kindergarten, the biggest change of all is that we decided to take a mid-year opening for Thomas such that he will start kindergarten in three weeks.   And just making a few changes and knowing that all I really have to do is acknowledge my difficulties and we will work together as a family is already making life easier.  It only took me three kids to figure it out.

Sung to the tune of “Hey Jude”…

Everybody knows the phenomenon of walking into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, looking through your pantry, opening the refrigerator – again, and wondering, “What the hell am I going to make for dinner?”  Those are the kind of nights that drive us to ordering pizza or making a run to In-N-Out.  Now there’s nothing wrong with ordering pizza from time-to-time and sometimes a girl just needs a grilled cheese, fries, and a milkshake.  But, personally, I want to really crave something like pizza or fast food in order to eat it, not just succumb to random pantry syndrome.

Last week I read this article interviewing chef Tamar Adler in which she discussed the essentials of her pantry and how she uses up what’s in her fridge.   When asked what her top five pantry essentials are Chef Adler replied:  olive oil, salt, red wine vinegar, eggs and a loaf of good bread.  And she added in garlic as a sixth key ingredient.  I had to agree with the olive oil, salt, eggs, and garlic.  I would probably substitute a lemon for the red wine vinegar (that way you get the acid of the juice and the flavor of the lemon and the zest).  But I have to rather stridently disagree with the choice of bread.  Bread?  I just don’t think of bread as an ingredient.  Instead of bread I would have chosen flour.  I think that her choice of bread was telling.  American food culture glamorizes well-known chefs and the intricate food that they create at the same time that record numbers of Americans rely on food stamps.   I realize that simple, delicious breads are not exciting to most chefs nor to most home cooks – there’s a reason that isn’t a “Baguette Wars” on television.  Yet bread is a staple of the American diet.  If we want all Americans to be able to cook and eat simple, delicious, and affordable meals; we all need to know how to make a loaf of bread (and bread’s fast and easy cousin, quick breads).

I did enjoy Chef Adler’s descriptions of how she uses up what’s in her fridge in ubiquitous frittatas.  At our house we have some sort of frittata/quiche/strata about once a week.  I just wish Chef Adler had chosen some flour for her pantry.  Because while a simple loaf of bread is great, the ingredients and skills to make baguettes, boules, focaccia, muffins  are so much better.

What are your pantry essentials?

So what do you think:  is he going to be crying to his therapist whist stuffing his face with brownies 20 years from now or will he think harder about the consequences of his behavior from now on?