I Just Want You to Know_ Letters to My Kids on Love, Faith, and Family - Kate Gosselin [8]
After diaper changes and clothes, the next task for the day was the first round of meals: make breakfast, feed breakfast, clean up breakfast, which was always right before make lunch, feed lunch, clean up lunch, and then followed by make dinner, feed dinner, clean up dinner. The endless cycle.
For breakfast, I often made a big bowl of oatmeal with organic quick oats, which was easy, fast, healthy, and inexpensive—plus the kids loved it. I would add blueberries or strawberries or brown sugar and cinnamon, or whatever we had on hand to make it different.
In the summer, after breakfast we would be outside until lunch, many times having a picnic lunch. We loved warm weather! The kids would run around outside, and after eating lunch, with a flip of the blanket, cleanup was done. In the summer, we also loved going to Henry and Linda’s, an Amish couple with five young boys. They grew organic produce—unofficially organic, they just didn’t spray. They grew everything under the sun! We would get strawberries and vegetables and all kinds of produce, which would then determine what we were having for dinner that night.
We visited a local farm to see their newborn baby goats.
The kids loved going for a drive to Henry’s, even if they didn’t get out of the van. And if we didn’t make it there in the mornings, and if someone was babysitting the kids at home, I’d run over there while doing my errands; or I’d go when Jon got home from work. Sometimes I’d go to Henry’s twice a day as he would call me to take his leftover produce very inexpensively. Whatever I didn’t use, I’d give away to family, friends, or neighbors.
I loved cooking with the fresh produce, and my challenge, especially if I had extra from the end of the day, was to figure out what to come up with from the ingredients. I would sometimes chop peppers and freeze them for stir-fry. I froze sixty quarts of strawberries one year. I learned to shred zucchini and freeze it to make zucchini bread in the winter. I also learned from Linda that I could freeze corn on the cob unshucked and make it in the winter as a treat. I felt really good about serving my family picked-from-the-garden-that-morning produce, and the kids loved to say, “Jesus made it, Henry grew it, Mommy cooked it, and we ate it!”
Having picnics and fresh produce was great in the summer, but such activities were much harder to do in the winter—and eight young kids always had plenty of energy to burn. We tried to do crafts often, but one winter morning we were all bored, so I started brainstorming possible things we could do. I had started to change my thinking from being a mom to being a preschool/daycare organizer when it came to projects and activities we could do during the day. I would often research online to find something that would work within our constraints: things that were inexpensive, done with one or two adults supervising, and had manageable cleanup. Not an easy task, but doable with a shift in thinking.
I had heard of using shaving cream as an activity and had actually stocked up with a few cans the week before. I used this monotonous winter morning as an excuse to test out the project. I sat all the kids at the table and gave them each a pile of shaving cream. “Swirl it around, mold it in your hands, draw shapes with your fingers, just don’t put it in your mouth.” These were my only instructions.
The kids loved it! They played happily for a long time, moving the white foam around on the table with their hands, and the cleanup was easy. In fact, my kitchen table looked great, like I had just conditioned it with special cleaner.
Hannah having fun with shaving cream!
Then I heard from Mady the words that made my day: “Mommy, you’re the