"What happened at school today, Peanut?" I try to engage her as she breezes through the kitchen one night as I'm making dinner.
"Nothing," she answers, not missing a step on her way to the other room to draw.
A few minutes later she comes back in to root through the junk drawer for her kid scissors. "Want to put the spaghetti into the pot?" I ask, trying to have quality time and get dinner on the table.
"No thanks," is all I get.
It's a challenge to get stuff done around the house and have "quality time". I happily abandon plenty of chores so that we have time to play together, but there are certain things, like food and laundry that just can't be ignored.
I've read that it helps to involve them in the chores. Huh. How the heck does that work? Some are good at it, apparently; but me, not so much. Especially with Peanut, I just couldn't find a way to get her involved in laundry or cooking. Getting her to talk about her day alone is nearly impossible. And during the weekday, there just isn't enough time before bed to pry school-day tidbits out of her AND make dinner.
But recently we had a breakthrough. I dumped fresh lettuce into the sink to wash it, and pulled out the salad spinner. Peanut breezed through the kitchen and caught sight of it.
"What's that, Mama?" she asked.
"It's a salad spinner," I replied. Since she still stood there, staring at it, I decided to see if I could hook her in. "Do you want to try it?"
She grabbed the step stool as I loaded wet lettuce into it. I demonstrated. She tried it. The spinner was a hit!
She spun that lettuce for all it was worth. And chatted away! I learned that the boys wanted to play the kissing game at recess and that she thought chasing them was fun, but kissing was gross so she tried not to catch them. I was told that Jonathan still hasn't learned to cover his mouth when he coughs and Kaitlyn got cool new black boots. It was quite revealing. And I thought a salad spinner was a dumb use of non-biodegradable plastic!
And now, we have the driest lettuce on the planet. Gobs of it. And dry little Barbies, marbles, and a sock. I know that kissing and boy-cooties are still icky, boots would make a good Christmas present and my continual harping on covering your mouth when you cough has taken effect.
Unfortunately those little insights produced enough salad for a month. We're eating it as fast as we can, but I still bought two more heads of butter lettuce today. I want to make sure I stay on top of that kissing game.
So glad that you posted - been checking in here periodically. I've missed reading your posts. Happy Holidays to you and yours.
Posted by: Kathleen | December 23, 2008 at 01:25 PM