Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Let's Talk About Crumbs!

Okay, so at the risk of sounding negative, I want to stop and talk about crumbs for a minute.  Have you noticed that blogland is full of beautiful projects, amazing mothers, and gorgeous, polished, peaceful homes?  I am a particular fan of the Steiner/Waldorf blogs but at times they overwhelm me.  You see, much as I might try, my home rarely looks like that (even on a good day AFTER I've cleaned!)  Our home is normally a chaotic mess, and we are generally running late for being somewhere, and most often one or the other of the small ones has misplaced a shoe?  Today is HARMONY DAY - things were quite harmonious in our household and we even looked like being early to school when Hannah announced (sotto voce as she exited the front door) that she needed to wear something orange or a chinese hat (we have SOOOOO many of those lying around LOL!)  And so then of course by the time we had raided the dress up box and tried to find her orange t-shirt in the infinite abyss that is her room things were less than harmonious :(

I love that we use blogs to celebrate our achievements ("Look I made this" or "The kids did that") but maybe sometimes we need to expose our lily white underbellies and let others know that the wheels sometimes fall off.  thehandmaden.blogspot.com was having a bad day yesterday and it was actually really nice to be able to sympathise and relate! Thank you Kellie for keeping it real!

Despite my grumbles I am quite prepared to live with the perpetual crumbs and chaos just for the precious SAHM moments like yesterday when Dan proudly brought in two feathers from the chookpen and stuck them in a glass of water "so that we can watch them grow".  At the moment that dear boy just cracks me up. He is teaching himself to read from Hannah's readers and the words he makes up or misappropriates are just too funny.  He said to me "Mummy, what noise does a lamington make?" I was puzzled until I realised he was looking at a picture of a flamingo!

While we are talking SAHM/domestic stuff.  Does anyone have ideas for integrating Waldorf type toys into a not strictly Steiner/Waldorf setting?  I LOVE our Waldorf toys - the feel of them, the look of them, knowing that they have been handmade and not mass produced but I have to say that Hannah enjoys her pink plastic little people castle much more than the beautiful wooden dolls house.  I frequently find our little root babies taking trips in the Tonka trucks or cohabitating with barbie and I just don't feel quite right about it!  Thinking of maybe rearranging so that all of the Waldorf stuff is in one spot - but I know that the kids will still end up moving things around to suit themselves?  In a perfect world I would love a proper Waldorf Playroom (and a lot less plastic toys) but that might have to wait.

BIG excitement in our house yesterday as the Schoolgirl progressed from Level One (golden words) to Level Two (red words)  We have begun our own little special way of celebrating small things - baby icecream cones at the Lobethal Bakery.  A lovely and affordable way of saying "YAY!" on a semi regular basis!
Hope you are having a wonderful week.  We are off to Granny and Grandpa' new beach house to celebrate Easter.
Keep smiling,
Nell

2 comments:

Nic Wood said...

I read that post yesterday and it really did bring a smile to my face, as well as a sigh of relief and confirmation that we are all human and life id not always smooth sailing!

I think just go with the flow about the beautiful stiener/waldorf toys you have - does it really matter if the beautiful animals are trucked around by the tonka truck, or the gorgeous (handmade with love) root babys end up hanging out in the pink plastic dolls house (I know it does to some people, and thats fine too) They are still being played with and loved and the kids are still able to expereince their natural beauty - they will keep those expereinces tucked away somewhere inside for the rest of their lives...and will probably not truely appreciate them until they become parents themselves!

I think that there are probably very few people that are able to totally immerse themselves in their idealic lifestyle, but every little baby step/experience you take closer to it, makes your life so much richer. Even those with what may seem like ideal simplistic and serene lives still embrace technology such as the internet as a means to fufill different parts of their lives. Its about picking what suits you and your family at any given time, and what is achieveable with out adding more stress than it would be worth to you.

(OK I think I will stop there - its a blog post in itself instead of a comment LOL)

Nic xxx

PS Today I was very thankful that we decided to use the plastic pellets in the dolls we made - Jazz had hers at footy on the weekend and it went 'swimming' in a mud puddle - she really needed a good bath!

Anonymous said...

Nell. I always enjoy reading your blog because I always leave thinking "how on earth did Nell manage to fit all of that into one day??!!" Three kidlets and still she crafts? LOL
Well done Hannah - your school must be using the magic 100 words? Mitch and Cam did too. They had a lunch order when they moved up a level. :)

Love ya! lisa