As a mother of seven, ranging in age from 1-15, I end up with quite an interesting range of conversations throughout a typical day. I was working in the kitchen a few minutes ago, and burst out laughing as I thought about the last three conversations I had with my children, over the past 15-20 minutes. First, I was sitting at the table, reading a lesson in a sourdough course I’m working through with Esther. I am quite interested in using sourdough, so I decided it would be a good Home Ec project for her. We are having fun reading it together, a lesson every few weeks, and trying out the recipes. While we were doing that, the 4-year-old came in, holding something in his hand, saying, “It can stretch out!” Turned out he had an earthworm, and was intrigued by how it stretched out longer. He laid it on the table, and we watched it hitch itself along, and discussed it for a few minutes, and then I was able to persuade him to take it back outside to the dirt where it wanted to be. Esther and I went on to discuss the sourdough artisan bread we were reading about, and then she went to work on a blog post and I went to work on straining broth off of beef bones.
The next thing I knew, she was telling me, “I need to hack into our printer!”
“What!??!” I said! Well, she had written a post for her blog several days ago, and set it to publish tomorrow. Today, she discovered that it had disappeared! The only way she can get it back is if she hacks into the printer, because she printed a copy for her dad and I to proofread. That’s what really struck me funny–earthworms to hacking a printer, in a few minutes! Whether she can accomplish it or not, is another story–we’ll see.
And now, the two littlest boys just came through again, saying hi, and the 4-year-old says, “The sky is straight lines, like stripes! Isn’t that neat?” The only reason I haven’t had conversations, simultaneously, about cows and sheep and ride-on mowers and motorbikes and chain saws and Laura Ingalls Wilder and you name it is that the other boys are away with Daddy right now! Sometimes I feel like my head is about to explode from having to carry on (intelligently) three or four wildly different conversations at once–but at the same time I really wouldn’t change anything. This time of life is anything but boring!
