Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Tacos and...I know what I did last summer

Writing about food, especially food I've prepared dozens of times, is coming more easily to me than writing about my life at the moment. Last night I made tacos, so it was Taco Tuesday, woot woot! Over the summer I've tended to alternate between tacos and fajitas every Tuesday. There isn't really much of anything to write about making tacos, except that this time I used some ground pork I had on hand instead of ground beef. If you've got ground turkey on hand (because let's face it, it is cheaper!) that works well because this isn't a meal that requires the meat to be particularly flavorful on its own--that's what the seasoning packet is for! Usually when I make either meal, I warm up some salsa con queso in a ramekin for Dan, and some plain cheese sauce the same way for myself. I write the date on each jar the day I open it, but a full jar normally lasts about 3-4 meals, and a month is about as long as I'm willing to let that stuff sit in the fridge before I throw it out. Dan likes black olives on his tacos, and I like sour cream. We both tend to use shredded cheese, and tortilla chips on the side to dip in our leftover cheese sauces. When I am feeling ambitious I'll add some diced tomato and/or shredded lettuce, but mostly I leave the veggies for fajita night.

This summer has been stressful, to say the least. I left my full time babysitting job by choice. Last spring, the mother of the child I did daycare for went into some sort of inpatient treatment, for what, I have no idea. But for a month, the beautiful, sweet little girl I cared for was without her breastfeeding, cosleeping mother, and living with her (albeit very kind and good with her) grandmother instead. Being in a crib at night, in turn, meant that she flat-out refused to nap in a crib for me during the day. I have no idea whether they practiced any sort of CIO sleep training, but I suspect they must have at least tried it based on her absolute terror of my crib. I went from having at least an hour of time each morning to myself when Sam was at school and she slept, to having to hold her for her entire nap.

At the same time, Sam was adjusting to school well, but getting extremely bored at home. On my days off, I'd be able to set up sensory bins and other stimulating toys that would not have been safe to use with an 18 month old running around. Days that she was here, he was increasingly destructive, coloring on walls, breaking things, just getting up to mischief in general. Field trips tended to take a lot out of me, so I wasn't doing them more than once or twice a week. As time passed, I became more and more aware that Sam would need my full attention, especially for the month of August when he'd be out of school the entire month. Once her mother was back, I gave my two weeks' notice, feeling as though I'd done the honorable thing to keep her in her normal daycare routine while her nights were uprooted. By coincidence, the week that the mother returned, I threw out my back chasing the little girl to try to fasten her diaper and had to call my mother to help take care of the kids that day. It was just too much, and I was done.

Without the extra little one, I was able to put together "theme" weeks for Sam's after-school and summer break educational stimulation. Week 1 was farm week, which I began to write about here and then didn't. I made a sensory bin with tractors and crushed oreos for dirt, with a little chocolate pudding for mud and some plastic pigs in one corner. We borrowed some little people farm sets from my parents, and took field trips to the library, farmers' market, and the farm at the MN Zoo. We made some art projects. I set up a YouTube playlist of videos and music about farms. For the first week, I was a little over-ambitious and burned out a bit.

Week two was all about transportation and vehicles. We did a little less, but still took a couple field trips and went to the library and rode the monorail at the zoo, which Sam was a little apprehensive about at first, but then really enjoyed. I wrote most of a post about a field trip to a park which housed an antique WWII airplane, but never finished it.

We did weeks loosely themed on fish/ocean animals complete with a trip to MN SeaLife Aquarium and music complete with a trip to a local park where Sam played a big outdoor xylophone. I wasn't quite cut out for the level of planning that would be needed to keep up the level of curriculum from that first week, especially as I was trying to get my house in order and my home economics going. (I did, however, set up YouTube playlists for each week, and you can watch them here! We still do!) The rest of our time was spent with trips to the park and the grocery store, the farmers' market, the zoo, the mall, and wherever we felt like going each day. By the last couple weeks of summer I was so ready for Sam to be back in school so that I'd have a little more time for me, for meal planning, for couponing, for cleaning, for getting his activities organized. And by no coincidence, time to write again. I lament not continuing to document my year of giving, but at this point, I feel like I've given the last 4 or 5 months to Sam and the little girl. Making oneself available when family and friends need you was part of the text from Isaiah, so I say it counts. Another post I started to write and didn't finish was one questioning the idea of writing about the whole project at all. Maybe I'll clean it up and post it one of these days.

Which brings us to today. Yesterday was Sam's fifth day of school, and his teachers have autism training today and tomorrow, so no school again until Friday. In the heat these last few weeks, we've taken to the play area at Burnsville Center instead of going to the park each day. Tonight I'll make Spaghetti Puttanesca and tell you all about it tomorrow.

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