Sunday Jam

Yesterday was a busy day at the Rock House.  Because the boys and I were super berry pickers, I now had about 13 pounds of strawberries to deal with before they went bad.  Luckily, last summer I got brave and tried canning strawberry jam for the first time.  My grandma always used to have some kind of homemade jam, and I missed it.  Store bought just isn't the same, so I gave it a shot, and it ended up being so easy.  And it didn't really take that long.  Well.  Let's remember that last year, I only canned about 4 pints at a time.  Turns out that 13 pounds of berries will make quite a bit more jam than 4 pints.  Let's try three hours of kitchen duty.  Not something I usually find enjoyable.

Luckily, brown baby loves to sleep in her Beco Butterfly:

And the boys were busy being gardeners in the front yard:

Pacey was on landscaping brick removal duty-- $ .25 per ugly, red brick-- and he knows how to capitalize.  He made close to $30.  And is quite proud because he figured out that over the weekend, he lifted half of a ton.  Something I'm sure will be a hot topic at the lunch table today.

Gage joined in on the brick removing fun, too, but gave up (not surprised, are we?) after only $7 and went to a much more creative endeavor.

I had fun mashing berries in the kitchen.  I turned Pandora radio to the Matchbox 20 station and pounded away.  Pounded and smashed, pounded and smashed...  I'm thinking there may have been some pent up frustration going on here.  It was way too much fun.

 
All of that smashing resulted in 15 cups of berries (thank goodness I got my grandma's huge canning pot) that needed 21 cups of sugar added to it.  Yes, 21 cups of sugar.  Who knew jam required that much sugar?  Which is exactly why it's so good, but I'm not sure it can be considered a fruit after all that.

Now those who know me know that I am not so much a cook of any kind.  I burn things.  I mix up steps.  The fact that the recipe is written for 5 cups of berries and 7 cups of sugar, and I had to triple it left me stressed.  I was convinced that somewhere my tripling calculations would be off and the jam would be ruined.  Husband always tells me not to do public math.  Kitchen math is equally as dangerous.

Boiling the canning jars makes me feel like something of a chemist.

So does simmering the lids...  The fact that I had three pots actively going on the stove is not lost on me.  I actually didn't burn or overflow anything.

The result: 15 pints of delicious strawberry jam!

It was a great Sunday, and I love that I connect with my past by doing things like canning jam.  I love sharing these kinds of traditions with my family and creating something that everyone at the Rock House loves.

How do you stay connected with your past?

One Pizza, One Pool, One Family

Alternatively titled-- Blending Families for Dummies (a book that we obviously need)

Last week I blogged about the challenges that a blended family faces, and one of the issues that we have come up against in the past is spending time together-- just the five of us-- doing something that we can all enjoy.  It may sound simple, but really it isn't.  Trust me.  Here's why:

1.  The age gap between the boy-os and the princess is just enough so that they have absolutely nothing in common.  Unavoidable.
2. I share joint custody of the boy-os with their father, so they are only here roughly half the time.  Unavoidable.
3. The princess is a teenager.  That equals friends, a boyfriend, a job, a team sport, and lots of time in her bedroom.  Understandable.
4. The princess periodically spends time at her mom's house.  Unavoidable.
5. Asian husband and I can sometimes be selfish with our time together-- being newly married and all.  Understandable, but can probably be adjusted.

That is not a recipe for easy family bonding.  It is actually the exact recipe for an authentic surface family feel.  Co-existing in the same house, but not really bonding.  We didn't have the luxury of years of baby and toddlerhood to spend together and work through the kinks of children.  We have been thrown into the mix late in the game, after each of us had spent several years of raising our kids on our own.  We are a bit rusty with the kind of work it takes to be a family.  And by that I mean a for-real family, not just a group of people living under one roof.  I used to scoff at the number of failed second marriages that involved two sets of children, but now that I've experienced the reality, I understand it and have a great respect for it.  Because it is a crap ton of work.  A. Crap. Ton. Of. Work. And if you don't pay attention, it can easily crumble right before your eyes.

Luckily, Asian husband and I instituted a plan of action to assist us in this family bonding endeavor.  I call it the "do whatever we can whenever we can" plan or DWWCWWC.  It can be pronounced dee-wick-wick, which makes it fun to say and by extension fun to execute.  This very intricate and detailed plan requires a lot of forethought and careful organizing to ensure everything goes well.  You should take notes.

1. Target a time when all of the family has intentions of being home and available.
2. Make plans.

You can see why it has taken us about two years to come up with it. I will pause while you recover from great awe.

This weekend we had ice cream at the local fro-yo place (which I guess would be frozen yogurt, not ice cream, but whatever), had lunch at the local pizzeria, and crashed a relative's community pool with an extra pool pass.  (I was convinced that the Russian lifeguards were on to the fact that we were impostors, but for the sake of the dee-wick-wick plan, I was willing to take the chance.)

They all smiled. At the same time. And no one had a finger up his nose (Gage) or in his mouth (Pacey). 

Natural Consequences

Just when I think that the past is really behind me, that I've moved on, grown, made strides, and learned something (any other cliches?), I realize that rather than growth and healing being a straight-lined journey, it is more cyclical, revisited periodically.  Coming on the heels of Father's Day, this current bout of understanding and reflection concerning the past has been fairly poignant.  I'm realizing that the process of blending a family is more complicated, more difficult, and frankly more work than I had been prepared for.  Given a variety of personalities, cultures, and family backgrounds, I liken it to throwing three different jigsaw puzzles on the ground and trying to come up with one coherent picture.  Not impossible, but also not easy.  We continue to work at it, diligently, but now with the knowledge that this work is true work, and it needs to be tackled each day with an awareness of the importance it holds.


It just so happened that for the past week, I have been converting old home videos to a digital format, which means that I have spent quite a bit of time immersed in my and the boys' pasts.  From the birth of Pacey to the time Gage was 3, their dad and I separated three times and finally divorced.  I went through several hairstyles (some good, some very, very bad).  I lived in four different homes.  Much of this was invisible to the camera's eye, but as I watched, I relived the backchannel story.  The anger and grief, the hopelessness and despair.  But I also saw our love for the boys despite the situation.  We laughed at them and with them, and it rejuvenated my soul to experience our relationships as a third party.  It made me glad that one day, when the boys are older and see the videos, they will see many happy moments that included all four of us.

In the midst of my personal reflection (and despite the fact that the boys didn't know I was watching the videos), Pacey intuitively told me that he wished that all four of us could still live together, so that way he could see me and his dad all the time.  In that moment, I realized that I owe so much to my little boy-os.  When making the choice to leave (time after time), I struggled with the impact it would have on them, and I finally found peace with the notion that if I had stayed, I would have continued to be unhappy and that would have impacted them in a much more detrimental way.  What struck me was that though I have moved on, and we have a new life with a new family, we will always be impacted by that choice.  The boys have ultimately lost something and will experience that loss daily-- when they wish to be with both parents all the time, despite the fact that they were so little that they don't remember us all living together.  I looked down at his head in my lap and saw a strength in him that I hadn't noticed before, and I realized the irony of divorce.  That in some way, in order for me (and by extension them) to be happy, I had to make a choice that would always make them sad.  And me too, a little, if I am being completely honest with myself.

I have no regrets for the choices I made that brought us here.  I know that I am much happier, much more fulfilled and much more myself in this marriage to an incredible man.  And that all translates to me being a better mom, which brings me back to the blending family issue.  Through all of this reflection and revisiting of the past, I have realized that I need to create a new definition of family for myself.  I have naively believed that simply by the merit of us all living under the same roof, we would immediately feel and function like a single, biological family.  I have wished that all of the kids would just be ours, and that it would feel like what I had only glimpses of in my previous life.  But through that wishing, I have ignored the reality of what blending a family and step-parenting means-- we are not a biological unit, and it is completely natural to feel that loss, but it is also equally important to know that the boys and I and the husband and the princess are a part of so much more as long as we are open to finding it.  We are a blended family, and though the journey that comes with creating and maintaining this kind of family is more intentional, less haphazard, and littered with remnants of our pasts that require careful navigation, I know we will be up for the trip.

S is for Strength

Christmas was a fun time at the Rock House-- filled with family and fun and all of the traditional Christmastime activities.  I have always made cookies with the boys at Christmas-- the first time with a 2 year old and a newborn.  Sprinkles and frosting decorated more of the table and floor than the cookies (notice Pacey is squeezing the frosting directly onto the table), and I know they don't remember it, but to me, it was an important time because I had never made my grandma's press cookies on my own before.  It had always been a Christmastime ritual to go over to Grandma's house and decorate the trees, wreaths, poinsettias, and dog cookies with candied cherries and sprinkles.  Baking with Grandma was one of my favorite pastimes, and since that first foray into independent cookie baking, which went beyond press cookies even, I have baked her cookies with the boys each year.

It always feels like more than just baking-- when I dig through my recipe box, find a recipe, some in my grandma's handwriting, pull down her KitchenAid mixer and set to work.  Reconnecting with the past, imagining simpler times, and creating something with the boys casts a warm glow around the process.  This year was especially meaningful because the boys and I made her S cookies, which were always my favorite.  The two-day recipe always had intimidated me, so I never tried it, but as the boys and I shaped cookies into S's, I felt perfectly at ease and content.  I held Gage's hand as he turned the handle of the grinder to chop the almonds the same way my grandma did with mine.  As we dipped the cookies into almonds and sugar, tears filled my eyes because I could feel a connection with my past that will allow my grandma to live forever in my kitchen, and it is moments like this that I can ask for nothing more but to continue baking cookies and building memories with my boys.

My grandma always said that I was determined and could do anything I set my mind to.  I'm not sure that I believed her when I was young, but the boys have changed my mindset as I strive to give them traditions, memories, and a warm family environment.  They will always remember these moments with me in kitchen, and I know that with every S, wreath, and tree she is smiling down on me and the Rock House family, pleased with the cookies, the continuing of Christmas traditions, and our happy life together.