On the Joys & Frustrations of Co-Habitation
Our life has been very full recently.
Our friend Gabriella and her seven year old son Matthias came to stay with us when they found themselves in the middle of a bad move without anywhere else to go. They're both staying in our office, so quarters are cramped to say the least. Brie seems to be able to make the best of it. Every week she re-organizes their space, making it cleaner & more efficient.
Then last week, Alex arrived in town for a brief stay on his journey back to Oregon. He's been living in Nashville with his sister for the past year, helping to take care of her four kids after her marriage fell apart. His parents have since moved in to fill that role, so now he's on his way back to Oregon, trying to earn a little extra money in a drug study here.
Three extra people. We almost doubled the size of our household!
Needless to say, it's made things a bit crazy and challenging, many times in ways I didn't anticipate.
The frustrations:
~ Meal planning. I never know how many people I need to cook for with so many people coming and going, each with their own agendas and schedules. I could be cooking just for my own kids, or I could be cooking for 4 adults and 3 growing boys. Often I start cooking without knowing how many people I'm actually going to serve. We're also going through food and dirty dishes more quickly than I could ever have imagined. Double the people doesn't equal double the food. That's what I'd anticipate, but their tastes are different than mine. So double the people has tripled the eggs and quadrupled the milk we use.
~ Indoor cats. We sent our own cat outside more than a year ago. That meant that I stopped having to constantly clean up cat hair or deal with allergies. Brie's cats seem happy enough, but they don't like being here. And they tell us by peeing on EVERYTHING. Pillows, blankets, freshly washed laundry.
~ Wrangling three boys who didn't grow up together. Matthias is intelligent and often sweet-tempered, but he doesn't have siblings. So, he's never really had to play with kids who are younger than him, and he loses his patience quickly. At first, he only played with Isaac and called Samuel a constant and steady stream of names. Now, they've finally all reached a sort of equilibrium, but it still takes work to maintain.
The joys:
~ Having a steady stream of company. It's nice to share your life with more people, particularly in those quiet moments in between things that make up the bulk of our existence.
~ Having an extra set of ears, eyes, and hands. The kids are easier to handle when there are so many adults looking out for them, helping them play well together, helping to teach them how to be respectful and obedient.
~ Sharing household responsibilities. In the past few weeks, I've come home to more clean kitchens and mopped floors than I can count. Brie's a professional eco-friendly house cleaner who runs a business managing a handful of employees. She can clean my kitchen in half the time it takes me, and it looks a thousand times cleaner when she's done. Now instead of the floors being mopped once a day by Steve or I, they're sometimes mopped three times a day after each meal.
All in all, this is a good time, but it has meant that my free time to just myself (which is usually the time that I would turn reflective and write in this journal) has been almost non-existent. I'm happy to squeeze in fifteen minutes a day to read the Bible & a saint's life. Now if I can only figure out how to give myself more time to think about and process it all....
Our friend Gabriella and her seven year old son Matthias came to stay with us when they found themselves in the middle of a bad move without anywhere else to go. They're both staying in our office, so quarters are cramped to say the least. Brie seems to be able to make the best of it. Every week she re-organizes their space, making it cleaner & more efficient.
Then last week, Alex arrived in town for a brief stay on his journey back to Oregon. He's been living in Nashville with his sister for the past year, helping to take care of her four kids after her marriage fell apart. His parents have since moved in to fill that role, so now he's on his way back to Oregon, trying to earn a little extra money in a drug study here.
Three extra people. We almost doubled the size of our household!
Needless to say, it's made things a bit crazy and challenging, many times in ways I didn't anticipate.
The frustrations:
~ Meal planning. I never know how many people I need to cook for with so many people coming and going, each with their own agendas and schedules. I could be cooking just for my own kids, or I could be cooking for 4 adults and 3 growing boys. Often I start cooking without knowing how many people I'm actually going to serve. We're also going through food and dirty dishes more quickly than I could ever have imagined. Double the people doesn't equal double the food. That's what I'd anticipate, but their tastes are different than mine. So double the people has tripled the eggs and quadrupled the milk we use.
~ Indoor cats. We sent our own cat outside more than a year ago. That meant that I stopped having to constantly clean up cat hair or deal with allergies. Brie's cats seem happy enough, but they don't like being here. And they tell us by peeing on EVERYTHING. Pillows, blankets, freshly washed laundry.
~ Wrangling three boys who didn't grow up together. Matthias is intelligent and often sweet-tempered, but he doesn't have siblings. So, he's never really had to play with kids who are younger than him, and he loses his patience quickly. At first, he only played with Isaac and called Samuel a constant and steady stream of names. Now, they've finally all reached a sort of equilibrium, but it still takes work to maintain.
The joys:
~ Having a steady stream of company. It's nice to share your life with more people, particularly in those quiet moments in between things that make up the bulk of our existence.
~ Having an extra set of ears, eyes, and hands. The kids are easier to handle when there are so many adults looking out for them, helping them play well together, helping to teach them how to be respectful and obedient.
~ Sharing household responsibilities. In the past few weeks, I've come home to more clean kitchens and mopped floors than I can count. Brie's a professional eco-friendly house cleaner who runs a business managing a handful of employees. She can clean my kitchen in half the time it takes me, and it looks a thousand times cleaner when she's done. Now instead of the floors being mopped once a day by Steve or I, they're sometimes mopped three times a day after each meal.
All in all, this is a good time, but it has meant that my free time to just myself (which is usually the time that I would turn reflective and write in this journal) has been almost non-existent. I'm happy to squeeze in fifteen minutes a day to read the Bible & a saint's life. Now if I can only figure out how to give myself more time to think about and process it all....