My Joy, My Joy

Today's issue of Deep In the Ground had a beautiful description of me cooking with Mr. Man tonight. I've begun preparing for my vegan birthday feast tomorrow. A dozen friends are coming to play with Mr. Man so I can spend the day cooking scrumptious vegan food. Mr. Man helped with the peanut butter cup cheesecake and the ambrosia salad.

I can do many things as a parent - some helpful and some unhelpful. If I get one thing right, I hope it's to teach him the love of food and cooking. As I rest my chin on my hand thinking about this post, I take in the scent of garlic and cilantro. The vegan pate cooling downstairs (containing kelp powder and nutritional yeast - a first for me) fills the house with a rich aroma. If I get this right, Mr. Man will not know that the stuff served in McD is food.

I've been working with him in the kitchen since he was old enough to stand on a chair and help in any simple way. Now he's next to me (still standing on a chair) and cutting pineapple with his own kid-sized julienne cutter. He measures and dumps ingredients and pushes the buttons on the Cuisinart. Sometimes it's tough to convince him that making dinner with me would be more fun than playing with his Brio trains, but that's okay - he's just three. I'm proud that he knows where food comes from and how to make good food. It especially tickles me when he asks someone more mainstream than us if the food they are eating is organic. Ha!

I find magic in short supply in my life; thank the Goddesses (Mr. Man always uses the plural) for kitchen witches!

Excuse me, I farted. Can I nurse?

Yep, that's what the little twerp said.

Love the attachment parenting thing, but sure am waiting for the nursing to end.

It was Valentine's Day, dammit

When I started pondering this post it was the 14th, day of red hearts, roses and putrid hallmark cards. For us, however, it's coffee and sharing a cookie in the cafe, playing a game and talking like the adults we rarely get to be amidst the work and parenting. Life is good when you have a wife like I do. Life is good when it's really, REALLY messy, hard and chaotic. I have to remember that when the chaos seems impossible. Pretty, contained lives are boring. So we work really hard and struggle in the working and parent really well and struggle at that too. At the end of the day we have little energy, lots of love and another beautiful, messy day ahead of us.