Mamas Tell All: The Perfect Mama [Blog linkup]

I was still in high school when I started learning about "The Perfect Mama," via Bible studies on Proverbs 31. During pregnancy and as a new mom, lots of people had advice for me. I've written before about how this advice - even so-called expert advice - doesn't always agree. It's impossible to be absolutely perfect because perfect according to Expert A is harmful according to Expert B. Even if they did agree, we all know that no one will ever achieve perfection. However, an idea of what perfection is will give us a goal to work towards.

At my baby shower for Nate, I was given a small scrapbook. Before they gave it to me, they passed around a few of the pages for the attendees to write parenting advice for me. There were a lot of sweet blessings and "cherish every moment" (which is impossible - some moments aren't cherish-able!). But there was also much more than that. What I see in this advice, and I what I've learned through experience, is that perfection as a mom is not so much in what we do, but in our faith in God, in our sanctification in Christ, in our eternal perspective. The things we do are important, but the good things will flow out from God at work within us when we are disciplined followers of Jesus.

Here is my favorite advice, some which helps me identify what I want to be like, and some which was just very helpful during the infant stage.

Patience is the one thing I learned right off the bat. Patience with labor, crying, husbands, countless diapers.

Never be afraid to hold and rock your baby as much as you want. Many times when a baby cries, he just needs warmth and comfort that only you can provide. You won't spoil him!

Always look to God for guidance. He has wonderful plans for you.

The most important thing I can think of is to love your children. Spoil them with love, and I know you will bring them up to love the Lord Jesus. 

Truly the greatest gift God has given me is the privilege to be a wife and a mother. I have learned so much about the character of God through the lives of my children. One of the things I have learned as a mother is that God loves my children even more than I do...He is trustworthy! He will give us wisdom concerning our children, as well.

Remember that the Scripture says, "Raise up your child in the way he should grow and when he's old he will not go away from it." Because I'm the oldest one at your shower, please let me encourage you to begin early to teach your child the Word and prayer. The Word will get him through life, prayer will help him have a personal relationship with Jesus. These will take him through his entire life no matter what comes.

boy mom tricks: high energy and noise

This may come as a shock: I am not a high-energy person, and I don't like noise. My boys...well, they can't be still, and the only time they are quiet is when they're sleeping. Not only are they loud and rowdy, they also fight. Over anything and everything. Siblings, you know?

We're a single-car family, and I don't currently have a valid driver's license in this country anyway. There is public transportation in this town, but we're a bit far from town center to easily get a tuk tuk to get out of the house. So what do I do with these boys when we're stuck at home during school breaks and Rodgers is at work? Yes, they drive me crazy, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

1) Send them outside. When they start getting loud and crazy, my first line of defense is, "Go outside." If it's hot, I tell them to stay in the shade. If it's raining, I send them onto the veranda. Actually, one day last week, they played in the rain. When they're loud and wild, they usually need to move - a lot - and this is the best way.

2) Sunday School. We haven't yet found a church here with a good Sunday School program, so we started using some lessons from Ministry-to-Children, especially on weeks that we couldn't make it to church at all. Then I realized that the singing and dancing (with help from YouTube) burned a lot of their energy, and they were always peaceful for the lesson. We're now working through the lesson series on The Lord's Prayer, not on Sundays, but we still call it "Sunday School."

3) Build a fort. When I build them a fort, suddenly they want to sit still and look at books. I do this if they've played outside, they've been active, but are for whatever reason still too rambunctious for being in the house, and especially if they are fighting a lot. We built this epic fort while Nate was on school break this time. Sheets over the backs of several chairs, connected to the "big couch," which they can crawl under, connected to the washing machine box they have been playing in.

4) (If possible) Get out of the house. These guys seem to get a bit of cabin fever after a few days, which manifests in insanity. By now, we know a couple of restaurants with playgrounds, there's always the beach, and sometimes just going to the supermarket helps them reset. But like I said, getting out is a bit difficult right now. When they're older, we'll be able to walk until we find transport, but they're still too small for that right now. I mean, if they get tired, I can't carry a 4-year old and (almost) 3-year old, together, at the same time.

5) Get out a "special" toy/game/activity. For Christmas last year, the boys got a train set. We have always kept the tracks put away because they turn into weapons when the train play is over. It's special when we get it out, and they play well for a solid chunk of time. There is also bubble-blowing, painting, cutting paper (a new obsession), and sidewalk chalk. We did all of these this school break. During Christmas school break, we'll make tree ornaments and snowflakes and do Christmasy things, which are all very necessary since it's a 9 week break!

6) Give them chores. They are still at the age where chores make them feel important and grown up (rather than enslaved). One day during break, I was trying to clean the bathrooms. Rodgers had just left for work, and the boys could not, would not get along. I gave them each a sponge and something to clean. They were occupied until I was done cleaning bathrooms, and were ready to get along with each other. They also both adore washing dishes, though this requires much more supervision on my part.

toys.

I've been reading about moms who put away all of their kids' toys, out of reach, inaccessible, and let their kids choose 1 thing or 1 crate of toys to play with at a time. While I think it's a great idea, it was never something I wanted to do. I thought I would miss letting my boys exercise creativity in combining toys from different categories: puzzles become roads, Legos become action figure accessories (usually "fighting things" aka weapons), trains and cars and Lego towers come together in a huge city. They also don't have a lot of toys (from an American perspective - from a Kenyan perspective, it's Toy's 'R' Us in here).

Then Ben hit this phase that I describe as Destructive 2 Year Old. When Nate was in this phase, we lived in a 2-story house and had fewer toys. He had a small basket of living room toys for downstairs and only slightly more upstairs toys. He sure did dump out his living room toy basket every chance he got, but it was only 1 basket of toys. Very manageable, and I didn't mind having him clean up only at the end of each day. Ben, however, has access to their full toy collection. Most things are sorted by type and put away in small baskets, which sort of stack in the bottom of their closet/built-in wardrobe dealy. Here's how our days have been going:

I go into my bedroom to check on the washing machine. I come back into the living room to find Ben has dumped 2 baskets of toys out on the floor. And he's playing with no toys but a piece of cardboard that was destined for the trash. He is required to clean up. It's a fight. We talk about what he wants to do. He asks for crayons and a coloring book. I deliver. I take the laundry outside to hang it up to dry. I come back into the living room. Ben has dumped out 2 baskets of toys in the living room and 1 in the hall. The crayons are nowhere to be found. He's playing with nothing at all, but pretending to fall off the couch. He is required to clean up. It's a fight. We take the baskets back to the bedroom, only to find that their outside toys have been dumped and spread all over the bedroom. He is required to clean up. It's a fight. It's now 10 am.

I can't cope with tripping over, stepping on, and wading through toys all day long. And I have no energy for the same clean up fight every 45 minutes. What we need is a manageable amount of toys that can be cleaned up only once a day.

Where the toys used to be: now just a basket for stuffed animals (which are currently all over the house) and a shoe box of costumes. 

I took the plunge a week ago and put all of their toys up on the top shelf in their room. They can keep all of their stuffed animals because these neither trip me nor hurt when I step on them. With everything else, they have to choose 1 container at a time to play with. I allow them to change what they're playing with during the day, and it's not such a fight to clean up because it's a very small mess. Plus, cleaning up means they can play with something else.

Where the toys are now.

Nate can reach the toy shelf with a step stool. However, he knows the rules and is very responsible. He can't quite put the toys away, but he can get new things down. He put the costume box "away" in the first picture, so he could get out the action figure box. I fully intend to give them access to all of their toys at the same time again. But first, we have to get through Destructive 2 Year Old (which very well may cross over into Destructive 3 Year Old).

coping with frequent power outages

I feel I've blogged at length about how we combat the unreliable water supply — and about how sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Especially in Kilifi, water is a huge challenge.

Our tiny freezer, stocked with ice pops, spare coffee,
a small container of bone broth, and a bag of chicken bones

But living with unpredictable electricity is a challenge, too. We have a small refrigerator, by American standards. With the exception of the micro-fridge in my college dorm room, it is the smallest refrigerator I've ever had. And it's rarely full.

It took us a few months to adjust our grocery habits to unreliable refrigeration. We lost fridge-fuls of food due to power being out for too long, and have saved some by moving everything to the freezer and driving all over town to find a bag of ice to keep it all cold. Now, we're usually ok if the power is out for a whole day, but it's because of our changed shopping habits. We have not yet acquired solar backup for the fridge. It will be a momentous day when that happens! I'd be able to keep the fridge stocked like I used to!

Obviously, we can't use the microwave when the power is out, but our stove is gas and lights with a match, so I can cook without power, as long as I can see! We keep flashlights in every room of the house, in case it is already dark when the power goes out. We don't have to stumble through the whole house searching in the dark. And we also had a solar powered lantern, which could light up a room.

But it broke.

When we went to replace it, we tried to find a solar lantern with a USB plug in it so that I could also charge my phone from it. Rodgers usually has the car during the day, so he can always charge his phone there, but my only option is to hope that the laptop battery is fully charged and drain it into my phone.

We looked at various options and settled on something way more awesome than we were shopping for. We haven't mounted the solar panel yet, it just sits on the edge of the veranda for now, with the cord going through a window (always open anyway).

The battery is slightly smaller than a riding lawn mower battery. It has a USB plug, and I was able to charge my phone with it the last time we had no power during the day. We haven't lost power at night since we bought it, so we haven't tested the lights yet. (We could just turn off the lights one evening and test them, but we haven't done that either.) There are 4 lights with long cords. We can keep the battery in the middle of the house and mount lights in 4 different rooms! It also came with all manner of plug converters. How does your cell phone plug in? I bet I have a converter for that. I can also plug in a car charger. I can plug almost anything into this battery, except for actual electric plugs.

I think we'd need a bigger battery for the fridge anyway. Next on the solar power list: bigger battery and bigger solar panel so that I can plug in the fridge. After that maybe a solar water heater...

oblivious to culture

Here's an interesting (and possibly infuriating) aspect about culture. Some communication and customs are very obviously culture-specific, but some exist at such a subconscious level that we can't really identify what they are in our own cultures.

In Kenya, there are separate greetings for people who are above you on the social hierarchy, people who are your equals, and people who are below you. In some cases, it's obvious who is who: a child is below me, an elderly person is above me. But in some cases it's not that clear to an outsider.

Me, trying to learn some conscious culture - how to make pilau

We went to have lunch at our friend's house. We didn't know who would be there apart from us, the friend, and her daughter, but there are always other family members around. Also, this friend is of a socio-economic status that it is safe to assume she has house help. (Here, you don't have to be outrageously wealthy to have a housekeeper who works every day or even lives with you.)

When we arrived, there were several people around the house - a few young men (probably her younger brothers or nephews) and a woman working in the kitchen. The woman was neither young nor old. To me, she could have been anyone - sister, cousin, aunt, housekeeper? To Rodgers, it was obvious who she was.

Everyone greeted us, shaking hands and saying whatever greeting was appropriate. Kenyans are compulsive about their greetings. An aside: if you don't greet someone, it's extremely rude, yet when you greet someone, it's not because you intend to have a conversation with them or even care what they say (the response is the same regardless of their circumstances), it's because it's required by custom to say a certain greeting and receive a certain reply. I don't really "get" the obsession with greetings, especially the super long ones they exchange in their native language. But I digress...

The woman came out of the kitchen to greet us, and she wouldn't let go of my hand after I greeted her, as if she was expecting more. Eventually she said the respectful greeting to me, which I didn't find appropriate at all, so I asked if she was saying that to me.

She said (in English), "No, you say it to me!"

I was totally confused. Who was this woman demanding I greet her with the respectful greeting and why?! I thought it would be rude to ask, "Why? Who are you?" But I was so embarrassed that I was frozen like a deer in headlights - I couldn't say anything.

Rodgers knew, intuitively, that this was our friend's mother. He had never met her before. She was not introduced. (While Kenyans love introducing themselves to large groups as they are giving a speech, when meeting you they expect you to know who they are and don't introduce themselves or other people.) And yet, he knew who she was. He couldn't explain to me how he knew this.

I told him that he's going to have to start cluing me in because I don't have this subconscious knowledge of his culture, and though he has it, he is oblivious to it. I have noticed other subconscious knowledge, communication, and practices in this and other cultures, so I assume there must be something like this in my culture, but whatever it is, I must also be oblivious.