My house is a mess right now

I'm trying to fit too much one on one kid time into a week and being totally child centred has led to that state of entrophy that consumes so many homes with kids.

My house it not healthy right now.

Mess is NOT creative. It really isn't - well organized displayed stuff can be creative, but if it doesn't have a place it is clutter, and if it has a place but hasn't been returned to it it is a MESS. Messes are disharmonizing. It stresses us out and frankly for me and mine, it symbolizes brain chaos too. It symbolizes fear, and anxiety, and losing our centre and then it feeds those things.

A healthy home life involves the full circle of any activity.

You do something like make a meal, get the kids to wash their hands, set the table, give thanks for the food, eat together, clear the table, wash the table, do the dishes, and the next time you come to make a meal it is a calm centred activity again. If you break the circle by not clearing the table or not washing the table or not getting to the dishes when you come to start the circle again the primary task of making the meal becomes a harried production because you don't have space, clean tools, etc. You start dropping things to fit in the essentials and usually that means you drop the kids helping because it takes too long or requires some supervision and you're too busy for that in that moment. Then you feel resentful that the kids don't help out automatically. If you are so harried that you can't set the circle right in that cycle then it just compounds and you have total chaos on your hands.

We HAVE to feed our kids every day so the mealtime circle usually keeps rolling along however wobbily.

What about things like artmaking and handcrafting though?

The painting circle requires that clean table, then you put down the painting boards, mix the paint, set a tray to soak your paper, put the paper and paint in front of each child then hand out the paintbrushes last. At last you paint. You remove the boards so the paintings can dry. You wash the brushes, little fingers and the table. You put away the paints. After the paintings dry you wipe down and put away the boards. All ready for next time. If you come back to paint and you've missed steps in walking the circle how likely are you to do the extra work to keep that circle spinning? Its the same with knitting, embroidery, papermaking, woodworking, what have you.

So today we're spending the afternoon cleaning up the mess, together. Tomorrow we will paint.

I used to be a juice hard-ass

I limited its consumption. I insisted that if they had it, it be organic. I squeezed my own. Then my kids started attending school and the juice box entered our lives. I HATE juice boxes - the packaging, the spills, the juice. My kids on the other hand, love the juice box. Papa Pan is a big fan of the juice box too, and keeps them in the car for instant child pacification purposes.

I found a way out of this sticky situation.

First, I noticed that we pay a 5 cent deposit on every single juice box here in Nova Scotia! Papa Pan is not a fan of juice boxes anymore.

Next, we found an organic juice seller at the Wolfville Farmer's Market who sells the best blended apple juice and everyone likes it, even watered down A LOT.

Then we got our new refrigerator. We needed a two door model because of the tight squeeze between the fridge and stove. I asked for a filtered water dispenser (city water after 3 years of deep sweet well water - blech!) and an icemaker (the only good thing about a hospital birth is the never ending supply of ice cubes they provide you with). The kids have been won over by ice cubes too.

My next project (and how handy, they're in Wakefield, where we're spending Christmas) is to get each kid their own aluminum sippy canteen from http://www.lifewithoutplastic.com/. So I can forever ban the juice box from our house.