I was folding laundry when I heard Lucy make this announcement.
“I’m multi-tasking!”
I looked over and sure enough her body was turned towards this little blue bowl where she was mixing an egg with a fork and then she would turn towards the stove, where she was tending to scrambling the egg she had going. Then back to the bowl. Then back to the stove.
I smiled.
This may seem like nothing. But Lucy does *not* multi task. As her “high functioning single mom” (words of my friend), I need to be mindful of how my extreme task-orientation (“Hey babe can you grab the towels on your way upstairs – make your bed and we will be ready to go as soon as you have your shoes on, don’t forget your charger”) can stress her out.
For me, I kind of see the opportunities as I move through my house. I have progressed even to where most rooms have “transition baskets” – artfully placed bowls or baskets that are for those things that are on their way somewhere else… This, ahem, efficiency can give Lucy anxiety. So the fact she was doing two things at once, naturally, on her first night making scrambled eggs – was. a. big. deal.
It was one of those parenting moments you don’t try for – when they grow in big ways because you were both confident in their abilities and a little tired.
We went out to my parents tonight to drop off a birthday present for my dad and an anniversary parent for my parents to enjoy. The girls swam for a little bit and we decided to make a run to Lucy’s new school to time and clock mileage.
(Side note – I gave my 13 year old daughter the task of being my phone personal assistant and today, over the course of driving from Webster to Kirkwood, she had cleaned up all my apps, cancelled subscriptions I wasn’t using, organized them into folders and updated everything pertinent. I highly recommend this service. “Next, mom, we are going to do something about all these photos.“)
Anyway – by the time we got home from our test run, I was tired. We fed the animals and Lucy wanted to make the cat a treat. Out of cat-obvious options, we decided to try and give her scrambled eggs. Lucy asked me how to make them and I just talked her through, without moving from my seat.
Pet friendly, of course.
Grab a bowl.
Water instead of butter.
No milk. No seasoning.
Stir egg with a fork, counting to 45. (Even though I have never counted stirring eggs, I find the more specific I am, the more trusting the girls are of my instructions.)
She did it entirely on her own. She turned the stove on and off. She got the bowl down, she cleaned up her dishes. She purred over her kitty (who, we discovered, doesn’t like eggs) and she multi-tasked.
She felt grown up.
I sat there and finished my La Croix then folded laundry, simply because I wanted the sweatpants that were dry.
I like this phase of parenting. I like allowing them the space to do the things they want to do because I like validating their ideas about how to live their life. I like supporting anything they want to do that is to care for, feed or tend to a human, animal or plant. I like seeing them really proud of themselves and process their results.
I like that I am about to have (human) scrambled eggs at 9:30 at night because she knows how to do it now and so – well – we’ll probably be eating scrambled eggs a lot.
But not before school.
Because, according to our test run, we need to leave the house at 6:50am CST…
Till next time :) erin
Frozen Spaghetti 