Family Tradition Sundays

Nothing too esoteric about Pizza. I love it. We make home made pizza every Friday night and have a "Chew and View" with the kids, watching a family movie. Typically a sweet treat is involved (usually home made hot fudge sauce over ice cream...couldn't be simpler...bittersweet chocolate and butter). Bob and I usually split a bottle of wine. We actually adopted this practice after moving back from India, where we often spent Friday evenings with our friends at their weekly "Chew and View." We missed our friends and it made Fridays seem more normal. Now, it's our family tradition, too.

This lovely specimen has a whole wheat crust with tomato sauce, carmelized onion, sauteed kale, sauteed mushrooms with rosemary, feta cheese, mozarella, and nitrate-free pepperoni topped off with a gremolata of fresh parsley, garlic and lemon zest (an accidentally terrific pizza topping...I'd made it and forgot about it as a garnish for braised lamb, and thus threw it on our pizza...delish!)

Home made pizza is SO good and SO easy that I no longer even like most delivery pizza.

Our entire family looks forward to this time together and the week feels incomplete when we have to skip it. Which led to my thinking more about family traditions (and how much fun it would be to post about that on a regulare basis) and how important they are at solidifying family relationships. It might *just* be pizza but it isn't. It's nourishment, which is a whole 'nother realm.

What traditions keep your family connected?

The Fischers
Pizza freaks in Minneapolis

Blog Remodeling....

Try not to notice that I am an indecisive procrastinator, if you please ;-) I'm going to be doing a little updating and remodeling of this blog and since I'm not exactly sure *what* I want the end result to be (sort of like, um...my life, wouldn't you know it,) things may look a little unfinished or odd around here. I've been out trolling blog land, admiring the features found in other blogs, and arguing back and forth with my internal editor about whether or what to change or add here.

Should be fun. And in the end it probably won't look much different...but what the heck.

The Fischers
Why am I out of half-n-half when my coffee so clearly needs it??

Birthday Thoughts...

*this post is part of Steady Moms 30 Minute Blog Challenge.

Happy Birthday to me... 38 years old. I'm trying to decide if I feel old or not. It's been a hard year and this is the first birthday I have ever had without my Dad...which feels really odd and sad. I was born at home with my Dad as babycatcher. I wonder how he felt at that moment? 20 years old and ready to change the world. It never occurred to me to ask him that particular question and I wish I had. It wasn't something I was thinking about till last night when I had the sudden realization that I couldn't call my Dad up to tell him I was calling so he could wish his favorite daughter "Happy Birthday!" (There are a lot of daughters in this family and we all claimed to be the favorite. The answer, regardless of which one of us was asking, was always..."Yes, you are." He had an awesome, rather dry, sense of humor.) Dad could bake a mean chocolate birthday cake...and I miss him.

Last year, for my birthday, I was in Agra, India visiting the Taj Mahal. It was a topper as far as birthdays go, though I do recall a cockroach in the ice bucket, but by then, we were on a first name basis with *those* creatures. The day after my birthday found us on the roof of a local Agra restaurant called "Stuffmakers," drinking Kingfisher and watching the sun set perfectly over the Taj. January 26th is also Indian Republic Day, which I never knew till we lived there. With an Indian name and an Indian birthday, surely I might consider myself to have at least a little Indian soul?

So, 38, missing my Dad, missing another continent. I'm mom with two terrific kids and a husband who is my best friend (even though I'm amazingly, right, all of the time! Really! At least, I'm sure he'd say so!) A dog who loves me even when I act like a lunatic (oh. the kids and husband, do that too.) I am older (though I really don't feel old). Today, I was so happy to be woken up to a lit birthday cake (I'm told, my mom helped the kids bake it last Sunday) and a cappucino. We had cake and ice cream at 7:30 am. It's not the Taj Mahal, but it is my heart. I may not be wiser, but I do know that I love how different my life looks than I ever imagined. I really love it. That we have all these dreams and plans and that many of them *do* come true...we birth them into being, both figuratively and literally, and yet they are never exactly how we imagined them to be, and if we allow it, allow ourselves to surrender a bit to the mutability of the universe, to the "wrinkle in time" that keeps us always changeable, they turn out to be even more powerful. Not always perfectly wonderful or perfectly happy, but, a better reflection of who we are continually becoming.

So, we don't go for perfect around here. My birthday wish today, is for you (whoever you are) to try and live with Intention, letting your actions flow from that. Hug your partner or/and your kids. Forgive someone, somewhere. And don't stop dreaming your life just because your 38...or 108.

Happy Birthday to Me.
Chandra Fischer
38-year-old mom in Minnesota

Fer Cryin' Out Loud...

I opened the Minneapolis Star and Trib earlier this week and came across an article reprinted from the Washington Post entitled, "Kids Living on Screens" with the subtext, "For more than 7.5 hours a day, youth are watching TV, texting and playing video games."

7.5!!! HOURS! A! DAY!

Wow.


Additionally, the article goes on to say that, not only are kids spending 7.5 hours a day awash in media, but that with the ease of technological multitasking they are actually getting over 10 hours of media packed into that time frame. Leaving, mere hours, of unplugged time.

Here is a direct link to the Kaiser Foundation that undertook the 10-year study cited in the article: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/mh012010.cfm

Okay. I understand that there are numerous reasons why this is so. I am no stranger to the pull of visual and technological media (blogging, for example...or facebooking...or surfing the net). I enjoy occasional tv shows and our family has a weekly "chew 'n view" in which we eat homemade pizza in front of a family oriented dvd. Like many parents, I've used the computer or televison as an electronic babysiter. My kids clamor for webkinz time and tv time, (we limit the kid's media mostly to Fridays,) and I somehow gave birth to a child who, given half a chance would most likely jump right in to *more* than 7.5 hours ( I like to think that given free reign (which I've seriously considered), this would taper off, but maybe not). I have often toyed with the idea of getting rid of our T.V. but my husband has not and I would never ever think of getting rid of my computer. Technology, in and of itself is not the culprit and I am grateful for its blessings...but I suspect that a great deal of this has to do with the fact that parents are also spending a great deal of time "linked in." We are busy people and all this technology makes our jobs and daily lives easier. But it shouldn't be our parenting strategy. Or the fallback for our fatigue. Our kids tend to live by our examples and the example our culture seems to be setting is one fraught with unthought consequence.

Life is to be lived. Engaging in the world takes connections with other human beings. Developing the capability to *see* the world and its people and think and act critically about the teeming and complicated lives lived HERE (and by that I mean, on this planet, rather than on your street, though that may be so,) requires interaction. With actual PEOPLE. In my experience, "hands off" also can mean "hearts off." Or at least a buffered heart. One that is insulated from real experience and actual emotion. This buffering leads to an "us vs. them" mentality which doesn't serve much.

Children have always been the world's great free thinkers. Full of creativity and passion, they have the capability of showing us the way forward, when we've forgotten. My kids are forever reminding me how to be open to my daily experience and how to stay fearlessly present in each moment. Hours spent in screen time, often being "told" what to do or think and how to do or think it, tends to obscure that kind of creativity.

Now, I am not you. I don't live in your family. I won't tell you what media balance is right for you or your kids. I am not a scientific expert on children and media. My children are young yet and I have yet to face many issues that parents of older children and teenagers do. But I am a mom and I am troubled by the kids I see that are unable to play creatively. Or by the kids whose creative play contains only the story line of the latest and greatest children's television show or video game. I challenge you to take a closer look at media time. Consider turning off and tuning out for a period of time. Institute an old fashioned family game night. Go skating. skiing. sledding. Visit a museum. Volunteer at a food shelf. The kids may balk a bit, but we all need the kind of connection that doesn't involve a media screen...

The Fischers

muddling along like anyone.

in Minneapolis, MN

Siblings

I hope my kids are always this close. That they grow to appreciate how siblings can be great friends and supporters of one another. That a sibling as friend means you will never be lonely, but always have someone you can reliably lean on.

One of the foundations of my life are my brother and sisters (1 brother and 4 sisters). We don't always agree. We are all imperfect. We've had periods where we grew apart. Growing up we fought at times. We've been angry or irritated by one another on more than one occasion. But we are woven together with the strongest thread and that means more to me than all the cappucino at Starbucks (and that, given my obscene coffee dependence, is saying alot). Our closeness didn't happen by accident but was nurtured along (despite the screaming catfights of adolescent girlhood) by our parents. I belive that this closeness is all about connection and a collective heart and that it we learn it by example... It isn't about perfect parenting or being perfect people. Instead, it's about openness and the willingness to stay present with one another, even as the ship is sinking and all the lifeboats are full of holes.

Maybe my kids will know this, too.

The Fischers
wherever we are

To Blog or Not to Blog...That is the Adventure!

So, I've been thinking about the blog lately. Wondering if I should officially declare it dead. Here it sits, on it's own little piece of internet real estate. Looking a little neglected and shabby...

Honestly, though, I love this blog. I loved writing about our move to India and our life there and I love that all of that is captured for us. Not just a private journal, but a public celebration of our family.

When I first fired my "pen" up in the blogosphere (wow, there's a word that emphatically did NOT exist when I was...say, 10 (not to mention, 25!) ) I wasn't all that convinced that blogs were such a good thing. Kind of self-serving. Sort of obnoxious. But I figured that since we were moving to India...I might have some interesting things to say that I wouldn't here. And it was a great way to keep people who loved us up to date with our adjustment to life in a foreign culture. All of that proved true. I wasn't thinking of it as writing practice but that turned out to be the case as well... It helped my writing to get it off of the hidden or absent page and set free on the internet. I've been a writer pretty much since I could hold a pencil because that is the way I quantify the world... I wrote daily for years and years. Journaling. Poetry. Fiction. Loads of it crap, but my version of it, at least. And then I had kids.

I have always wanted to be one of those people that claim a swell of creative impulse birthed forth along with said babies. Except I can't. A large part of that is probably because my births were unexpectedly traumatic, for me. And I was deeply sad, and deeply angry that this was so. Denying the existence of those emotions was an occupying force in my life for a time and denial is a sure fire way to repress your creative impulse in a very direct way. Good writing is truthful writing and writing truthfully wasn't an option for me, at that time. Channeling that denial into healing happened over time and it changed the trajectory of my life but it also got me out of the writing habit.

Additionally, what creativity I did have was poured into my children and my parenting. I did not feel inspired to write on little sleep and more coffee! Add birth advocacy, starting midwifery school and working a part-time job into the mix...and in my case, you have a writer who doesn't write.

Moving to and living in India rekindled my creativity in a big way. Growing kids with new needs rekindled my creativity. Jumping into Homeschooling rekindled my creativity. And blogging about all of that put the pen back in my hand. At the same time, I started to actually read Blogs and found a pleasureable fascination in reading them. I discovered that while they could certainly be self-involved they were also often intelligent, honest, compelling and funny (a guideline I often use in reading books, as well). And as a parent, it felt a bit like having the chance to peer into the real lives of other parents...a truthful conversation about parenting and living that didn't always happen "IRL".

Upon moving back from India, life got hard. My dad was diagnosed with liver cancer and eventually died on October 18th, 2009. I needed to focus on my family and our transition and I needed to do so privately. So, I let the blog go and it was the right thing for me to do. I also struggled with where to take it...we were back. What was there to write about? No more exotic travels. No more dissing of dysentery. Just us. In the places we were raised. No Adventure.

I've changed my mind about that, too. What I have here is my own little corner of the internet. I can spout off into the ether and it may reach no one. I can write badly or very well and it doesn't really matter. Somehow, I feel less compelled to perfection here. I do it because I like to. Because our lives may reflect someone else's experience or Not. Because I'm redefining my understanding of Adventure...

I was delighted to read this the other day in Yoga Journal, in an article written by Matt Walker, "Adventure isn't something that's reserved for the extreme athlete or the daredevil. It is an expression of of your heart's intention and passion for life. It's the ability to think big about who you are, how you live, and what you can do in the world, whether you're climbing mountains, practicing Sun Salutations, or listening to a friend. It is the willingness to embrace challenge and move toward success. it is the acknowledgment that total committment does not mean blind faith or brazen disregard, but confidence and belief in the face of challenge." I couldn't have said it better, myself.

The Fischers
Embracing the Adventure...
in Minneapolis, MN