cooking dinner with the kids (well, actually, with one kid at a time)

I always have trouble getting into a summer routine, but this year it was easier, because there were a few things I knew I wanted to do.

And one of them was to cook dinner with my kids.

Bess is almost 11. Gamgee is 9.  And Lucy and Anna are both 7.

Great ages, marvelous ages, capable ages.  (Seriously, dear moms of young ones, it gets better and better. Harder in some ways, easier in others, but . . . better. Because they become people, more and more. And that is lovely.)


But anyway, Adam and I have four children. And that is not so much as some, but it is a fair amount of children as these things go, and while I love them when they're acting like a litter of puppies - all tumbling over each other and shouting and playing and shouting (So. Much. Shouting.) - I also really love spending time with them one-on-one, when I can pay real, focused attention to each individual child.

And it struck me that since dinner has to be made every night, and since each of them enjoys spending time in the kitchen (none so much as Bess, who is the sort of child who makes banana cream pies from scratch - pie crust and meringue and pudding and all), that taking one of them every weeknight as my Dinner Buddy - i.e., co-chef - would be a great way to get some one-on-one time in.

And it has been.

Now, to be honest, making dinner with a seven-year-old (or nine-year-old, or almost-eleven-year-old) makes dinner prep. take twice as long*, but that's an okay price to pay for some quality time with each of these small people I love who are swiftly ceasing to be small and so quickly becoming big people with personalities and loves and annoyances and hang-ups and joys and everything that makes up a person in this world.

I want to be there with each of them as they grow through these important years.

Making dinner is just one small way.

But it's a good way. And I love this time, and I am grateful for it.

Thanks be to God.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell



*I lie. It's at least three-times-as-long.