the belly chronicles

Tea cafe

The YIS food fair was a full day of fabulous, for sure. It's always great to be with a community willing to pull out all the stops. I hope we raised lots of money as well.

A highlight for me was the ELC cafe. Miel's school seems sprinkled with fairy dust. Only good happens there. And so with their little cafe today. Their unit of inquiry this year has been the study of tea, a subject generated by the children's interest in making pretend tea in the play yard with leaves and sticks. That's the kind of school it is. From there they have gone to a tea plantation, developed a relationship with a local tea shop where they've had a gallery showing of the cups and tea pots they made, and they've hosted numerous international tea events.

It was natural that they would continue by serving tea to the public, but when you see your 4-year old make a pot of tea, pour it into cups and serve them on a tray, it's one of those ephemeral moments of grace. A time to stop and watch and fully take in the moment.

Which I guess is what tea ceremony is all about.

to love and to nourish

There's so much I love about these cards. The fact that they were made by Miss Sweetness herself. The fact that she not only wrote her own name, but "Dada" and "Isaiah" as well. Even Isaiah was impressed by little sister's abilities . . . 

And see how she appreciates that Dada lets her have cereal for breakfast? He tends to be "in charge" of breakfast on weekends, and often the morning starts early with breakfast and then moves on to more nutritious fare. It's been a point of contention between us, since I don't believe in cold food first thing in the morning. In Chinese medicine, we see the spleen/stomach/digestive system as a wood burning stove that needs warm, cooked food, especially when breaking the night's fast. But I do enjoy getting to sleep in or zipping off to a morning zumba class, and so we explore the beauties of compromise that make family life such a growth experience.

But this cereal thing has been more of a challenge this week, since last week you might remember I embarked on the Real Food Challenge and cleaned our pantry of every bit of processed food on the first day. The challenge has been a lot of fun and I won't bore you at this moment with the particulars of every day. You can check out Nourished Kitchen website for that. But I will tell you that I should have suspected something when Steve offered to go grocery shopping on Friday. Lo and behold, the pantry is already getting re-filled, mom and dad are getting a some precious sleep, and the kiddos are getting a little of what they really want.

At least they ate it with the delicious, creamy raw milk that we've been enjoying from a local farm for the past month.

 

So maybe it's the extra va-voom she gets from the nourishing milk and all the other power-packed food she eats, or maybe it's the sheer joy she gets from eating cold cereal, but I like to think that all those extra lines in her "E" (not to mention that sweet dot on the "i") are a sign of feeling pretty darn good about herself.

Happy Valentine's Day to you! I hope it's left you feeling pretty darn good about yourself, too.