Why could Santa not come in Little House? - Page 2

[Queen Gwen]

Originally Posted by juliasmum

If they only did washing one day a week, you know that they had to reuse diapers, unless they somehow had enough diapers to make it through the entire week. Do you think they had enough diapers to make it through, or just let the wet ones dry to be reused?

.

Per this page Frontier Women I have the impression that if they had access to enough water they'd boil the diapers as needed. If no water, then dry out and scrape.

I remember reading something by a missionary a few years back, talking about having to boil diapers (hauling water first), then hang them to dry, and if it was the rainy season they had to be hung to dry inside the hut. She thought women here were in a totally luxurious lifestyle since we have washers and dryers, and she couldn't fathom using disposables, it just seemed so...decadent.

Edited to fix link, since I forgot to check it first (duh).

[kathleenE]

pioneer women

[QUOTE=Queen Gwen]Per this page Frontier Women I have the impression that if they had access to enough water they'd boil the diapers as needed. If no water, then dry out and scrape.

Thanks for the link! It's funny, I read the book it was condensed from a while back, and forgotten about it; I'm going to go check it out of the library and read it again! Somebody earlier had mentioned No Time on My Hands; there's also a sort of teen version that's shorter called Pioneer Girl: Growing up on the Prairie, by Andrea Warren.

I love this thread and still want to talk about the Little House books, which I've read so many times. Probably I need to talk about it with you all because I ended up with three sons, no dd's! And I tried to get them interested in the books when they were littler, but they shunned them as "girl's stuff". Well, I still have my third ds to work on--he's only two

[margi83301]

Any other books about prairie life that you mamas would suggest?

We Sagebrush Folk by Annie Pike Greenwood.

It's a true story about pioneers in the dry desert of southern Idaho. It's very good.

[alicia622]

I this thread! It has been at least 22 years since I read the Little House books and reading the questions makes me want to read them all over again to see what i think now.

[Gunter]

like this thread!

My great-grandpa gave me the series in a box set when I was a child. I loved reading them and long to live a similar lifestyle. They must have greatly impacted me b/c I really long to follow the homesteading example.

Dh and I have a TV (for movies; it doesn't get any chanels) so we watch the DVDs of the show from the 1970s. He wants the babe to call him "pa" now!

[Periwinkle]

Lovin this thread. Great book rec's too :

[clewal]

Don't forget, that in Little House on the Prarie, not only was the creek to high, but it was also a two day trip to get to Independence.

[journeymom]

Queen Gwen, that's a great web site. I think it's notable how much work kids did.

Regarding diapers, somebody here long ago pointed out that before disposables and before washers and dryers children were out of diapers much sooner than they are now. It wasn't a point of contention or a difference in parenting philosophies like it is now, it was a necessity.

Ugh! Can you imagine, though, line drying all those barely-clean diapers inside your tiny log house on a dreary, rainy day?

[Charles Baudelaire]

Originally Posted by journeymom

Ugh! Can you imagine, though, line drying all those barely-clean diapers inside your tiny log house on a dreary, rainy day?

It's enough to make you want to switch to 'sposies.

[journeymom]

[Basylica]

Heh, this is nuts, i've just re-read like the entire series this past week or so. Hey, I don't get like ANY time to myself, reading a real book is too hard when you have 10 min....but re-reading a LH book, I can read half of it in 10 min

Re xmas: forgive me, but I think the reason santa wasn't going to come that year was because the girls knew that santa came by sleigh, and the creek rose and they knew that santa couldn't cross the creek. I think in a effort to save the santa mystique ma and pa decided to "cancel" christmas until edwards came. They did get home-made treats that year, they each got a little heartshaped cake!

And I have the little house cookbook. I LOVE that book almost as much as the whole series. Anyone else?

I've always wondered, what ma had to say about sex and such to laura. Curious minds REALLY want to know

Laura and almanzo never really made a sucess so to speak...
Not like 'manzo grew up in NY...
They lived with his parents for awhile, moved to florida with his folks I believe (?) too...and finially bought rocky ridge that LAURA paid for!
They finially did have a nice enough house and laura was able to travel to visit rose in SF...so they were OK I think.

and ma and pa did alright for themselves, better than laura and almanzo I think. They bought a house in town later in life near the building pa made, and L and A lived there for awhile too, and mary had her own room until she died.
Pa was a respected community member and a free mason, and the oldest member of desmet....
He did carpentry for a long time I know, and probably sold or rented his building for extra income...

And I think the laura-school thing might be debated either way, SHE felt a need to teach, but her parents could afford to buy a organ and later a sewing machine..so pa did alright
I think the timing of her school probably was why they bought the organ. She'd made the 40 during winter, and the 75 was during spring/summer, right?
And most of pa's money came in during the summertime when he was taking carpentry jobs.
Plus, if the perry school could pay her 25/mth for teaching 3 kids, and Pa had the boss job for building the school they probably paid him pretty well....
So they probably had a abundance of income they didn't originally plan on when mary left for school, because desmet was booming and pa was getting so many carpentry jobs then...
So she probably NEEDED to give them her 10 dollars from sewing and 40 from school, but by the time she took perry school she didn't really need to give them any extra money...
She kept her third school's worth of pay too, to buy dresses.

So out of the 3 terms she taught, she only gave them $$ from one for mary.


Anyways, i've always wondered what the "scandel" around the bouchie/brewster thing was. Does anyone know?? (Laura called them brewster in her books because of the "scandel" surrounding them later. Their real name was bouchie (sp?))

[aprons_and_acorns]

:

I'm going to get myself down to the library and re-read all of those books. Although if this thread keeps growing I might not need to! :LOL

[zinemama]

Hey Kathleen, my ds is way into the Little House books, so don't give up! We started with those picture book versions that are just a single episode (In general I abhor all those spin-off books, but these are well done), and then moved on to LHITBW when he was 4. He really liked it, and I only had to edit a bit. Now he's 5 and we've read up to Plum Creek. There's a difference in tone/age of characters between that and Silver Lake, so we're stopping there for now.

Also, I have to say, I was really nervous about explaining guns to him, and how exactly that was going to come up. "Big Woods" was the perfect way. Pa making the bullets, using the gun only for hunting as necessary, etc.

[mnnice]

I think diapers were rinsed and dried behind the stove the majority of the time.Then the whole stash was washed weekly in good weather.

My mom as often spoke of how when she visited my MIL when my brothers and I were little that my grandma would rinse and hang up the diapers in her enclosed porch (a space with four walls, but no heat). My grandma diapered her babies in the 1930's and 1940's). Whereas my mom would dunk poopies wait until she had a whole pail full to wash. She diapered her kids in the late 1960's and 1970's with access to a washer and dryer.

[Llyra]

Originally Posted by journeymom

Does anyone know what denomination of Christianity the Ingalls were?

I'm not sure, but I do know that one of the books mentions that Reverend Alden was a Congregationalist minister, so I would guess that was what they were. Then again, living in remote places, there might only have been one church, so they just went to whatever church there was.

This discussion is really fun; I always loved those books. The how did they go to the bathroom question was always a big one for me, even as a kid. I've also always wondered (and this is probably rank heresy but I'll ask it anyway) whether Laura had been given any kind of sex education before she was married. Girls in that era were often left pretty ignorant about what to expect, but then again she lived in a one-room cabin for a lot of her life, and her parents managed to conceive several more children. In The First Four Years, when Laura finds out she's pregnant the first time, she says something like he who dances must pay the fiddler, which is a very wry comment about sex, I think, and I'm surprised it made it into the book.

BTW, Carrie was born in the Big Woods, when Ma had family nearby to help with the birth. Somebody asked about that.

[koofie]

Originally Posted by kathleenE

Oh, and that reminds me of another question. Who took care of baby Carrie when they all had malaria in LHOTP? Ma was too weak to get out of bed, and so was pa. They all were. Did poor baby Carrie just rot in her own feces and urine in her cradle or trundle bed for several days before the family was discovered by Mrs. Scott and the doctor?

Since Carrie was not even born in *real life* during the time they lived in the LHOTP, I think Laura didnt bother to mention Carrie in that part of the book. I think Laura was around 2 when they left Wisconsin for the first time. Then, they returned later and moved to Walnut Grove. This is my understanding. I always assumed that this book was based on the little Laura remembered, what she was told, and events that happened in other times or places. HTH!