It's a Jungle in Here

now we are six

2011-06-05T21:35:00.005-05:00

Dear Evan,

I failed to write you a birthday letter when you turned five, so now I've got a lot of lost time to make up for. You turned six today! It's a little bit unbelievable, how much you've grown. Looking at your six-year-old face, it's hard to find any traces of the chubby-cheeked baby who used to toddle around our house. You're getting taller and skinnier all the time -- those Schmidt genes are finally starting to show themselves.

You've had a lot of big changes in your sixth year. The most important in your day-to-day life was starting kindergarten. Finally, after all those years of waiting, you get to ride the bus with your big brother and your neighborhood friends. Now you, too, get to have gym (your favorite) and music and library and computer class and field trips and bingo nights and all of the wonderful things that come along with grade school.

And you're right at home in school. Your teachers have sent home glowing reports, you're making friends, your handwriting has progressed from shaky preschooler scrawl to careful, precise printing, you're adding with ease (and getting there with subtraction), and best of all, you're reading! You took your time getting into reading, but once you got the hang of it you quickly became a pro. Now you read stories aloud with perfect expression and barely any stumbles at all. You're a huge fan of comics, but you're beginning to make forays into chapter books as well.

School has been a huge deal this year, but you've grown up in other ways as well. You learned to ride a two-wheeler this spring, and you could not have been more proud of yourself. In true Evan fashion, you spent a few days complaining that it was too hard and you'd never be able to do it, and then one day practically without warning you climbed onto your bike and rode off down the street as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

One of the biggest changes since the last birthday letter I wrote you is that tantrums are nearly a thing of the past. You have come a long way in learning to control your temper, and your hard work and practice have paid off. You seem so mature these days. There are still occasional bumps in the road, but you're really learning to master yourself, and I think that makes everyone who lives with you a little happier.

One of the biggest challenges you had to face this year was the sudden death of your uncle John, your dad's older brother. This was your first real, personal encounter with death, and it took some time for you to really process and comprehend what had happened. We were all deeply affected, of course, but it breaks my heart a little that you only had a few short years to know your uncle. I hope you'll always remember how much he loved you.

This year wasn't all changes, though. In many ways you're still the same Evan we've known and loved for so many years. Rambunctious, spontaneous, imaginative, funny, affectionate. Still obsessed with Legos, still in love with any animal you lay eyes on, still ready for snuggling at bedtime. You're still the same unpredictable child who constantly keeps us on our toes. You make sure our lives don't get boring.

Only a day into six years old and we've already been told that six year olds don't need help with things anymore. Six seems to be a Big Deal, the first year, maybe, in which you really believe you have changed. But at the same time you're not in too much of a hurry to grow up, and I'm glad for that, because it's so much fun be your mother, Evan.

a letter to my brother-in-law

2010-10-13T15:27:00.000-05:00

Dear John,

A million thoughts have been swirling through my head in the last couple of days, but the one I keep returning to, the thing I can't get past, is how unfair it is that you're dead. How unfair it is to you, who had so much life left to live, and how unfair it is for the rest of us, who have to figure out how to live in a world you're not part of anymore.

It's so unfair that you were taken from us so suddenly. I'm just hung up on the injustice of it, from the stupid little things like how sad I am for you that you'll never get to play the keyboards on Rock Band 3, or how you'll never get to read the book you were telling me about the last time I saw you, to the huge things like how you won't get to see your nephews grow up, and how terribly sad it is that you and Elizabeth don't get to grow old together. You had so much left to do!

I've been your official sister-in-law for less than a year, but I felt like family from almost the first time we met, nine years ago, because you were so open and warm and friendly. I've lost a number of relatives in my life, but this is the first time I've lost a family member who was also a dear friend. And maybe it's because I'm so far away, but it still doesn't feel quite real yet. When I think that I'll never see you again, never hear your wonderful contagious laugh, never have another huge warm hug from you, it seems impossible.

I only got to know you for nine years, which was not nearly long enough. And if nine years can produce so much grief, how much worse must it be for those who knew you and loved you for decades, for your whole life? And there were so many who loved you -- who wouldn't love you? You were an amazing person, a son, a brother, a grandson, a nephew, an uncle, a friend, and you were so kind, generous, loving, and always smiling. My heart aches for your parents, your siblings, all of your family and friends, and most deeply for Elizabeth.

How do you say goodbye to someone you didn't even know was going to be leaving? We all miss you, more than words can adequately express. It's so hard to see beyond the sudden pain of loss. I know it won't always be this painful, but your absence will always be felt.

Thank you, John, for being such a wonderful person, for all the fun and laughter and hugs and conversation and games and generosity and kindness and love. You will never be forgotten. You will ever be missed and loved. Rest well, brother, and maybe someday we'll meet again.

Love,
Heidi

belated birthday post

2010-01-21T16:25:00.004-05:00

Dear James,

I'm a month late with your birthday letter, but surely after eight years of living with me and your dad, you've learned that punctuality is not something we're known for, nor does it run in the family, so I know you'll forgive me. I know this, too, because you're a forgiving sort of person, quick to move on, never holding a grudge.

Thank goodness for that, because this year you are beginning to make comparisons between your life and the lives of your peers, and you're quick to let your dad and me know when we fall short of the parenting ideals. Too many chores, no allowance, we never take you to McDonald's, that sort of thing. You like to inform us of all of the wonderful things you'll do as soon as you turn eighteen. I almost died the day you added "buy whipped cream in a can" to this list. Someday you will understand that your mother always whips real cream not because she hates you and wants you to be weird, but because she loves you and wants you to enjoy real food.

Yesterday you were angry with me for one of my many parenting failures and you demanded, "How do I know you're my real mother?" It's hard to tell sometimes, because you are still so remarkably like your dad. Your second-grade teacher is very impressed with your math knowledge and skills, and she told us how surprised she was during the first week of school when you informed the class about negative numbers. I would have loved to see the look on her face a couple of weeks ago when you went to school armed with the information your dad had just taught you about imaginary numbers.

You take after your dad in so many ways. You share his curiosity about the world around you, and from him you've learned to turn to science for your answers. You're so imaginative, always coming up with new ideas. You share his love of games, especially video games. You can be so silly -- you should have seen the look I gave your dad when your teacher told us about all of the weird noises you make in class, seemingly without even being aware of making them -- but you still have a surprising attention span, especially when it comes to drawing and reading.

Now, reading: that's one way I know you're my son. When you find a book you like you get so wrapped up in it that you can't put it down. You don't hear people talking to you, you carry the book around with you when you're forced to do something other than read, you bring a flashlight in the car so darkness won't prevent you finishing this chapter. You're reading books that are shelved in the Young Adult section of the library, yet you still like to be read to at bedtime.

It's a strange age, eight. You're navigating the gray area between childhood and adolescence. You like to snuggle on the couch and watch nature shows, yet you like to rock out to Weezer. You play Legos and cars with your brother at home, yet on the playground at school you and your friends play Twilight. I was the kind of kid who always felt a little out of place at this stage, but I think you're enjoying it, being able to move within two worlds.

You and your brother are still great friends, but I've noticed a bit of a change this year. It's becoming apparent that you are growing older, your tastes are changing, and you're a little less content to play the same old games. Sometimes you even decline to play with Evan in favor of reading, which sends him running to me, pleading can we please not get Calvin and Hobbes from the library anymore because all James does is reeeaaaaad!!! Evan gets frustrated with your growing maturity, but you are often kind enough to humor him.

It's fun being your mom in so many ways, James, whether you're telling jokes or drawing comics or helping me cook or regurgitating facts you've learned from Nature or Nova or from your dad. I like watching you crack up while you watch movies; I like sharing favorite books and movies and music with you and knowing you're old enough to really appreciate and enjoy them; I like overhearing you sing songs or recite poems you've learned at school; I like to see you drawing charts and graphs for fun, or designing board games, or writing stories.

Thank you for helping make our lives so much fun, James. Happy belated birthday. I love you more than any blog post can convey.

catching up: washington vacation

2009-12-17T09:16:00.000-05:00

Since we're leaving on Friday to spend Christmas and New Year's in Washington with Greg's family, I thought it was about time I got around to posting about our summer vacation there.

It had been three years since the last time we'd been to Washington in the summer, and we'd almost forgotten how much there was to do there in warm weather. Such as horseback riding:

And trips to the beach:

(I believe that was Evan's first time at the Pacific Ocean.)

We went to the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, one of the few temperate rainforests in the world. It's full of giant old trees all covered in hanging moss, which, on a sunny day, is quite lovely. I've actually never been there on a rainy day, so I can't speak to that experience, but I'm sure it's neat then too.

Icidentally, the drive to the rainforest takes you through the small town of Forks, which is now well-known as the setting of the Twilight books and movies. It's amusing to see the Twilight mania in this little logging town -- every business with a sign out front welcomes Twilight fans to town, there is a store on the main street selling only Twilight merchandise, and we even saw some teenage girls posing in front of the "Welcome to Forks" sign as we drove into town.

Anyway. This photo is of one of the more memorable parts of the trail through the rainforest, and gives you a bit of an idea of the size of some of the trees.

Greg and I were able to take a couple of days to ourselves to go hiking and camping in the Olympics (thanks again to Greg's parents for watching the boys for us!). We hiked to Royal Basin, a lake that is only reached after climbing a seven-mile trail that rises over 2500 feet in elevation along the way. Needless to say, we were sort of useless in the movement department for a day or two after we got back. But that view is worth it, don't you think?

We also saw our first wild bear on that trip, although we didn't get any photos. We saw him only because he heard us coming and started crashing through the underbrush trying to run away from us, so even if we had gotten a photo it would have been of his rear end. So.

We went to Salt Creek, which is a very pretty beach and a great place to look at tide pools. We've been there many times as well, but it never fails to amaze us with its beautiful scenery and the interesting creatures you can find there. In addition to all of the tide pool animals we've seen there (such as sea stars, mussels, crabs, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, snails and fish) we've seen bald eagles, sea lions (or were they seals? I can never remember), sea otters and whales.

It's also just fun to play in the sand and water there:

We hiked out to the Devil's Punchbowl at Lake Crescent, along the Spruce Railroad Trail, a trail that actually used to be a railroad. We've done this hike many times in the past but it's a good one for kids (relatively short and flat), plus it's beautiful, so we keep going back again and again. Here's James on the bridge over the punchbowl:

And here's Evan along the shore of the lake during the hike:

In addition to all of these day trips we took, we also had a lot of fun just hanging out with Greg's family, playing games, watching movies, berry-picking, walking the dogs, building with Legos, eating fresh seafood, and just generally being on vacation.

Last night I finally got around to posting some of my photos on Flickr, so click here and take a look if you're interested. Those are maybe half of my photos from the trip, but it took about eleventy-zillion hours to upload and label them all, so I think that's all there will be. There are more photos of horses, hiking, the beach, the rainforest, and tide pools, among other things, so check it out.

We're headed back to Washington tomorrow morning, and can't wait to spend the holidays with Greg's family! And hopefully it won't take me quite as long to post photos from this trip once we're back home again.

trivial pursuit for kids

2009-12-12T09:45:00.002-05:00

My kids love to play games, any kind of games. Video games, computer games, pretend games, guessing games, board games. James, especially, love games so much that he's constantly making up his own or playing games by himself. If he doesn't know the rules to a game he'll invent them. His games are always terrifically complicated.

He's certainly passing on his love of games to his brother. This morning I came downstairs to find them deeply involved in a game of Trivial Pursuit. Evan can't read yet, and most of the questions are outside the limits of their young knowledge, so they make up their own questions. Usually their questions are about Star Wars or Pokemon, but this morning they actually created their own categories to work with: Animals, Water, Sand, Air, Candy and Plants. Evan was The Questioner.

Evan: Why doesn't sand evaporate?
James: Because it's not made of water!
Evan: Good!

Evan: Why don't all birds eat fish?
James: Because they don't all live near water!
Evan: Good!

Evan: Why can't you eat sand?
James: Because it's not food!
Evan: Good!

Evan: Why doesn't water go upstream?
James: Because hills make it go downstream!
Evan: Good!

It's so much fun listening to them.

friday photos: thanksgiving edition

2009-12-04T13:25:00.006-05:00

We spent Thanksgiving at my mom's house, as we do every year. Only one of my sisters was able to come, and we had a slightly shorter vacation than usual, due to both of my sons having school on Wednesday, but despite those things we still had a fun long weekend.

My sister and I made Thanksgiving dinner for 13 people, which was less work than I expected, and utterly delicious. (I didn't take any photos of the food, but my sister's turkey was one of the most perfect-looking -- and delicious-tasting -- main courses I've ever seen.) We took the kids to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was a big hit for both kids and adults (Wes Anderson + Roald Dahl is like a dream come true for me). We played a lot of Rock Band:

On Saturday we went down to the Cooperstown, NY area (famous for being home to the Baseball Hall of Fame) to go to a local cider mill and to a historical museum and village, the Farmers' Museum. Believe it or not, the kids were not enthralled with this part of the afternoon, but there were some parts they enjoyed. The highlight for them was the carousel ride:

I am in love with this carousel. The animals are all animals native to New York State, and they are both adorable and hilarious in carousel form. Some of the animals included a bear, a loon, a goose, a skunk, a frog, a cow and a fish, as well as the pig, raccoon and beaver shown below:

The historical village was really pretty. It would have been nicer to walk around there on a sunny day, but even with a chilly drizzle it had its charms:

In other news, a few days ago we woke up to the first snow of the season, which we were actually pretty excited about. We have a holly bush outside our front door, and I loved the look of the white snow, red berries and green leaves together:

The trees edging our apartment complex looked beautiful topped with a little snow:

And Evan was thrilled to make some snowballs:

The snow has since melted, but its brief appearance has helped get us in the mood for the holidays. We have a Christmas tree (which we'll hopefully have time to decorate soon), we've taken our Christmas photos, and we've started diving into Christmas books and movies and music. And in two weeks we'll be on our way to the west coast to spend a couple of weeks with Greg's family -- we can't wait!

Oh, and by the way, I've started uploading many of my photos to Flickr -- so far I've mostly put older photos up, but I'm hoping to keep up with posting newer photos there too. Check it out if you're interested!

28

2009-11-19T13:53:00.003-05:00

Today is my 28th birthday, and I realized this morning that while I always do birthday posts for the boys, and even once in a while for Greg, I've never done a real retrospective birthday post for myself. So I dragged up some old photo albums from the basement and scanned in every photo I could find from my past birthdays.

Surprisingly, out of 28 years, I only have photographic evidence of 5 birthdays, and one of those was an especially unphotogenic year, so I'm only posting 4, plus a bonus photo. We'll start with the most recent and work our way backwards (because the cuteness factor increases the further back in time we go).

Here is my ninth birthday, and let me tell you how cool I thought that buttoned bow was. You can't really tell from the photo, but my blouse also had some random colored buttons on it, and I was convinced that the combination of the two was the height of fashion. I believe this was the first year I was allowed to use the big knife to cut my own cake, which might explain why my mom is hovering so closely over me.

This is my sixth birthday. That's my grandmother in the photo with me, my mom's mom -- I was born on her birthday and she was a constant fixture in that corner chair at all of our birthday parties. Other photos from this particular party, by the way, include photos of my presents, a little bunny family and a bunny-sized playground, which I posed and made my mom take pictures of for me.

My third birthday. I have two memories of this day: 1) I adored my cake. When my sisters were little, my mom made creative cakes for them, much like the cakes I make for my boys, but when I was a kid, she must not have loved me enough or something, I'm not quite sure, but this is the last cake I remember her making. 2) I loved my outfit. You can't see it in the photo, I think it's under my arm, but the vest had a little plaid cat on it to match the shirt. I loved that little cat. Clearly my fashion sense was still developing at that age.

My first birthday. Yes, I looked like a boy.

And for a bonus, because I don't have any good photos of myself on my actual birth day or as a wee newborn, here's Baby Heidi:

And that's it for the birthday retrospective. I'm not sure where the other 24 years went, although I think I already mentioned my mom not loving me enough, so that might have had something to do with it. (Kidding, Mom! I love you!) I don't even have any fun birthday stories to share -- in the first place I have a terrible memory, and in the second place, birthdays for most of my life have been pretty low-key. If I remember correctly. Which I may not.

This morning over breakfast James said, "Wow, Mom, in two years you'll be thirty!" I said, "Yep, and in twenty-two years I'll be fifty."

"Yeah," said Evan, "and then you'll be dead."

I replied that I'm planning to live until at least a hundred and forty, but you know, half of that wouldn't be too bad as long as I get to spend all of my birthdays until then with the people I love.

catching up: moss island

2009-11-18T22:37:00.007-05:00

There are not many exciting places to go or things to do in central New York, where I grew up, but one of the most reliably fun and interesting activities in the area is to spend some time on Moss Island. Moss Island is an island in the middle of the Erie Canal in Little Falls, NY, and it's got some really unusual geological formations, which make it a popular spot for hiking and rock climbing.

We've been to Moss Island a few times before, but this summer was the first time I have remembered to bring the camera there. I didn't get to explore the rocks as much as I might have liked, since we had four kids with us (my boys, my niece and my nephew), so the photos are a little limited in terms of the scope and variation of the features of the island, but it was still a nice afternoon, and cute kids make up for the lack of really stunning photos, right?

The island is formed by a lock in the Erie Canal. To get there, you pass by (or through) a historic lock:

Here's a glimpse of the modern lock. Moss Island is under all of those trees to the right. To access the island you have to walk across the lock, which is pretty cool. No photos, though, sorry.

Once you're on the island, there are trails through the woods, and lots of places to hike and climb around on the rocks:

James, with Greg's help, did a little more advanced climbing:

Here's an example of some of the cool geological features you can find on the island. If memory serves, everything was carved by glaciers.

Poor toddling baby Will couldn't keep up with the big kids, who were all eager to explore, and even take a break for a photo op once in a while:

Because there's so much variation on the island, it's the kind of place you can visit again and again and still have fun and see new things. We're looking forward to returning as our kids get older, when we'll be able to do some more adventurous climbing. Until then, it's a nice place to walk and play.

evan's preschool photo

2009-11-17T12:19:00.002-05:00

There are still a lot of photos and stories from summer that I swear I'm going to get around to posting someday, but for now I have to share Evan's preschool photo:

The photographer who came to the school for photos was really good with the kids and at getting natural smiles out of them. We weren't even planning on ordering photos, but I went in that morning to assist the photographer with setting up and supervising kids, and because of my (very minimal) help, she offered to give us some free photos. Looking at that face above, I'm glad we got them after all, because isn't that cute?

The day we got the photos back, Evan's class had earned a trip to the treat jar. I told Evan he could have his treat after lunch. We were putting on our coats when Evan saw one of his friends eating her treat.

"How come she gets to eat her candy?" he asked his friend's mother.

"Oh, well, sometimes I spoil her a little," replied the mother.

"Why do you spoil her?" Evan asked.

"Because I love her," she replied.

Evan looked at me, matter-of-factly: "Too bad you don't love me, Mom."

It's a cute photo, but don't let that sweet smile fool you: he's still Evan.

summer fun: darien lake

2009-10-27T10:38:00.007-05:00

One of the perks of all the car shopping we did this summer was that a local chain of dealerships gave away tickets to a local amusement park for taking a test drive. Two test drives got us four free admission tickets to Darien Lake, which is about a 45-minute drive from our house. We'd never taken the kids to an amusement park, at least not at ages where they could fully enjoy everything the park had to offer, so we prepared ourselves for a day full of fun.

One of the first things we did at the park was to go on the ferris wheel. It's a pretty big ferris wheel, and poor Evan was terrified:

The top of the ferris wheel gave us a great view of the park, which even Evan eventually admitted was pretty cool, once we convinced him to open his eyes a little bit:

After the ferris wheel, Evan had no qualms about any of the rides. In fact, he was often disappointed because he didn't meet the height requirement for a lot of the rides. He was so eager to go on rides that while James and Greg did something for tall people, he opted to do a few rides by himself. I was told in no uncertain terms that I did not need to ride with him:

The favorite ride of both kids turned out to be the bumper cars, which they rode several times:

That is, the bumper cars were their favorite until we got to the water park. Thanks to an unusually cool summer, the day was not as warm as you'd ordinarily find in upstate New York in July, but that didn't stop our water monkeys. James spent a long time trying to master this climbing course over the water, and nearly made it:

Most of the time they just played in the water, climbing and splashing:

After about 8 hours of sun and water and play, we took the scenic route home and discovered a great pizza place in a small town along the way:

This pizza place had amazing deep-dish pizza loaded with delicious goodness:

Three-quarters of the family fell asleep on the ride home, full and exhausted and happy. We'll definitely be going back again, and hopefully Evan will be tall enough next time that none of us will have any disappointment in an otherwise perfect day.

my life as a chauffeur

2009-10-19T14:12:00.002-05:00

It turns out that having both kids in school really hasn't changed much around here. A month into Evan's school year, we've settled into a routine that's working out pretty well for us. The only snag in our scheduling so far is a small one, but rather annoying: my free time during Evan's school time is not nearly as much as I expected it would be.

See, he's in school for two and a half hours. Great, I thought at first, that's seven and a half hours a week! But as it turns out, once I factor in the time I spend driving Evan to school and then Greg to work and then picking Evan up again, I'm left with a little under two hours, which is hardly enough time to do anything.

Examples of ways I've spent my less-than-two-hours on preschool days: grocery shopping and checking email; running and showering. And... that's it. On mornings I grocery shop I have very little time once I've gotten home and put everything away, and on mornings I run I have a little time afterward to stretch and cool down and shower.

I don't mean to complain, though, I really don't. It's so nice having time to run, and being able to go to the grocery store without kids in tow. I guess my problem is just that I saw those free hours as an endless expanse of time which I could fill with any number of productive activities, and I'm quickly finding, to my dismay, that my time is not infinite at all, but still pretty limited. Before Evan started school I told everyone that my fall project during my new-found free time was going to be to make a quilt, but I've hardly had time to think about it, let alone start one!

I'm spending a lot more time in the car these days as well, between driving both Greg and Evan three times a week, plus the driving I need to do for errands. That's partly due to the lousy weather we've been having though -- rain and unusually cold temperatures have been preventing Greg from riding his bike much this fall. Hopefully spring will be a little better for that.

So, to answer everyone who's been asking what I'm doing with all my free time: the same stuff I always do, but also driving other people around a little more. Not a bad way to spend my mornings, though.

stories of preschoolers

2009-10-01T12:29:00.003-05:00

Even though Evan is in preschool now, he's only there three mornings a week, so we're still going to one of the community play classes for preschoolers on one of his off days. The main reason I decided to continue with this class in addition to preschool is because of how much Evan loves his teacher.

She's not a real teacher; she's a Parks Department employee who leads the kids in some activities and supervises them while they play, makes sure they're using the equipment and toys properly, that sort of thing. It's a really unstructured environment, held in a school cafeteria covered with big mats and active toys. The teacher really enjoys the kids, though, and she spends a lot of time just playing with them, for which they all love her too.

I'm about to tell more snobby parenting stories here, by the way. Because these classes are free or really cheap, you get a lot of different types of people attending. Let's just say that my bleeding-heart granola sensibilities are even more unusual here than they are at Suburban Preschool. I frequently find myself boggling over some of the things I overhear from other parents there.

There was the grandmother who told her grandson to be nice to Evan or Evan's mommy would get mad at him and yell at him. Then she looked at me and whispered, "Really, yell at him." Whuh? Sorry, Grandma, but it's not my job to discipline your grandson for you!

Then there was the father complaining that his daughter wouldn't go to sleep before 10 or 11 pm. They'd tried everything, he said, but it was no use, because his two-and-a-half year old daughter knew how to turn on the television in her bedroom and put on a DVD by herself, so despite their best efforts she still stayed up late watching DVDs. (The other parents listening to his complaint, by the way, responded with variations of, "Kids these days! They're so smart and technologically advanced!")

This morning there was another grandmother, playing with her grandson on the mats. Five-year-old grandson picks up a block and Grandma says, "You can pretend it's a gun." Five-year-old points his "gun" at the teacher and starts yelling, "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" Teacher keels over, groaning. Little boy laughs: "Ha ha! I killed you!" Grandma suddenly gets very sharp with grandson: "That's not nice! We don't say that!" Little boy asks, "What?" all innocent-like. Grandma says, "We don't use the word 'kill'. That's not nice." Oh, okay, gotcha -- pretending to shoot a teacher with a gun is fine and dandy, but don't call it killing! We wouldn't want to be inappropriate!

There are a lot of cute kids and normal people who attend these things, but some of these people are just so very different from me in their basic fundamental values and principles that I can't even comprehend what's happening inside their heads. Evan and I get along really well with the teacher, but some of these people make me wonder how she stands it sometimes. She was telling stories this morning too, of some of the more colorful kids saying things to her that just make her jaw drop at the rudeness of them.

I worry, sometimes, about whether my kids are going to grow up to be good people (and these worries are based more in my own paranoia and lack of parenting confidence than they are in any signs from my kids that they're becoming sociopaths or something) but then sometimes, when I spend time with my kids' peers, I figure, even if my kids aren't Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., at least they'll be better than the obnoxious jerks these kids' parents are setting them up to be.

And then I feel guilty for thinking kids are jerks, and this is when I start to feel like a judgy snob. But I guess... I'm not really sure what my point is here. I'm not even sure I have one, really, so I suppose this is a good place to end the rambling.

preschool

2009-09-28T10:12:00.004-05:00

Evan had his first day of preschool this morning. It was a strange feeling, dropping him off and getting back into the car with Greg beside me and an empty back seat behind us. James started nursery school for the first time when he was younger than Evan is now, yet Evan still seems so small.

Camera/computer issues are still not resolved, but luckily Greg just got a fancy-pants new cell phone and he was able to get a first-day photo of Evan:

Our little baby, all grown up, with his new big-kid backpack and everything. Sniff.

This will probably surprise no one, but Evan loved school, loved it to pieces. When I picked him up he ran to hug me and the first words out of his mouth were to ask me if we could dance ourselves home from school. Sweatshirt and backpack went on, and he was off, skipping down the hall toward the door.

The ride home from school was all narration, because guess what they had for snack??? Raspberry yogurt! And Mrs. S. is the nicest teacher in the world, she's much nicer than James' teacher! And they had story time, but Mrs. S. didn't read a book, she did a puppet show! And there's another Evan in the class, and Evan M was a very good listener for Mrs. S. but Evan S. was, oh, a pretty good listener. School is good.

We went to a welcome picnic at the school on Saturday, and it was a little weird. Greg and I are not so much the type of people to walk up to strangers and initiate small talk, so we kind of hung back and people-watched. The vibe from this school is different from that of James' preschool. Less granola, more Wal-mart. Comparisons: the snacks served at the new preschool were Capri Sun and store-bought cookies; snacks I have seen people feed their children at the old preschool were things like legumes and homemade whole-wheat crackers, and nothing less than 100% juice. Cars in the parking lot at the old school were mostly older minivans with liberal bumper stickers on the backs. Cars in the parking lot at the new school are much newer, shinier, and bigger, even including some SUVs. (I can't imagine anyone at the old school setting foot in an SUV.)

We spent some time discussing the suburban feel of the place before it struck me that maybe now that we live in the suburbs and are sending our son to the suburban preschool, maybe we look like a typical suburban family too. I mean, is there any way to tell from looking at us that I literally make my own granola? I started remembering something about books and covers and resolved to keep my mouth shut until I actually met some of these people. Even rereading the last paragraph makes me feel like a big snob, so -- hey! A project to work on in my new-found free time: less snobbishness.

So this school is not our ideal. It doesn't match, in my mind, the standard set by James' crunchy urban school. But the smile on my son's face, and the excited chatter all the way out the door and during the ride home have convinced me that it's a pretty good place for him to be.

farm visits

2009-09-15T15:39:00.005-05:00

We've had three opportunities to visit our CSA farm this year, and it's always a fun experience. We were there over the weekend, and once in June. I forgot to bring my camera this time, but I never posted the photos from June, so I'm still able to share all of our farm love.

One of the great things about the farm is that they really encourage kids to get involved, so our kids have been able to help pick beans (both green and purple, which I'd never seen before, and sadly have no photos of), tomatoes (a literal rainbow of colors), potatoes (both red and blue), and peas:

We picked from pea plants taller than my first-born:

...who is a very adorable helper, by the way:

The farm is located in the same neighborhood as a buffalo farm, which we took a walk to visit. The buffalo were very shy of the large, noisy group of children who came to gawk at them, so I didn't get any really good photos, but a decent one:

The farm has two dogs in residence, both of whom my children adore. This is Juno, who earns her keep by killing woodchucks, and is skeptical of children:

The farm is a lovely place to walk around and explore:

You might find any number of bugs if you look hard enough at the ground:

Or you may find a gigantic dandelion fluff:

Be careful, though -- your shoes will most likely get very wet and muddy during a day at the farm, especially if it's rained nearly every day of the summer:

All in all it's a pretty beautiful place to be:

Each time we've been to the farm we've been able to have lunch with the farmers and their apprentices, as well as with other CSA members. The farmers always put together a delicious salad consisting of greens and vegetables taken out of the ground that morning.

It has really been a wonderful experience for us, getting so close to our food and the people who grow it. The kids complain a little about being put to work, but then I watch them both dig into farm-fresh salads with enthusiasm, sometimes asking for seconds, and I hope years from now they will remember these visits fondly.

end of summer

2009-09-11T10:03:00.002-05:00

It's come to my attention that there are people out there who actually miss it when I don't update my blog, which I really hadn't guessed. I stopped updating during my busy summer and people noticed and said things to me, so here I am, back to the blog.

It's not quite fall yet, but it's starting to feel that way. The days are suddenly noticeably cooler, trees in the neighborhood are starting to glow red and orange, and James started second grade on Wednesday. Second grade! I do not have the requisite first-day-of-school photo to share with you, for two reasons: 1, the laptop is having issues and I can't use it to do the whole photo thing, and 2, I forgot to take the requisite first-day-of-school photo. I actually brought the camera to the bus stop on Wednesday, but neglected to put the battery in it first. Yesterday I had every intention of taking a second-day photo and passing it off as a first-day photo, but the bus came ten minutes early and what with all the sprinting to catch it I didn't get a chance. Today I just gave up.

Second grade, by the way, is great, and Mrs. F. is his best teacher ever. And I don't know if it's maturity or something they're putting in the water at school, but James came home and voluntarily told me all about his day. No prying! Questions answered with multiple syllables! I hardly knew what to do with the sudden influx of information!

When James first got on the bus and went to school, Evan and I went inside and I asked him what he'd like to do all day. He answered, "I don't know what to do without James." Heart-meltingly sweet, I know, but not entirely true. No James means no competition for the Legos, which is mostly how Evan has been spending his time this week.

Evan is due to start school soon too. He was supposed to start next week, but we got a letter from the school informing us that the church in which the school is housed is having roofing work done, which includes asbestos removal, so school doesn't start until the end of the month. We did, however, get to go in to the school to meet Evan's teacher (apparently asbestos exposure of under half an hour is okay?) and she read to him and gave him presents, so he's totally sold on this whole preschool thing.

Evan, by the way, suddenly seems so much older. He's had a growth spurt over the last several months, and we cut his hair short, and finally he really looks like a preschooler. The baby fat is melting and the traces of babyhood in his appearance are fading away as well. It's been weird to witness such dramatic changes in a kid who's always grown so gradually.

We had a lot of fun this summer, and hopefully I'll remember to get back into the habit of blogging to share some of our many photos and stories.

friday photos: belated birthday edition

2009-07-03T10:52:00.005-05:00

I realized that I did my annual birthday letter to Evan, but I forgot to post any photos from our birthday festivities. So, as long as I'm still not uploading photos from the new camera, I can at least catch you up on some older photos.

Evan requested a strawberry Pikachu cake this year. Not one of my prettiest efforts, I'm afraid, but it was one of the most delicious birthday cakes I've made. He was pretty happy with it, which is what counts.

He got not one, not two, but THREE giant Star Wars Lego sets for his birthday. This was by far the most exciting birthday event. Here he is showing off all three:

And here he is with one of the finished (or nearly finished) products. Which one, I have no idea. I'm not up to date on my Star Wars ships.

Now that he's four, he's decided he's big enough to really ride his balance bike, and he's been practicing coasting with no feet:

The funnest part of any birthday is the balloons, obviously. But what's more fun than playing with balloons? Drawing scary faces on them! (Ignore the smiles; I think it's the teeth that's supposed to make them scary.)

All in all I think it was a pretty enjoyable day for the birthday boy.

nature's bounty

2009-07-02T12:29:00.003-05:00

We've been getting vegetables from our CSA for six weeks now. It has been a really interesting experience. You sign up months ahead of time and agree to pay a certain amount for months of fresh, seasonal, organic produce, but you never know, beyond a general understanding of what's in season at any given time, exactly what you'll be getting or how much.

We're splitting our share of produce with a friend of mine, so the amount we're getting is pretty manageable, most of the time, and sometimes not enough (for example, splitting an average-sized bunch of asparagus in half, where one half goes to a solo person and the other half goes to my family of four often leaves us wanting more). Up to this point, the spring and early summer have been heavy with leafy green vegetables. I have to tell you, we are eating more leafy green vegetables than ever before, including some things we've never seen or heard of. At first it was a little intimidating and overwhelming, but now that I've gotten used to this abundance of green, I'm wondering what I'll do when it's over for the season.

We've gotten plenty of common produce items: asparagus, lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, spinach, peas in pods, rhubarb, thyme, chives, onions, dill, carrots, radishes. But we've gotten some more unusual items as well. The photo above is of one of the first salads I made this year, created entirely with our farm vegetables. It features two kinds of lettuce, spinach, edible weeds (such as purslane, chick weed and lambsquarter -- I still am not sure what any of those look or taste like, even after eating them), radishes, and chive blossoms. Did you know chive blossoms are edible? They taste very much like concentrated, intense chive flavor, and, much like a strong red onion, will leave a taste in your mouth for hours after eating.

Other new-to-us foods that we've received include watercress, mizuna, bok choi, Chinese cabbage, parsnips, tarragon, pea greens (the leaves from pea plants), garlic scapes, garlic greens, radicchio, senposai, and arugula. Chances are, if you've never heard of something on that list, it's probably a leafy green vegetable.

It's exciting, learning what to do with all these new foods. I'm glad, too, that my kids are getting used to eating all manner of green and/or unusual things in all kinds of dishes, and that, for the most part, they do so willingly. And the fact that everything we're eating from the farm is organic is just a bonus.

As soon as I get some photos uploaded, you'll get to hear about our second trip to the farm, where we got to learn more about where the food on our plates is coming from.

summer

2009-06-29T10:27:00.002-05:00

School ended last week, and so far we are having what you might call a blissful summer vacation. The weather has been gorgeous -- sunny, warm but not hot, with enough rain to keep things green, and a few nice thunderstorms. The kiddos are playing outside daily, and are fairly committed to their daily chore schedule. Mostly they're happy because I'm being more permissive about video games and computer games.

We really started our summer fun before school was out though, with weekend activities like strawberry picking, a Father's Day visit to the science museum to see some nature films, Father's Day brunch at our favorite diner, and two or three trips a week to various parks where Greg and I have been playing lots and lots of frisbee.

Greg is busily preparing for his defense, but his schedule is much more flexible and relaxed now than it was in the weeks before he turned in his thesis, so we're all enjoying spending more time together. He's arranged to keep working at the university once he's officially done, continuing to do research for his adviser, but with a significantly higher salary and more regular hours.

The expected increase in income has us shopping already. We recently bought a new camera, only to discover after bringing it home that our computer and printer are both so outdated that they aren't compatible with the camera's memory card and software. Luckily Greg's laptop is compatible, although it's going to be a bit of an inconvenience to upload all of our photos to the laptop and then transfer them to the desktop. (In other words, no photos for the blog for the time being.) This has gotten us thinking about upgrading to a new computer in the near future as well.

We've also started car shopping. We've had our current car for five or six years, but it's a 15-year-old vehicle and we've had to make a lot of repairs and replace a lot of parts in the last couple of years, so we're finally upgrading to a car from this century. Interestingly enough, looking at new cars has made us value our old wagon even more: our two requirements for a new vehicle are that it has at least as much space as our current vehicle, and gets the same or better gas mileage, two criteria which are surprisingly difficult to find in one vehicle.

Even car shopping has been a lot of fun though. The first place we looked was at a tent sale at the local mall, where they served free food, and where a clown provided free balloon hats, candy, toys and face paint for our kids. Another chain of dealerships is running a special where you can get free tickets to a local amusement park just for test-driving a vehicle. They must be getting desperate to sell cars in this economy, but we'll take it.

I don't expect to be blogging much this summer -- there's just too much to do to spend much time inside at the computer. For once I'm actually feeling ambitious, and I want to take advantage of that while it lasts, as ambition is not one of my stronger qualities. I hope you're all enjoying your summers as well!

big news!

2009-06-10T13:22:00.004-05:00

Just a quick update. Most of you reading this probably already know, but: Greg handed in his thesis! He has a month to prepare his defense, and then, he will be finished with grad school. Finished! It's possible he'll have to make some corrections to his dissertation after the fact, but he will be able to get a real job, with a salary large enough to support our family, and we'll actually get to see him every day.

So! Exciting!

James and Evan came in from playing on Monday afternoon to see Greg sitting on the couch. "Dad!" they cried, "Are you done?" When he replied in the affirmative, James asked, "Does this mean you'll get to stay home all the time now?" Sadly, no, but he will be home a lot more often now that he's not spending all of his waking hours writing.

So things are good. We're feeling a little more relaxed now, and starting to make plans for the summer now that we have a time frame to work around. We'll keep you posted as to what's next!

four years old

2009-06-05T12:08:00.006-05:00

Dear Evan,

Today you're four years old. This is an important birthday -- this year was the first year you've really understood what birthdays mean, and you've been waiting for this day for a long time. Since James' birthday back in January, every time we've gotten a new Lego catalog you've gone through and pointed out to us which sets you wanted for your birthday. For the last week, you've been counting down the days.

When Grandma arrived this morning to spend your birthday weekend with us, she asked you how old you are now. You replied three, and wouldn't admit to being four yet. Eventually we were able to understand that you didn't think you actually turned four until you had the birthday cake. Eventually we were able to make you understand that this isn't true.

You've grown up a lot this year. I'm not foolish enough to tempt fate by saying that your tantrums are completely over, but I really think we're getting close. We can even go whole days without tantrums, sometimes! You're learning to control your temper, and I am so proud of you when I watch you struggle not to scream or flail or explode, when you express your emotions with words, because teaching to do those things has been a very long, hard road for both of us, and I think you're finally coming to the end of that road.

Lately you like to hear stories about what you were like as a baby. I tell you that we used to call you Monkey Paws, Crazy Eyes, Tomato Face. I tell you that you've always been a picky eater, and you've always been a reluctant, light sleeper. I tell you that your first words were "ball" and "car" and that you loved mama's milk and that you've always adored your brother and you just eat up every word.

Your imagination continues to surprise me. You're so inventive, creating names, putting together costumes, designing Lego ships, constantly narrating stories. Now that you're learning to draw recognizable pictures, your creativity is blossoming even more as you color monsters and Pokemon. You and your brother spend hours together inventing and creating and designing and building.

You are still stubborn, still willful and determined. Now that your tantrums are fewer, though, I'm coming to value these qualities in you because it shows you know your own mind. You're full of confidence. You hate being told what to do, and you won't take no for an answer. I keep reminding myself that someday your persistence will be an asset in achieving whatever you set your mind to.

Physically you're still spirited and rambunctious. You run almost everywhere. At the community play classes we went to this year, you tested your physical capabilities and limitations, often threatening to give me a heart attack with your stunts, jumping, leaping, diving on the mats. Any time I asked you to stop doing something dangerous, you'd look at me with that pouty lip and say, "But Mom, it's so much fun!" At playgrounds, other parents watch you with worried eyes as you climb structures they don't think someone your size should be able to climb. You like to tell people that you're small, but you're very strong.

It's been a difficult year for you in some ways, now that your brother is going to school full days. Learning to play without James alongside you, and learning the patience of waiting for that bus to arrive every afternoon have been hard for you. Yet you've done it. You two are still best friends, and you still miss him while he's away, but I think you've grown into yourself more as an individual without James. You can't wait to go to school now yourself.

We've had a good year, Evan. Maybe even our best. You're learning so much: you can write your name, you can read simple words, you've learned to dress yourself and do some simple chores around the house. You hardly nap anymore, and are learning to deal with being overtired. You are naturally very resistant to change, but you are learning to be a little more flexible when it comes to trying new foods. (We're still working on your clothing and shoe issues.)

Also, this morning, after years of thinking you'd never be able to, you learned how to roll your tongue:

Four years old, Evan, but I'm still allowed to call you my baby. I love you.

friday photos: who's that kid? edition

2009-05-29T09:16:00.003-05:00

I think we all know by now how awful my camera is, so let's just ignore the poor quality, shall we?

Big news this week: we upgraded our eldest son to the newest, sleekest model:

Truly, I'd nearly forgotten how beautiful and striking his eyes are underneath all that hair.

My foot is in this photo just for reference. Who knew a seven-year-old could possess SO much hair? We could build ourselves a cat out of that.

For the record, his distaste for nicknames carries over to those poking fun at his new haircut. I was immediately chastised for trying to call him Baldy. He's very happy with his new look, though, reporting on how much quicker it is to take a shower and how differently his bike helmet fits now.

Next up: Evan's been asking for the same haircut, so we might have two little baldies on our hands soon. Just remind me not to call them that to their faces.

midweek recipes

2009-05-26T12:19:00.003-05:00

The bad news: I'm discontinuing my Weekend Recipe feature. (Remember that? How I used to sporadically post recipes once in a while?)

The good news: I'm compiling all of my recipes online, in a separate blog, found here: Heidi's Collected Recipes.

Mostly this is for myself. My previous system for recipes was to write everything down in one of four notebooks used for recipes, or on random post-its and scraps of paper. By putting everything online I'll be eliminating the hassle of carrying notebooks with me when I travel, as well as the time it takes me to flip through any (or all) of those notebooks to find a particular recipe.

I figured that putting all my recipes online would be an easy way to share recipes with those of you who are interested, as well as keep things organized for myself. It's not really a food blog -- I'm not going to describe how to make anything or write any reviews or take any photos. I post the recipes and write a few notes about what works and what doesn't. I'm also using it to post recipes that I haven't tried but would like to when I get the chance, so if you're going to make something I've posted, be sure to check the notes and see if I've ever made it.

I've been in the process of transferring my collection to the new blog for a few months now, so head over and check it out if you're interested!

friday photos: lilac festival edition

2009-05-22T10:28:00.004-05:00

I've been posting a lot of photos on Facebook lately, which made me forget that I haven't been posting any here on the blog. Some of these photos will be familiar to any of you who I'm friends with on Facebook, but shockingly, not everyone I know is on Facebook, so I'm posting them here too, along with a few new photos.

Now that the weather has finally gotten nice, we're spending a lot of time outdoors. Last week Rochester held its annual Lilac Festival. Unfortunately we were only able to go twice, but we managed to see a lot of flowers, take a lot of photos, go on some rides, see a band, and eat too much unhealthy food. Lots of fun, as always.

My boys are not very cooperative when it comes to making them pose nicely in front of flowers and trees -- you'll see it's nearly impossible for them to close their mouths or just plain smile -- but I still managed to get some nice shots of them. As always these days, there are a few in purple-tinted Technicolor.

Happy weekend, everyone!

a conversation

2009-05-08T13:05:00.004-05:00

Scene: Evan and Greg are looking around the farm. They see a group of small wooden crates nearby.

Greg: Look at all those boxes.

Evan: Oh, they're just the right size for me when I die.

Greg: What are you talking about?? You're not going to die!

Evan: You can bury me in them when I die.

Greg: No, I'll just throw you on that compost pile over there.

Evan: No, you have to bury me in a box!

Greg: Why do you want to be buried in a coffin?

Evan: Yeah, a coffin! Because then I can turn into a vampire and eat you!

tractor evan**

2009-05-05T10:57:00.003-05:00

Evan was thrilled to get the chance to sit on a real! live! tractor! on Saturday. Most of the other kids, including James, sat on the tractor for less than a minute before hopping down, but Evan was antsy to get up on that seat, and once he was there, he stayed put for a while, turning the wheel, asking, "Can I touch this?" and "What's this do?" He pushed and pulled every moving part he could find, exploring everywhere.

After a minute or two of playing with the various levers, he stopped and looked up at the girl who was helping show the tractor to the kids. He gave her an exasperated look and exclaimed, "Why isn't it starting?!"

He has the same trait I did as a child: an inability to believe that one's size or age should prevent them from doing anything they want to do.

**Post title suggested by Evan.

weekend photos

2009-05-04T08:24:00.006-05:00

On Saturday we took a trip out to visit the farm that will be growing most of our vegetables for the next 6 months. A couple of months ago we signed up for a CSA -- Community Supported Agriculture, which means that we buy a share of a farm and then get a portion of everything that's grown there during the year. We're excited about knowing exactly where so much of our food will be coming from (bonus: the farm is organic), and it was nice to meet the people who will be growing it. On our visit on Saturday we toured the farm, did some hiking, and shared a potluck meal with other CSA members. It was a gorgeous day, and lots of fun, and tired our children right out.

We started right out with a hike through the fields and woods around the edges of the farm's property. James brought his binoculars for a little bird-watching:

Evan, whose peaceful car-nap was interrupted by our arrival at the farm, was grumpy about having to hike as soon as he woke up:

James did some careful investigating of the ground, looking at bugs and flowers and gopher holes:

Evan perked up eventually. How could anyone be grumpy in the midst of sunny springtime woods, surrounded by hundreds of blooming trilliums?

After our hike we checked out the greenhouses where some of the lettuce we'll be eating later this month is already growing:

Evan enjoyed running through the greenhouse aisles:

We'll have the opportunity to go back to the farm a few times this summer. Part of our membership actually requires working there a couple of times, so I'm sure there will be more farm photos to come throughout the year.

spring break part 2

2009-04-27T09:09:00.005-05:00

This turned out to be the most successful school vacation we've ever had. I wrote about the first part of the week a few days ago, but the last few days of vacation were even more fun.

We spent a morning at the fun library, one that has lots of toys and computer games as well as a big playground outside, but which is a lot further from our house so a trip there is something of a special occasion. James used his own library card for the first time in months, and I was pretty sure one kid wouldn't be able to read the massive pile of Pokemon books he checked out, but he's proving me wrong already.

We spent an afternoon mini-golfing with friends. James had a good time hanging out with some of our adult friends who he looks up to, and I got to spend a little time with a friend visiting from out of town. I think Evan managed to avoid any full-blown tantrums, although he came close a few times. He spent most of his time sulking, pouting, and not playing, but then told me a couple of days later that putt-putt was so! much! fun!

Saturday was totally gorgeous, so we went for a hike, then to the beach for some ice cream. I stole these photos from my friend Leslye who was smart enough to remember to bring her camera and its memory card, unlike a certain scatterbrained blogger.

It was still a bit cold for the beach, but it was nice to be out in the sun and the breeze, sunburns notwithstanding.

I think this is the first vacation we've had where I was actually a little sad to see James go back to school. Not that I don't love spending time with him, but having an extra kid at home for five extra days is usually not much of a vacation for a stay-at-home parent -- just more work. But my kids are old enough and helpful enough now that we can all enjoy ourselves. This is making me hopeful for summer vacation!

propaganda

2009-04-23T12:17:00.005-05:00

Hayao Miyazaki is one of my favorite filmmakers. He makes beautiful, rich animated Japanese children's movies, but I'd watch them even if I didn't have kids, they're so wonderful. One of my favorites of his films is Nausicaa, the story of a young princess who is a warrior, pilot, pacifist, environmentalist heroine. The futuristic world she lives in is one where a toxic jungle flourishes, and enormous insects roam the earth, and Nausicaa attempts to bring harmony between people and their surroundings while trying to prevent a war in her peaceful valley. It's one of my favorite movies of all time (and one of Evan's favorites too).

A few years ago I loaned our DVD to a friend of mine to share with her children, as an alternative to the standard princess movies made in the US. She returned it after a week or two, and told me she thought it was okay, but she thought the environmental messages felt like propaganda and that really bothered her. I always thought the messages were obvious but not over-the-top -- they fit in with the context of the story and the passion of the main character. I wouldn't call them propaganda at all. (Bear in mind that I'm a dirty tree-hugger, though.)

But it occurred to me today that that's how I feel about most mainstream children's movies: propaganda, of the gendered variety. Most kids' movies completely reinforce traditional gender roles, and the narrative of Boy Saves Girl and Boys Have Adventures and Girls Want Romance. And most people, I think, don't question this at all.

Example: My kids and I recently watched Madagascar 2. Not the worst kids' movie I've ever seen -- it was mostly entertaining, not too gross or inappropriate, not objectionable in most ways. Even funny at times, and I don't usually find kids' movies very funny. (Those penguins, though! And the chimps!)

Of the four main characters in the Madagascar movies, there are three males and one female (That ratio is my first problem). The three male characters' storylines involved 1) a zebra's quest for individuality, 2) a lion's quest to prove himself to his father, and 3) a giraffe's quest to become a witch doctor. The female character's storyline? Dating. That's it. It's true that in the end (spoilers!) the female hippo ends up with the male giraffe after he confesses his love and attempts to sacrifice himself to save the other animals, so there is a male with a romance storyline -- but the romance is only a part of his storyline, whereas with the female hippo, it's basically all she gets.

There are so many children's movies where the only female characters function as love interests for the males without really contributing anything of substance to the plot, and it really is starting to seem like propaganda to me. Cultural propaganda that serves to convince little girls (and boys) that girls are there for decoration, ornaments, instead of being actual people who can solve problems and rescue people.

Luckily in the age of the internet it's pretty easy to find films that don't conform to this mold, and there are the occasional big-studio children's films that don't either -- the Pixar movies are generally pretty good about gender, and the recent film Coraline was completely wonderful (as is the book it's based on). And we're currently watching on DVD a television series that's the best kids' media I've ever seen in terms of gender stereotypes and roles (which I'm planning to write about in its own post once we're through the whole series).

It's hard to avoid the propaganda altogether, but I feel like my eyes have been opened to a new way of contradicting those messages now that I've identified them as a form of propaganda.

spring break

2009-04-22T11:42:00.006-05:00

James has his spring break from school this week, and seeing as we have no spare time or money for a real vacation, we are having what trendy people refer to as a "stay-cation" which, if I understand correctly, is a stupid name for staying home and doing special things on a small scale. In the spirit of staycation, I have made my children pancakes on a weekday morning (unheard of!), I let them stay up late watching nature shows, and we took a visit to the children's museum.

I've posted bits and pieces about our children's museum before, but it really is an amazing place. We spent almost six hours there yesterday and Evan did not have a single tantrum, or even any whining, that's how magical it is. No whining! I wish that could have lasted forever.

The last time we were there, winter break, the place was insanely crowded and I nearly lost each of the children at least once in those fast-paced, waist-high crowds. It was completely overwhelming, for me anyway. The kids still loved it. This time I prepared myself for the worst, and gave the kids a strict lecture in the car on the way there about the importance of staying close together and never leaving my sight unless they want to live in their bedroom until college. All of which was totally unnecessary, because for no reason I can think of, the place was practically empty. I think the kids were even more well-behaved with fewer other children there. I still can't get over how good they were.

Some of yesterday's highlights include the carousel:

Evan is scared of the carousel horses that actually move, so he rode a miniature stationary horse who he named Fluffy.

There's a pretend TV studio at the museum, where James gave us the world news:

And then Evan filmed James' new cooking show:

And of course, the Lego table, where the boys spent at least an hour constructing various things, because they obviously don't spend enough time doing that at home.

In honor of Earth Day, the museum had some Earth-related events going on. We watched a play called Basura (Spanish for garbage) starring a woman whose overacting reminded me of Shirley Temple, and a puppet made out of trash. Together they taught us all about recycling, and even sang a recycling song to the tune of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, leaving us with that charming melody embedded in our brains for the rest of the day.

After the show we were invited to make our very own trash projects. And this is where I lost my patience. I'm fine with plays and songs, even those that indoctrinate my children (if the indoctrination is of a type I agree with, of course), as long as my kids are enjoying themselves. And I am a big advocate of recycling and reusing anything and everything we can. But I can not get behind the idea of reusing old materials to create extra junk that's going to sit around my house. That's not reusing anything, that's just reconfiguring the garbage and moving it from the recycling bins into my kids' bedroom.

Naturally my kids were on board with the plan to use someone else's garbage to clutter up our house, and I do have to admit that they came up with some pretty interesting little creatures, as much as I dislike the whole concept of the thing.

James made Big Mouth:

And Evan made Froglet:

Very creative, and almost cute, for something made out of garbage, but honestly I'm just wondering how soon I can smuggle these creatures into the actual trash and recycling bins.

Still, despite that little quibble, the museum was a really fun way to spend a day of vacation -- so fun I wish we had time to go again this week -- and I'm hoping the rest of the week will be as easy as yesterday was.

friday photos: corbett's glen edition

2009-04-17T10:09:00.007-05:00

We recently learned about a local park we'd never been to or even heard of. It's called Corbett's Glen and it's a really unusual little park, full of hills and trails, with a stream running through it, bounded on one side by a railroad track (I think three trains came by in the couple of hours we were there) and almost completely surrounded by the suburbs, to the point that you're occasionally walking alongside people's backyards. There are even a couple of houses entirely within the glen. It has a lot of interesting features, and while we were there last weekend I managed to take a lot of photos.

One of the coolest things about the glen is that one of the entrances to the park takes you through a stone tunnel, under the railroad bridge and beside the stream:

And there's a little waterfall on the other side of the tunnel:

If you ask James and Evan, one of the best possible things to do in this park, or any park really, is to throw rocks in the water.

We found a strange vine structure, which will probably be even cooler looking once we get some green around here:

We climbed a huge hill overlooking the stream. For a city that's so flat, it was surprising to find a large, steep hill perched over the water:

There's some pretty cool terrain in the middle of the park. The path takes you along a sharp dip between two hills:

And there's a long section of the path that splits between the ground, and a long narrow ridge that rises maybe six to eight feet or so above the path:

It's not fully spring yet -- things were still mostly brown -- but we did see some promising signs:

And some cheerful graffiti:

Once we had hiked from one end of the park to the other we stopped for a rest and some playing and goofing around:

And on our way back, along a different, more remote trail, we saw a large, abandoned, rusted machine of some kind. I love finding random things in the woods:

friday photos: scratch-paper-comix edition

2009-04-10T10:42:00.008-05:00

I've been wondering about the quality of James' art education all year, as he brings home one construction paper collage after another, but this week really topped them all. I know that kids love to draw on scratch paper, but this is something Evan regularly does in his preschooler art class. Are public school budgets for art classes really so low that first-graders are limited to construction paper and scratch paper projects?

Despite the questionable usefulness of public school art class, my first-grader has a lot of interesting things going on in his head, and he manages to produce some hilarious stuff. This week's scratch paper drawing is actually one of my favorite things he's made at school.

This is Part 1 of a comic-style story in which several of his favorite characters team up against one formidable foe. Read the full story below the fold.

First, Cyclops was tearing down the city. He smashed a building in half in New York City:

But then Luke Skywalker came and stabbed Cyclops in the foot with a lightsaber:

Then, Cyclops got angry:

He smashed the Empire State Building in half:

Then Indiana Jones came and whipped him in the leg and Luke said, "Thanks for coming to help me!":

Then Curious George stabbed Cyclops in the eye with a banana while he was hanging from a giant tree:

Then Spongebob pulled out one of Cyclops' teeth and made him swallow it:

Then Plankton came and wanted to make friends with Cyclops, but Cyclops burped the tooth out onto Plankton's face:

Then Plankton zapped Cyclops with electricity out of his remote control. Then R2D2 came and zapped Cyclops in the face:

Cyclops smashed everyone except Gary the snail, who had a lightsaber:

Then Gary stabbed Cyclops in the face with a lightsaber and he died:

You may have noticed the "Part 2 Come Soon" at the bottom of the page. If Part 2 does indeed come soon and is as fantastic as Part 1, I may post it as well.

Evan, by the way, thinks this is just about the greatest story ever, and while I'm not entirely on board with all the stabbing, I do think a giant Cyclops destroying New York would need to be stopped, even using violence if necessary.

Let me know if you're interested in seeing more of my kids' artwork, or if this is one of those blind parent moments in which I'm forcing everyone to look at something I think is brilliant and you're all dreading the prospect of having to look at more children's scrawling excuses for art.

evan news

2009-04-08T14:45:00.003-05:00

So the news lately is that we have a preschooler in the house. Evan is officially enrolled in preschool for next year, and we're all excited about it. Well, actually, I don't think James cares much, but the rest of us are excited. Evan's excitement comes mostly from the fact that the new school has a matchbox-type car that resembles the Batmobile, and mine comes mostly from the fact that I will be getting over 7 hours a week all to myself come fall. I'm not sure what Greg is excited about, since he's not getting any extra free time or Batmobile-like cars out of this preschool deal, but he seems happy about it. Maybe he's actually thinking of the social and academic benefits our son will be getting, who knows.

The school is very similar to the preschool James went to, but cheaper, and closer to our house. It's also a cooperative school, where parents serve on the board and volunteer in the classroom, and actually, the physical layout of the school, the varieties of toys in the classroom, and the fact that it's located in a church make for some rather eerie similarities. The teacher seems very friendly and capable, though my first impression of her is that she won't be nearly as awesome as James' teacher was, but that would be hard to do. Still, I think she'll be more than fine.

Evan and I are still going to some community play classes, where he keeps the teacher endlessly amused with his antics and his chattering. He's finally getting to the point where I can sit and watch him play without hovering, without fearing that he will kill himself or someone else by recklessly diving off of something. If he ever stops throwing tantrums, I might be ready to believe he's growing up a little.

friday photos: first hike of the year edition

2009-03-27T12:19:00.004-05:00

Last weekend was just nice enough for us to head out to a local park for the first hike of spring. Things are not very green yet, but the snow is gone and it's warm enough to leave the winter coats at home, so we're happy. We're hoping to get in more hiking and camping this year than last (Last year: no camping at all, and hiking maybe twice? Pathetic.), so we're getting the kids used to trekking as soon as we can. Some photos:

Wide open space to run around in!

James goofing around on a tiny bridge. Curiously, the bed of this little stream was literally covered in seashells.

Evan's short little legs got some assistance from time to time. He seemed to think that if he couldn't see the camera, he couldn't be photographed.

Out in the woods along one of the trails is an old rusted-out car. Our camera doesn't quite capture the robin's-egg blue of what's left of its paint.

This is what happens when I ask for a nice photo of my boys in front of the pond:

The forecast for this weekend is for more nice weather, so we're hoping to get out hiking again. Happy weekend, everyone!

girl stuff

2009-03-23T10:47:00.004-05:00

This morning Evan was, as usual, leafing through the Lego catalog, since he's apparently hoping to become some kind of human Lego encyclopedia. Usually his remarks are predictable: "Cool!" and "Look at this!" and "I want this one for my birthday!" Today, though, I overheard him exclaim, "Yuck! Girl stuff!"

I flipped through the catalog when he was finished, and I found that in the 65-page Lego catalog (which might be longer, actually, but ours battered copy is missing a few pages), two pages are drenched in pink with the proclamation "Just for Girls!" at the top of the page. This pink girly stuff? Horses, puppies, and a house with a family.

By singling out two pages that are "Just for Girls!", the implications are that 1) the "girl" toys are not for boys to play with and 2) the rest of the catalog is not for girls to play with. You may think that's too narrow an interpretation of the subtext, but take a lesson from my three-year-old son. This little boy, who's heard over and over in his young life that there are no "girl toys" and "boy toys", that anyone can play with anything no matter what gender they are, firmly told me that those two pages in the Lego catalog are "girl stuff" and "me and James will definitely never play with girl stuff!" And when I asked him if girls could play with the Star Wars Legos and Bionicles and Indiana Jones, he did not hesitate for a moment to tell me no. So even if that's not the message toy companies are intending to send, that's the message that's being absorbed by young minds.

A similar thing happened a couple of months ago when I took Evan shopping with me for a birthday present for my nephew. We wandered the toy aisles, looking for something good, trying to remember what 1-year-olds play with, when we turned a corner and were visually accosted with a sea of pink and glitter. "No way!" Evan cried. "These are the girl toys!" Girl toys, such as kitchens and horses and dress up clothes.

And, to digress for a moment, what is it with horses being designated as girly? First of all, horses are most often associated with cowboys, who are usually not only men, but like the total masculine ideal, all macho and rugged. And then there's the reality that riding horses and caring for horses is really dirty work, which is typically the exact opposite of what society encourages little girls to do! I've always found that really odd.

Anyway, this is not a new phenomenon by any means -- toys have always been gendered, in some ways -- but it's new to me, trying to teach my sons how to interpret and navigate all of this division. My instinct is to say that there shouldn't even be any division in the first place -- I mean, the Supreme Court decided decades ago that "separate but equal" is never equal. But focusing on the ideal doesn't address the problem that exists in reality.

So I keep on trying. I tell my sons again and again that they can play with anything they want to play with, they can like anything they want to like, that their choices are not limited by manufacturers' colors, and neither should girls' choices be limited that way. I do think they understand that, and believe it -- after all, they play with their toy kitchen all the time, they like to have their nails painted, they play nearly every day with Neighbor Girl, with whom they play everything from Star Wars to hopscotch to soccer to, yes, horses. I do think they both get it.

But there is still something disheartening about hearing your preschool cry, with as much disdain as a three-year-old's voice can carry, "Yuck! Girl stuff!" It's just another reminder that no matter how attentive a parent you are, no matter how progressive or idealistic you are, there is still a whole culture out there that is insidiously trying to undermine every effort you make that falls outside the mainstream.

friday photos: taste of spring edition

2009-03-20T09:09:00.003-05:00

I woke up this morning to a fresh coat of snow over the grass and the rooftops. Earlier this week we had some beautiful sunny days with warm temperatures, but I should have known it wouldn't last. This is Rochester, after all, where it's not unheard of to get a snow or ice storm in April or even May.

But we did get a chance to get outside and enjoy the sunshine, which I'm grateful for. Evan was happy to let me photograph him in action, as he jumped off of rocks over and over and over again.

It looks like there's more nice weather coming this weekend, so maybe spring is finally on its way after all!

an open letter to a fellow mother

2009-03-18T11:40:00.002-05:00

Dear K's Mother,

It's so nice that our sons have befriended each other at the preschool play class, and I'm glad to have someone to talk to about our children, the town we live in, and other mundane small-talk sorts of things.

But what I don't enjoy is your sporadic gender commentary on our kids. I find it odd that you proclaim Evan and your son, K, to be "all boy" as they are tumbling and climbing and jumping on the mats, when our friend's daughter, A, is right alongside them. I find it puzzling that you marvel at how "dainty" A is: "She even walks differently than the boys!" And when A's mother explains that A's style of walking is something she's had physical therapy to try to correct, and you recall that actually, your oldest son walked that way for a while as a toddler but grew out of it, you still have no problem finding another way to differentiate the sexes, zeroing in on the one moment when A lies down on a mat and pretends to go to sleep, cooing that "the princess is sleeping!" Oh, those boys are wild, but the little girl, she is a calm and docile princess. In this minute and this minute only, but that's apparently enough evidence for you.

I find it strange, too, that you and N's mom exchanged laughter over how rowdy Evan, K, and N were being, "such boys!", with their jumping and tumbling, commenting that all of the little girls were staying far away from the mats where our sons were being so rambunctious. It seemed that you two had forgotten the previous half hour in which little girls were climbing right there on the same mats with our boys, and you must not have noticed in the next half hour when girls were again playing with the boys.

I wonder if you would still call Evan "all boy" if you saw the way he likes to snuggle up to me, sucking his thumb? I wonder if you'd hold fast to your notions of how different boys and girls are if you saw my son's bright red toenails? I wonder if you've ever considered that part of the reason boys and girls do behave differently might be because people like you label little girls "princesses" simply for existing? I wonder if your head would have exploded had you known Evan during the phase where he liked to pretend to be Princess Leia?

K's mom, you seem like a pretty nice woman. Maybe if you can stop your gender editorializing, or if I can learn to ignore it, we could be friends. I'm not sure how likely either of those options are, though. It's too bad, because I could use a friend who understands what it's like to raise boys surrounded by so many hyper-masculine cultural stereotypes.

Hugs,
Evan's mom

catching up, again

2009-03-16T13:49:00.003-05:00

So soon after my return to blogging, I disappeared again. But there was actually a reason this time. The last week in our house was full of sickness. I was the only one who didn't get sick at all (knock on wood), so I got to do a lot of caretaking. Poor Evan got to experience vomiting for the first time in his life, and poor James was out of commission for 3 days, an all-time record in his short little life. And poor Greg, who turned 30 on Thursday, had to spend a very subdued birthday with no real festivities to speak of.

Luckily my mom came out to visit over the weekend, enabling me to emerge from the sickhouse for the first time in days, to have lunch with a friend and to go running. All of a sudden there are signs of spring in Rochester, and the mild temperatures and blinding sunshine have encouraged all of us to get out in the fresh air. The weather has made me so happy, despite the illnesses plaguing our home, that I feel as though a weight I didn't even realize I was carrying has been lifted. It's not that I was sad or depressed over the winter (most of the time) but spring has unexpectedly elevated my mood beyond where I though its peak was.

We've had other things going on lately that are probably contributing to my high spirits: Evan got into the class we wanted at the preschool we applied to (another cooperative preschool, which appears to be less hippie-ish than the school James went to, but still looks like it will be a good fit for us), and we joined a CSA. I'm sure both of these items will be covered in great detail on the blog once they've actually started, but for now, suffice it to say that we're all pretty excited about both.

So, as soon as we're all healthy, and provided Mother Nature doesn't surprise us with a late March (or April, or May) snowstorm or ice storm, it looks like we're going to have a pretty good spring.

friday photos: summers in washington edition

2009-03-06T12:10:00.004-05:00

We've had some warm weather here for a few days in a row, and it's making me dream of summer. I really hope we're able to make it to Washington this summer. I've been looking through old photos lately, and I wanted to post a few to remind me of some of the fun we've had there in the summertime.

weekend recipes: this is why you're fat edition

2009-02-28T14:07:00.004-05:00

So have you all seen the website This Is Why You're Fat? It's simply a collection of photos of some of the most unhealthy foods known to humankind, most of which have been deep-fried. It's equal parts fascinating and revolting.

It inspired a weekend recipes post, though, in which I'm going to share a few of the reasons why I'll never be a size six again: foods that are terrifically fattening and unhealthy, but, to me, deliciously irresistible. If you know me at all you'll be unsurprised to learn that they're all chocolaty.

The first is my current obsession, homemade chocolate peanut butter cups. They're pretty easy to make, and incredibly difficult not to eat all in one sitting. Way, way better than Reese's. Oh, but a word of advice: if you think this will be a fun project to do with the kiddos, you're wrong, unless you think chocolate messes and sticky hands are fun.

Next up, homemade peppermint patties, which I made for Christmas gifts this year. Not as easy as the peanut butter cups (figuring out how to coat the patties in chocolate without making a mess was a little tough) but very tasty anyway.

Next we have chocolate truffles, which are very easy to make, fun to decorate, and actually not a bad candy project for kids. I think I've done these for Christmas presents as well. And do I need to mention how delicious they are? I'm sure you can imagine.

Lastly, another recipe that's become a favorite around our house: the best chocolate pudding. I will never make chocolate pudding from a box again. I first made this as the filling for a chocolate cream pie over Thanksgiving, and it was a big hit. Since then I've made it a few times just to eat plain, and it's remained good despite various improvisations on my part (using skim milk, part soy milk, cocoa powder instead of bar chocolate, brown instead of white sugar). I've never used a double boiler to make it, and I've never strained it, and it's still one of the finest desserts I've made.

So there you have it, some of my favoritest unhealthy foods. What are yours?

friday photos: january edition

2009-02-27T10:48:00.004-05:00

It's been a while since I posted any Friday photos. I mentioned before that our camera had been broken for a while, and it also has some crazy issues with the image quality, so I don't actually have very many photos from the last few months that are both in focus and in realistic colors all at once. So there are not many photos here representing January, but at least there are a few good ones.

I made a hat for Evan. It's supposed to be a crab, but he wouldn't let me round out the top, so it's a square crab. Or, alternately, just some kind of square red monster with beady eyes and claws.

We've done a lot of sledding this winter; the weather has been just perfect for it. Greg and James at one of our favorite sledding hills:

James' birthday occurred during my not-posting phase, and while I did manage to write the annual birthday post, I didn't post many photos. So here are a few extra birthday moments.

First, James putting together the Lego ship he got from Grandma Kathy and Papa. (SO! EXCITING!)

With the finished craft (for a moment there I was almost disappointed with myself for not remembering the name, until I remembered that I don't really care), which he put together all by himself:

One of the treats we had instead of a real birthday cake was a birthday sundae. Candlelight is really not adequate to illuminate the staggering amounts of sugar on top of the ice cream in that bowl. It was truly impressive. And naturally he ate every bite.

The photos don't show it well enough, but it was a pretty good month.

catching up

2009-02-25T16:10:00.004-05:00

Looking back through my recent posts, I realized that I haven't written much about our lives in a while, so I thought I'd write a brief (though probably not very brief) post about what we've been doing over the last couple of months.

I'll start with Christmas. I wrote about our ridiculous holiday travel experiences, but then completely neglected to write about our actual vacation. We were at Greg's parents' house for about ten days, and it was wonderful to spend so much time with his family after a full year without seeing most of them. We did all the usual holiday stuff -- played games, watched movies, lazed around, ate a LOT -- but probably the most remarkable thing about the vacation was snow. Snow! In the Pacific Northwest! As someone born and bred in upstate New York, spending seven Christmases in green, snow-free Washington state never felt quite like Christmas. But the Pacific Northwest got hit with some unusual weather this winter (luckily, not affecting our travel on that end at all), and we were able to play in the snow, to build snowmen and have snowball fights and go sledding in a place with real hills.

It's always hard to say goodbye to Greg's family, knowing we won't see them again for a long time, but this year we're hoping to visit again in the summer, for the first time in three years, thanks to the travel vouchers and frequent flier miles the airline gave us after all the trouble we had. I didn't realize how long it had been since we'd been to Washington in the summer until the boys and I were watching an episode of Blue Planet about tidal areas, and James, when asked, told me he can't remember exploring tide pools in Washington. I had to stop and think that the last time we were there, he was four, so he probably wouldn't remember much about it. Hopefully that will change this summer.

I say hopefully, because the biggest thing going on with us lately is that Greg is in the final stages of writing his dissertation, really pushing to finish it within a month or two, so by the time summer rolls around, hopefully Dr. Schmidt will be employed. And hopefully whoever employs him will be willing to give him a little vacation time over the summer. We could all use a vacation -- with Greg trying to finish, he's working ridiculously long hours, and we don't see him nearly enough. I've been feeling lonely and overworked on the domestic front, and the boys are even losing out on weekend playtime since Greg is going in to work most Sundays. To give you an idea of how things are, today is Wednesday and James hasn't seen Greg since Sunday. We'll all be glad when graduate school is over and done with.

James is still enjoying first grade, as much as he can enjoy doing a bunch of work that's too easy for him. He brought home another perfect report card a couple of weeks ago. Evan and I are going to more community classes for preschoolers, and we're looking into real preschool for the fall. Last week was winter break, in which the boys and I spent waaaay too much quality time together, which made me incredibly grateful for public schools and birth control.

There's not much else to tell -- we're all healthy (most of the time), we're all content. Pretty boring sometimes, but nothing to complain about.

oh, right, i have a blog.

2009-02-24T11:33:00.004-05:00

Hello, blog readers. You may not have noticed, but I haven't blogged in a while. I don't really have a good reason or even a decent excuse for not blogging. When I tried to pull the "my camera is broken" excuse on my sister, she was quick to point out that words can actually be posted on a blog without accompanying photos. And now that Greg has fixed the camera, I can't even use that weak excuse anymore.

So I guess it's back to blogging, if I can remember how to do this. I'll ease back into it by posting a video. Evan has been composing adorable zombie songs all morning, so I'll share the best one I managed to catch on video.

That's all for now, but I'm hoping to return to regular blogging, so I'll be back soon!

2008 in books

2009-01-18T12:23:00.002-05:00

Time for my annual book post! I managed to read a lot of books in 2008, and any of you who are my friends on Goodreads already know what I read and liked last year, but I like listing them all together and choosing my favorites and least favorites of the year.

I want to mention a couple of things before I get to the list itself. First, for the first time ever, I'm abandoning my literary pretensions. I read some good serious literary novels, and some heavy non-fiction books, but I also read a lot of popular fiction, the kind of stuff I'd usually consider trashy. And I've reached a point in my life where I'm not embarrassed by that.

Also, for the first time ever, I'm listing the children's books, young adult books, and graphic novels I've read. I'm not going to be embarrassed about those anymore, either. I'm being selective about the children's books, sticking to those I sought out for my kids to read rather than everything I read with the children, or that's pretty much all this list would be.

Below the fold, the entire list, with some commentary and awards at the end.

1. Persuasion by Jane Austen
2. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
3. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
4. The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
5. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
6. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
7. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
8. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
9. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
10. Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
11. Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay
12. The Sisters Grimm, Book 1: The Fairy Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley
13. The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
14. The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
15. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
16. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
17. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
18. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by AJ JAcobs
19. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach
20. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
21. The Sisters Grimm, Book 2: The Unusual Suspects by Michael Buckley
22. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
23. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
24. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
25. Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
26. Mirror Mirror: A Novel by Gregory Maguire
27. Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan
28. The Sisters Grimm, Book 3: The Problem Child by Michael Buckley
29. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
30. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
31. Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi
32. Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
33. The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
34. The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander
35. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
36. Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander
37. The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
38. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
39. Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
40. The Well of Lost Plots Jasper Fforde
41. Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde
42. First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
43. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
44. Ghosts in the House by Kazuno Kohara
45. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
46. The Sister Grimm, Book 4: Once Up on a Crime by Michael Buckley

Best Underrated Jane Austen Novel: Last year I set a goal to read all of Jane Austen's books. I nearly succeeded: I read 5 in 2008 and am currently working on the sixth. I did so much Austen over the last year that I'm giving her her own category, and because Pride and Prejudice is universally acknowledged to be her best novel, I'm awarding a prize to the best Austen novel that isn't P&P. In my opinion, that's Persuasion, narrowly beating out Sense and Sensibility.

Best Adult Fiction: In the Time of the Butterflies wins this category easily. It's a beautifully written novel about four sisters and their involvement in political events in the Dominican Republic in the 1960s. Based on real people and events, but fictionalized by Alvarez in a moving, engrossing way.

Worst Fiction: Mirror Mirror. Maguire could have stopped with Wicked and been in my good graces forever. Nothing else I've read by him has been nearly as good, and this was the worst yet. It barely kept my interest, and annoyed me in many ways that I can no longer recall because there are far better uses for my brain cells than to remember this completely blah, lackluster book.

Best Short Stories: Smoke and Mirrors. I'm adding this category despite the fact that I only read one short story collection in its entirety last year, mostly because I want to point out that Gaiman's story Snow, Glass, Apples is a far better retelling of the Snow White tale than Maguire's book. Some stories in this collection are only so-so, but Gaiman's plays on fairy tales and other works of literature are really fun to read, and I think the short story is his best medium, so it deserves a mention.

Best Adult Fiction Series: Nominees, for those who aren't sure which books above are part of a series, are Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series (on which the TV show was based), Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series (on which the current film, and the national phenomenon of teen girl hysteria are based), and Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series (on which, sadly, nothing is based, to my knowledge). Fforde wins, because he's the best writer of the bunch, and tells the most original and clever stories of three. The Thursday Next novels blend sci-fi, mystery and literary appreciation in such a fun way, it was hard for me to put any of these books down and I zipped through them all.

Worst Fiction Series: Dexter. It's pretty much unheard of that I would recommend a TV or film version of a story over the print version, but the television show has so much more detail, character development, better side plots, better pacing, better writing, that if you're at all interested in the story of the serial killer who kills only other serial killers, I really recommend going with the show and skipping the books. Season one follows the plot of the first book, but successive seasons abandon the books for their own plots, and with good reason. We just finished watching the third season of the show, and it was excellent, but I was hardly able to even finish the third book, it was so bad.

Best Guilty-Pleasure Fiction: The Twilight series. These books are really easy to make fun of, and there is a lot to criticize from a literary perspective in terms of the writing style and quality, the characters, the plot, the too-simple resolution of a lot of plot elements... basically everything, but these books are SO addictive. It's irritating how easily they suck you in, yet I devoured them.

Best Historical Non-fiction: A tie between Team of Rivals and We Wish To Inform You... Team of Rivals took me longer to read than anything I've ever read in my life (about 8 months, on and off) both because it's lengthy, and because it's dense and requires a lot of attention. It is a really thorough portrait of the Lincoln administration, very well-written. We Wish To Inform You... also took me a while to read, though this was entirely due to subject matter. It's the story of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and it's heartbreaking and devastating to read, but it's a story more people should know about.

Best Historical Non-fiction, Runner-up: The Wordy Shipmates, which is not Vowell's best book (that would be Assassination Vacation) but is still a good read. It's a brief history of the Puritans, focusing on their appreciation of education, and Vowell writes in a really accessible, humorous style.

Best Science/Nature Non-fiction: Mary Roach's popular science books are fun to read, but I'm giving this award to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle because Kingsolver's memoir of the year her family spent producing as much of their own food as possible, while contrasting traditional farming with the industrial farming methods used to produce most of the food in the US, was both educational and inspiring. Plus, it has recipes, some of which are delicious.

Best Graphic Novel: Persepolis, both volumes. Looking strictly at artwork I might have chosen Pride of Baghdad, which is much more visually rich and interesting, but Persepolis has a far better, more developed story. It's a memoir of Satrapi's childhood in Iran during the revolution of the '70s and '80s, so her personal story is told within the context of larger political events. They're quick to read, but a lot of depth is packed into simple illustrations and text.

Best Children's Book: Ghosts in the House. This book is so cute. I love the orange, black and white art, and the story is simple and cute. Evan, who loves anything Halloween-themed, adores this book. If you go to the Amazon link I posted above, click on the photo to look inside the book, and click on "Surprise Me" to see some random pages and get an idea of the style.

Best Children's Books, Runners-up: And Tango Makes Three is a sweet story I've written about before. The Paper Bag Princess is great; it's a reversal of the typical story of a prince saving a princess from a dragon. And though they're not on the list, I wanted to mention the picture books of Kevin Henkes and Brian Lies, which we've been reading lately and which are all wonderful books for preschool aged kids.

Best Young Adult Fiction: Cornelia Funke's books deserve mention, because she is a wonderful author (she also writes some great picture books for preschool aged kids, which usually feature little-girl heroines) but my favorite was The Willoughbys, a parody of older children's novels featuring genius orphans outwitting the dim adults who wish to do them harm, which were the sorts of books I loved to read as a kid. Quick and funny.

Best Children's Fiction Series: Tie between Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, and Michael Buckley's Sisters Grimm. The Prydain books are wonderful fantasy adventure stories, reminiscent at times of The Lord of the Rings, featuring a headstrong hero who learns, via his friends and his adventures, all about friendship and bravery and right and wrong. The Sisters Grimm books are incredibly clever and often funny (I read these with James and he adores them; thinks they're hilarious and great fun). They're about two sisters who are the descendants of the Brothers Grimm, and who live in a community secretly populated by familiar characters from fairy tales, nursery rhymes and beloved works of literature (including Alice in Wonderland, and even Shakespeare). They're full of mystery and adventure. We're taking a break at the moment because they've grown a little mature for a 7-year-old as the series has progressed, but we will certainly read the remaining books before too long.

And that's it! If you want to know more about any of the books I didn't mention specifically in the awards, you can click on the Goodreads box in my sidebar to go to my profile and check out all my book ratings.

What have you read lately? Got any recommendations?

evanisms

2009-01-11T12:03:00.004-05:00

Evan says so many funny, ridiculous, and unexpected things that I can't help but share them. He constantly makes me laugh.

A few days ago we were playing a game where he was sitting on my lap, and I was wiggling my legs, throwing off his balance, and saying, "Oh no! Don't fall!" Evan slid off my lap and landed on the floor on his feet. He stood up, looked down and said, "Well. It's a good thing I have legs."

This morning we were playing a high-five game. You know, up high, down low, in the middle (pull your hand away), too slow! Evan likes to say "Too slow, Joe!" at the end, but this morning I said, "I'm not Joe. You're not Joe." So the next time around I try to slap in the middle and he exclaims, "Too slow, Hobo!"

Lately he's been saying "No way, Jose!" all the time. A day or two again I said something to him and he thought it fitting to reply, "No thanks, Ho-zanks!"

He's recently learned the word privacy. Not the definition, though. He will insist on having privacy in the bathroom... right up until he needs someone to come wipe him up. Nor does a need for privacy prevent him from parading around naked after a bath.

When he's surprised, Evan will exclaim in an incredulous tone, "What the?!?" Sometimes he adds on a little something: "What the holy cow?!?" is common, and we've also heard "What the holy mustache?!?"

And he still has a flair for the melodramatic. It's pretty common in our house, once the kids are bed, to hear little footsteps running around upstairs, and for Greg or me to yell up the stairs, "Back in bed!" A couple of nights ago Greg was putting Evan to bed and told him to stay in bed so we wouldn't have to yell at him. Evan burst into tears, crying, "You don't love me anymore??"

He keeps us laughing, alright.

happy birthday to james!

2009-01-08T14:07:00.003-05:00

Dear James,

You're seven years old today. Seven years old! It hardly seems possible. But it's true; you're growing up. Things are changing in your world. You're slowly growing away from being a little boy, and starting to make your way to adolescence.

7 mini Dutch babies for a 7-year-old boy

Physically, you continue to grow up and up and up. Just last week we sent you to get ready for bed and you returned, totally oblivious, wearing your little brother's pajamas. Sure, they were short in the arms and legs, but they still fit you, you insisted. It wasn't until I really looked at the photo above, taken this morning, that I realized your face is growing up too. I think it's because your grandmother just trimmed your hair to allow us to see your face properly for the first time in months. Now, looking at that photo, I can see that all traces of chubby babyfat cheeks are gone. I don't know how this is possible when you're already out-eating me much of the time now.

You still look exactly like your dad, and you behave like him more and more as you grow older. You like to tease, tell jokes, play pranks. You are agreeable and cooperative. Anger and moodiness can often be cleared away in a matter of minutes. You're as curious and inquisitive as ever, always wanting to know how and why. Thank goodness your dad is a scientist with endless patience. He's been teaching you multiplication as well as some scientific principles that I would have expected to be too advanced for a first-grader, but you've proven me wrong.

Old age hasn't yet diminished your cheerfulness or optimism. When we were stuck in airports for so many hours over the holidays, you were the optimist. You were sure, every time, that we'd be on the next flight, that any minute now we'd be boarding an airplane. You played games with your brother, you befriended other kids waiting in the airport, you made your own fun and continued to enjoy yourself and boost our spirits when your dad and I threatened to get too disgruntled. You were tired, but you kept going, so excited about going to see Grandma and Papa for Christmas. When we left the airport after that first day of unsuccessful travel attempts, you were so surprised and disappointed that it hadn't happened. It was heartbreaking.

I feel like we don't see you much anymore these days -- you're at school all day long, and when you get home, most days you play outside until sunset. We get to see you for dinner and bedtime, with a little play in between, sometimes a bath, some homework,some chores, some reading. Your days are full and busy, but you don't seem to miss us much. I don't notice it most of the time either, how little time we're really spending together, until weekends or vacations when I get to spend entire days in your company and I'm reminded of how much fun it is to play games, to cook, to read, to snuggle with you.

I love you, darling boy, my sweet baby James. Happy, happy birthday.

surviving a vacation at home

2008-12-22T09:29:00.003-05:00

Today is Day Three that we were not supposed to be at home. Remember that 6am flight Monday morning we were supposed to be on? Canceled yesterday at noon. Waking up this morning to mountains of snow and more coming down, I can understand why. Hopefully the weather will be clear enough to fly us out tomorrow. Otherwise we might miss Christmas, and here's how we feel about that:

(Those are sad faces, if it's not obvious.)

We haven't been home for Christmas since before James was born, and we haven't had this much snow in a couple of years, so we are trying to make the most of our unintended vacation and have as much fun as we can.

On Saturday we went sledding, and while we have no photos of the actual sledding, we have happy smiles of kids playing in the snow:

(I think we need a new camera; the color quality of our photos is going further and further downhill.)

When not playing outside, my kids have been spending a lot of time with video games. They're still hooked on Spore, and they got Lego Batman from my sister and her husband for Christmas, so it's hard to tear them away sometimes. Ordinarily I try to keep the video games to a minimum, but really, I can't bring myself to care lately. We're supposed to be with their grandparents right now. If video games make them a little less sad about that, so be it.

I've been baking a lot, because what's Christmas without baking? So we have pumpkin muffins and granola bars and peanut butter cups, and an apple strudel for breakfast this morning. The snow has been heavy enough to intimidate us from going to the grocery store (that and the thought of all the terrible drivers on the road) but it's amazing what you can make from odds and ends in the cupboards and the freezer.

The best, though, is the gingerbread house my friend Sara brought over yesterday. Here's what it's supposed to look like, per the package:

And here's how ours turned out:

When we opened the package, we found a lot of broken pieces that had to be repaired with frosting. Most of the little figures were broken as well, though the frosting couldn't glue them back together. So our happy holiday gingerbread house evolved into a sort of Christmas House of Horrors. The hunchback was the perpetrator (at least we think he/she/it is a hunchback -- a little hard to tell with these candy people): the little boy is strung up on the side of the house, and the little girl has been decapitated in the front yard. We contributed to the depravity by committing cannibalism once the house was finished.

Here's a close-up of the poor little girl.

So that's how we're filling our vacation days. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be off to the west coast, and hopefully we'll make it in time for Christmas. I'll keep you all updated.

hahaha, did i say hiatus?

2008-12-20T12:48:00.002-05:00

...because the Fates had other plans for us. Or maybe I should say Northwest Airlines had other plans. Alternate post title: air travel sucks, especially when there's no travel involved.

Today finds me at home with two wide-open days to fill, so I thought I'd use my new-found wealth of free time to blog about how I got all this extra time. Any of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook may have read my disgruntled updates yesterday, so now you can get the full story. I'll try to keep it brief, but no promises, because I might get ranty. Read the whole saga below the fold:

Friday, Dec. 19

3:30am: Alarm clock jolts us out of sleep

3:55am: Taxi arrives to take us to the airport

4:05am: Standing in line at Northwest check-in counter

4:20am: NW employees begin to arrive

4:30am: Check-in counter opens and we proceed to check in and check 3 large suitcases

5:00am: Checked in and through security, waiting at the gate

5:30am: Boarding begins for 6am flight to Detroit

6:00am: Airplane backs out of the gate to prepare for flight

Around this time, our pilot makes an announcement: the weather in Detroit isn't looking so good, and we may have to reroute to either Pittsburgh or Minneapolis. We cross our fingers for Minneapolis, since that's our layover between Detroit and Seattle. They are adding extra fuel to the plane in case we are rerouted.

5-10 minutes later, our pilot makes another announcement: the extra fuel has pushed our airplane over the weight limit and they are looking for nine volunteers to get off the plane. No one moves. Plane returns to the gate.

5 or so minutes later, flight crew makes an announcement: NW has another plane headed directly to Minneapolis, and anyone who gets off our plane can be rebooked on the Minneapolis flight. Greg goes to the front of the plane to speak to the NW representative.

Greg returns to me and the kids and says we can get off and go straight to Minneapolis on another flight instead of going through Detroit. We exit the plane with 5 other passengers who have the same plan.

7:00am: We are told at the ticket counter that the NW flight to Minneapolis that was used to lure us off the plane has no extra seats. We are issued travel vouchers and meal vouchers and rebooked on a 12:15pm flight to Detroit.

7:30am: Muffins, bagels and coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, courtesy of NW meal vouchers.

8:30am - 11am: We set up camp next to the children's play area. Kids run and jump and play while Greg and I amuse ourselves with the laptop and the Nintendo DS.

11am-ish: Head back to gate to check status of our new flight. Flight is delayed. Snow has started falling in earnest.

12pm-ish: Find a quiet, unoccupied gate to settle in and wait for flight status updates.

1pm-ish: Lunch at Subway courtesy of NW meal vouchers.

2pm - 5pm: Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Repeated flight delays. We are told that a flight headed to Rochester was rerouted to Syracuse, and our flight is dependent on that plane getting to Rochester from Syracuse. We also learn during this time period that our luggage has arrived in Seattle. Thankfully our toothbrushes are in our carry-on bags.

5:00pm: Another Detroit flight begins boarding. There are extra seats on this flight but the line of standby passengers is too long for us to get on board. At this point our 12:15pm flight is expected to leave at 7pm.

5:30pm: Detroit flight that has just boarded is now deboarding. I mention this because for the second time in one day, a NW flight is over the weight limit and passengers are asked to leave. This time, however, all passengers must exit the plane because one of the random passengers who was asked to get off refused and argued, and caused this flight to miss its window of opportunity to take off.

6:00pm: The same flight to Detroit begins reboarding.

6:30pm: The flight to Detroit is boarded, but by this time, so many passengers have missed their connecting flights and rebooked new flights for other days that there are 8 available seats.

Around this time, the flight crew is trying to determine how many more people they can take while staying within the weight limits. A pilot approaches us and asks if we are headed to Detroit; when we say yes he tells us he'd like to get us on the plane because our children would help keep the plane under the weight limit.

Then this pilot disappears and is never seen again.

The NW agent at the check-in counter begins letting standby passengers onto the flight. Greg inquires at the counter and we are told we can't get on this flight. The woman tells us that there is some feature of their computer system that won't allow her to change us to this flight, despite the fact that it's going to our destination and there are seats available, because we are still booked on the 12:15pm flight.

7:00pm: Flight to Detroit that we were not allowed to change to takes off. We are told that the plane we are waiting for from Syracuse is on its way and is expected to arrive at 7:30pm. We buy snacks to wait, still using vouchers. At least they were generous about that.

7:30pm: NW agent tells us that the plane from Syracuse is no longer listed as in the air, and our flight time has been moved back to 8:30pm. The kids are starting to get stir-crazy and continually ask when we're getting on the plane to go see Grandma and Papa.

8:00pm: At this point there are eight people left waiting: the four of us, a college student, and a couple with a 17-month old baby. We are all trying to get to Detroit to transfer on to other locations. I send NW a complaint through their website, detailing our saga.

8:30pm: We are informed that the plane we've been waiting for for over 8 hours has had a mechanical issue and our flight is canceled. We are all in tears of exhaustion, frustration and disappointment by this point.

9:00pm: We are rebooked for a Monday morning flight, 6am. We are told that there are no flights available on Saturday, and there is only one flight on Sunday, but it is already overbooked by 15 people, and there is another winter storm due on Sunday anyway. We are given additional travel vouchers. Evan asks if we're getting on the airplane now and I laugh and cry at the same time.

9:30pm: A friend picks us up at the airport to take us home.

10:00pm: We watch A Muppet Family Christmas while I make pasta for my starving children, who are too tired to eat more than a few bites despite how hungry they have been for the last couple of hours.

10:45pm: My children fall asleep, one on the couch and the other on the floor, and I carry them to bed.

11:00pm: Greg phones NW's Baggage Services to find out what is going to happen to our luggage. The employee he speaks with at first argues that our luggage can't be in Seattle, because it should have been taken off the flight when we got off the plane, despite the fact that more than one NW agent told us over the course of the day that our luggage was in Seattle. Then the customer service rep tells Greg that he will have to return to our airport to file a claim with the NW baggage office there. Greg, bless his little heart, argues with the woman for 5 minutes before she relents and checks the damn computer to find that yes, our bags are in Seattle and we can pick them up when we arrive there. Which will hopefully be on Monday.

Today we woke up late to a beautiful day, sunny, with fluffy white snow everywhere. We were dismayed to remember that our kids' boots and snow clothes are in our luggage, but luckily I found some slightly outgrown and some slightly too big items in the basement that will suffice for going sledding today. We have enough canned and frozen food to save us from having to go grocery shopping. We are planning to enjoy our extra two days of vacation even if we're not where we wish we were. We're just hoping that the snow that's expected on Sunday both here and in Seattle will be over by Monday morning so we can just get to our family for Christmas, damn it.

If you've made it to the end of this, thanks for indulging my self-pitying rant. I would advise you to steer clear of Northwest Airlines, but honestly, I don't trust that the others are that much better. The quality of our experiences with air travel has been steadily worsening over the last few years, regardless of which airline we're on. And they don't have to care, because we don't really have any choice.

Sigh. Hope everyone out there is having a better time than we are. And hopefully I won't have anything to blog about any time soon.

hiatus

2008-12-17T14:12:00.003-05:00

Thought I should drop in on the ol' blog to say that I've been way too busy with holiday stuff (and a little bit busy with practicing my laziness) to think about writing any blog posts, and in two days we're leaving for a two-week vacation at Greg's parents' house. I expect that once we're there I'll still be busy with holiday stuff, as well as catching up with the family and playing Rock Band, to do any posting any time soon, so consider the Jungle to be on temporary hiatus.

I don't know whether I've officially mentioned it here, but I'm on Twitter now (see sidebar). I will probably Twitter while I'm away, since that doesn't require much time or effort or thought, so you can still check in here for my Twitter mini-updates, or follow me on the Twitter site if you're eager to know how lazy and/or indulgent I'm being over the holidays.

I hope the next couple of weeks are fun and happy and healthy for everyone, and I'll see you back here in January!

friday photos: thanksgiving edition

2008-12-05T12:13:00.003-05:00

I forgot to bring my camera to my mom's house for Thanksgiving, so I'm stealing some of my sister's photos to post. I spent a lot of time hogging her sweet camera, so it's pretty likely that I took these photos anyway. These are, by the way, photos of three of the things I was most thankful for over our Thanksgiving vacation.

James has been experimenting with a ponytail lately, and this is his samurai impression:

Those of you who know Greg will not be surprised when I say that he was the instigator of the frosting war paint:

Amazing turkey cupcakes that my sister and her husband bought.

Okay, so I'm kidding about cupcakes being one of the top three things I'm thankful for, but seriously, look at the detail on that frosting. That entire thing is edible, and extremely rich and delicious. And we all know that Thanksgiving is about cramming yourself full of desserts that singularly exceed your recommended daily intake of calories. Besides, it's not as easy to take photos of the things I'm truly thankful for: love, good health, prosperity, safe travels, family togetherness, and all that good intangible stuff.

bankrupting ourselves with holiday travel

2008-12-04T13:23:00.003-05:00

Okay, I mentioned in my last post that I wasn't going to complain about airfare prices, among other things, but this is less of a complaining post and more of a startled observation. With math.

Get Rich Slowly linked to an interesting site yesterday: Cost To Drive. You put in your starting point, destination, and what type of car you're driving, and it calculates your estimated fuel costs. The site finds the lowest prices for gas along the way, so it's really more of a minimum cost, but it's still fun to play with.

So this morning, as I was playing with the site, I dusted off the seldom-used math part of my brain and did some additional calculations. Because the site uses the lowest prices, I rounded up (waaaay up) to reflect potential fluctuations and the fact that one might not always find the lowest-priced gas around. I learned that, even with my rounding, our plane tickets for Christmas break cost more than five times the price of fuel for a drive across the country and back.

Then I figured that if we were to drive from New York to Washington, even if we were to stay in decent hotels and eat out, we could easily do the round trip for less than half of the price of our plane tickets. By driving, we save ourselves at least 4 days of travel (assuming that somehow we'd be able to drive pretty much non-stop), which means that we are spending at least $250 a day for those four extra days with Greg's family. Ouch. Not that they're not worth that, of course, but still. Ouch.

three and a half

2008-12-03T10:06:00.007-05:00

I have been feeling, shall we say, rather negative lately. I have been tempted to write posts complaining about the price of airfare, or the insurance annoyances we're having lately, or about James' various illnesses, but I thought I'd make an effort to be more positive and write a post instead about Evan, who is nearing 3 and a half years old, which is, despite its challenges, an endlessly amusing age for a child to be.

Evan talks pretty much all the time, narrating everything, and I've started writing down some of the funnier things he says. There are basically two categories of Evan-speak: the definitions, and the narration.

Some recent Evan definitions:

"Mom, remember when Dad’s taco was all fludged over? Fludged means that something’s dirty or yucky."

Evan: My nose hurts.
Me: What did you do to your nose?
Evan: Maybe I skicked it.
Me: What does “skicked” mean?
Evan: It means you hurt your nose, or maybe bonked it on a door.
Me: Did you bonk your nose on a door?
Evan: No.

Evan: I’m gonna whip-notize you. (while swinging his “whip” [i.e. the belt of his bathrobe] around.)
Me: Hypnotize me?
Evan: No, WHIPnotize.
Me: What does that mean?
Evan: It means someone is going to put a banana on your head. Or a fish.

Me: Who's hitting my stomach?
Evan: Oh, I thought that was a hitterang.
Me: A hitterang?
Evan: A hitterang means something you can hit.

And some classic narration:

[While jumping on the bed and practicing his moves in front of the mirror] "You know what this attack is called? Punch! Hit! Chop! I do the dance of punch! Hit! Chop! I do the dance about punch! Hit! Chop! And then I jump and then I punch! Hit! Chop! Jump! Hop! Punch! Hit! Chop! Whack! Jump!"

"Mmm. Goody. When I say goody, that means I like this dinner. Mmm, goody. Hot hot! When I say hot hot, that means I need a drink. Hot hot! [takes a drink] Soupy! When I take a drink I say soupy! [drinks] Soupy!"

He still has his moments as far as tantrums go, but he makes me laugh at least twice as often as he makes me cry, so I'll take it.

friday photos: first grade update edition

2008-11-21T10:12:00.003-05:00

Last week we had James' parent-teacher conference. We suspected that the conference, like all previous conferences with James' teachers, would be fine, because he is bright and, with the occasional exception of talking too much, generally well-behaved.

Also, I had heard a funny story from our neighbor a week or two earlier after his conference with his daughter's teacher. Neighbor Girl and James are in different classes this year, but still play together every day after school. NG's teacher was asking NG's dad about what NG does outside of school, and NG's dad mentioned that NG plays with her neighbor James a lot. NG's teacher said, "Oh, you mean Smart James from the other class?"

So, knowing that other teachers in the school know our son as "Smart James" had us feeling pretty relaxed going into this conference.

We love James' teacher this year. Mrs. M. is friendly, enthusiastic and experienced, and best of all, she loves James to pieces and couldn't say enough about how well he is doing in school. The only issue that came up at the conference was when we told Mrs. M. that James thinks school is too easy and he would love to have more challenging work (something he's told us on a regular basis since school began this year). Luckily Mrs. M. realizes how bright James is, and that he could benefit from more challenging work, but unfortunately it seems she has little flexibility to provide him with more challenges. Because of the requirements and structure of the first-grade routine, Mrs. M. doesn't have time to work individually with James on advanced material. And it certainly wouldn't be fair to ask her to put in extra work for a kid who's already excelling when she probably has her hands full trying to keep some of the other kids up to speed with regular class work.

So we're trying to spend some extra time working with James at home. Last weekend I bought him a 320-page workbook of second grade skills, which he is currently flying through with little trouble. He is perfectly content to sit down and fill out worksheet after worksheet of spelling and math problems. Good practice for his handwriting, too. And we're currently reading Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, which James is enjoying just as much as I did at his age.

I never realized when James started school that it would be so much more work for us, but the older he gets, the more fun we are all having.

Oh, and a word on Evan: I discovered yesterday that he can recognize the numbers 1-9, when I thought he didn't know any of them. Smart kids!

friday photos: end of autumn edition

2008-11-07T08:37:00.003-05:00

One of the nice things about renting is that you don't have to do any yardwork, but you do get to enjoy the fruits of the maintenance crew's labor. They recently took a leafblower to some areas of the complex, and for about a week my kids have been eying a particularly enormous pile of leaves near the end of our street.

We've had gorgeous weather this week, but both Greg and I have been fighting off some kind of vague undefinable illness for a few days, so it wasn't until yesterday that I felt ambitious enough to actually take the kids to the end of the street to play in the leaves.

And this leaf pile, oh my gosh, the kids were tunneling through it, they were swimming in it, they were at times completely buried and lost from sight. They had an absolute blast. And good thing, too, because this morning some workers from the town came by and took away all those leaves.

election day

2008-11-04T10:44:00.003-05:00

Happy Election Day! I hope you're all going out to vote today.

James has the day off of school today, so after breakfast all four of us headed down to our town hall to vote. No voter drama here -- there was one couple ahead of us in line, voting went off without a hitch, and the poll workers gave my kids their own "I Voted Today" stickers. Then we headed to Starbucks for our free coffee (we don't have a Ben & Jerry's near us, and I didn't know about Krispy Kreme in time or else my children would have been in a sugar coma before lunchtime).

I have to say, regardless of political affiliations or opinions, Election Day is so exciting to me. It was so nice waiting in Starbucks and seeing almost every other person wearing wearing an "I Voted Today" sticker, and conversing with fellow voters. Evan finally changed his mind about McCain and was chattering happily about Obama, to the delight of other customers. We overheard one pair of customers telling another pair to make sure they vote today, because their employers have to give them time to vote.

I've been seeing a lot of inspirational stories in the news lately, about people waiting in line for up to six hours to vote early, about elderly people registering to vote for the first time in their lives because of this election. I know several people who've donated their time to help campaign during this election. James came home from school yesterday shouting excitedly that his school had elected Obama.

Election fever, it's everywhere.

And I have heard stories about voter fraud, about sneaky measures to impede people's right to vote or to disenfranchise people, rumors that the election will be stolen by one side or the other. Obviously there are some problems with our voting system. But to see people's hope and optimism and excitement and patriotism in the face of these challenges is just so heart-warming to me. I feel so happy to be an American today, to be able to be part of this process, to voice my opinion, to be part of something so much bigger than myself.

Please vote today. And feel free to share any interesting election day stories!

happy belated halloween

2008-11-02T16:25:00.001-05:00

...from your two favorite junior superheroes:

friday photos: halloween edition

2008-10-31T14:08:00.004-05:00

No photos yet of the kids in costume, but we've been getting in the Halloween spirit in other ways.

Chocolate Mice:

(Not a great photo, I know, but I swear to you those delicious little mice were impossible to photograph!)

Spider Deviled Eggs:

I made some nerdy Halloween decorations:

And another jack o'lantern masterpiece from Greg: a skeleton/snowman jack o'lantern.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

i have failed as a parent.

2008-10-29T19:18:00.001-05:00

Somebody's been reading right-wing propoganda behind my back:

Evan: I'm voting for McCain!
Me: Oh? Why are you voting for McCain?
Evan: Because he has a better plan.
Me: Really? What's his plan?
Evan: To save the world. And Obama's plan is to destroy the world.

the political post

2008-10-20T08:01:00.004-05:00

I don't write much about politics on my blog. I don't keep my views a secret -- I have my tagline and my "Obama Mama" button (thanks, Jessica!) in plain view on the front page -- but I don't often write about it, in part because most people who read my blog already know or can guess my views, in part because I get really worked up about certain political issues and, for the sake of my mental health, it's best to avoid getting into them too frequently, and in part because I would mostly be preaching to the choir here.

But I can't refrain from doing just one political post this year. There are a lot of things I could complain about, in regards to both presidential candidates, but there is one issue that's been coming up a lot recently, in the debates, in speeches, in election ads, that is driving me crazy: taxes, especially as they relate to economic class.

McCain and Palin have spent a lot of time criticizing Obama's tax plan, arguing (falsely) that it will hurt Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber and anyone else named Joe in the middle class. Palin has mocked Biden for saying in his campaign speeches that it is an act of patriotism to pay taxes. McCain has, since the last debate, spent a lot of time deriding Obama's plan to "spread the wealth around." They're hinting that an Obama/Biden administration is the first step on the path that will lead the US to socialism.** Under a McCain/Palin administration, however, good old free-market capitalism will ensure that everyone will make as much money as they possibly can, and hold on to every last cent. No need to share your hard-earned money with any free-loading poor people, or those soulless bloodsuckers in Congress! Sounds nice in theory, doesn't it?

My opinion on taxes is pretty well summed up by former Supreme Court judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr: "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." Republicans seem to have forgotten what taxes are actually used for. Presently, I'm not a fan of the large percentage of taxes which are being used to fund an ill-conceived and mismanaged war, but I would happily pay more taxes if it would ensure that every person in America had access to health care, that every child in America had access to a solid, well-funded, free education (including college), that the war would be ended, that more money would be invested in funding alternative energy sources and scientific research, and that failing infrastructure would be improved -- to name just a few.

The problem with arguing that your money should be yours to keep because you've earned it, is that you're ignoring all of the taxpayer-funded factors that contributed to you being able to earn that money. Were you educated in public schools? Do you drive a car that meets safety standards down a paved road equipped with traffic lights? Have you ever taken antibiotics that were tested for safety and approved by a federal agency? Can you call 911 and expect that police, fire, or ambulance will be dispatched to your home or the scene of an accident? Do you have mail delivered to your house and business almost every day of the year, free of charge? Heck, do you eat food or drink clean water?

Without taxes funding all of these aspects so necessary to daily life and to help our society flourish, you might be making more money, but you'd be spending more from your own pocket to make up for the shortfall. It is in the best interest of a society -- it is essential to the growth and prosperity of a society -- to protect public health and safety, to promote law and order, and to educate its citizens. Taxes may fund some things you don't personally approve of, but they fund many more things that we, as a society, require for our continued improvement.

What about Biden's patriotism angle? I guess that depends on your definition of patriotism. Personally, my patriotic relationship to my country resembles my relationship to my children. I love them, I am grateful for the things (both tangible and intangible) that they give me, I am proud of their accomplishments, I am occasionally disappointed in their bad behavior, but ultimately I want to see them succeed, and I will, to the best of my ability, help them achieve success. Part of that necessarily involves spending money to help support them. It is because I love America that I am happy to pay taxes to support all of the things that make this such a nice place to live.

I mentioned economic class above, and here's where that comes in: so far, all I've heard any politician talking about is the middle class. How do we help the middle class keep their homes, how do we help the middle class send their kids to college, how do we help the middle class afford rising gas prices? It seems like such a long time ago that I was a supporter of John Edwards, but before the primaries he was my top choice, in part because he was willing to talk about poverty, and how to help eliminate it. When he dropped out of the race he was congratulated on making poverty a priority for the Democrats, and Clinton and Obama both promised to keep talking about how to reduce poverty. And now... when is the last time you heard any politician mention poverty? The problem with focusing on housing, or college tuition, or gas prices, is that you're ignoring the people who don't even have homes and cars, and whose children will not be going to college no matter how cheap it is.

I wrote above about all of the societal benefits that are funded by taxes. We pay taxes collectively in order that all citizens might share in what these taxes pay for. That some people have managed to enjoy these benefits while building a great deal of wealth is incredibly fortunate. It doesn't happen that way for most people, and not because of laziness or stupidity, but because there is a lot of arbitrary unfairness built into our economic system. Personally I believe that the work I do raising my children to be educated, responsible citizens is, in the long run, a greater benefit to society as a whole than the work that a professional baseball player does. Yet somehow our free market has decided that a man who gets to play games for a living should be compensated more in one year than I will probably make in my entire life. I'm not asking for pity -- certainly I've made a choice here -- but it's a good example of how skewed our values as a society are. I can obviously see that some jobs require more skill, more training, more education, more time, more physical effort than others, and should be compensated accordingly, but in general the disparity in income between social classes is far larger than is reasonable, and I'm all for Obama's plan to "spread the wealth around" and make things a little more equitable.

McCain has also criticized Obama's proposed tax credits for people who don't pay income tax. Something I never hear mentioned in discussion of these tax credits is that these people who are not paying income tax are not paying because they don't even make enough money to live on, let alone be taxed on. Right now, we are one of those families. We pay no income tax because a graduate student's salary is not enough for a family of four to live on. Without tax refunds and credits, we would be bankrupt by now. Maybe this will sound hard to believe, but I actually look forward to being able to pay taxes, because it will mean 1) that we have enough money to live on with some to spare and 2) that we will be able to repay the government for the benefits they've given us over the last few years.

My family is on the threshold of becoming middle class, and if we ever do get up above Obama's proposed $250,000 cut-off (which was not chosen randomly or arbitrarily, but because the people who earn more than that in a year make up the top 5% in the US), I really will be happy to pay taxes to help the 95% of Americans who are not so fortunate. Especially those closest to the bottom. I don't have any complaints about paying taxes. I might disagree on how those taxes should be spent, but if I have some extra money that could be used to teach a child to read, to clean up environmental waste so that people have clean drinking water, to give someone a new kidney, to rebuild a bridge that collapsed, well, why wouldn't I give that money? Why wouldn't anyone want to contribute to making our neighborhoods and cities and states and our country clean and safe and healthy?
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** There's a good article in today's New York Times that explains just how hypocritical it is for McCain to accuse Obama of socialism.

friday photos: long weekend edition

2008-10-17T09:07:00.006-05:00

Last weekend my mom came out to visit, and because of the Columbus Day holiday she got to stay for an extra day. With two full days to work with, we managed to have a pretty busy weekend, and lots of fun.

Saturday was supposed to be Pirate Day up at the beach, and it turned out that there was very little pirate activity going on, but it was a beautiful day to be at the lake. On Sunday we went apple picking and stopped for ice cream on the way home because it was so unusually sunny and warm.

Greg and I also celebrated our eighth anniversary over the weekend, going out to a nice dinner and going out on the town with friends, but we didn't manage to take any photos of those events.

Lots and lots of photos under the fold.

Evan wading in frigid water while fat Canadian geese swim by.

Fun to play in the sand any time of year.

Just before he laid down and started sand-swimming.

I haven't looked it up yet, but we think this is a cormorant.

It was a stunningly gorgeous day.

We made a quick stop at the beach's playground.

They actually love playing together. So cute.

James' best pirate face at the wheel of the not-a-pirate-ship we toured.

Evan riding a lion on the beach's historic carousel.

James rode a rabbit on the carousel.

James was a big help picking apples.

"Look, Mom! I made a X with the apples!"

I wish that all weekends could be so fun. Though, I suppose if they were, they wouldn't be quite as special, so maybe it's better this way.

i was a girl scout, but i wasn't prepared for this.

2008-10-15T11:41:00.004-05:00

James came home yesterday waving a flier for Cub Scouts sign-ups. I was really hoping to avoid this scenario altogether, but since this is the second flier we've had sent home, in addition to seeing a sign-up booth at his school's open house a few weeks ago, apparently they've been advertising it so much that it's finally wormed its way into my son's consciousness, and he's decided that he wants to be a Cub Scout.

I'm conflicted. Greg and I are not fans of the larger Boy Scout organization because of their discrimination against gay people and atheists, not to mention the gender exclusivity. Yet the idea of James being able to socialize with other boys while participating in the kinds of outdoorsy, crafty, practical activities that we try to promote for our boys anyway is appealing to me. And it's very appealing to him.

I just spent some time with the Google trying to find alternatives to Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts that are open to anyone, regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else, and such groups do exist (the Spiral Scouts and Campfire USA are two that looked good to me) but unfortunately there don't seem to be any chapters in our area.

So what to do? I guess I've already decided that despite its good qualities, Boy Scouting just doesn't measure up to all of my values. I just wish there were something to offer James in its place. I shouldn't worry, though; Greg was never a Boy Scout and he's the best outdoorsman I know. And he's already well on his way to teaching the boys how to enjoy and appreciate nature and the earth. So James may be disappointed by our refusal of Cub Scouting, but he won't be deprived. And, I suppose, with the additional things he'll learn from us about inclusion and acceptance, he'll be even better off.

friday photos: fall is pretty edition

2008-10-10T10:14:00.004-05:00

We are in the height of autumn here in western New York and the colors couldn't be prettier:

(The faces could be a little nicer, but the leaves are pretty.)

(Ignore the pinkish/purplish clouds please; our old camera is having color issues lately. But the foliage colors are pretty accurate.)

And let's not forget the pretty colors of fall produce, too:

(This is not a great photo, but this is some purple and golden cauliflower I found at the farmer's market, which tastes pretty much exactly like ordinary cauliflower, but is much prettier.)

Can I work the work "pretty" into this post one more time?

The weather forecast for this weekend is beautiful, and my mom will be visiting, so we are going apple picking and hopefully spending a lot of time outdoors enjoying a lovely autumn weekend. Should be pretty nice.

best ever trip to the doctor's

2008-10-09T14:40:00.005-05:00

I had an appointment this afternoon with a new doctor. He is an odd little man, and apparently he's very busy, because he had a brusque, impatient manner.

No chatting, no small talk, he didn't even ask what I was there for, but just launched into an examination. He listened to my heart first.

"Sounds a little crooked," he declared. "You need to eat more food."

"What kind of food?" I asked.

"Umm... like some pretzels or stuff," he said dismissively as he exchanged the stethoscope for another instrument. This one, I'm not sure what it was, he jammed into my ear and exclaimed incredulously, "It's 20,000!"

Then, another instrument, this one with explanation: "Now I'm going to look in your ear with this telephone." A brief glance into my ear through the instrument: "Whoa, it's pretty dark in there."

Next the good doctor asked me to photograph him with each of his instruments individually.

"Are you a real doctor?" I asked suspiciously.

"Mm-hmm," he answered, and that was all I could get out of him after that.

"Alright then," I said, "let me take a photo of your best doctor face."

scene from the bus stop

2008-10-08T07:58:00.002-05:00

Waiting at the bus stop with Neighbor Girl and Neighbor Girl's Dad:

James, to kid across the street: Hey, Captain! Hi, Captain!

Me: James, why do you call that kid Captain?

James: The first time I met him, he just told me his name was Captain.

Neighbor Girl's Dad: And Tennille?

James: I can kneel! [drops to knees on the sidewalk]

Me and NGD: [cannot contain laughter]

It's my least favorite part of day, morning, even when I don't have to drag myself out of bed and down to the bus stop in the chilly autumn air, twenty minutes earlier than the scheduled time due to the unpredictability of the new bus driver. (Of course, it's the days we're out there twenty minutes early, in the rain, when she comes nearly on time, and the days we only make it out ten or fifteen minutes early, we barely catch the bus.)

But early mornings are made infinitely more bearable when you spend the worst part of it with a thirty-year-old guy who cracks pop culture jokes and starts singing "Substitutiary Locomotion" when you mention the kids have just watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Then it's actually a pretty good way to start the day.

monday photo

2008-10-06T11:09:00.003-05:00

There's nothing like blowing bubbles to cure a case of the evil-Mama-is-making-me-wear-a-sweatshirt-outside blues:

happy banned books week!

2008-09-30T11:18:00.003-05:00

It is Banned Books Week once again, in which the American Library Association encourages people to Celebrate the Freedom to Read, and reminds America how important the right to free speech is. I'm personally a big supporter of free speech, and I like to use the lists of challenged books published by the ALA to find new books to read, because those which people seek to ban are often the most interesting and thought-provoking.

Here's the ALA's list of the most frequently challenged books of 2007, and the reasons why they were challenged:

1) “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2) The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3) “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language

4) “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman
Reasons: Religious Viewpoint

5) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
Reasons: Racism

6) “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

7) "TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8) "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou
Reasons: Sexually Explicit

9) “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris
Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10) "The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Sadly, I've only read half of these (1, 2, 4, 6, 8), and my kids have only read one (which I wrote about not too long ago). Looks like I have some reading to do! The link above also notes that Toni Morrison (one of my favorite contemporary authors) is off the list this year, after previously having two of her books featured. Too bad! Maybe she'd better write another controversial book.

Incidentally, it was very recently that I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for the first time, and I found it to be a very moving and beautifully written book that I would recommend to anyone. The "sexually explicit content" (which, by the way, is not portrayed in a positive way) is one of the defining moments of Angelou's youth. Should she have ignored writing about something that affected her so deeply, that changed her in a very real way, that surely plenty of young girls can identify with, to avoid offending someone who's not satisfied to simply put down the book and walk away? That's what good literature is about in the first place: affecting the reader.

It really baffles me that some people decide that if they don't want to read a book, or want their children to read a book, that no one else should be allowed to read that book. I think literature is a great tool to use in learning to understand and process the world around us and the issues people face. It's hard for me to understand a point of view that would seek to prevent others from thinking and learning and challenging themselves.

Just for fun, here are some more links about challenged books from the ALA:
The Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century
The Top Ten Challenged Authors from 1990-2004
The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990-2000

I'm pleasantly surprised to see a handful of books on that third list that were taught or read aloud in my elementary and high schools.

Some of my favorites on these lists I'd also count as some of my favorite books of all time. The Harry Potter series, Bridge to Terabithia, House of the Spirits, A Wrinkle in Time, The Handmaid's Tale, Julie of the Wolves, Roald Dahl's books, Toni Morrison's books, The Giver, and Slaughterhouse Five are all excellent books that I've enjoyed. Some of them I loved as a child, and have found as an adult that they're still just as good (for example, I re-read Bridge to Terabithia a few months ago after finding a copy at a used bookstore, and I sobbed every bit as much at 26 as I did at 11).

So what are your favorite challenged books?

what's for lunch

2008-09-23T09:05:00.002-05:00

Yesterday James had the best lunch he's had since the school year started. This is because the siren song of saturated fat and empty calories is so alluring to my son that I agreed to let him choose one or two lunches per month to buy in the cafeteria, and yesterday was his first school lunch.

"It was awesome! I had a cheeseburger -- with extra ketchup! -- and rice balls with bread on the outside,** and an apple and applesauce!"

I have had a fear of school lunches ever since I read Fast Food Nation several years ago. It's been too long for me to accurately remember all of the details, but the basic reason school lunches are so terrible is because government subsidies make meat and dairy the cheapest foods for schools to buy, so lunches are very heavy on meat and dairy (and, consequently, fat) and not so big on fresh fruits and vegetables or whole grains. Looking at James' school's September lunch menu, I see entrees such as mozzarella sticks, nachos, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, several varieties of breaded and fried chicken, and pizza every Friday. Sure, they're serving canned fruit and vegetables every day, but somehow I doubt calling your sides "sunny corn" or "yummy carrots" adds much to their appeal.

On top of the questionable nutrition of school lunches, we also have a commitment to eating ethically-raised animal products on a very limited basis, so you can see why we're not keen on school lunches. We more than qualify for the free and reduced lunch program, but as cheap as I am I just can't bring myself to sacrifice my son's nutrition to save some money. So I've been trying to be creative with packing James' lunches so that he won't feel left out of the daily grease ingestion.

Let me tell you, there are some good resources out there for school lunch ideas. I've been taking inspiration from the idea of bento boxes, which are Japanese home-packed meals featuring a wide variety of foods, and often some cool artistic designs made from food. There are many photo sets on Flickr showing ways in which people have adapted the bento idea for other types of foods and cuisines. I've also been checking out Vegan Lunch Box (not that we're vegan, but I got the corresponding cookbook from the library and it has a lot of great ideas as well as some tasty-looking recipes) and LunchNugget, two blogs in which mamas document the tasty lunches they make for their offspring.

Now, I'm not nearly ambitious (or awake) enough at 7:30am to use cookie cutters on vegetables, or fashion octopuses out of hot dogs, and we don't have a real bento box in which to artistically arrange lunch. But I do find it really useful to have so many ideas to consider, so that my kid is not just taking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple to school every day (which, incidentally, is Evan's lunch nearly every day, since he does not yet know what he's missing). And James, luckily, is willing to let me experiment and find out how well a burrito or a leftover chicken drumstick holds up in the lunchbox for three hours.

So far he seems to be satisfied with a once or twice a month special school lunch. Let's hope I'm good enough at this creative lunch-packing to make that last the whole year.
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**Tater tots. How happy am I that my kid doesn't know what a tater tot is?

friday photos: self-portrait edition

2008-09-19T09:42:00.002-05:00

Compare:

operation good parenting

2008-09-16T11:20:00.003-05:00

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I've never really spent very much time one-on-one with Evan. James and I had three and a half years to bond before his baby brother came along, but Evan has always had James around. For the brief periods when James wasn't around -- nursery school and half-day kindergarten -- Evan was usually napping. And truth be told, what with the terrible twos lasting the better part of two years, I spent a lot of Evan's toddlerhood trying to get away from him when I had the chance.

So it has been a process, re-learning how to spend entire days in the company of a three-year-old in general, and Evan in particular. He requires a lot more attention than I'm used to giving him, for one thing -- previously much of his need for attention and companionship was fulfilled by James. And I certainly knew that he was stubborn and single-minded, but I didn't expect that he'd reject most of my game or craft or reading ideas, instead demanding I do what he wants "or else I'll cry really loud!"

I often feel like a failure of a stay-at-home mom because I don't like to play with my children. I know that sounds awful, but it's slightly better with an explanation: I like playing board games, reading, doing puzzles, drawing -- quiet, mental things. I don't really like my children's two main play activities: bouncing off the walls, and inventing convoluted Lego/Star Wars/Indiana Jones/Pokemon/Ninja Turtles/Scooby Doo/Biker Mice From Mars* stories to act out with Lego people. My kids spend hours together playing these games, and Evan had a hard time realizing, once school started, that I just wasn't going to fill James' shoes in this regard. So we had to come up with something else.

Today I started Phase I of Operation Good Parenting: Munchkin Madness. Munchkin Madness is an arts and crafts program for preschoolers offered by the town recreational department, and it's so cheap it's almost free. Not only has Evan not spent much time with me, but he's also never really been around kids his own age, so I thought it would be a good experience for him.**

I'm not really used to other three-year-olds either, so it was kind of a surprise to me to find that Evan was the most outgoing and rambunctious of the 10 or 12 kids in attendance. He was the only munchkin who appeared remotely mad. But I was really pleased with the way he barreled into the room and immediately started playing, with no hint of shyness. He provided the soundtrack for the morning, too -- singing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones theme songs, of course, which drew a lot of laughter from the other mothers there.

He had a lot of fun drawing and painting ("Not just painting, but... finger painting!!") and playing with the other kids, and as young as he seems to me, my littlest baby, he has really turned into a little boy. A preschooler. And I'm starting to see an older, more mature personality develop -- a fearless, take-charge attitude.*** I have the same feeling now that I had when James started preschool: a sense of wonder and curiosity about the way in which my child is becoming a real individual person. I've never really taken the time to think about Evan's development without considering James' influence on him, so I'm interested to see how he changes this year without the constant presence of his brother.

Tomorrow, Phase II of Operation Good Parenting: Library Story Hour, in which we see whether my ~~toddler~~ preschooler can sit still for more than three minutes at a time.
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*I don't even know what this one is.

**We've been putting off preschool for now, what with the uncertainty of when Greg will be finishing his program and getting a job.

***Last night at dinner we were talking about war, for some reason I can't recall right now, and I said that I thought I'd rather go to jail than fight in a war. Greg and James agreed with me but Evan set his face into a defiant little scowl and announced, "Not me! I want to fight in a war!" Let's hope the opportunity never comes up, because that's not something I can bear to think about at the moment.

friday photos: the evan is funny edition

2008-09-12T08:10:00.000-05:00

Let me tell you, when you go shopping at Target with a superhero in tow, you get a lot of attention.

And when that little superhero stops in the Lego aisle, he is so overcome with excitement that he is unable to speak the words "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" but instead fills the air with what would sound, to an uneducated observer, like a series of high-pitched tuneless wails, but is actually the respective theme songs for these two movies with which our little superhero is obsessed.

Here is a characteristic photo of Evan reading his favorite book, otherwise known as the Lego catalog. Every little superhero-in-training needs a thorough knowledge of current Lego sets.

You're lucky he's wearing pants in that photo. Evan's always scheming ways to avoid wearing pants. I may have mentioned his recent refusal to wear a pair of shorts on the grounds that they were too distinguished, and a couple of days ago he tried to convince me he couldn't wear pants because he would look too adorable in them. Kid needs to learn a thing or two about effective persuasion.

the tale of the twenty-five dollar zucchini

2008-09-10T12:10:00.000-05:00

You may remember that I was attempting to grow zucchini in a container on my back step this summer. Let me tell you the story of my zucchini plant and why my ambition to be a gardener will be a long, hard, uphill battle.

First I should explain that I come from a family of farmers. Well, okay, one farmer, my grandfather, and he had a dairy farm, but I do have many relatives who are good with plants, including my sisters and my mother. When I was young, after my grandfather retired from dairy farming, he kept a small garden in the front yard. I vividly remember eating carrots pulled straight from the ground with dirt still clinging to them, and gobbling garden-fresh green beans.* But the zucchini -- it was my grandfather's zucchinis that were truly spectacular. My sister would collect zucchinis as long as our forearms and twice as thick around, and bake loaves of her famous zucchini bread.

So I've been a big zucchini fan since childhood. For the last several years I've loaded up on the cheap, abundant, enormous zucchinis from the farmer's market and made zucchini bread, zucchini brownies, zucchini cupcakes, zucchini stir-fries, zucchini fritters, zucchini lasagna, and so on and so forth. I have, over the years, collected an impressive number of recipes in which zucchini is the featured ingredient. So imagine my happiness when a friend of mine called early in the summer and offered me some zucchini seedlings.

He brought over three little seedlings for me one night, and I went to the local gardening store a couple of days later to buy a gigantic planter and pounds and pounds of dirt in which to plant my little seedlings.

"Do you think this is going to be worth it?" Greg asked when I came home, my wallet twenty-five dollars lighter.

"Sure!" I said. "Zucchini plants produce ridiculous amounts of zucchini. They're unstoppable!" I had big plans, big hopes and dreams for these little seedlings. No more supporting the local farmers for me -- I was going to be a local farmer!

So I planted my three tiny little seedling, and one died almost instantly. That's okay, I thought, there are two more. That's more than enough. And my two remaining seedlings began to flourish. I was excited, watching the leaves grow bigger and broader, watching the big yellow flowers begin to develop. Then my first little zucchini fruit began to appear, and I took photos and posted about it on my blog, because, look! I'm growing food!

And that first little zucchini, once it got to be about four inches long, inexplicably began to rot and die. I scoured the internet for advice, and then, before I could self-diagnose and treat my plant, it grew another zucchini. This one grew into a beautiful shiny ten-inch vegetable before I plucked it and turned it into soup. Now there was no stopping my zucchini plant.

Perhaps I should stop here for a moment to note that part of the reason I was so excited to grow my own zucchini is because all those green-thumb genes I mentioned above are apparently recessive in me. I like plants, but really only do well with those that tolerate neglect. I might describe my thumb as a sort of sickly yellowish color with accents of brown on the edges -- which, incidentally, is the color the leaves of my zucchini plant began to turn shortly after I harvested that first perfect fruit.

I plucked off the dead leaves, I treated my plant for powdery mildew, I moved it to the front of the house where it could get more sunlight, and my efforts almost worked. The plant produced a few more zucchini, but every one rotted and died on the vine. The leaves recovered and are again a healthy, happy green, and there are still a couple of flowers, cheerful and sunshine-colored, but there are no more little zucchinis beginning to grow, and I suspect there will be no more this season.

So my first food-gardening experiment yielded one zucchini. One twenty-five dollar zucchini. Meanwhile, over the course of the summer when I was too impatient to wait for my own plant to mature, I continued buying zucchini from the market. Four for a dollar, for zucchinis as long as my children's limbs and twice as fat around.

I think next year I'll stick with the farmer's market.
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*Every grandchild was affixed with an identifying label, growing up. My sisters were saddled with animals: one was known to love butterflies, and the other, elephants. Not that they actually loved these animals, but that was my grandmother's pronouncement, and once decided, these preferences were all but carved into stone. Christmas presents were very predictable. Me, I was known for loving green beans. Since green beans don't translate well into Christmas gifts, I ended up with random unpredictable items, such as dolphin figurines. I think I'd have liked the green beans better, personally.

the problem of memory

2008-09-08T10:25:00.001-05:00

A few days ago I bought blackberries at the market. Every time we've had blackberries this summer, Greg and I have lamented the fact that we weren't able to visit his family in Washington this summer because of how badly the blackberries in NY pale in comparison to their west coast counterparts. (There are, of course, a million other [more important] reasons we're sad about not having a summer vacation in WA this year, but we do miss those blackberries.)

"Man," one of us will say, "I wish we were in Washington; then we could have buckets of blackberries for free, instead of $3 a pint, and those would all be ripe!"

"Yeah," the other will say, "these aren't nearly as sweet, and they're so small! You can't even do anything with so few blackberries!"

And so forth.

A couple of days ago, though, Greg chimed in with, "Remember the blackberry french toast we had at Tom's one summer?" When he saw the blank look on my face, he continued, "Remember? We picked a whole bunch of blackberries at my grandparents' house, and brought them to Tom's, and we made french toast and put all the blackberries on top? That was the most amazing french toast!"

I managed something like, "Well, I've had a lot of good french toast in my life."

"Come on," Greg pressed, "remember, we got to Tom's apartment -- not the one he's in now, not the last one, but the one before that -- and no one was home, so I broke in through the bathroom window and landed in the bathtub? Remember that time? We had that blackberry french toast on the same trip."

"Oh, yeah," I said weakly, "I think I remember that."

Readers, I was lying. I didn't remember it, I don't remember it, and doesn't that sound like something one should remember? Blackberry french toast can conceivably be forgotten, but I feel like I ought to remember my boyfriend breaking into someone's house through the bathroom window and landing in the bathtub. But it's a big blank instead.

Ten years ago, I had an amazing memory. I was an excellent student who hardly needed to study because I remembered almost everything from my classes and textbooks. I could have told you the middle names and birthdays and phone numbers and addresses of every single one of my friends, and a bunch of people I wasn't friends with too. My best friend and I had an intricate system of code names for practically everyone we knew and there was no need to write it down because there was endless space in my head for this sort of knowledge.

Today I have no memory to speak of. (I attribute this change directly to parenthood, by the way, and the lack of sleep that comes with it.) I see movies and can barely remember the plots a day later. I have trouble returning phone calls and emails because I forget that people have called or written me. Every single time one of my best friends from high school calls me, I fail to recognize her voice even though I've known her for fifteen years.

So I keep endless lists of everything, from grocery lists and library books to daily to-do lists and lists of upcoming events. I keep a list of possible menu items for dinners and school lunches. I leave myself written reminders to answer emails or schedule appointments or pay bills. If it's not written down, I will forget it.

That's part of the reason I started a blog. To chronicle and to remember all of my experiences in raising two very interesting children. I read back through my blog archives recently and was surprised by how difficult some parts of my life were, and how funny other parts were. Time has dulled my memory to a vague series of highlights, and it's so easy to forget the details. I don't want to forget.

I don't want to forget the hilarious lullaby James composed for Evan, telling him to go to sleep because his shirt was so beautiful. I don't want to forget the time that Evan refused to put on his shorts because they were too distinguished. I don't want to forget the way that James picks up and pockets every interesting rock he comes across, "interesting" being a very subjective term.

I don't want to forget Evan asking me to pick him up this morning. "What for?" I asked. He smiled and said, "For everything! For hugs and kisses!" And then I picked him up and he snuggled into my chest and it instantly became one of those moments I never want to forget.

I can't trust my human memory that much anymore. But I can trust what I write here. So this post is a reminder to myself to write more, to capture these moments, these swiftly fleeting childhood days, and through recording and remembering, to appreciate them more.

weekend recipe: zucchini chowder

2008-09-07T20:14:00.004-05:00

The weekend recipes are back! You know, until I forget about them again. But I've got a fabulous recipe to share tonight, posting it with just a couple of hours left in the weekend, so it still counts as an official weekend recipe.

Allow me to introduce the Zucchini Garden Chowder. This recipe, like all of my recipes, originated somewhere else, somewhere I can no longer remember, and though I've personalized it a little, credit should be given to some genius cook out there. Not me. This has become my new favorite recipe for cool or rainy summer days. Most of these ingredients are still available at my farmer's market, so if you're as lucky as I am you may be able to try this out before summer officially comes to a close. It's pretty quick to throw together, it's healthy and filling and, of course, delicious.

Ingredients:
2 medium zucchini, chopped (give or take -- the zucchinis at our market are so enormous that I've successfully used wildly differing amounts of zucchini in this recipe; I'd say typically 3-4 cups)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon dried basil (or chop up a bunch of fresh basil)
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
salt
pepper
3 cups chicken stock or vegetable stock (or water)
1 teaspoon lemon juice (or a nice big squeeze from half a lemon, or leave it out, it's not crucial)
2-3 cups diced tomatoes (canned or fresh)
1/2 cup milk
2 cups corn kernels
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

In a stock pot over medium heat, melt butter, and saute zucchini, onion and basil until vegetables are tender. Stir in flour; season with salt and pepper to taste.

Stir in stock and lemon juice. Bring soup to a boil; reduce heat and cook for a couple of minutes while it thickens up a bit. Add tomatoes, milk and corn. Return soup to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 5 minutes or until corn is tender. I usually stir a couple of times to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom.

At this point you can let it sit and keep warm for a while if you need to. Just before you're ready to eat, stir in the cheese until it's all melty and delicious-smelling.

This makes a huge batch of soup, and with some bread for dipping it makes a solid meal. My entire family actually eats this -- this is the meal that made Evan decide, very deliberately, to start liking tomatoes -- and even after a couple of us have had seconds, we have enough left over to throw in the freezer and save for another cool or rainy day. We have some in the freezer right now and I think I'm going to wait until the farmer's market starts to dry up for the winter and then break out this soup to bring back the tastes of summer.

friday photos: first grade edition

2008-09-05T09:46:00.002-05:00

This year I actually remembered to take the obligatory first day of school photo.

So far first grade is a success. We have not missed the bus yet, despite it coming 6-7 minutes earlier than scheduled (we had to run for it this morning, but we made it), James' lunch box is coming home nearly empty every day (so far no begging for cafeteria chicken nuggets or pizza), and James is in the same class as both his kindergarten best friend and his kindergarten girlfriend. This girlfriend, by the way (to tell an anecdote I could have blogged about in my missing month but didn't) is the girl he told over the phone a couple of weeks ago that he doesn't want to marry her, he just wants to have babies with her. Let's hope she didn't repeat that to her parents.

As always, James tells me virtually nothing about school, and the thousand questions I ask in the brief period between him getting off the bus and going outside to play are answered in monosyllables around mouthfuls of snack. Full-day school is a tiring adjustment for him, I think; at least, that's the excuse I'm giving him for his cranky attitude toward me when he gets home every day.

But we are all adjusting. Evan and I are learning how to fill our days without James around. I'm slowly remembering what it's like to hang out with one child at a time. We're all getting used to getting up and getting ready much earlier than usual. I think it's going to be a good year.

the end of summer

2008-09-03T08:40:00.002-05:00

It seems like just yesterday that I was food blogging about summer produce and banana cakes. Suddenly I look at the calendar and six weeks have flown by and my oldest child is a first-grader. Where does the time go?

To be honest, though, part of the reason I wasn't blogging is because we deliberately had a pretty slow summer. We stayed home a lot, played in the backyard, with weekly trips to our local library and occasional day trips to a beach or a park. We had a nice visit with my family, but sadly we were unable to visit Greg's family this summer. We played a lot of frisbee, went swimming a couple of times, went hiking only once, went camping not at all. There was very little that seemed worth posting on the blog, and we barely took any photos during the second half of summer anyway. Here are a couple of exceptions:

There have been some milestones, some personal accomplishments. Evan is in the beginning stages of learning to read, and he is potty trained! Surprisingly, with how difficult he's been about practically everything, his entire life, potty training turned out to be easy. Much easier than with James, even, and I think that's the first time I've been able to say that about the two of them. Once Evan decided to do it, he did it 100% and never looked back.

James started school today. First grade! For the first time, he will be gone all day long. He stepped onto the bus today -- in typical James fashion -- without a backwards glance, not even when his brother burst into tears because he couldn't get on the bus with the other neighborhood kids.

We had a happy summer -- a relaxed, laid-back, happy summer. But I'm starting to look forward to fall. And now that I'm actually writing again, I'm looking forward to a return to blogging as well.

monday food blogging

2008-07-14T15:29:00.004-05:00

I don't have much to write about lately, so I'm posting some photos of recent adventures in food.

1) Mulberries: I bought these at the market because I'd never had them or even seen them before. They're pretty, with a subtle, not-too-sweet taste, but they go bad quickly.

2) Monkey cake: I made this banana cake for a children's monkey party hosted by a friend of mine, and it was scrumptious. And cute. Ignore the sloppy decorating please.

3) Zucchini! I don't know whether I've mentioned it here yet, but I'm attempting to grow zucchini in a container on my back step this summer, and this afternoon I noticed my first tiny zucchini growing! This is the first food I've ever grown (if you don't count herbs, which I don't), so I'm very pleased with myself. And I'm very impatiently awaiting the day when I can pick this little zucchini and eat it right up.

i knew i would jinx it somehow

2008-07-10T14:31:00.003-05:00

We've started potty training Evan, and I've been holding off on writing about it here, because I knew that as soon as I proclaimed to the Internet that Evan was really doing well at potty training, he would stop doing well, because that's the way things go in my life.

It turns out I was wrong. He hit a speed bump in the potty training today, after all I did was think about writing about it. I don't know what I did in my last life to end up with such ridiculously bad luck in this one, but if we're at the point where my thoughts are jinxing things, I'm in trouble.

Anyway, he had been doing well. Really, really well. Greg and I had a big argument a week or two ago in which I firmly insisted that Evan was not ready for potty training, and then about five minutes after yelling at Greg and bursting into tears I realized that it was really me who was not ready. So I decided to suck it up and move forward with the potty training. It couldn't possibly increase the amount of bodily fluids in my life, and might actually reduce them a little bit, so what did I have to lose?

And he was good at it! And so very different from James. James didn't care what it felt like, what it smelled like, he was not going to interrupt his precious playtime to pee on the potty. Thankfully, with James, poo was a different story -- I'm pretty sure he never had a poopy accident after we started potty training. After the last three years, I shouldn't have been surprised that Evan would be the exact opposite.

He's good with the peeing. We let him run naked a lot, now that it's so hot, and he has no hesitations about running upstairs to pee in the potty. A few days ago we even attempted an outing in underpants -- I didn't even bring any diapers with us -- and we returned home from the library clean and dry. We've had a couple of minor accidents, but mostly he's been willing and even enthusiastic about peeing in the potty.

But. There is a but. We are having poo issues. One issue, really, and that is issue is this: my kid would rather poo in his pants -- underwear or diaper, doesn't matter -- than go on the potty. Today he was playing naked and started asking for a diaper. We both knew why. So I had him sit on the potty, and he peed, and then said he was done.

"Don't you need to poop?" I asked.

"No."

"Don't you want to try?"

More emphatically: "No."

"Please, can you try? Just try for a minute?"

"I don't want toooooo!"

"What's the matter? Why don't you want to try?"

"I don't want you to see it."

"Do you want me to leave? So you can do it by yourself?"

"Yes."

I start to walk out of the bathroom and notice I have an extra shadow. Before I can stop him he streaks into my bedroom and hops up on my bed.

"No! Don't poop on my bed!"

"Mom, I think I'm ready for a nap."

The little sneak. Since he naps in my bed, I don't let him nap diaperless.

I tried to push it a little longer. I said it wasn't time for a nap, so we went and played for a while, me hoping the whole time that he would give in and use the potty, and Evan determinedly holding it in.

Eventually it was nap time, and I diapered him and we snuggled together and he quickly fell asleep. And an hour and a half later from downstairs I heard little footsteps running out of my bedroom, and heard a door slam. Oh, but it's not what you think; he was not going to use the potty. My little sneak likes to fill his diaper in the privacy of his bedroom, which is exactly what he did.

So I brought him downstairs and changed him and tried to stay positive! And encouraging! And enthusiastic! About how next time he can use the potty! Then, as I do after most diaper changes, I asked him to throw the diaper away. All of a sudden we had a tantrum on our hands.

As an aside, Evan appears to have been taking tantrum lessons from a 12-year-old girl lately. More than once, after putting him in time out, we have heard him sob melodramatically, "No one wants me around!" and today's time out had him wailing about how he never gets to go anywhere. "Why exactly do you think you're in time out?" I asked him. He knew, but I guess he likes to throw dramatic non-sequiturs into his tantrums these days.

Anyway, back to the problem at hand, this poop thing. Anyone with some potty experience have any advice about this? He's so stubborn, I don't want to push it and make a huge issue out of it, but I would just like him to, you know, go in the potty. I'm ready to be done with the diapers already, and he's not helping! What's worse is that he has pooped in the potty, several times. He just seemed to suddenly develop this aversion and I don't have any ideas on what to do. Suggestions?

too hot to write sentences

2008-07-08T15:23:00.003-05:00

Assorted photos from a fun weekend:

maybe i should raise my standards

2008-07-01T14:09:00.003-05:00

I have been trying to get motivated this summer, to do a lot of fun things with the kids, and accomplish some things of my own as well. I've started an incentive system where every day the kids and I complete a list of tasks (a mix of chores and errands and fun things too -- I have mandated both reading and playing outdoors as every day "tasks") and if we do well enough, we will "earn" a trip to a local water park at the end of the summer. So far it's turning out to be as good for me as for the kids in terms of being productive and not just lazing around.

So yesterday, I spent much of the day cleaning and organizing and putting things away, enough so that when Greg came home he remarked on a visible difference. This afternoon we invited one of James' friends over to play, so I spent a good portion of the morning cleaning up as well. I hate cleaning, but I feel so victorious when I can cross something off my list, not to mention how much better the house looks in general. So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself after this whole bout of productivity.

James' friend came over after lunch, and as soon as he came in, almost the first words out of his mouth were, "Wow! This house is messy!!" As if that weren't enough, he felt the need to reiterate after seeing another part of the house. There's nothing like the discerning eye of a six-year-old to deflate your ego.

perspective

2008-06-30T14:33:00.002-05:00

One of Greg's aunts passed away last week, after a long struggle with brain cancer. She had cancer as long as I knew her, and I didn't know her very well, but she was always very kind and sweet and welcoming to me, which I especially appreciated in the early years of my relationship with Greg while I was trying to find my place as a new member of his family.

It is a sad loss, and we're sad that we can't be with Greg's family, but it wasn't until I read this post by Greg's sister Karen that the whole things began to resonate with me. I've been slipping again recently -- slipping into laziness, slipping into bad temper, slipping into pettiness and resentfulness and pessimism. And reading Karen's post just made me stop and think about how lucky I am, how very fortunate I am to have my good health and a wonderful family and very little difficulty with anything, in general, and even though Lynn passed away, we are better off for having had her in our lives in the first place.

Yesterday we went to the beach, despite the storm warnings. I sat in the sand at the edge of the water, next to James digging in the sand, watching Greg and Evan play in shallow water as dark clouds inched their way nearer and nearer to us. I let the water wash over my feet and legs and I let the slimy green algae sift through my fingers and for a moment, I was hit with a sense of wonder at how lovely life can be when you just let go of the little things for a while. Sometimes I think I make my life much harder than it needs to be, and it's hard to remember to just slow down and enjoy the moment.

So thank you, Karen, for a much-needed reminder and change of perspective.

milestone

2008-06-25T15:40:00.003-05:00

My first-born child finished kindergarten today. I can't really think of anything meaningful to say about it, just -- that kid is getting old, now. The time, it flies, even when you're not always having fun.

midweek recipe

2008-06-24T20:02:00.004-05:00

Tonight I made what Greg and I agreed to be the worst meal I've ever made. It was a "simple dal" -- lentils cooked with Indian-style spices, and it was simply disgusting. I don't know what went wrong -- the cardamom? the cloves? (both of which seemed suspicious to me when I added them to the pot) -- and I will never know, because I will never make this dish again. I've been obsessed with Mark Bittman lately (author of "How to Cook Everything" and "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian", among other things) because his recipes are generally quite good, but this? Unspeakably bad.

I'm not giving you that recipe. I'm willing to blame myself, and not Mark Bittman, for my culinary failure, but I'm not going to think about that dish ever again.

But last night, I made one of my best meals ever. It's one of the first things Greg and I ever cooked together, and remains one of our favorites. My sister and Greg and I invented it -- not that it's incredibly unique, not that no one's ever combined these particular things before, but it's one of the few things I can reliably make well without a recipe, and it's delicious. Incredibly delicious.

Lemon-Asparagus Pasta

This is not a real recipe, so I don't have precise amounts of things to tell you, but you will need:

pasta
olive oil
garlic, minced
salt
pepper
lemon
Parmesan cheese
asparagus, chopped into chunks

Cook your pasta. Whatever style you like, though we usually use angel hair or something similar.

Heat some oil in a skillet. Since there's no real sauce for the pasta in this dish, I tend to go heavy on the oil, and sometimes add butter too, so I can drizzle it over the pasta at the end. If you don't like the flavor of your meals to come from delicious fat, use only a tablespoon or two.

Add the garlic (I do two cloves or so). Sometimes I also add some chopped onion, but not always. Let it cook for a minute or two.

Add the asparagus. Stir things around a little, and then cover your pan for a couple of minutes. You want your asparagus to be bright green, and easy to stick with a fork. This only takes a few minutes, so pay attention or you'll overcook it. I usually add the Parmesan at the same time as the asparagus -- just give it a good sprinkling of cheese and stir it around a bit.

Season it with some salt and pepper, however much you like. Dish out your pasta onto your plates, and top the pasta with the asparagus, and some oily fatty scrumptious drizzle, if you're so inclined. Give it a squeeze of fresh lemon. I discovered last night that it's also good to top it off with a little feta cheese.

And that's it. Serve it with a salad or some bread, or just enjoy it by itself. It's fast, easy, flexible, and now that asparagus is in season, it's the perfect time for it. Even the kids liked it -- James, who's been eating asparagus since he could chew it, inhaled his and asked for seconds; Evan, well, it's a good meal when Evan doesn't leave the table in tears. He actually ate all the pasta, even if he wouldn't touch the asparagus.

I only had one bunch of asparagus from the farmer's market, and three of us were so disappointed when it was gone that I'm planning to go back to the market on Thursday (the next time the market is held, or I'd go sooner) and buy more asparagus so we can have it again this weekend.

Enjoy!

homophobia starts early

2008-06-19T15:02:00.003-05:00

James got off the bus today and told me that one of his classmates and classmate's 4th-grade brother were teasing him on the bus, saying that James likes boys and James wants to marry a boy. James didn't seem too upset about it -- he said he told them it wasn't true, told them not to say it, but I don't think he got very angry about it.

But I'm angry. I can't believe that that's something six-year-olds are teasing each other about. First of all, all this talk about marriage in general among kindergarteners is unsettling -- how quickly do kids need to grow up these days? I hear far too much for my liking about which of the kids in James' class are "getting married." Yet already, at such young ages, these children are acutely aware that boys liking boys is something to tease about, something to shame another child for.

If it starts this early, how bad will it get as they get older? I made sure to point out to James that even if it were true, even if he liked boys, there's nothing wrong with that, but how do my reassurances stack up next to the taunting of his peers?

It makes me incredibly sad, actually. It makes me grateful that I've never had to face teasing over something as wonderful as love. It makes me worry about what my kids might face should one of them be gay. It makes me worry about my small voice versus the roar of society in their ears. It makes me fear that my kids may one day end up teasing other kids this way.

You know, I was so overjoyed about the recent California ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. But then something like this comes along, elementary children being already caught up in the prevailing negative attitudes about gay people, and it makes me realize just how far we have to go before it will really, truly not matter who you love.

and i don't even have gray hair yet

2008-06-16T20:02:00.002-05:00

James: Mom, how old were you in 1804?
Me: I wasn't born yet.
James: You mean Brown's Berry Patch was around before you were born?
Me: Yes.
James: Wow!! That's really old!!

father's day/weekend photos/weekend recipes

2008-06-15T19:21:00.004-05:00

Happy Father's Day! We had a fun day today, celebrating Greg with one of his favorite things -- fresh strawberries. Today was the opening day of the season at the U-Pick farms around here, a couple of weeks earlier than usual thanks to some unusually warm spring weather, so we went out this afternoon and picked fourteen and a half pounds of strawberries.

And then we came home and ate 10 pounds of them. At least, that's what it felt like. But just look at these; I mean, could you really help yourself when faced with these perfect sun-warmed little berries?

You probably won't be surprised to learn that both kids were more interested in snacking than picking the strawberries:

And we managed to eat quite a few more once we got home, with a couple of strawberry dishes.

The first, which I neglected to take a photo of, was a spinach strawberry salad that we had with dinner. It's a really simple recipe, one I got from the mother of a friend of mine: spinach, sliced strawberries and crumbled feta cheese with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. It sounds weird, I know, but the combination of sweet, salty and tangy really works nicely. I used this vinaigrette recipe, and I added about a teaspoon of brown sugar and a little strawberry juice that had collected in the bottom of the bowl. I thought when I was making it that the garlic might be a mistake, but it turned out fine. I'm sure a store-bought dressing would be just as good.

And for dessert we had strawberry shortcake! Soooo goooood. I found this shortcake recipe, which is a bit more like a biscuit than cake, but still good. We split each shortcake open and topped the halves with a layer of strawberries. We forgot to sugar the strawberries ahead of time, so we decided to try sprinkling them with cinnamon sugar, which turned out to be a nice touch. Then we topped the strawberries with fresh whipped cream and mini chocolate chips, and most of us were able to refrain from licking our plates clean, but it was hard. That was a good dessert. This one I took a photo of:

Hope everyone had a happy weekend/Father's Day!

a tiny misunderstanding

2008-06-10T09:29:00.006-05:00

James came to the back door to complain about Evan splashing mud on him. I looked at James, already spattered with plenty of mud.

I said: "Ask him to stop, but if he does get more mud on you, it doesn't really matter, because you're already muddy."

James heard: "It doesn't matter how muddy you get! In fact, why don't you go ahead and cover yourself in mud, because I don't think you're muddy enough already. You can never be too muddy! ... And don't forget about your brother; make sure you coat him in mud too!"

~~Evan~~ Batman was very sad about having to come inside and get into the bathtub:

By the way, I know he doesn't look terribly muddy in that photo, but bear in mind that most of the mud on his body had by that time dried to a much lighter color.

James had literally painted his legs with mud. This photo was taken after he'd already started washing off:

The bathtub was filled with muddy water:

I was too busy at the time to think about taking a similar photo of the laundry sink while I was rinsing out the boys' clothes. Let's not even talk about James' sandals, which were about five pounds heavier with all the caked-on mud.

You know, after six and a half years of mess, dirt, sand, mud, muck, and bodily fluids, you start to think you've seen it all, that they've exhausted their capacity to disgust you, but kids always find a way to surprise you.

happy birthday, evan

2008-06-05T12:40:00.002-05:00

Today feels like summer. The cottonwood trees are spreading their fluff all over the neighborhood, making it look as if it's snowing, and I wonder whether you will ever really see snow on your birthday. Maybe one day you'll travel to Australia or Chile or the Himalayas and celebrate a winter birthday.

One of your most prominent traits to develop over the last year is your sense of adventure. It's easy for me to picture you climbing mountains or crossing the outback when you get older, because those things aren't so very far from diving fearlessly off the side of the couch or charging off on your own in strange places.

Your independence and your will have continued to grow this year. Now more than ever you are doing things for yourself, and you are as insistent as always that you do things your way. You have a very un-toddler-like quality of being incredibly determined and single-minded, frustratingly so.

But that doesn't mean that you don't still need us. Because no matter how stubborn and determined and aggressive you can be, you are in equal measure affectionate and loving. One of my favorite times of the day is naptime, when we lay quietly together in my bed and you pet my hand and I get to watch you fall asleep. Every day.

One of the things I love best about you is how free you are with your emotions. You still scream, oh yes you do, about all kinds of things, but when you're not unhappy, you are very, very happy. You are the most generous child I've ever seen when it comes to spontaneous acts of affection -- unsolicited hugs and kisses and snuggles and I love yous. It melts me every time.

You've grown delightfully silly in your third year. In fact, it's hard for me to tell how much you really know, because counting and reciting the alphabet and rhyming are games where you like to send yourself into fits of giggles giving wrong answers. But just when I start to think I've got a backwards child who can't even count to five without mistakes, you count perfectly to twelve. You like to keep us on our toes, in all kinds of ways.

Your creativity is blossoming, guided by your brother, who you are very easily frustrated with and angered by, but without whom you're a little lost sometimes. You and your brother devise clever games in which your identities are always changing, in which the adventures never end. Your imagination has grown in leaps and bounds this year. It's incredible to watch.

Something that puzzles me about you is how easily you identify with the bad guys. Your favorite part of The Wizard of Oz was the flying monkeys, you've requested a Darth Vader cake for your birthday, and you're the villian as often as you're the hero in games with your brother. You like the bad guys because they are big and strong. I hope to help you learn over time that strength isn't always physical.

We play a game at meals, at almost every meal these days, in which I tell you and your brother to stop eating, because I don't want you to grow any bigger. This is the only trick that has ever worked more than once to convince you to eat more than a few bites of dinner. "Look, Mom!" you tease, "I'm growing!"

"No!" I say. "You two are growing too fast! Stop growing! I want you to be my babies a little longer!"

And you think I'm kidding.

I love you, darling boy. Happy birthday, today and for many years to come.

jedis don't read books

2008-06-04T10:24:00.000-05:00

Greg and I were talking about books recently, and I said that I hope our children will continue to be readers when they get older. Evan overheard me, and, as always, had to be contradictory.

Evan: I'm not going to be a reader when I grow up. I'm going to be Qui-gon Jin!

Me: But don't you think you'll still like to read books?

Evan: No! I will eat Pez and play with light-sabers.

I suppose I should at least be glad that he's starting to think about the future at such a young age.

back-ish

2008-06-02T20:28:00.003-05:00

Things have been fine for the last week or so, but we've been very busy and I haven't really thought much about blogging. Once you take a break it's kind of hard to get back into it. What's there to say at the moment? We had a really fun weekend when Greg's brother John and his girlfriend Elizabeth came to visit. Other than that things have been ordinary, and time marches on with few changes. Only I'm not feeling sad about that anymore.

So. Summer is approaching; one of my babies is nearly three years old; my other baby is nearly finished with kindergarten; my boyfriend is nearly finished with his doctorate. And I am watching the progress of all three of them with pride and happiness.

and on and on and on and on

2008-05-19T12:52:00.002-05:00

I've been in kind of a funk lately, so I probably won't be posting much this week.

I'm in a rut right now where I'm looking to the future and seeing nothing but miles of monotony. Mostly I'm fine with the way my life is, but the past few days, the past week or so, it's feeling incredibly useless and depressing. My life is a broken record.

I cook and cook and cook, which takes as much mental energy as physical, what with planning menus and making things nutritious and even just trying to have each element of a meal on the table at once, and then we eat all of the food and my hard work has disappeared and I have to do it all over again.

I wash our dishes and wash our clothes over and over, every day, and yet we're always dirtying more dishes, dirtying more clothes, and I have to wash and wash again and again.

I pick up puzzles and blocks and Legos and trains and videos and yo-yos and board games, but the boys always need something to play with, so as soon as one thing is put away, something else comes out and I'm always picking up, putting away, picking up, putting away.

Let's not even get into other people's bodily fluids, because those never stop coming, either, and those things fall squarely into a mama's job description.

It is work that I do, this domestic stuff, this mothering stuff. Yet it's a curious kind of work, in which all of my efforts are continuously negated by other people, and there is never anything to show for all this work that I do. Everyone has housework, everyone has responsibilities, of course, but to take your own burden and multiply it by four (and with children, it often feels like even more than that), it just gets tiring.

No matter what else I do with my time -- taking the kids to the park, going to the grocery store, reading a book, going camping, sewing, playing board games -- those things are just tiny breaks in the never-ending monotony of domestic responsibility, and I am tired. I never envisioned that this was what my life would be. Most of the time it's okay. But once in a while it just makes me very, very sad that this is all there is right now.

friday photos: lilac festival edition

2008-05-16T12:48:00.008-05:00

For the last week Rochester has been celebrating spring with its annual Lilac Festival. We've been three times so far, and might make it back once more before the festival ends on Sunday. There are rides and vendors and tons of carnival-type food, but my favorite part is the flowers. Not just lilacs, but flowering trees and tulips and rhododendrons and peonies and on and on and on. We've gone a little photo crazy.

Here's Greg and me in front of what turned out to be a crabapple tree. Who knew they could be so gorgeous?

James climbing one of the best climbing trees I've ever seen:

The boys resting in a cool carved bench:

Evan spent much of this morning's excursion in tears, because he just needed someone to CARRY HIM!

Below the fold, a bunch of flower photos. But, as my mom pointed out, no photos of the famous lilacs. Sorry.

An orchid in the conservatory:

I don't know the name of this flower, but it was also found in the conservatory, in a very humid, tropical sort of room, and it was literally nearly the size of my head:

And some interesting varieties of tulips that I thought were just beautiful in both shape and color:

Happy weekend, everyone!

pernicious penguins

2008-05-15T10:50:00.002-05:00

I just read my children one of the most "challenged" picture books in America: And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. It's a very sweet book -- the true story of two penguins at the Central Park Zoo who fall in love, spend all their time together, and raise an adopted baby penguin together. It's just that these two penguins both happen to be male, so apparently telling their story advocates homosexuality.

It's true, by the way. If you're a parent, then you surely know all about the pernicious influence penguins have over children. After we saw March of the Penguins, it was all I could do to keep my children from jumping in the icy river in the dead of winter. And after we saw Madagascar my children started learning martial arts and tried to steal a cargo ship. And after reading this book this morning, my children immediately set out in search of gay penguins to have sex with.

Really, it's a very sweet, simple story and I find it incredibly sad that there are people somewhere out there who feel that their children are in some way threatened by a loving penguin family. Penguins.

friday photos: budding artist edition

2008-05-09T08:19:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I was feeling brave, so I got out the easel and paints for Evan. This is something he loves, but it's so much work on my part that we rarely do it. So yesterday he had a total blast.

identity crisis

2008-05-06T11:00:00.002-05:00

My darling younger son is entering a phase of identity crisis. Every day, we hear (multiple times) a very detailed description of who he is at that moment. Often he must stand still and repeat his title several times in a row before he is able to, say, walk to the bus stop, or get into the bathtub. Some examples:

"I'm super-duper big mean red blue Obi-Wan Kenobi on Hoth."

"I'm super-duper ultra mean brown Tuscan Raider."

"I'm super-duper big mean black white clone trooper."

He is always super-duper. I have to agree with that bit. But please don't address him as Evan, unless you wish to be corrected and reminded at least three times.

My favorite, though, was the night we were having dinner with friends, and, at a lull in the general conversation, Evan said, mostly to himself, "Everyone calls me Evan, but I call me a bounty hunter."

Good to know.

friday photos

2008-05-02T15:12:00.003-05:00

A cute photo of me and beardy Greg, just for fun:

Greg and James fishing at the lakehouse a couple of weeks ago:

The boys posing in front of the lakehouse:

Greg and James enjoying the hot tub at the lakehouse:

An example from James' kindergarten April journal, in which every entry involves video games:

Happy weekend, everyone!

just quiet

2008-05-01T10:44:00.002-05:00

I haven't felt like I've had much to say here lately. Things are good; we've been busy. We've been enjoying spring and seeing lots of friends, but none of it seems worth reporting on at the moment. I've been lazy lately, yet am still not getting enough sleep. Go figure. So what have I been doing? In case you're curious:

I've been listening to NPR a lot lately, trying to stay informed, but finding it hard to care about the endless coverage of the Pope's US tour or which presidential candidates wear American flag lapel pins. I thought NPR was supposed to be the good news source. And then, I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear news items like this: "Gas prices have reached an all-time high, with an average price of $3.76 per gallon of regular unleaded gasoline. This is one cent higher than the previous record, which was set... yesterday."

Saw a couple of good movies recently: Velvet Goldmine (about '70s glam rock in the UK) and Kinsey (about the famous sex researcher). Just don't watch them with your mother; that could be a little awkward. Unless you and your mom like seeing full frontal nudity together, and if so, who am I to judge?

I've started reading a book about the Rwandan genocide of the '90s (We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families) and it's helping put my life into perspective a little bit. I may feel bored and useless sometimes, but at least I'm not being hacked to bits with a machete. There's always that.

I've been following news of the worldwide food shortages, while simultaneously trying to pretend that it will not affect us that much. Just when I've gotten good at economizing on food, prices of even the most basic things are going to skyrocket. Oh, while I'm on the subject, let me direct you to this article at Cheap Healthy Good: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding the Food Crisis, which lays out the causes, effects, and potential solutions in handy list form. A good read.

The big news in the world of children is that James has a cavity, which makes me feel like a failure of a parent. Though it's not all my fault: "James, have you been brushing on the back side of you teeth?" "Nah, it's too hard." So we're re-establishing good brushing habits, and stepping up the flossing as well, which is hard, because I would rate flossing my children's teeth as one of the grossest things I've ever done as a parent. This is more a weird thing about me than anything about my kids' mouths, but I would rather change a thousand dirty diapers than floss someone else's teeth.

That's all, I guess. Hopefully I'll wrangle up some photos to post tomorrow.