It's Official!

I'm in a bad mood ALL THE TIME now! It might be just PMS or I might be entering a new phase of my life where I'm really crabby just constantly. Either way, that's kind of great.

I changed my blog yesterday and now I don't recognize it when I open my page. It's like "Ooops! I accidentally stumbled upon this orange page somehow and also that toddler's mother obviously isn't watching her very well to let her leave the house with her boots on the wrong feet like that." 30 times a day. I'll get used to it in time and then who knows, maybe I'll redecorate again with a winter motif and The Baby with her winter boots on the wrong feet.

Okay, I'm busily working on the winter holidays e-book.

Off I go to watch a movie with the kids, eat some pasta and be crabby for the rest of the evening. It should be a terrific night.

Why Dragons on Michaelmas?

Angels - particularily Michael - battle Satan. (Rev 12:7) Satan is traditionally represented within Western culture as a dragon (among other things), which means that a) Dragon Tales is spiritually dubious as well as being really irritating and b) our playing with knights and dragons has Deep Spiritual Signifigance. According to early legends, Saint George was the Archangel Michael's earthly representative, so reading our fantastic St. George and The Dragon book is ONLY appropriate. Children in Medieval Michaelmas festivals would pretend to battle dragons, so our setting up play castles has historical precedent going back to the sixth century!

Michaelmas was traditionally a harvest festival (timed much more appropriately for my area than Thanksgiving!), and people would have roast geese, roast carrots and special breads with a cross on top. I'm making Irish Soda bread and pot roast with carrots, I believe, since I REALLY HATE ROAST GOOSE. (last year my dad brought me a plucked goose and then told me I had to "cut the wing tips off." Um, can't do that, dad.) And there was also traditionally music and dancing, so there are all the ingredients you need for one awesome little holiday, should you be so inclined. You certainly don't have to be, but Michaelmas is one EXTREMELY little boy pleasing day.

Would you be interested if I put together an e-book of little winter holidays stretching from mid-November until the end of February? They would be a mix of religious and secular days from a variety of traditions and I would have simple recipes and crafts to do with little kids as well. I'm very shy about offering this, but I know that adding new traditions like this has added a lot to our family life and my readers have expressed a lot of interest, so if you would like me to do this, let me know. If enough people are interested, I'll have it ready by early November.

On Little Special Days

Tomorrow is Michaelmas, the Feast of All Angels. This WAS widely celebrated in Western Europe until the Puritans had their no-fun way with holidays, and now it's celebrated by I don't know who else, but we make an angel food cake and read St. George and The Dragon, and my husband (or "Daddy") has big plans involving making a castle out of blocks with the kids and then defending it against a rampaging Playmobil dragon attack.

I like little holidays - there's no pressure, unlike Christmas when certain mothers sniffle around the house and refuse to let anyone open presents because we're visiting with the Other Side and thus it is NOT CHRISTMAS BECAUSE WE RUINED IT. But Midsummer's Eve is mine and whatever we decide to do is great. And I love the way special little days catch a certain kind of magic and hold it, this ordinary day that's suddenly lifted out of the normal, small children dashing barefoot across a damp lawn first thing in the morning to see if maybe, maybe fairies did do the impossible and visit the little house they built the day before and always the answer is yes.

I'm a big moody grump today.

For the same reason that I was a big moody grump last month at this time. So I'm going to take it easy today and I'll see you tomorrow. I have a post in the work on family traditions (how you celebrate holidays and birthdays, everyday rituals, that sort of thing), so if you want to leave your traditions in the comments - or ideas for my post, whatever - please do.

Me and The Princess

The Baby decided to spent yesterday rather overdressed, which made my usual household uniform - pajama pants and a sweatshirt - look even crummier in comparison. There's nothing like hanging around someone in a ballgown and crown all day to make you feel a bit like a slattern, really.

My thoughts are turning - gently - to Christmas. There are only 89 days until, you see, and since Christmas is a financial stretch for us, I have to plan things out carefully. Not that we aren't extravagant, but it's a cautious extravagance. I want to get The Boy this shield, with the matching helmet and knight costume. And sword. When we first had kids, we vowed "NO WEAPONS!" but now I feel, begrudgingly, that I was trying to remake my son over in my own image, and that we should allow him to play in a way that is authentic to him and his gentle masculinity. And with that, there goes the last of my ideals, I guess.


Another thing I want to get is a creche that The Baby can play with - we have one, but it's breakable. Any suggestions?

And here's another question: what magical gift bringers (if any) do you have at your house? We have rather an extensive list:
- a leprechaun who unwillingly leaves behind gold coins on St. Patrick's Day
- Fairies who leave little china dishes, pretty glass baubles and candy on Midsummer's Eve
- St. Nicholas, who comes because the kids have a Dutch Great-Grandma, as they tell their VERY jealous friends on December sixth.
- Santa, of course, who is a different person altogether from St. Nicholas - his brother, my children reckon.
- and the Three Kings on January Sixth.
- And then there's the very generous Tooth Fairy, who has recently been dis-believed by a certain sorrowful but growing-up girl.

These archetypal figures stand for important things, I think - summer's wild and chaotic beauty, the excitement of the coming of Christmas - to be replaced, when the time comes, with real faith and an adult's wistful enjoyment, this knowledge of the passing of time.

(Edited to add: a creche is a Nativity Set!)

Today's Post - For Reals!

I attempted to dash off a post this morning, tying together Britney Spears and The Five Little Peppers and how our society hates children and it was a big leaden lump of awfulness. I hit "publish", cringing, and then decided IMMEDIATELY against it. It was BAD!

We - The Baby and I - spent the morning at a good friend's house. She very kindly had hauled all of her princessy dress-up clothes downstairs for The Little Crab, who then spent the entire visit wearing a very fancy outfit, like a petite Spanish Infanta. She also showed our friend her "ballet", which she has only ever seen photos of - and so entirely consists of posing, beautiful and still, while wearing a solemn ballerina expression. It was VERY funny. I had cups of tea and virtuously turned down perhaps the best looking carrot cake I had ever seen in my whole life and then felt very tragic about my current Grim Diet and Awful Weight. So sad!

Also sad: I can't log into my hotmail account right now. If you're one of my friends who writes to me on hotmail, use my beckfrogandtoad at gmail one, okay? I'm wanting to phase out my hotmail account ANYHOW and this might be the push I needed.

The Baby painted an entire book of Paint By Water pictures yesterday while I was busy - she enjoyed it VERY much.

She seems very much like a big girl all of a sudden, competent and passionate and articulate. And speaking of articulate, The Girl was so quietly pleased with the happy reception her stories received last week that she promptly sat down over the weekend and wrote another one - and now she's asking me very wistfully every night if I've blogged it yet. So now - in the absence of a topic of my own - let me present my daughter's story, entitled "Rain, Rain, Rain", now with authentic spelling!:

It has rained for a week. In front of your house, the street is like a river. The electricity in your house is off. Only the candles burn at night. You can't go outdoors. How do you feel? What will you do to occupy your time? What hardships will you and your family endure?

But it keeps raining. We grab all the food that dous not hav to be in the
frige, candols, maches and toys. The dounstars is flouded. My laptop's baderys
are ded.

I look out the windo. I see our house bohat evrey one had one.Every one was
giving one when thay found out about the rain. We grabd all are suuf and jumqtd
out of the windo and into are houseboht.

We saw frind's houseboht's thay wer all on are house bohat. We pardye'd
intell al the water was gone. We sed good by and every thing was back to normal.
The end.

All right! "Party" as a verb! Homeschooling, here we come.

Three Little Peppers

Today's post has been deleted for being REALLY AWFUL!
I'll rewrite later.

And WHY am I all bruised today?

Since it's Monday, you'll have to go to the Kitchen Party to find out. Also, ouch.

You Asked For It!

Here you go - I carefully went through the infuriating article I talked about yesterday. Her lines (I don't want to mention her name so she can't google her way over here) are italized.

Their fury says a great deal about the current debate over women's choices -- all of it alarming.
Or is says a great deal about how women who make non-mainstream choices have just HAD it with people lipping off about things that are NONE OF THEIR FREAKING BUSINESS.

The media gave lots of coverage to women who quit the labor force to become full-time mothers, but they treated this decision as if it were simply a lifestyle choice. They never seemed to mention the risks of economic dependency -- or the myriad benefits of work.
This is like those atheists who insist that they need to insert their opinion into every little conversation. Does ever news article about women quitting the work force NEED to have this added on, or can we just presume that women KNOW that economic dependency can be risky and that work can be rewarding?

Over time, most stay-at-home wives are likely to face major hardships as a result of divorce, widowhood, a spouse's unemployment or illness, or any number of other challenges.
And guess what! So do most WORKING wives! A couple I know both had good jobs and bought an expensive house - then he got sick and they lost EVERYTHING and ended up living in her parents' basement. Her career didn't save them.
The world IS flawed and dangerous. My staying at home DOES make me more vulnerable - but is the only solution to buy into what society expects of me? We carry extensive disability and life insurance, are able to live VERY cheaply when needed and beyond that, I have faith in my husband, in his essential decency and reliability and in his love for me. He's a fallible human being, but marriage itself is this huge act of hope.

Women who abandon their careers and become financially dependent on their husbands often look back on that decision as the biggest mistake of their lives -- even women in stable, enduring marriages.
I dunno about this. I know many happy older women, content with their lives and and their choices. My own grandmother raised her big family, was a loving helpmate to my grandfather and then took up painting in her 50s and now teaches painting classes in her 80s.
Being "financially dependent" does require maturity - yes, economic abuse CAN happen. But my husband and I see ourselves as a unit, with all money being a shared resource. I don't feel "dependent" on him, although I do appreciate his loving hard work.

My reporting revealed that the bad news is just as ominous as I'd feared; so many women are unaware of practical realities that range from crucial changes in the divorce laws to the difficulties of reentering the work force and the penalties they pay for taking a time-out.
A "time-out". Do notice the patronizing language.

As for the children's welfare, sociologists have spent decades comparing the kids of working moms with those of full-time homemakers, consistently failing to prove that the latter do better.
Actually, there's a lot of debate over this very thing, but for me it's not a matter of doing "better" - it's about doing it MYSELF. I want to be the one who rocks my baby down for a nap, who greets them after school, who is with them when they're sick. It's sort of a sign of how screwed up priorities are when the only reason someone like this would see for staying home with one's own children is the desire to have children who are "better."

And yet millions of women continue to be misled by the fairy-tale version of life, in which Prince Charming comes along and takes care of you forever.
In a good marriage, the husband and wife take care of each other. I think all people start out with an idealistic view of what marriage will be. And isn't the modern idea that we can all be these self-contained self-supporting careerists equally unrealistic? As she said: illness and unemployment can happen, even to hard-working career women. We need to become a society again where people can rely on each other.

After all, women aren't stupid; it's true that they've been deserting the labor force in record numbers, but surely the problem was just that unfortunate information gap.
You know, I've written before about these middle-aged career women I run into who are just HORRIFIED that I don't work, and it is EXACTLY like when they were in their Baby Booming prime and rejecting their parent's values, except now they think that they have made such fantastic choices and are personally OFFENDED when anyone chooses to do anything else. I mean, obviously if I make different choices, it's because I'm uninformed. And stupid.

If this were accurate, I wouldn't mind someone complaining about it, but my book is not a polemic; it's a painstakingly reported collection of information and interviews.
Here is the dictionary definition of "polemic": 1. A controversial argument, especially one refuting or attacking a specific opinion or doctrine. As in "This book is clearly a polemic."

If you want to disagree with my conclusions, you need to address the facts on which they're based rather than acting as if these were simply matters of opinion. They're not.
I have an uncle who always argues like this.

Of course, these women hadn't read the book either, but they weren't about to let the evidence get in the way of their pre-conceived biases.
Those stay-at-home moms! They're just SO STUPID!

You wouldn't buy a car without doing some comparison shopping and researching the advantages of different options, would you? So why would you make a major life choice that could jeopardize your future without informing yourself about the risks -- and the alternatives?
That's right: raising children is like buying a car. Here's how one of my friends made the decision to become a SAHM - her 14 month old daughter had her third ear infection in two months and she was spending one HOUR a day with her and her child was acting increasingly distant and she decided to HELL WITH THIS. She and her husband talked it over and by living really cheaply, figured out that she could stay home with her child for another two years and YES, it did affect her professional life but she's working again now with less hours, trying to make her career reflect the reality that having children brings new demands. There probably were risks that she didn't take into account, but she desperately needed to do it and so she did.

In my interviews, most said they didn't want to think about the problems they might encounter in the future, let alone to do any contingency planning.
How many women did she INTERVIEW? Every stay-at-home mother I know has back-up plans - many of my friends run home businesses, many return to work part-time when their children are a few years old, many are taking classes to keep themselves employable. And every homemaker I know has sat down with her husband and planned out life and disability insurance, too. There probably is this mythical Blithe Homemaker, but she's not really among MY acquaintance.

When I asked about the dangers of economic dependency, they bristled and insisted that bad things would never happen to them, only to other people.
I love how she claims to be writing only about "facts" and then uses such derogatory terms to describe homemakers - they "bristle"!

Among full-time homemakers, this overdeveloped capacity for denial is often accompanied by a highly combative sense of indignation about views that challenge their own.
I love sentences like this because they're so unanswerable - I disagree with what she's writing? I have an "overdeveloped capacity for denial"! I find her condescension hilariously offensive? I have a "highly combative sense of indignation"! Obviously I suck to reject the intellectual riches she is so generously offering.

In recent years, stay-at-home moms have gone on the offensive, demanding that their choices be respected and attacking those who question them. Many people have thus been intimidated into silence -- a phenomenon I encountered with increasing frequency over the last few months.
Is demanding that people respect my choices really "intimidating them into silence" and would that language dare be used for any other group in society? I don't THINK so.

"We don't want to upset the stay-at-home mommies," more than one editor told me in a patronizing tone of voice that suggested the conspiratorial whisper of adults who are trying not to wake the cranky children.
Gee, why would stay-at-home moms feel the need to go on the offensive? I don't see anything disrespectful in the above statement.

Institutions that rely on the volunteer efforts of stay-at-home moms are particularly leery of presenting any program that might challenge their assumptions and rouse their ire.
RE: not biting the nose off one's own face. My children's school has TONS of needed volunteers, willingly raising desperately needed money and helping in the classes, on school trips and in the library and they're all SAHMs. One of my older friends once told me that the second my kids were in school I would find out how societally necessary I was because certain institutions - like schools - depend upon homemakers.

stay-at-home wives -- the ones most at risk, and therefore the ones I most wanted to reach with my findings -- are being insulated from the truth by well-meaning decision-makers who are, in my opinion, infantilizing them.
People aren't reading my book! It's a CONSPIRACY!

Yes, it's true that women who don't work are often so defensive about their choice that they've helped to create this regrettable climate
That's me: defensive. Regrettable. Kind of infantalized and dumb, really.

somewhat dimwitted second-class citizens who aren't really up to the task of dealing with reality, which has to be left to the grown-ups
Why would I possibly feel defensive and not at all like reading her book? Is it because I'm dumb? Must be.

Maybe some of them will even reconsider their choices and start making more sensible plans for the future than relying on the blithe assumption that there will always be an obliging husband around to support them.
She thinks she's special. Anyhow, recently a big factory closed locally and now people are losing their houses, because they stupidly relied on the blithe assumption that there would always be an obliging factory around to support them. If only they had made more sensible plans.

Grumble

1. I'm still sorting through toys. I now hate toys. My children, for the record, LOVE their new tidy playroom and haven't noticed that 3/4 of their toys are gone. Small children are dumb and easily distracted.

2. My best toilet training advice that I have is a) bribery works (we're currently using mini M&Ms, which are GLUTEN-FREE!) and b) get them underpants with their VERY FAVORITE cartoon character on them and then talk very seriously about how we must never, ever pee on Dora. It just wouldn't be respectful or nice. This may not work for you, but it might. I won't write about how many times I had to mop up pee yesterday because it would make my life sound too glamorous and then everyone would be all jealous and stuff.

3. I had a phonecall from the school last night that The Boy now has a block of speech therapy open, which makes me feel EXACTLY like putting my head down on the computer desk and wailing. I don't know why my kids have speech problems, but it feels like it's all my fault.

4. I wrote a long ranting post earlier, realized it was sort of... I don't know, defensive and mean-spirited, and so I deleted it. It was spurred by Veronica Mitchell's most recent post (she's so smart!) and I ended up so furious after reading this article that she linked to that I ranted at my dad until he fled from my house. I just did it again! I just wrote three more paragraphs - that I deleted - RANTING AND RANTING. Ha.

Our Playroom - Now Mouse Free!

Here's the bookshelf/dollhouse corner (dollhouse courtesy of Bonnie's daughter! Thanks, sweetie!):
The curtains didn't photograph correctly - they're coral, not red. But you get the idea. My husband is putting shelves above the bookcase to hold more bins of toys tonight, which is going to be great. I don't know why there's a framed photo in front of the dollhouse, now that I look at it - I think The Baby did that while I was distracted.
The kitchen corner, a very colourful bike and a crash cart full of Polly Pockets, My Little Pony and friends and Fisher Price people. Don't touch them - I JUST GOT THEM SORTED. Remember when I wrote - several zillion posts back - about how we planned on only having tasteful wooden toys when we were first parents? The above photo should show exactly how well we've succeeded.
And here is The Baby shutting us both in. Oh, I thought I was finally going to get to LEAVE the playroom? Ha. What you can't see is that she is wearing a crown - or "Cwown", as it is apparently pronounced in short royal circles - and that she is, in fact, a pwincess.

In other news, The Pwincess has been toilet training at a rapid pace. We visited a friend with a Baby-aged daughter (and an actual Brand New Baby!), and The Baby's Friend very obligingly used the big toilet right in front of her and then displayed her awesome Dora undies. Well. The Baby had a determined look on her face all the way home and is now enjoying wearing some big girl undies of her own, which has me feeling sort of nervously on edge. But hey - I'd rather spend all day mopping up royal toddler pee than clean the playroom again, so it's all good.

Whoooooo boy.

Guess what I'm doing today?
Go on, guess.
......
I'm scrubbing the playroom, of course!
How have three small children acculmulated so much JUNKY TOYS in their short lifetimes? At first I was like "this teddy bear is a precious, beloved thing" and now I am brutally tossing them into garbage bags, muttering darkly that life is TOO SHORT to clean another FREAKING TEDDY BEAR.

It's kind of nice to see an orderly, clean room appear from the formless void, but my kitchen is full of plastic toys waiting for their trip through the dishwasher and my laundry room is FULL of dress-up toys and cloth dolls and puppets - my house looks like a dirty, dirty toystore right now, but my playroom is starting to look great. And once I am done, I will lock the door and never allow my children back in to mess it up again. Maybe.

My husband very kindly disposed of the mouse corpse and was very unmocking of me about it, since I am a but a frail woman* and this is Our Way or something. My mother mocked me cruelly, however and rolled her eyes at me as she was leaving because I am SUCH a suck. A less grateful daughter could point out that she did, in fact, raise me, but I would never do such a thing. And now I am off to finish sorting through toys and scrubbing and then I will sleep the sleep of the deserving poor, likely face down in a pile of freshly cleaned and grateful to still be here teddy bears.

*Kidding. You knew that, right?

Rated R For Really Horrible

I decided to clean out the playroom this morning - I had big plans involving getting rid of all of the junky toys and having the kids return home this afternoon to a beautiful, sunlit playroom that they could actually PLAY in, instead of wading hip-deep through Happy Meal Toys.

I noticed with some horror that the kids had been sneaking candy into the playroom - candy wrappers! - and then noticed with some MORE horror that wee little mice had been pooping behind the train table. I was revolted for a few minutes, and then I made a mental note to vacuum and scrub the floor and kept picking up and sorting toys. Oh, I was so very productive! Such a good, good mama!

There was a large cardboard box right under the train table full of miscellaneous toys that needed to be sorted and such and so I upended it and out tumbled a mouse that had fallen into the box and then been unable to make its way out and so perished. Yes. A dead mouse. I fled screaming hysterically - I have MOUSE ISSUES - and phoned my husband at work shrieking into the phone that THERE IS A DEAD MOUSE ON THE FLOOR OF THE PLAYROOM AND HE NEEDED TO COME HOME RIGHT NOW AND BURN THE PLAYROOM DOWN.

He'll take care of it when he gets here, although he says that he won't burn the playroom down. As for me, I have been instructed to close the playroom door and pretend that it's a bat. Not a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE MOUSE but a sweet little dead bat. It is NOT WORKING.

Great. So this evening, after the kids are in bed, we are going to wash EVERY SINGLE TOY in the playroom - all five million of them - and I'm going to make plans on moving to a brand new, hermetically-sealed house that no mouse could ever possibly get into. Also, I'm going to go give my cats a dirty look. Lazy jerks.

Yuckyuckyuckyuck. The TRAUMA.

And here's the butter tart recipe

That I mentioned in my Kitchen Party post. (go read it! Leave me a comment!)
Preheat the oven to 375.
Prepare pie pastry for a two-crust pie and roll it out on a floured surface. Using a big round cookie cutter (or a big round cup), cut out 12 circles and line 12 medium-sized muffin cups with them. Do NOT prick.
Pour boiling water over 1/2 cup raisins and let them sit around until they're fat. Drain.
And yes, you can skip the raisins if you hate them, although the tarts ARE good with raisins, really. Arrange your drained raisins in the tart shells.
Mix together:
1/4 cup softened butter
1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar
Stir in
1 cup corn syrup
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/4 tsp salt
and 1 tsp vanilla.
Combine just until blended. Spoon into unbaked tart shells, filling each until about 2/3 full. Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 18 minutes. DO NOT allow filling to bubble over. And let them cool down before taking them out of the tin, too, as I found out last night to my dismay. Eat while singing O Canada.

It's Monday YET AGAIN!

I don't know WHY Monday's always catch me so unaware - it's like I get lulled into this false security by Sunday and then BLAMMO! I have to get the kids ready for school and make lunches and run errands again, just out of NOWHERE!

Monday's ALSO mean that my Kitchen Party post is up! Go read it and you'll find out exactly WHY The Girl has been picking up so many acorns recently.

Your Weather Update

It is 2 degrees outside! (that's 35 or something. I don't get farenheit.)
TWO! DEGREES!
Fall lasted a week. Apparently we're well into winter now.
Off I go to get the winter coats out of the attic.

The Boy told his dad yesterday "My style is abstract but as I get older it's developing."
Hahahahahaha. Also: there goes my plans for a family of little doctors to keep me in splendour in my old age. Freaking artsy fartsy kids.

I'm cold! I'm under the weather! I'm run down! So I'm just going to take it very easy today and just hang around the house in my pajamas while it storms outside. My muse is apparently taking it easy today, too.

I wrote a really boring story right here about borrowing $2 from my friend Bonnie yesterday to buy a can of peas and then reread it and realized that it was the worst thing I had ever written. Creative bankruptcy! Fear it! The Girl wrote another story for me last night, and I will just give you one tantalizing sample:

Once we were climbing Magic Mountain. Why Magic Mountain is called Magic
Mountain is because some people go down after sunset and they end up
disappearing. No one ever knows what happened to them. We thought we were
safe because we were climbing ten hours before the sun was supposed to set.
Suddenly, the sun went down.

She cracks me up SO much, that kid. The two of us went for a walk last night around town and while we were in the Good Neighborhood, a young girl biked up to us.
"Hey," she said to The Girl. "I know you from school."
"Yeah, said The Girl, completely calmly. "Are you one of (The Boy's) friends?"
"No," said bike girl. "I'm older than that."
"Oh, then you're in Mrs. Blank's class. She's nice."
The two of them chatted for a few minutes and then we walked away with me a little bit dazzled by The Girl's utter social competency. Her dad is so shy and I'm such an awkward, silly person that she seems like this little Grace Kelly in a family of goofs. She reminds me of myself in only a very few ways: she likes to read, she thinks writing is Great Fun, and she likes to cook. In all other particulars, she resembles someone else entirely and I can't decide WHO. Herself, maybe.

I made this chocolate spice bread yesterday afternoon and whoa, it was good. It WAS good and now it's gone. I don't have any big baking projects planned for today, although my husband has been hinting oh-so-subtly that he'd like me to make some butter tarts sometime soon.

Speaking of Bonnie and things that were really good: her post today was just lovely.

Bring me my bow of burnished gold

The Girl's homework last night was to read me a story that she'd written for class. They were given the following prompt:

Susan sat down in her desk at school. She started to put her books away. A new student walked into the classroom. She sat in the desk next to Susan. The new student looked very frightened. Susan...

And this is what The Girl wrote:

...said "hi, my name is Susan. What is your name?"
"Rose," she said.
"I'll introduce you to everyone."
Susan was scared of Rose.
Five years later Rose said "I've waited long enough!" With that, Rose took off her mask and said "I've waited for years for this"
Susan said "Who really are you?"
She said "Megadoctragone!" and with that, she ate Susan all in one gulp.
The end.

Awesome. What a great kid.

Picky Kids R Us

I've written about it before but let me mention it again: MY KIDS ARE PICKY EATERS. VERY. My gorgeous exotic soup yesterday was for lunch, while my older two kids were in school eating tuna sandwiches and goldfish crackers, okay? They do eat some things - sweet potatoes, broccoli, lentils - that I know other kids have issues with, but suppertimes mostly consist of me cajolling/begging/threatening them to eat.

Boy, I used to be smug about what a good eater The Girl was - as a toddler, she'd eat ANYTHING. Then she turned four and started spending more time with other kids and her food universe shrank, the end. But she's a good kid and I don't care too much what she chooses not to eat right now - either she'll eat more things as she gets older or she won't and I don't get that much say in it. (I am SO lying! I CARE! SO MUCH!)

My soup yesterday was rather improvised, so I'm a little bit hesitant about giving you the recipe. I'll do my best, though - I was reading The Moosewood Cookbook and decided to give Gypsy Soup a whirl, but I didn't have a lot of the ingredients (no celery! no chickpeas!) so this is my own version:

- cook 2 cups chopped onions, 2 cloves minced garlic and 2 cups sweet potatoes (ALSO: I FORGOT: one chopped red pepper!) in vegetable oil for five minutes or so. Add 2 tsp paprika, 1 tsp basil, 1 tsp salt, a dash of cinnamon, a dash of cayenne, one bay leaf and 3 cups chicken stock (the recipe calls for water, vegetarian readers!). Throw in a couple of handfulls of red lentils (unless your hands are the size of baseball gloves, in which case you might only want to throw in one handful. But they're probably not.) Simmer for half an hour or so, stirring occasionally. When your lentils are cooked and your sweet potatoes are mushy, voila, you have lunch!

I think it would look VERY pretty if you took it and pureed it in your blender in batches - very orange - but I'm only guessing because I accidentally blew up my blender a couple of weeks ago. Kerblamo. Anyhow, the Baby and I loved the soup and then we went and played in the yard between rainstorms:

We took Dora out with us and she had a good time trotting along, smelling sow thistle and going down the slide. I watched the recent recalls with some horror, worried that The Baby's Dora was going to be included, but phew! She wasn't! The Baby just noticed her picture on my monitor and announced "That's me! And my Dora! And we outside! We picking fwowers! My Dora EAT ONE!" That Dora. She's so crazy.

I posted a link to my favorite chocolate zucchini cake recipe in yesterday's Kitchen Party post, if you haven't already read it. I made it last night and it is ALL GONE now. Tasty.

I wrote a long, miserable post about The Terrible State of The World, and then shook my head no, since who needs to read a long miserable post about The Terrible State of The World? You'll either agree with me or not and what changes?

Nothing, that's what.

So I went for a long walk with my dad and The Baby and examined the new toys in at the hardware store and watched dad buy a new doorknob and The Baby kicked an empty beer can down the sidewalk. Then I came home and wrote ANOTHER long, miserable post about The Terrible State of The World. Apparently, I am just in that sort of mood, my long line of Presbyterian minster forebearers speaking their ancestral language through me, always.

I made a pot of soup instead, full of sweet potatoes and cinnamon and turmeric and red lentils, and someplace in chopping onions from my in-law's garden and peppers from my parent's, I felt better. The world is still bad and people still do terrible things and we must manage to live with this knowledge, this work of adulthood. The Baby stirred our big cast iron pot of soup, solemnly, and announced that the soup was full of red and orange and my heart was suddenly filled with radiant joy, joy for this child and the timeless blessing of having my own child in my arms - not as an adult with sad, hard work to do, but as a mother and child, this joy reaching back forever.

It's Monday EVERY DAY NOW!

And I'm being mournfully autumnal over at the Kitchen Party. Go have a read.

One Year Old

Happy birthday, Kara Jeanette! You are - according to the birth certificate which came in your box - one year old today, and The Girl, who is your owner, demanded that we make you a cake With Candles, thank you very much.

So we did.

There is not much time in childhood for dolls. The Girl is still very much a little girl, but many of her peers seem to be getting ready for an early and ill-advised adolescence, spending a lot of time standing in hostile little groups outside the convenience store, drinking pop with what they hope is a sophisticated air. I suspect, rather wistfully, that this might be the last full year of doll love at our house and that next year will find The Girl a bit ambivalent, teetering on the edge of pre-adolescence.

I enjoy The Girl more now that she's older - we can hang out! and paint our nails! and look at magazines together! - and my relationship with her is now taking on a more familiar, human form. So much of her first year, I felt like I had been bizarrely saddled with this little squalling martian, this unhappy person from another world and that even the air here hurt her. Now she MAKES SENSE - if something is wrong with her, she can talk about it and her emotions seem much more like normal human emotions and she likes reading and is just altogether a pleasing sort of person. She IS getting older though, the way she is supposed to, and parts of her childhood will be left behind forever, including Kara Jeanette, unaware that her sole candle is as much of a memorial as it is a celebration, something we did because we were wistfully aware that it would likely never happen again.

So Sleepy

The Baby decided last night that she had important, pressing matters to discuss and that she needed to discuss these important, pressing matters every five minutes and so today, I am the walking dead. She's not too cheerful either - both of us spent the morning slumped over on the couch, with me suggesting that we go back to bed, maybe, like SANE PEOPLE. But no.

I hate rushing my older two off to school in the morning, the annoyance of getting them dressed and fed and brushed and hustling them out the door and the sudden startling silence after they're gone. But it's also nice to have some time alone with The Baby and to be able to discuss her important pressing matters in actual daylight. We're going to make some pizza crusts later on this afternoon and then have a relaxing bath and be cheerful and happy for her siblings arrival home from school, bursting through the door loud and raucous and home again. Maybe I'll even make some cookies to greet them, should I work up enough energy, which is NOT - I must add - seeming likely right now. It's a nice thought, though.

If it was Monday, I could call this "Monday's Musings."

The Baby and I have been finding ourselves sort of at loose ends right now - the house feels so EMPTY without my two raucous older kids running around squabbling and playing huge games of Let's Pretend and making scary experiments in the bathroom. I'm sort of wildly amused by all of my newfound free time, because when The Girl was The Baby's age, I had NO IDEA how to fill a day with a toddler or how to cope and now I'm like Only One Toddler At Home = Vacation! Also, I wish I could go back in a time machine and have a do-over with The Girl so that she didn't have such an overwhelmed, weepy mom. Anyone have a time machine?

Yesterday's stuffed animal safari was entirely my kids' idea - I just went along for the ride, and played "person unconscious with malaria" in the shade while they ran around. They also sat at the table chuckling and drawing pictures of Arthur, hugely fat, his glasses sad little circles in the middle of his enormous doughy head.

The Baby and I made a big pot of black bean soup for lunch, which is pretty darn tasty. (and here's my recipe: brown one onion and two cloves of minced garlic. Add one can of black beans and one can of diced tomatoes and some oregano and cumin and let it all cook for a while. Tasty AND cheap.) We - the Royal We, which means me - took down the cheerful paper lanterns and cleaned the livingroom and rearranged the furniture into its autumnal formation and strung up dollar store chains of leaves along the curtain rods. Throw in several loads of laundry, a walk for the mail, playing in the backyard with The Baby and several readings of The Baby's new Charlie and Lola book and you have your answer to what stay-at-home mothers do all day. I'm not QUITE sure what I'll do when all three of the kids are in school - have another baby? spend all day staring sadly out the window? get a JOB? perhaps write The Great Canadian Novel? open my own detective agency? - but there are still a few more years before that question needs to be answered. I'm not a big fan of making plans, because I figure that I'll get to that point in time and the answer will present itself, but that might be because I'm PRETTY stupid.

And happy, now that my PMS-induced of despondency has passed. I actually phoned my husband at work crying yesterday morning because I was SO sad and so he came home from work in the evening with that wary My Wife Is Crazy Now look on his face, but I was back to my regular self, which is to say that I was complaining about cramps and making supper and pretty cheerful about everything, none of which I've planned at all but all of which seems to be turning out just as though I'd ordered it. Lucky me.

Look at me and my mood swings!

Or: Posting Whilst Pre-Menstrual.
The kids had a GREAT school day and both of them are very, very happy. We made this cake after school (although it did NOT look like anywhere near as good, thank you) and hid some stuffed animals in the yard and played Animal Safari and I feel MUCH better now. Thanks for all the support.

Normally I'm pretty cheerful on this blog.
Chipper, even.
Today, I'm just sad, though. Dropped my older two kids off at school this morning, ran in to drop off some money for pizza cards and milk tickets and then stood at the edge of the yard to watch for them, just to reassure myself that they were still there, looking for The Girl's ever-present hat, The Boy's shock of standing-up hair and couldn't see them. They were there but just out of sight, in the mass of other children and I'll see them at the end of the day, tired out and grumpy and full of complaints.
I'm just sad. It's nothing to be sad about, not really.

The Interweb Was Broken!

At least at my house. Another friend in town reported having no difficulties, which made me suspect, darkly, that my computer was possessed. But it wasn't.

School starts tomorrow, which has made today a bit emotional - I'm trying to jam all of the SUPER SUMMER FUN that we didn't have over the actual summer into one grey, rainy day. Meanwhile, my children are laconically eating tons of celery and Cheez Whiz, one of their ancestral foods, and pretending that a row of chairs in the office is a train leaving for someplace else. It doesn't feel like summer outside at all - there's a chill to the air and the leaves are yellowing and it feels like September, like summer was months and months ago.

Gingerbread is such an autumnal food for me. I know that gingerbread men are for some reason strongly tied to Christmas but to me, the smell of ginger and cloves and cinnamon smell like autumn, like leaves on the ground and the smell of woodstoves burning. I wrote a little bit about my gingerbread hearts in yesterday's Kitchen Party post and here's a nice spicy cookie recipe that you can make into people, if you like, or hearts if you'd rather not (and if you don't have cookie cutters at all - how'd you manage that? - you can use a floured cup rim and make round cookies):

In a large mixing bowl, beat together:
3/4 cup butter, softened
with an electric mixer for 30 seconds. Add:
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground ginger (or 2 tablespoons fresh, if you have it)
1 1/2 teaspoons finely ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
and
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg.
Beat until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl once in a while. Beat in:
1 egg
and 1/3 cup molasses (that's where the iron comes from).
Beat in as much of
2 3/4 cups flour
as you can with the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour with a wooden spoon. Divide dough in half, cover and chill for 4 to 24 hours.
Grease a large cookie sheet OR line with parchment paper. On a lightly floured surface, roll half the dough at a time until it's 1/4 inch thick. Flour your cookie cutters and cut our dough. Bake in a 350 oven for 10 minutes or until the cookies look dry. Transfer to a wire rack (or a clean tea towel on your table, whatever) and let them cool down before stuffing them into your mouth.

Hey hey!

I'm posting at my Kitchen Party blog today, and rambling on about my kids' going back to school and their school lunches and also waxing philosophical* (or as philosophical as I get, which maybe isn't that VERY.). Go have a look and say hi!

*ominously enough, I spelled "philosophical" SO wrong.

I'm home!

Sadly, so is all of my junk. I just spent the past two hours unloading the car and unpacking and starting the wash and everything and I am really, really tired after all that unpacking and the several hour long car ride with squabbling, wailing children.

It was lovely seeing my brother and sister-in-law - their new house is beautiful and new and sunlit and they live in a beautiful green little neighborhood in the same little city where we used to live. It was sort of oddly poignant visiting again, imagining what our lives would have been like if we hadn't moved - the same way I feel when I run into some fondly remembered but not regretted ex-boyfriend, the possibility of this parallel but different life running alongside my own. The kids were QUITE disgusted to learn that we voluntarily left this city, this Eden, with its toy stores and doting relatives and all of that, envisioning a thrilling new life that entirely revolved around making purchases at various exciting new stores, only pausing to be chased around by Their Favorite Uncle Ever. We paused and looked at our old apartment and remembered all of our very good reasons for moving - for one, BOY, WOULD WE EVER BE BROKE - and everyone was pretty cheerful by the end of the weekend to leave for home, even if it meant leaving a beloved brother in the city where he is so happy and we never were.