A few days before I had The Girl, I went for a walk with one of my brothers, following the train tracks that meander up through the older houses in the city we lived in. My brother and I went for dozens of walks around town, so I don't know why this particular one stands out for me, but the memory of me ungainly and huge and balancing on the traintracks really has stayed with me, the trees suddenly green in the early spring.

Two months later, this was me and The Girl, her jaundice making her look ruddy and seafaring next to my unnatural pallor. And rockin' unibrow.

I had no idea what I was doing.

That girl - and her scary eyebrows - is as long gone as that tiny baby who became my lanky child. Nine years - well, nearly - may as well be one hundred years, and much of the parts of parenting that mystified me are now something like second nature, something that feels like I've been doing it for the past hundred years, something that I will be doing for the next hundred.

Of course, I won't. That baby in that girl's arms is now a lanky, resilient girl, something that happened just as fast as those old ladies warned me it would. And the next one is a tall, kind-hearted child and even our current baby is not really much of a baby anymore and in substantially less than a hundred years - in less then two - I will have three school aged children. I don't know what happens next, one hundred years after the last time I walked down the train tracks, laughing in the spring sunlight.

One of the things about writing about things that actually happen is that I then feel like I should write about what happens NEXT. The kids had a better couple of days: The Girl has planned her own party with another girl who has not been invited (it turns out), complete with cake, for the weekend. The Boy came home cheerful and wanting to invite various kids in class over. It's not exciting to write about, but there's your update.

A few more questions, answered:


1. A snowmachine/snowmobile is this thing:


They are VERY MUCH part of the culture around here, to the point where I was told by my doctor not to ride on them during EACH of my pregnancies. DONE! They're not very safe, either - each winter is marked locally by the death of several men on the stupid things. And in the summer, people drive ATVs. My husband lost a young cousin to an ATV accident as a child, which is a very, very sad thing.

2. The Boy is in a tiny class. My kids go to a very small northern school. There ARE way more girls, though, which someday might be kind of a nice thing - although I don't think that being in the same class as the same very small group of kids for 10 solid years really leaves anyone with any romantic allure.



3. The Baby doesn't have the attention span to sit through a movie. She gets bored watching tv, switching the television off right in the middle of Max and Ruby with a stern "Dat's done NOW." But DID GRANDMA LIKE HER WORM CAKE? The kids are only allowed to watch one movie a week, because we are really striving to be the least fun parents ever, and according to the kids, we're winning. Hooray for us!

The Baby has never watched a movie during the day before, but it's -17c outside and she's still potty-training and so we're housebound. So I popped in Charlotte's Web - the old animated version, with Debbie Reynold's voice as the wise and kindly Charlotte - and The Baby is sad right now because Wilbur is lonely on the farm. Poor Wilbur has not yet met Charlotte and he is crying and The Baby's forehead is furrowed with worry.

This has been a rough week for my kids. The Boy is being left out by the other three boys in his class, and it HURTS him. The Girl was the only one not invited in her whole class to a big birthday party and she wept bitterly yesterday after school.

Sometimes I hate other people's kids. And then I think that it's MY fault because I don't let The Boy watch Ninja Turtles and apparently an in-depth knowledge of reptilian kicking is necessary for social success in the early grades. Also, we don't own a snowmachine which makes us - this is so obvious that I should not have to write it - losers. And if we DID have a snowmachine, my six-year-old son would not be allowed to drive it on his own, unlike all three of the boys in class, I AM NOT KIDDING.

Mostly it's my fault because we moved to Hillbilly Town in the first place and now we're too spoiled by the freakishly low house prices and FREE AND EAGER babysitting grandparents to consider moving. I don't know what I expected: did I think that the other kids would welcome my kids with open arms, all "Oh Wise Children With Parents Who Used To Be Sort Of Urban! Come, Tell Us Of Your Hummus And Limited TV Viewing!"

And meanwhile, poor old Charlotte is dying at the damn fair AGAIN and Wilbur is wailing his eyes out and The Baby is sound asleep on the couch, missing the bittersweet end, not knowing that pain will ever come.

My Kitchen Party post is up. It's about wanting to suddenly cook SPRINGTIME foods, and I'm needing some help thinking of what spring foods actually are, so put on your thinking caps. (What does a thinking cap LOOK like? I have a cardboard mortarboard hat stashed away from when The Boy "graduated" from Pre-kindergarten, so maybe that would do in a pinch.)
Anyhow, I wrote in my post that I'm working on this week's menu plan, so I'll post that later at my recipe blog when I finally get it done (edited to add: It's up!) - yeesh - and you can see if there are any recipes that you might be interested in too. I'll let you know when it's up. Now go read my Kitchen Party post, please and thank you.

The Baby is showing you her VERY FAVORITE book in the world - she can chant the simple text by heart, which is awfully cute.

I bought her that book when I was heavily pregnant with her, standing in a bookstore and feeling sort of desperate to buy her something that was just hers. Our first two kids have left us very well stocked with board books, and I felt this pressing need to buy this unknown baby something of her own. And now it is her favorite book and she can chant the words by heart, this book that has always been just for her.

My own amazing baby, the book says - turned overnight into my own amazing girl.

The Baby was rather frighteningly sick last night - she suddenly had a very, very high fever and became groggy and incoherent and hard to wake up. My husband and I shared one of those looks of utter mutual panic and made some quick plans to take her to the hospital an hour away, to leave our older kids with my parents while we rushed out into the bitterly cold night with our baby girl nearly unconcious in our arms.

But then we gave her some fever medication and all at once she was nearly her regular grumpy self. We tucked her into bed a few hours later and kept peeking in at her, sleeping peacefully. When she woke up this morning, she was no sicker than she has been for this past month, which felt like this astonishing gift.

My husband is away for the weekend, at a church thing for the next couple of days. I did what any independent, self-reliant woman would do and begged my mom to come spend the weekend and God bless that woman, she's here. Yes, I AM a suck, and my only excuse is that The Baby WAS so very, very sick last night and if she gets that way again, I don't want to be the only adult in the house in the middle of the night, to have her safety hinging on my ability to not be a weeping, terrified mess.

My mom and The Girl are baking in the kitchen while I write, this endless echo of who I was, who I will be and the smell of chocolate throughout the house promising comfort of a sort. (The fat butt sort.) So I'm going to sabatoge my diet and drink some wine after the kids are in bed and miss my honey and that is going to be my weekend, this sharpened focus of how much I love him.

Seek And Ye Shall Find

Oh, Google searchers. What brings you to my modest blog today?
"Frog and Toad Masks"

Here's a frog mask.

Here is a VERY FRIGHTENING TOAD. Eep! I'm going to start wearing that into the kids' room when they're rowdy at night.

"Dead Movie Stars"

Someday, Clark Gable. Someday.

"Lego Candy" - Check out your local Bulk Barn, my favorite place to buy food with the word "BARN" in the name.

"Birthday Card Grandfather Idea"
This one would suit most of the grandfather-aged people I know quite well.

I HAVE NO WORDS, BABY BOOMERS. (I drew that! Wow, the artistry!)

"Twenty Two Month Old Toddlers Act"... like freaking maniacs.

"spell onamatopaiea" No, and you can't make me.

"fund a frog in my sons room." That's not one of the more impressive charities I've ever heard of, really.


"cartoon movies frog and toad are friends"
I aim to please:




"dream interpretation hungry wolf" Are you also on a speedy yacht? Are you wearing a white suit and lots of man-rouge?



"frog and toad wedding readings" REALLY? At your wedding? Weren't Frog and Toad just friends? But here you go, from "Days With Frog and Toad" by Arnold Lobel:

The robins flew out of the bush.
But they could not fly
as high as the kite.
Frog and Toad sat
and watched their kite.
It seemed to be flying
way up at the top of the sky.

No? You could always read the story where Toad DOES look funny in his bathing suit.

Glad to have been of service.

Talkin' About The Potty

We've been potty-training this week - a bit late in the day, since The Baby is 34 months old and all of her friends were toilet trained by their second birthdays. I don't know if it's lack of incentive on MY part - more than possible - or lack of ability on hers or some ooky combination of the two, but I now find myself toilet training someone who is able to complain about it in lengthy paragraph-sized monolouges, which is exactly what I deserve for being a lazy mother.

So anyhow, yesterday SOMEONE was running about the house unpantsed, and SOMEONE decided to relieve themselves copiously on the floor. It wasn't just pee, either, and I know that I have a no-talking-about-poop policy, but this was pretty funny, so hang on.
"MAMA!" yelled The Baby in the poor, poor playroom. "Somebody pooped on the floor!"
I went in and indeed, someone had.
"Ew," I said. "Who did that?"
"I dunno, Mama," said The Baby, unconcerned. "I think maybe you did."
HAHAHAHAHA. And also, yuck. If she (and it was in fact her! Go figure.) can manage to poop in the potty today, we are totally going to buy her a lovely $8 toy pizza set from the Hardware store, which is what she picked out of everything in the world as the one thing her little heart desires. So cross your fingers.

We potty train later than normal around here, although both older kids were trained before their third birthdays and The Girl was trained at 2 1/2. I know many, many potty trained 20 month olds, though, and that tends to make me feel like an underachieving mother. It's funny because NOW, years later, I can barely remember that my kids were the only ones in diapers at Story Time, but at the time IT FELT KIND OF AWFUL. You have so few clues when your kid is that age about whether or not you're doing a decent job with them - since all toddlers act a lot like baboons, you can't really judge them by behaviour - and potty training is the first thing we have to actively TEACH them and when they're the oldest kid in the room in diapers, you feel like you've already failed raising them. I know that there's some hippy dippy stuff out there about early toilet training causing kids some sort of deep, Freudian damage, but as my husband pragmatically says, SOMETHING will, sooner or later.

And that is why we're having the intensive potty-training workshop this week, just the two of us hanging out, watching tv and drinking LOTS of juice. Here's hoping that by the end of this week, The Baby has moved to lovely, lovely underpants and that - oh, my heart - the last of her babyhood is done forever.

Mad did the funniest, funniest thing yesterday: she wrote a post in the voice of two other bloggers, me and Bea. She emailed me on the weekend to let me know that she was planning on writing a parody of me and I spent the rest of the weekend in a state of nervous excitement, wondering if it would sting. (it didn't - I was delighted.)

I'm thinking about our upcoming kitchen renovations today - our house has many things in its favour - high, high ceilings! antique hardwood everywhere! being astonishingly affordable! - but the kitchen is a plywood mess and tiny to boot. I'm not going to post pictures of it because it's EMBARRASING, but here's the expertly-drawn floorplan:

Hahaha. Awesome. I am SO talented.

Okay, the front door is in the bottom right corner and then there are FOUR other doorways in that tiny little room - two in the top left corner (one with stairs) and two in the bottom left corner. The fridge occupies the small amount of wall space between the two doorways, there's a very narrow cupboard on the left wall (the only original thing to the house!) and the black and white vintage table that's in pretty much all of my cooking pictures, and then there's a dishwasher, a stove and a very small row of grotty cupboards. Here's what we're planning on doing:

- moving the fridge to where the table currently is, with built-in cupboards around and above it.

- making a narrow cupboard for brooms and stuff like that where the fridge currently is.

- building new, non-crappy cupboards, installing a built-in dishwasher.

- and sanding the hardwood floor in the kitchen.

So that doesn't sound like any work at all, right? But it's still going to be small. Do you have any suggestions for making the most of a small kitchen? Are there any built-in features that we should plan on adding? And here's another problem: how do we keep it feeling age-appropriate to the house? What colour scheme should we use? (right now the kitchen is pale yellow, but we're planning on repainting!) I'm ready to start making a notebook of ideas and renovations are going to start SOON, so let me know!

It's Family Day!

Exclamation mark! We have no big plans for it, because everyone is SICK. OF COURSE WE ARE! But the Boy and The Baby are having lots of fun in the now-clean playroom and The Girl is helping her dad set up a giant drafting table in the office and I just wrote my Kitchen Party post, so you should probably go and read that.

The Boy's face is STILL pretty red, by the way - that face paint did not wash off as completely as we might have hoped. He was painted to look like Spiderman and watching a hockey game, so all of your guesses were correct. Now go read about my bread catching on fire this morning.

A post with no point whatsoever

We're sorting through toys in the playroom today. O Death where is thy sting?
Important note to all reading grandparents: THE CHILDREN HAVE ENOUGH TOYS. I REPEAT: THE CHILDREN HAVE ENOUGH TOYS.

The Baby has this disconcerting habit of giving out a loud bellow RIGHT before she falls asleep. My husband told me yesterday that it's to warn sleep that she's on her way. That should tell you something about my wee munchkin.

Tomorrow is our very first Family Day Holiday. The weather is cooperating nicely by sending us freezing rain (today) and a severe stormfront (tomorrow). We're going to batten down the hatches - what does that MEAN? - and stay nice and cozy, assuming we're not all crushed by a teetering mount of toys. BUT AT LEAST THERE WAS NO DEAD MOUSE THIS TIME! A mercy.

Radioactive

We had to run some errands this afternoon, and I kept catching people staring at The Boy.
"What is THEIR problem?" I would think angrily, and then I'd catch a glimpse of my kid.

Oh, right. THAT.

Hearts

I told you I was awful at frosting.

My grandmother gave me her good dishes right after Christmas, the ones my grandfather bought for her while they were dating. "I'm never going to give a big dinner again," she said.

The Boy was up most of the night, awake and coughing. His dad got up with him, rubbed Vicks on his chest, gave him medicine, sat up with him for hours and then went groggily off to work. The Boy was surprisingly chipper when he got up and insisted that he needed to go to school, his mouth full of pink frosted sugar cookie. He rubbed the edge of the fancy plate, admiring the faded roses. "That's really pretty," he said, and then grabbed his bookbag and dashed off to school waving goodbye before he got into my mother's car.

My grandfather died less then three months after The Boy was born, but I think he'd have liked him, my earnest, kind-hearted Boy. I can picture the two of them solemnly going to the barn together to feed the cats, my Boy talking endlessly, my grandfather straight-backed and handsome. It's been nearly six years now, and my grandmother lives alone in the large house my grandfather built for her and life is very long.

I was the only one awake in the whole house for a while last night - unless you count the cats tearing around downstairs, the morons - staring into the pale near-darkness. I did my usual sleepless prayer, listing off this long list of people I worry about, things that I fret over, my wishes, and then, my husband's sleeping hand on my hair, I added my last wish. Let me go first, I whispered into the darkness. Don't make me live a day without him.

Hey!

I just accientally hit publish and I currently have a post up that just says "Hey!". Well, at least it's cheerful. This is my 450th post at this blog, which is a bit startling to think about. I have SO MUCH TO SAY, apparently.

Here's how to roast brussel sprouts - turn your oven on to 350. Halve your brussel sprouts and cut the little nubby ends off. Toss them with some olive oil, some vinegar (this would be a good place to use fancy vinegar) and some salt and pepper. I often think some nutmeg might be good at this juncture, but I've never gone so far as to add it. Spread them out on a baking sheet and pop them into the oven for 25 minutes or so.

They're NICE roasted - the bitterness mellows and they take on a gentle, nutty flavour. If you truly loathe brussel sprouts, this probably won't help, but I enjoy the rank vegetables and think that brussel sprouts look like cute little Barbie cabbages. So Barbie can make some coleslaw her her next hot tub party, you see.

Tonight's supper is going to be some vegetable-lentil soup from the crockpot. Barbie is probably going to be too hungover to eat, AGAIN. That Barbie.

Hey!

Oof.

I'm weary tonight. It's been a busy, busy day - JUST LIKE THE RICHARD SCARRY BOOK. That's right, I drove a Bananamobile around town with my best friend, Lowly Worm. And then we went to a Valentine's Day party, with The Baby wearing a lovely pink dress and a lovely white lacy blouse and lovely pink tights with red hearts on them and a lovely foofy thing in her hair. I was going to wear a matching outfit until I realized that would be FREAKING INSANE.

I also went to a meeting with the older kids' speech therapy team - boy, the things you don't even dream of before you have kids - and The Boy has now started speech therapy and The Girl is now more or less done. She can't say her Rs, but she's been in speech for six unbroken years and she's weary of it, and that is just ENOUGH. So that was my executive decision that I made today.

I also roasted some brussel sprouts for supper, which my husband proclaimed "The least disgusting brussel sprouts he'd ever had." Um, thank you, honey. The rest of supper was honey-ginger-soy salmon and some brown rice and a quinoa flake Scotch apple dessert that needs a little bit more fine-tuning. And now I am as tired as this little sleeping bunny, without being anywhere near as cute:

It's a cookie kind of day

I made cookies yesterday - REALLY AWESOME COOKIES - and then I wrote about it at the Kitchen Party, complete with pictures. It's your lucky day! Go have a read.

This Evening I Will Perform An Act Of Lunatic Daring

Sometimes (okay, just the one time.) I wonder what I'd have called my blog if, oh I don't know, I'd maybe THOUGHT ABOUT IT for a few minutes first? I could have named it after a BIG PEOPLE book ("We Have Always Blogged In The Castle"). I could have named it after something I like doing ("Drinkin'"). I could have been bluntly honest ("Yapping About Not Much"). But nooooo. On a whim, I named it after the nearest book at hand and now I am stuck with it.

The answer, by the way, was "stomach bug". It's been a long, nausea-tastic weekend. I spent most of today curled up on the couch in a near-coma, with a pleasant break when I went and curled up in the tub for a disturbing amount of time, just long enough for my husband to knock on the bathroom door and ask, with a faint note of worry in his voice, "Beck? You okay in there?". I was fine, but a bit dozy. It's sort of sad, by the way, that I associate early pregnancy with the sudden need to vomit for three straight months, but this time it WAS just a stomach bug.

I'm thinking about entering a chili cook-off next week, because nothing I can think of can equal the glory of winning a small town chili cook-off. "It's her!" locals will whisper to each other excitedly. "The chili queen!" And I'll smile mysteriously as I walk by, the scent of cumin and rare peppers mingling in the air... bleh, that felt gross to even WRITE.

The Boy lost ANOTHER tooth today - geez, kid - and the Tooth Fairy will once again deposit $5, which is the going rate for teeth at Beck Towers. He's sitting on the couch right now watching Dora through a pair of rather impressive spy glasses and enjoying his new Jack-O-Lantern mouth. It's a good look for him. And now we're going to play a computer game. Over and out.

Cooties

The Boy and The Girl both have horrible husky coughs and fevers. Do NOT come over.

The Boy lost his first tooth yesterday while home sick, which was VERY exciting for him. The Crazy Tooth Fairy left him $5, which is NUTS. My husband - I'm revealing a big secret here! - came downstairs from leaving the money, holding a tiny white tooth in his hand, and then stashed it away in a little glass jar in the same drawer as the rest of them.

I don't know what he's planning on doing with all of these little teeth and envelopes of hair clippings and tiny little socks, but he keeps them. Parenthood lets us do things that would be VERY ooky in any other circumstances, hair and teeth not normally being considered wholesome collectibles. Maybe someday, when he's very, very old and widowed and shuffling around the house, surrounded by the comforts of very old age, he will pull open that drawer and smile at the signs that once upon a time he was a daddy to a child who woke up the house shrieking in the middle of the night that the Tooth Fairy had left him HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS.

I got some fresh words for ya

It's Chinese New Year today, which means that I'm going to have my yearly discovery that I'm not very good at making egg rolls. I'm also planning on discovering the same thing about wontons later on, too. It's a day of discovery, a voyage through my ineptness! Should be fun.

Should you not want to spend your evening swearing in the kitchen, there are several very easy recipes up at my food blog right now - the EXTREMELY EASY lentil-spinach soup that I made last night, which my kids loved so much that they each had about three bowls. I would have taken a photo, but like very many very good foods, it's more tasty then photogenic. We also made cupcakes yesterday afternoon because it's my mother-in-law's birthday today (she's reading this now! Happy birthday!), so that recipe is up too. I would have taken a photo of them but I was too busy stuffing my face as fast as I could. Oh, and The Girl very shyly asked me to write down her recipe for her favorite subs as well as a handy tip for sneaking more spinach into your sandwiches. If you could comment on that one, she would really be happy.

To clear up what I'm not eating for lent: fast food. pop. chips. candy. (apparently cupcakes are not on the list. Hey, they're full of WHOLESOME INGREDIENTS! Buttermilk! Eggs! Energy-giving sugar!) Which doesn't sound like an adult's list of vices, now that I'm listing them. I felt like collapsing on the floor yesterday afternoon and crying out faintly for Diet Coke, but refrained from doing so because I have a will of iron.


I keep having these sudden unplanned waves of nausea today. I opened the breadbox and the smell of the bread made me run gagging from the room, which was a bit unexpected. There's a virus making the rounds in town and it's likely that. There's the other possibility, which caused my husband to say on the phone this morning "That's all right. I don't need sleep to live." That's the spirit!

Here are two BRAND NEW blogs that I've been enjoying recently - President of Her Book Club, with a very interesting post about Lent today, and A Mama On A Mission, written by Susan who I think might be my long-lost twin. Maybe. You should check them out and say hi - they're both dandy.

I just checked the temperature - it's -18 outside (-0.3, my American friends) but the weather site cheerfully informed me that it "feels like -35" ("-31", my States-living compadres.), or as I like to call it "TOO FREAKING COLD TO GO OUTSIDE." Good GRIEF, why do I LIVE here?

We won't be doing this today.

Dust

It's the first day of Lent. I'm giving up junk food for the duration. So I might starve, maybe.
I WAS going to write a very, very sad post about how sadly sad I am but then I cheered up. I still don't have anything to write about, though.

..... a lot of time has passed since I wrote that. I still have nothing to write about. I don't normally - and this shouldn't be a surprise - have a problem with thinking up things to write. But today I'm feeling sort of pleasantly wordless. See you tomorrow.

Shriven

The Girl told us yesterday that one of the boys in her class "did the love look" at her.

The love look?

She demonstrated: a sappy expression and rapidly batted eyelashes. AH. THAT love look.

Stop looking at my kid like that, lover boy.

She doesn't tell us many things that happen at school - school is school and home is home and she likes the two to remain separate worlds. The Girl is a private person, like her father, layers of secrets buried down inside of her. She likes to remain unruffled, undisturbed, deep water down for miles.

Three years ago, my uncle died on his 42nd birthday after a brutal struggle with lung cancer. I was heavily and precariously pregnant with The Baby and it was just so sad, sad, sad. A week after he died, my phone rang and it was the doctor at the clinic telling me that my husband's appointment had been moved. His appointment that I had not known about. I phoned my husband at work, my voice full of questions, and he told me, sadly, that he hadn't wanted to scare me. I was instantly terrified.



He had found lumps all through his wrists, fingers, arm, and had not told me because he knew that I would worry. He had carried it alone for weeks, waiting to see the doctor. I don't suffer alone with ANYTHING, really, as my constant complaints about PMS and minor illnesses should obviously show, but he carried his worries all by himself so he wouldn't burden me and because he prefers to be undisturbed in his fear. And this is what my little child, my Girl, does, too.



I only had a few hours to be worried about my husband - the problem was nothing, just a genetic fluke that he shares with his mother, grandfather and probably an endless line of quiet, stoic people. I worry nearly constantly about my Girl, though, this quiet child who bears so much alone. Only rarely do stories burst out of her when she can no longer carry it by herself - childish cruelty bourn a little too long, amourous classmates being both amusing and creepy, lunch monitors who yell a bit too easily. Sometimes she wants me to fix something, but more often these days, her stories sound like a warning or an apology, giving notice that she is getting older and older and older.

Hey! Did I mention that I WON? I WON!

Okay, moving on. My Kitchen Party post is up and I wrote in melancholy-fashion about doughnuts. Doughnuts - the pastry of pain. You want to read it now, rigggghhhhhht?

I won!

Hooray!
I'm so pleased.

I've asked it before....

.... and now I'm asking it again. I need book recommendations for our small town library, the one that's in dire literary straights. I need:
- recent books, from the past year or two.
- books that are the current talked-about books.
- not to be a snot, but middlebrow books. We're already filled up with lowbrow and I don't think highbrow would get that many readers. Aim for the middle! (if you know what I mean.) Christian popular fiction is fine - that gets a lot of readers here, but try and avoid genre fiction unless it's REALLY good.
- books that are good recent books for young readers - both children's novels and nonfiction and storybooks. All the librarians are currently buying are series books, and there's not a lot of quality new children's books hitting the shelves. (I wasn't clear enough here - while recommendations for good children's series are appreciated, I was wondering if there are any good stand-alone kids' novels right now, if anyone knows of any?)
- good Canadian fiction, something which I think should be a purchasing focus.
- and finally, non-fiction books that people are going to want to read. Craft and cookbooks are wildly popular around here, so if you have some good recommendations in that area, they'll doubtlessly be happily received.

So: librarians! readers! I know you're out there! PLEASE HELP!

Today is a holiday - the kids are home from school because of a PD day (do they ever go to school? Only rarely.) AND it's St. Brigid's day, to be followed by Candlemas. Or Groundhog Day. Or some bizarre mix of the two, which is what we do.

So: pancakes are traditional this time of year - they're like little round suns and I really REALLY am sick of winter storms so I certainly GET wanting a little sunniness, even if it's just on my plate. I made these pancakes again this morning, and they were gobbled up by my little truants, and later today I'm going to make a beef stew, which seems fitting, and the traditional VERY SIMPLE bread. And we are going to get some ale to go with it, which also seems fitting. At bedtime, the kids always put one last piece of bread in the window for St. Brigid, in case she happens by and is hungry.

Tomorrow, I'm going to make cannelloni from crepes - I'm thinking of this recipe - and we're going to light lots of candles. The kids run outside in the morning and stomp on the ground to wake up the groundhogs - did I mention we're sick of winter? - we watch Groundhog Day (not just the only Groundhog Day movie that I know about, but a very theologically sound piece of film in its own right) and there is this hilarious cupcake recipe if you want, although The Girl is going to a birthday party tomorrow and so I'll pass, thanks. We have plans to make shadow portraits of the kids, which may or may not happen - we'll see.

And there are two bright little days in a row, right in the middle of winter in this gloomy time of the year. Now I have to go wrestle my kids away from the lure of the big shiny television and out into the cold, cold day - I hope today, however you celebrate it, is a good one for you, too.