I discovered this week that giving a blueberry popsicle to a 17-month old is like giving a raw hide to a dog. Total entertainment. It also makes a good pre-breakfast treat for the kid who wakes up two hours earlier than the other kids.
Equal parts vanilla (or plain) yogurt, blueberries, and milk. A touch of honey, maybe a little more if you use plain yogurt. Throw in a few raspberries too. Blend and pour into popsicle mold.
From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
I hear them from in the kitchen, their voices traveling from one side of the house to the other, and I know in a few seconds they will pass through my view from the window. My six-year-old runs with the wind; fast and agile, Katherine flies up the steep grade of our tiered yard and leaps back down the slope over the protruding tree roots without slowing her pace, calling over her shoulder, "Come on! Let's ride bikes!" Clara lags behind, her three-year-old legs sturdy and strong, but not yet fast.
I head outside with the baby and wander around the yard to keep an eye on them while they ride up and down the street. Michael, the 10-year-old across the street, has set up his new jump and is practicing tricks on his bike. My girls watch in fascination. Katherine cautiously takes a turn riding slowly up over the ramp and bumping down on the other side. Clara contents herself to ride around it in circles.
I busy myself picking dandelions and forget-me-nots, feigning oblivion so as not to intrude on their play. I circle up around the back of the house. As I wander back down the other side I hear Michael call out, "Let's race up the hill and back down - whoever gets there first wins!"
For a moment I hesitate, suspended between my instinct to call out "No! No races - Clara is too young, SLOW DOWN!" and my desire to allow her space to figure it out on her own. I look up the steep hill, covered with patches of loose gravel, and the scene unfolds in my imagination: Michael skillfully races down the hill, Katherine close behind, anxious to keep up, maybe even win. Clara, who has not fully mastered her back-pedal brakes, speeds out of control, barely keeping her balance on the tiny, blue two-wheeler. I can see her fear as she looses control, handle bars shaking as she skids across the gravel. She'll fall off, break her arm, need stitches… I won't be able to stop her in time.
But despite the anxiety-driven vision rushing before my eyes, I can't bring myself to call out my warning. From the depths of my own childhood, memories of running free with neighborhood kids silence me. We rode bikes as fast as we could pedal, we did tricks on roller-skates, we forged secret passageways through neighbors' yards, we climbed high in trees where we held tree-house meetings. I broke my arm once, my sister got stitches. But during those long hours after school, and on summer evenings when we played until dark, we were free to figure it out, and it was magical.
I hold onto that cherished time in life, and in a display of casualness, I lean down to help the baby blow the seeds off a dandelion. The white flakes swirl around me as I watch the bike race out of the corner of my eye. Michael and Katherine come speeding down the hill, Clara not far behind, a look of fear on her face as she struggles to control the shaking handlebars. She skids on the gravel, tipping dangerously, unable to brake. Her feet shoot off the pedals and drag on the ground until she wobbles to a stop. She doesn’t fall.
Michael calls out the next race and all three head back up the hill again, as fast as they can pedal. I turn away and look for more dandelions, deciding that perhaps I don't need to watch them so closely.
From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
It is so nice to be sitting at my computer, at my desk, at home, connected to the internet! Some people talk about how great it is to take a step back from social media... Not me. I missed it every day we didn't have it.
But no internet did have its advantages. We've made a lot of progress settling in here. Mostly cleaning (indoors and out), but now we're starting to slow down and enjoy our new place.
Here are a few pictures. (One day I'll get back to writing about parenting, but for now I'm consumed by the yard - and so are the kids, which means I'm not actually doing all that much parenting)
The first weeded garden bed.
The other garden beds still look like this. Pretty, but totally out of control.
Here is a little weeded patch with tomatoes planted by Auntie M.
And raspberry bushes. The kids spend a good part of their day snacking off the raspberry bushes, especially now that we've figured out they are a wild variety and are ripe when they are deep purple, not bright red.
This space was thick with dead branches, but an hour with the clippers (I now love clippers and would be happy to clip away all day) and we made a little "house" for the kids. My mom sent us the hammock 10 years ago, and we never had a place to hang it (no yard and/or no trees). Usually I get rid of such unused, random things, but somehow this was overlooked. I think it made its way into the camping box, where it was safe in our hopes of camping again one day.
The craft porch. Glitter, paint, spilled water, a million tiny pieces of cut up paper... I don't care. They can make whatever kind of mess they want and only half clean it up. During the day I look past the mess at the view, at night I simply close the door.
And the night sky. I can always count on a night sky for calm and perspective.
From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
It's hard to blog with no internet. But we should have it by the end of the week, so I'm hoping to get back into my normal routine of wasting away in front of the computer screen into the wee hours every night, and then regretting it bitterly at 5 am when Alexandra wakes up.
But in the meantime, I thought you might like an update on the chicken coop. Three hours with a pitch fork, shovel, broom, and putty knife, and the coop is CLEAN. Fresh straw and pine shavings and a sun-dried mud pit make for happy chickens. I think they even like me now. They used to run away whenever I was near, but now they ignore me. I don't think I'll be carrying them around anytime soon (or ever, if I can help it), but we're making progress.
Katherine and Clara have started naming the chickens. The names seem to change regularly, but as of yesterday they were: Dora, Dora, Golden Egg, Golden Egg, Speckled, and Best Chicken in the World. They have also started claiming specific chickens to be their "very own". I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they start fighting over who belongs to whom.
One of the Doras
One of the Golden Eggs
We inherited six chickens when we moved, and while I don't know anything about chickens, I'm pretty sure the coop needs a good cleaning.
If you have chickens, I'd love to hear how you clean your coop, how often, with what, etc. I need details; "Use pine shavings" is a little too general. For example, do you rake or shovel out the coop? Where do you put the used (what do you even call it? Bedding?) Can you dump it in the woods? Compost it? What do you use to clean the floor/walls? I've heard about vinegar/lavender/citrus concoctions... does anyone have a brand or recipe for this? What about the outside section of the coop? Any suggestions for the mud pit it has become?
Please advise!
1. Avoid going to Home Depot with children at lunchtime, especially if it means driving an hour each way.
2. Don't wait until moving day to begin packing.
3. Remember that small children still need to eat and sleep regularly.
4. Cry when you realize how much "stuff" you have.
5. Treat yourself to coffee and chocolate croissants as necessary.
And plan on your kids needing clean, dry clothes at some point during the move.
Last week was filled with heavy rains, a leaky roof and flooded basement, a power outage, closing on what is now our house(!), and the beginning of moving chaos.
We love our new (very old) farmhouse, but there is so much work to do - fun work like gardening, feeding chickens, and exploring our new space, and not so fun work like clearing away cobwebs and packing.
We will be busy this next week. I'll be back with updates and pictures next week, and maybe even a tutorial on how not to carry out a move with three small children. #1 Do not take three small children to Home Depot at lunchtime, no matter how anxious you are to get outlet covers.
As promised, here is a picture of our Easy Canvas print that arrived today (sorry about the poor lighting - thunderstorms and only one lamp here). It turned out really well - I love this picture of our favorite family spot.
Only one day left to enter the giveaway they are hosting. Enter here and you will automatically receive a 60% off coupon and perhaps win an 8x10 canvas of your favorite picture!
A few weeks ago I attended a pot luck dinner and the theme was British Food. When given a choice of what to contribute to a meal, I almost always opt for dessert. So I made lemon scones. They turned out quite well. I got the recipe from Taste of Home, but used the peel from a whole lemon, not just a teaspoon, and made mine thicker than 1/2 inch. Here is the recipe:
Serve with tea and enjoy while learning R.
From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
I'm not really a picture person - most of the time I forget the camera, or if I bring it I forget to take pictures. The few pictures I do take pictures either end up on this blog or in some cyber folder and only get looked at about a week before Christmas in our holiday card creation frenzy. I like the idea of printing out pictures and placing them in frames around the house, or even better, in neatly organized albums, but I don't think I've printed a picture in at least 3 years...
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We had a lovely day. The girls woke up early so I was able to take them to get a surprise donut breakfast for Dave while he slept in. When we returned, we arranged the gift basket (filled with chocolate) on the table, along with the donuts and painting the girls had made for Father’s Day. Dave was happily surprised and we all enjoyed breakfast before heading out for a family hike. We chose a trail we had heard was great for kids – not too long or too difficult, with great views at the end. We brought a picnic lunch and ate it in a shelter overlooking a lake with beautiful mountain views. All three kids – especially Alexandra – enjoyed the climb. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading books and painting. Then early dinner and early kiddo bedtime. A perfect day to celebrate Father’s Day.
Doesn’t that sounds lovely? You may even be thinking, wow, they pulled that day off seamlessly! They have got it down.
Well. That is one version of our lovely Father’s Day. But I want to keep this space real, so here is that same story with reality woven in.
We had a lovely day. Alexandra woke up screaming at 5:30 am, as she does every day (we have no idea why), which in turn woke up Katherine and Clara. Last night I recklessly promised Katherine that she and I could get up early and go - just the two of us - to get donuts for a special Father’s Day breakfast. So when Katherine realized Clara was also awake and expecting to be included in the impending outing, she threw herself into a tantrum (“You said I could go alone with you, you said! That’s not fair! Clara will ruin it, she’ll fuss all the way up the hill, she can’t even walk all the way to the donut store!”) I’m pretty sure the neighbors could hear the chaos, so there is no way Dave slept through it, but luckily he opted to ignore it and stay in bed so as not to ruin our “surprise” breakfast plan. And Katherine eventually accepted my reckless consolation offer to take her on a different, even better special outing later in the day. So off we all went to get breakfast, minus the coffee, because I have not figured out how to safely carry two hot coffees while walking three small children through town.
Breakfast was nice, everyone was happy with their donuts, and afterwards we managed to pack up and get out the door for a hike in a record 45 minutes. We made it to the trailhead and set out with energy and high spirits. Our pace was a bit slow due to Alexandra insisting on walking too, but who am I to discourage a 16-month-old from hiking, besides, what was the rush? But about a mile in we realized the 3 miles was going to take a lot longer than the “hour” estimated in the trail guide, and that it was already 11am, and, oh, we had left our picnic lunch in the car for after the hike, because surely we’d be back by noon.
So I trudged on with the kids while Dave enjoyed a little trail run back to the car to get our lunch. He caught up to us just as we made it to the peak, and we enjoyed lunch with a scenic view overlooking the lake. Then it started to rain. It was kind of nice at first, we could hear it but not really feel it as we walked through the woods, but then it rained harder, and in the end we all got pretty wet. But still, our little hikers kept hiking, and there was only one quality Parenting101 moment when I *may* have thrown out an idle threat of abandonment (If you fall and twist your ankle we won't be able to carry you back to the car and we'll have no choice but to leave you here!) in an attempt to get Katherine to stop run-leaping down a steep, rocky section. The threat had no effect and Katherine did not fall and hurt herself.
We made it back to the car by 3pm. Crap! 3pm! We still had to do the grocery shopping and Katherine was expecting her special outing alone with me. I hastily made the grocery list in the car while Dave navigated through the downpour. Luckily the kids think the ultimate outing is accompanying me to the big grocery store (probably because we almost never take them), so grocery shopping doubled as our special outing.
And somehow, late in the afternoon, books were read, pictures were painted and dinner was made. All three kids asleep before 8pm.
It was a lovely day. We got up early, went for a hike, enjoyed a picnic, got the grocery shopping done. It was a very nice Father’s Day. But it was very real. We had to parent all day long.
From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
I tend not to appreciate computer technology. My life would be complete with TextEdit and Safari, and maybe Excel (since I do love a well organized spreadsheet), but I'm married to a Mac/Techie guy, so we have computers and software and stuff that I am *encouraged* to use. It's not that I can't figure out new programs, it's more that I don't particularly enjoy it. I think it has to do with impatience. The whole purpose of technology is that it can do what you want it to do better and faster than you ever could. So when it doesn't just magically work, I get annoyed. And by annoyed I mean I whine and complain until I've worked myself into a state of total frustration, all the while cursing so-called technological "advances" (for example, "They can put a man on the moon but strikethrough on my blogging platform doesn't work! What is WRONG with this thing? WHY WON'T IT WORK??)*. I pretty much carry on until my techie steps in and solves the problem in order to stop the big noisy fuss.
But it has come up that I need to use R, which is "a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics". You have to tell it what to do using commands in R code. No drop down menus, no point and click commands, no user-friendly interface. I've never really tried it, but I'm pretty sure I do not care for programming.
Being in that ever-elusive balance between career and motherhood, R has morphed into the Green Eggs and Ham of my existence, and I have become the yellow-cat-monster guy who insists on disliking it.
But R keeps popping up all over the place, and this time my techie can't save me. So after some resistance (which, in my defense, was mostly due to time constraints) I finally gave it a try, accepting that I'd have to eat the Green Eggs and Ham.
And guess what -- I do like R! It combines logic and creativity, and if you are so inclined (and capable) you can even strive for elegance. Plus, it's not annoying like certain programs (ahem, Word) because the user tells it exactly what to do. In other words, it won't try to auto format your work against your will or (incorrectly) predict your bullet alignment preference.
What can you actually do with R, you ask? Well, you can look at your dessert intake per week and compare it to that of your husband and average Joe.
We see here that I eat more chocolate and more cake than David, but David eats far more ice cream than I do. Both Dave and I consume significantly more desserts per week than average Joe.
You can also track your enjoyment of R over time. I started out not enjoying it at all, but now enjoy it quite a bit. That dip in my enjoyment represents the day I spent trying to figure out why I couldn't get a factor command to work due to a colon where there should have been a comma.
And the formatting possibilities... error bars, point size, x and y axis labels, color... Perhaps you'd like to see the same graph, but with a pink line? Here you go!
Say, I like R. I do! I would do it anytime...
*Please excuse the first world problem
From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
Emily's Balloon, by Komako Sakai, is an old favorite that recently emerged from behind the bookshelf where it went unnoticed for the past year.
My mom bought this for Katherine before she was born, and my first thought was, "This story is sad!" I wasn't sure I wanted to read my children anything but beautiful, happy-ending books. But Katherine, and now Clara, love this book, and I have since changed my view on happy vs. not-so-perfectly-happy endings in children's literature.
Emily's Balloon is simply written, leaving plenty of space for a child to fill it in with his or her own thoughts. The artwork captures the joy of a young child with a beloved balloon.
From Soulemama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
