Week in Review: Singin' in the Spring?

I did a bit of cleaning this past week -- I suppose one could call it spring cleaning, as I did take most of the winter decorations down, and redid our seasonal table with some more spring-like decor. (The bird dresser scarf is from my grandmother, and some of the artificial tulips -- the silk ones -- in the vase were decor at my bridal shower several years ago.)

Part of the reason for this was that I hosted a "Sing in the Spring" brunch on Sunday. I really enjoy entertaining every so often, and used another of my grandmother's linens -- an card-table-sized tablecloth embroidered with spring flowers -- to cover up some of the scratches on my coffee table, which served as one of the eating surfaces. (It has also seen semi-regular use as a racetrack for toy cars, dumping ground for wooden blocks and puzzles, etc. -- hence, the scratches.) Menu consisted of orange juice and water served in pitchers -- as well as peppermint tea in a spring green teapot, but I don't thin most people noticed that -- fruit served in a cut glass serving dish that I think was a wedding present, microwaved sausages served in one of our wedding china bowls, Almond Cake (recipe from my grandma) served in a Tupperware® cake keeper, and Spinach-Egg Casserole served in the glass casserole dish I baked it in (the one with the lid; to make it easier to store leftovers).

After some time chatting and eating, a former coworker of mine, who left to actually pursue her dream of a career in music, led us in some semi-structured singing and in some singing exercises. (She's now running a "spontaneous singing" business, designed to teach people improvisational skills that can transfer to other areas of their lives -- whether they "can sing" or not.) I don't think anyone really knew what to expect, but we ended up learning a beautiful song in the Zulu language (the lyrics, which she eventually translated for us, translate to "every burden rolls away"), having a hilarious "story" communication around the circle which took place completely in invented language -- emphasizing the importance of nonverbal communication -- and created a samba rhythm with various groups counting different beats and combinations of "1 and 2 and 3 and 4." It was great fun to spend this time with friends, and to spend time singing -- and our singing experience used much more energy than I thought it would!

The four-year-old and the husband were not home for much of this event, but the four-year-old did help prepare the spinach for the egg casserole the previous day by helping me cut it into smaller pieces: I used the kitchen scissors; she used one of her pairs of safety scissors -- which I washed afterward, because she complained that they turned green.

And, despite the new decorations and the spring theme of the brunch event, spring has not yet arrived here -- it snowed again late Sunday afternoon and evening. Which is one reason why it's a good thing that our church is offering a youth soccer program on Saturdays in March: it's the time of year when parents and kids are getting desperate for opportunities to run off some of that pent-up energy. (We've played some Gator Golf in the house, but it's just not the same.) In fact, at last Saturday's first session of the pre-K and kindergarteners' soccer, as soon as the coach said, "Now I want you to run--" all the kids took off immediately running in the church gym. They didn't bother to wait for further instructions. The four-year-old actually did pretty well with the "skill drills" in practice, and played enthusiastically -- at least until she wore herself out.

Earlier iin the week, I also went to a Craft Night with friends, where we worked on various crafting projects in one woman's living room. I have a few cross-stitch things I'd like to get done before Christmas (especially since the original intent was to finish them for last Christmas...), but at least I'm not working on a needlepoint project begun 30 years ago. :)

And, last Wednesday evening, I saw four trumpeter swans flying north in the early evening. Perhaps it's a sign that some spring-like changes are on the way.

Menu Plan

I had a brief fall off the menu planning wagon last week -- which resulted in our having our Pizza dinner last Thursday, because I had nothing else planned -- but fortunately, I recovered quickly, and recalled that we had garlic and linguini in the cupboard, to create a Garlic Pasta (recipe from a Quick Cooking compilation) for Friday night.

i hosted a brunch for some friends on Sunday, with my version of an Egg Casserole recipe from a Taste of Home Seasons and Celebrations compilation cookbook (i.e., I left out the meat and seafood they called for and just made it with the eggs and vegetables), an Almond Cake recipe from my grandmother, and some Fruit and Sausages. It must have been a success, because I've had recipe requests for the almond cake and the egg casserole -- both of the things I actually cooked.

We'll be doing a bit of some seasonal celebrating this week with our menu, since Mardi Gras/Fastnacht/Fat Tuesday approaching before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday.

Monday: Jambalaya. We haven't had this for quite some time, and it incorporates (or can, anyway...) rice, shrimp and sausage -- all favorites of the five-year-old. Plus, it has some Mardi Gras-like associations, for me in my mind anyway, since I associate them both with New Orleans (to which I have never traveled). Also, there's some sausage left over from the brunch that can go into it.

Tuesday: French Apple Pancake. This is an oven pancake that puffs up and is relatively filling for a family meal, without requiring the cooking of individual pancakes. Pancakes are also a traditional Fat Tuesday meal, as people used up their butter and eggs that they wouldn't be eating during Lent. Besides butter and eggs, we'll also be using some of the apples we picked and froze last fall for this recipe.

Wednesday: Church Supper, prior to church activities -- like Ash Wednesday worship.

Thursday: If there are enough leftovers from earlier in the week, that's what DH and the five-year-old will be eating while I attend a Bible study; if not, there's mac and cheese and/or a bag of Voila pasta in the house.

Friday: Pizza.

Saturday: White Chili. A recipe from my sister's college roommate, which my sister didn't like, but I did. Just haven't made it in a while, plus the theory is that spring should be springing some time in the next few weeks, and ending "soup weather." (My husband doesn't like to eat soup when it's warm.) Or, at least, one can always hope ...

Math, Science and My Girl

We went to a demonstration of the "My First Science Kits" products at Michael's craft store last Saturday. We did not buy any of the kits, but the four-year-old was fascinated with the demonstration. It focused on the color mixing kit, which also comes with a bag of small crystals you can grow in the test tubes from the moisture you've used in your color mixing (and the crystals also then absorb whatever color you've put in that tube). We got there late enough in the demo that the lady gave the four-year-old a tube of crystals (since she had the opened product and had to do something with it) -- I'm not sure what on earth we'll be doing with them, but the four-year-old occasionally picks up the tube and says, "Wow, look how much they grew!"

She also had a lot of hands-on participation in the color mixing itself, using a dropper to put water colored with tablets similar to those used in Easter egg coloring kits into plastic cups to create -- purple from red and blue! orange from red and yellow! green from yellow and blue! brown from everything mixed together! --- and so on.

This also resulted in experiments at the breakfast table the next morning: did you know  that if you pour cranberry/blueberry juice into water, and vice versa, they both turn purple? Shocking, I know.

Her father is a scientist, and she is very eager to do "es-spear-a-mints." I hope to maintain this eagerness, but we don't always get around to doing as much as we could -- although we have been doing some "what sinks and what floats" experiments at bathtime lately.

Still, it's an encouraging to me that in one day -- one day -- lately, the four-year-old, self-directed, has been exploring science and math skills. I did have to try to explain "one half" to her (I forget exactly why it came up), by demonstrating with the measuring cups we use for the cooking she helps with: I poured the half-cup full of water, twice, and then poured those into the one-cup measure to filll it.

Otherwise, pretty much all we parents have done is make the resources available to her. Resources like a simple wooden ruler for measuring "how long is...." a stuffed animal, a book, a game box, her leg, my leg, her arm, my arm, etc., etc.

Plus, the Usborne 1,1001 Things to Spot books (she's currently interested in 1,001 Things to Spot in the Town, a Christmas present). Numbers of how many of certain items you're supposed to find in each scene are called out along the borders of the two-page spread, so it's good for both number recognition and counting. Plus, the scenes show a variety of different towns, including a Middle Eastern market, a downtown theater district, and more, so it's got some social studies/geography in there, too. She loves the "finding things" books.

And, she's just started getting interested in another Christmas present, Curious George Learns to Count from 1 to 100. So far, we're just reading the story, in which Curious George counts up to 100 things (something like "11 socks, 12 shoes....17 birds," etc.) on the day of his town's Centennial celebration and not doing much of the other learning activities suggested within it. (As you can imagine, it's a rather long book.) But the story does incorporate the numerals for 1 to 100, and we have the hardcover edition which also has the numerals from 1 to 100 imprinted along the front and back covers. She has been interested in pointing to those and counting up to 100 -- we just have to watch the timing between her finger and her mouth, since they seem to race against each other. And, she's started independently counting up to at least 50 -- because she told me her Ariel mermaid toy was 50 years old so got to be the queen of the waves in her bath, as opposed to the smaller mermaid toy, who is apparently only 5 years old.

Books of 2011: 5-10

6. Grace (Eventually): Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott (2008 library list)

This book appears to be a collection of her writings published in the early 2000 and, while some such column collections age well (for me, for example, Anna Quindlen comes to mind), this one hasn't, overall. The frequent George Bush-bashing just seems irrelevant and annoying. There were a few nice things in here -- some stories of acceptance of people at her church, and of the trials of teaching Sunday school to small children examined in light of the overall picture of grace, but overall, for me, it was a "meh."

7. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (church book group, February)

I actually didn't go into this with high hopes, and was pleasantly surprised. I found his examinations of the "whys" behind certain social phenomena very interesting. For example, the relevance of the logical approach of the Chinese language to math -- it's basically the metric system in words -- to Asian students' success in mathematical fields in the U.S.; and the examination of hockey success based on birth dates and season starts -- and, hence, amount of ice time practice. (As you can imagine, that one was a big topic of discussion here in Minnesota at the book group.) Kudos to Gladwell for also including his own family's experiences -- his mother is Jamaican, educated in England -- in some of these sociological explorations. I'm still somewhat disturbed, however, by his apparent conclusion that yes, people who succeed in any endeavor need to work hard, but if you work hard in a particular endeavor and it's not the right time for the succes of that area where your talents lie -- i.e., it's not the 1970s for Jewish laywers in New York, it's not the 1980s for computer programmers, it's not the late 1800s for wealthy industrialists -- well, then, rots o' ruck to you. A thought-provoking, memorable read.

8. Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella (women's book group, February)

Picked as an easy, light, fun read, by the author of the Shopaholic chick lit series. This one's not part of that series (although I, personally, can see a sequel featuring the cousin of the main character -- even if others in the group couldn't), and I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the Shopaholic ones I've read, but it was still fun. The main character is in her 20s, rather aimless and lacking her own direction in life -- when she becomes haunted by the ghost of her great-aunt, a 1920s flapper with a mystery to solve/necklace to find. The great-aunt's gumption helps the main character get her life on track, find love, etc. Also, there's a lot of descriptions of 1920s fashion, and I kind of like 1920s fashion.

9. Retire Happy: What You Can Do Now to Guarantee a Great Retirement by Richard Stim and Ralph Warner (2008 library list)

I picked this up now in part because of my mom's recent retirement and because, as a person in her 40s, I probably should be thinking about retirement, well, a bit more than I have been. I liked that, while it did talk about the financial aspects -- and offered some very practical, clear advice -- the book also focused on other areas of life where one should prepare now to have a good retirement (and, as a byproduct, have a good "now," too): things like maintaining health, establishing and repairing family connections, and figuring out hobbies/interests/what it is you've "always wanted to do" -- and taking steps to do it. I would definitely recommend this book and may try to acquire it for our home library at some point.


10. Things I Want My Daughters to Know by Elizabeth Noble (2008 library list)

For some reason, I had been under the impression this was a nonfiction book. It's not: it's a novel -- one which I really enjoyed. I tend to like well-written books with all the family interweavings and such, and this book has all that: it's about the letters a mother leaves behind to her four daughters after her too -early death from cancer, what the daughters learn from the letters, what they do with their lives, how their perspectives of their past life changes, and so on.

Wordless Wednesday: A Decorated "Cake"

"Cake" made by four-year-old and Grandma with sand buckets and snow. Decorated with squeeze bottles filled with water and food coloring.

Week(s) in Review: February Wrap-Up, Longing for Spring

(So, apparently one of the goals I should set for myself with this blog is "regular posting schedule." Duly noted.)

It's been a couple of weeks since I've written, weeks in which we've celebrated Valentine's Day, experienced One Gigantic Monster Snowstorm, hosted my mom for a visit, and more.

Valentine's Day: I love seasonality and holidays, but unfortunately never got around to fun stuff like making homemade Valentines, etc., this year. We did have a special Valentine's family dinner, consisting of spaghetti with red sauce; garlic breadsticks shaped into X's and O's; the molded strawberry jello salad (red) with a sour cream/strawberry juice layer (pink) that was such a hit at Christmas, only this time done with the heart insert on the Jello mold; and brownies with a heart shape in the middle of the pan created from broken bits of leftover Christmas candy canes. We also exchanged (storebought) cards, small heart-shaped boxes of candy, and gave my daughter Melissa and Doug puzzles featuring princesses and horses.


President's Day: Didn't do much for that, either, except that the four-year-old and I made some coconut-cherry cookies with a recipe from an old Taste of Home magazine. (They're President's Day cookies because of the George Washington connection to cherries, of course.) She's an enthusiastic stirrer/mixer operator/dumper in of ingredients, and I let her get some scissors practice by cutting the maraschino cherries into smaller bits.

She was in a musical mood for a while there, resulting in things like singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" incredibly loudly and with the wrong words (she somehow replaced "mild" with "wild") as well as "Jingle Bells" -- so that I had to explain what  a "one-horse open sleigh" (rather than a "10-horse two-ton sleigh") is. There was also a brief pretend concert with the toy piano and guitar Santa brought her for Christmas 2009.

After her church choir practice, which happened to be the day before her very good friend's fifth birthday (we sang "Happy Birthday" to J, a rather reserved child who doesn't like to be the center of attention -- what was that they say about opposites attracting? -- in the parking lot after choir), we had an interesting conversation on the drive home: "She's gonna be five and I'm only four, and it's Not Fair!" I gave up on the explanations after a while and just agreed with her. "You're right. It's not fair."

We've also been having constant conversations about whether "x food" is "healthy" or not, I think in part prompted by the discussion(s) resulting from having to stop her from opening the children's vitamins meant to be donated to our church's mission trip to Haiti. The gist of these conversations is that "your doctor says you don't need vitamins, because you eat so many healthy foods, but some kids aren't lucky enough to have enough healthy foods to eat."

 The healthy food conversations are also coming in part because I'm doing a winter weight loss/maintain (not gain) program at work, which I'm making sure to talk about in front of the four-year-old in terms of "health," not "weight." (It's being done by teams -- which got weighed as teams on the shipping scale at the beginning of the challenge, and will do so again at the end.)

And speaking of food-related conversations, we also made a grocery store stop the other evening. At one point she asked if we were going home now, and I told her that no, we had to pay first. Her response: "'Cause if you don't pay, God will be mad." This is part of her interpretation of the 10 Commandments.

I don't think it's exactly stealing, but I wouldn't want it repeated -- although a one-off was kind of...intriguing -- when my hairdresser actually paid the four-year-old two dollars when I got my hair cut (finally; it's been since August). The reasoning behind this was that the four-year-old, who was fascinated with the in-wall vacuum, actually completely cleaned up the cutting area of hair, resulting in the hairdresser not having to do any work at all.

Also related to girly "glamour," we spent an evening making bracelets and rings out of Play-Doh. Our other popular manipulative of late has been the Legos, which have been transformed into an ice cream stand, a picnic table, a swimming pool, a parade float .... can you tell that the wishful thinking around here is longing for spring and summer?

Not surprising, really, especially considering that our snowstorm a week ago dumped Nineteen. Inches. of Snow. on top of our already existing piles in the space of time between mid-Sunday morning (yes, we missed church) and Monday evening, when it finally stopped. I think the current total snow tally for this winter is something like 79 inches, and we are up there among the top three snowiest winters in recorded Minnesota history.

I attempted to have a cozy day of soup during our snowed-in period -- but unfortunately managed to break our ceramic pasta/serving bowl as I was pouring soup into it. We salvaged some of the corn chowder, but the bowl -- a wedding present that my husband particularly liked -- was a loss. Plus, I ended up having to pull the stove out from the wall and scrub the sides of it, plus the kitchen floor behind and underneath -- as well as the rest of it while I was down there; might as well -- to deal with the results of the corn chowder avalanche.

This past weekend, we attempted to embrace the snow (sort of) by engaging in some snow painting with food coloring-colored water in some empty dish soap squeeze bottles - and then playing with the soccer ball. Luckily, it's bright pink, so it shows up well in the snow, and the huge berms of snow on either side of the sidewalk deflect it from going out into the street. The snow is too deep to play in the yard.

We also thought of spring during my mom's visit when we accompanied Grandma to a couple of fabric stores to pick out fabric for spring/Easter (and maybe the spring family wedding) dresses and skirts. Which resulted in having the four-year-old try on some dresses from her closet to see what size pattern still fit -- and looking at how long her legs have become, so that some of those dresses now look the style on little girls in the 1950s, way up the thighs barely covering the rear ends. We're adding another tier of flounces to the Easter dress pattern to make it longer -- and one of the dresses from the closet has now become a shirt.

Our weekend excursions also included a trip to Target to hear the reading of Dr. Seuss stories, and a trip to Michael's for the demonstration of the My First Science Kit.

And, one reason my mom was visiting was to babysit while my husband and I got our taxes done, and also went to a movie (The King's Speech: very good, and we saw it before it won the Oscar. By a day. We're so prescient.) and checked out a new Vietnamese restaurant in our town (much improved under the new ownership).

And now...it's March. Isn't this the month spring is supposed to start?

Week in Review: Rhyming Play, Cute Quotes and Skiing

So, I started this week in review thing in part to remember cute kid quotes.

Hence, a few moments of dialogue from the past week:

(After mooching a piece of catfish off her father's plate during our Sunday dinner out): "I hope it's not made out of dead cat!"

(Same dinner, after taking a bite of corn on the cob and managing to squirt me -- sitting next to her -- in the eye with corn juice): "It wasn't in my eyes, because my eyes are up here, and my mouth is down here."

(At dinner at home, after commenting that her chicken was a bit spicy, and my comment that some spices are healthy for your body): "Like bacon?"*

(After singing a song learned in church choir, "I Just Wanna Be a Sheep" -- a song that alludes to following the Good Shepherd): "Mommy, I'm Jesus's horse. Are you Jesus's bear?"

The ridiculously bitter cold finally ended toward the end of last week, easing into some unseasonably warm weather in the 40s! During the deep freeze, there was a lot of playing with blocks at our house, building "houses" for a couple of rubber mice. There is apparently a lot of play value in these mice -- they've since moved into the play kitchen, where they are residing in the pretend coffee pot, occasionally being served dinner, and occasionally being baked into a mouse pie.

They also participated in the "play" that the four-year-old requested we perform with last week's hit of the library books, Rhyming Dust Bunnies by Jan Thomas. She found the book hysterical, memorized it quickly and, since there are four characters -- three dust bunnies who occupy themselves with rhymes and a fourth who tries to warn them of the advance of the enemy vacuum cleaner -- it worked out perfectly, in her mind, for she, me, and each of the rubber mice to say one of the characters' lines upon numerous readings of the book.

(Part of the reason we acquired this book from the library is that she's been obsessed with rhymes for a while, constantly asking "does __ and __ rhyme"? And, it's hard to tell if it was merely the memorization of the book -- but she may have been sounding out and actually reading some of the simple three-letter words, like "hat," "mug," etc!)

Part of our weekend activities included another literary event: the Borders bookstore kids' party for Silverlicious by Victoria Kann, the latest in her Pinkalicious series (a huge hit with little girls: how can you go wrong with books that so prominently feature things like the colors pink and purple, rainbows, unicorns, etc.?) I was informed a few days later that she enjoyed that party, so I think it was a hit. :) It consisted of a Borders employee giving a very animated reading of the book, and then some crafts (very glitterful) based on the book, and some take home prizes -- like stickers and shiny pencils. I had also budgeted for a book purchase while there, and made sure to take my Borders coupon with me -- although the idea of so many books rather overwhelmed the four-year-old, and I had to help her make her choices after we had read a few in-store. (We ended up with a couple of Little Golden books -- The Little Mermaid (Disney version), Barbie in a Mermaid's Tale, and a My Little Pony title.)

Prior to the Pinkalicious party, we had attended a showing of free animated films at a nearby library. This month, they focused on winter themes, with a European short about a mole and his snowman, a Swedish one (with subtitles) about two Claymation rabbits building a snowman then getting lost in a winter storm, and the Chuck Jones 1970s version of The White Seal by Rudyard Kipling. (That last one was a little bit long and slightly scary for the preschoolers in the audience - lots of true stuff about hunters and seals --  but I think they try to make these appeal to a wider age range.) She thought the other films were funny, though, and also enjoyed the cupcake the health food people who were cooperating on this event helped the kids make -- they made faces or designs with strawberry slices, blueberries and raspberries, and they provided granola bars and juice boxes for "movie snacks."

We attempted to be even more healthy on our Sunday afternoon excursion to the park -- we started out sledding, but were distracted by the many, many people out on cross-country skis on such a nice day. The four-year-old asked to learn to ski, and I thought it was a good idea -- after all, she lives in Minnesota, so she's going to need to embrace winter, and the sooner she gets used to being active, the better. (Also, I hadn't cross country skiied for a long time, and have been really wanting to -- it was part of my physical education requirement in college and, although I initially signed up because the one-weekend trip allowed me to take more academic courses in my schedule, I ended up really enjoying it. I'm just not very good. :) )

The park rents skis and boots, including kids' sizes, and, after we finally got her boots into the bindings of her skis, the four-year-old actually did really well for the first time -- even figuring out on her own that it was easier to ski in someone else's' tracks. I was not the most graceful skiier ever -- especially since I knew she was losing patience, and finally gave up on actually getting my own left boot into the binding - I just stood on that ski the whole time without it being truly attached -- but I definitely got some exercise. Even more because I had to haul her up from her falls, including the (at least) 15 falls in the same spot that pretty much ended our excursion (every time I'd hoist her up, she'd immediately fall down again, which led to a meltdown).

I suppose it didn't help that her socks were evidently soaked -- becasue she insisted on splashing through every puddle in the parking lot on the way into the park, to the point that we had to scrub purple dye from her boots off her feet at home that night. Still, I'd like to go skiing again.


 * There is an explanation as to why she thinks bacon is a spice. I will provide it if asked.