Walk Without Flinching

So. How are you then? Me, I've been on an extended pout and am quite ready to see the back of summer, if not 2010 in its entirety. You know those times in your life when people you otherwise sort of enjoy say things like "God doesn't give you what you can't handle" or "Even the darkest clouds have a silver lining" and you kind of want to punch them except you don't because your sainted charm school instructor might well rise from the dead and haunt you, thereby resulting in even less sleep then you've recently enjoyed? You know those times? That.

The less said the better.

In between pouting and the occasional dainty tear poised ever-so-fetchingly at the corner of my right eye, I've spent a good amount of time this summer trying to feed my family in ways that won't kill them. Oh, yes, that's right. You haven't heard. I say "not kill them" instead of "not kill him" because we now have in hand the Girl's allergy assessment and blah blah blah, it turns out she's nearly as unfeedable as her father albeit in a slightly different way.

Because nothing thrills me as much as solving a problem in a way that involves as many trips to the library as possible, my recent list of check-outs reads like someone with a very troubled constitution, indeed. With allergy-free and celiac-aware publications hitting the shelves at what seems to me to be a rapid pace - perhaps it is less so to people with more experience in these matters than I - there is plenty from which to choose for guidance. One would think that there would be no trick at all to ridding oneself of troubling foodstuffs. At home, anyway. Let's not talk about restaurants for a spell, as we're not really speaking at the moment.

Vegan and vegetarian cookbooks are near useless for their reliance on wheat and soy products. Gluten-free resources often feature bean flours and nightshades heavily, both of which are very strictly limited for us. I found one book I adored, only to discover that it called in nearly every recipe for an ingredient that is priced upwards of $27 a pound. Then there are the recipes that sound wonderful but turn out to take not unlike library paste (which, now that I think on it, probably has a wheat binder and therefore cannot be eaten by at least two people with whom I live).

Interestingly, among the cookbooks most useful in retooling my kitchen and dining table weren't intended specifically for special diets at all. Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals, in particular, was helpful for reminding me that simple is better and there are few - if any - of my family's problem ingredients in fresh food, humbly prepared. Likewise, Everyday Food: Fresh Flavor Fast: 250 Easy, Delicious Recipes for Any Time of Day, helped me retain the notion that a decent, healthy meal prepared and served sometime this century (even when I've had a bad day at work and tonight is riding night and...) is not necessarily an impossible mission. No need for special or shockingly expensive ingredients, no need for deprivation, and no need for substitutions when a bit of redirection is possible and even desirable.

Hey, is that a silver lining I see?



P.S. If you're looking for a bit of inspiration for simple, seasonal meals, I recommend these for clear and concise directions and a refreshing lack of jargony references to specialty products:

It occured to me some weeks ago that my expectations for exciting activities in March were fairly high. I simply had nothing interesting to write about and I puzzled over this until I realized that March '06 had us settling into a new house and March '05 saw us preparing to put our former house on the market. In March '04 I had a new baby and in March '03 we had just moved into the house we sold in '06. So you can see where a normal March with no new infants and no real estate news may seem a bit blah. So if I'm not post-partum and we're not fixing to move (or recover from moving), you might wonder what I've been up to.

In no particular order, I have been:

1) Falling for Google's April Fool's joke.

2) Sending psychic apologies to Daniel Craig. I have finally seen Casino Royale and I am deeply shamed over my initial, uh, disinclination toward him as Bond. I have been open here about my enthusiasm for the Bond Emeritus but, wow, beach scene, anyone?

3) Sorting out my professional life, with no appreciable result.

4) Bemoaning man's (woman's) inhumanity to man (woman). (Aside: I had no idea that expression is a Robert Burns thing. And they say that blogging isn't educational! O.K. I don't know if anyone actually says that, but you know they think it.)

5) Failing at the execution of a cute Easter project.

6) Waiting for my butter to soften so I can make the Cheddar Olives for tomorrow's egg hunt. Also on the menu: a very traditional spice cake with cream cheese frosting, deviled eggs my way, sundried tomato and garlic mini-tarts, Fromage Fort and some chocolate oaty cookie things I learned from Susie J's indespensible site of baking fabulousness. All of this is great, of course, but seriously, those olives? Try them.

Oh, and I've also watch my son ride his bike without training wheels and swim without some kind of floaty thing or belt and looked on as my daughter wrote her name all by herself for the first time.

I guess it's been a big month after all.

This morning, to the amusement of the children, I set a large metal bowl outside on the front walk to collect falling snow. The goal? Snow ice cream, something I know only from my own nursery school memories (aside: is nursery school still called that? or is it more "preschool" now? I haven't heard nursery school in a while) but which I had been planning all winter and just waiting for a good time.

To make some of your own, place your largest bowl outside in an area where snow will collect without coming through tree branches and where vehicle exhaust isn't present* (so, not right next to a street or driveway). When the bowl is pretty much full, gently stir in some sugar, a small amount of vanilla extract and slooooowly stream in milk, stirring, until you get the consistency you want. Depending upon the moisture level of the snow and the warmth of your home, the result will be anywhere from thick like a milkshake to the kind of melty thing kids love to make by vigorously stirring commercial ice cream in their bowl (known as "ice cream soup" around here). Eat, enjoy, and relive your youth.

* A friend expressed mild revulsion when she heard of my plan to make snow ice cream. "Isn't it dirty?" she asked, with an almost audible shudder. My thoughts about this are: We live on a non-working farm in the middle of nowhere to the west of a large city and entire days go by without us seeing so much as a single vehicle that doesn't belong to us. So, the snow that falls into our bowl is likely to be about as clean as it gets and eating the result is no more unhealthy in the general sense than, say, a fruit roll-up, fake-juice foil drink thing, or your average sugary cereal - all things a child is much more likely to consume than a bit of milky icy confection once or twice a childhood. Even if we didn't live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, I'd probably feel o.k. about this. I mean, you don't want to collect snow from the middle of JFK Boulevard or anything, but on the scale of ingestible things likely to cause harm, I'd rank snow ice cream well on the low side.

I had plans this morning to come here and share more ideas of what you can do with the cornmeal you undoubtedly ran out and bought so you could make cornbread. Instead, I am typing this from bed where I am also bidding goodbye to the last notions I had that I am not actually sick.

Another day, then, for the empanadas, cornmeal waffles, polenta, and spoonbread. Today my food concerns are a bit more pedestrian - what to feed the kids when thinking of food at all leads to unwelcome lurching in the mid-section?

There's always eggs and toast, of course, although I find that cooking eggs while I'm under the weather does nothing at all for improving my physical state. Buttered noodles work well, particularly rotini, the shape of which seems to distract the kids from noticing that I have neglected to add veggies or meat to the bowl (if I'm up to it, a generous sprinkling of grated Parmesan and some cracked black pepper in my bowl are wonderfully self-nurturing).

If soup is called for, I break out one of my boxes of pre-made broth. I do try to keep homemade on hand, but it's usually frozen so doesn't work well for last-minute needs. You can buy excellent organic veggie and chicken broths at many groceries these days, making them great pantry staples, so don't feel shy about keeping and using them. Heated broth with maybe some diced onion, frozen peas, a bit of kale and some of those teeny-tiny dried ravioli or tortellini make a great, last minute soup that's quick and delicious. You can also use celery, drained and rinsed beans, rice or anything at all that you have lying around and looks good and before you know it soup's on and you're off the hook for another few hours.

I've also been known to make beer bread, serve it warm and buttered along with applesauce or a clementine or something and call it a day (this approach has the added benefit of resulting in leftover bread, so you can serve it again the next day if events regrettably come to that). Because the bread has all of three ingredients it's crazy fast to make, the only requirement being that you need to remember to get it started a little more than an hour before you want it (maybe an hour and a half before, to include mixing and cooling time).

No matter what is served and no matter how it is made or procured, don't forget to include the kids in what you are doing and why. As impatient as you may feel and as intolerant of spills and dropsies as you might be (believe me, I have bitten my own tongue so often that it may well be perforated), tolerating kitchen mayhem now could lead to you one day hearing, as I did today, "Mommy, if you need to lie down it's o.k. I will pour Entropy Girl's juice and grind the coffee beans for you. Would you like some cinnamon toast?"

And with that, I feel better already.

A couple years ago, Kodak ran what I consider to be a brilliant advertisement. A group of children walk in what looked to be a museum with stark white walls. On the walls are scores of photographs, some of them iconic images for Americas - the first flight at Kitty Hawk, Muhammad Ali with his arm raised in victory, 1980's Miracle on Ice, Martin Luther King, Jr. standing before an uncountable crowd. Others are more mundane - baby in a sunhat, a bride and groom in wedding finery, a couple hugging and mugging for the camera. The docent asks the children if they can hear what the photographs are saying. "They're saying Keep me," he tells them, "Share me, protect me...and I will live forever." Nearby, a man stares in teary reverence at a decades-old picture of a young woman in a blue dress.

It was genius, this way of reminding us that even though we now take pictures with our phones and our PDAs and goodness knows what else, that these images still require protection if we value them, if we want these bits of digital ephemera to live on as our boxes of old film-based photographs do...that even though we have moved beyond the box of unlabled and yet still precious pics under the bed, there is much still to keep and share.

I have a file on the computer on which I type this named 0000432Xy7.jpg. It is a picture of Entropy Girl in her first hour of life, nearly three years ago, wrapped in a pink and white plaid blanket and staring directly into her father's face. For all it's importance to me, I clearly have not done enough to act on how this picture makes me feel. There are no back-ups, no duplicates and it has never been printed for display in my home.

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Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur (and not just when the Boy Wonder asks if it's "hard to be [my] age"). I am becoming wary of what each technological advance trumpted as the Next Cool Thing will cost us. When every house on every block has it's own 108-inch television, will we bother to gather together to watch movies when watching one on such a screen is already like being with a crowd (except for the pesky interpersonal interaction part)? Students are no longer expected to learn cursive writing in some school districts, a casualty of our typing and texting age. I think this is sad, and not only because many students actually find cursive easier to learn first than printing, especially visual-learners whose tendancy toward the drawing and art make the flowing lettering more appealing, but also because losing longhand-based literacy cuts people off from entire centuries of human expression.

And, of course, we no longer need to know how to cook. But you know how I feel about that.

I fear that we're not protecting the things we find valuable, let alone sharing them. In our rush to trade up our Lion King VHS tapes to DVD to Blu-ray we're left behind, just more of the masses who will either become irrelevent or clamor to catch up. But we're losing more than the occasional hand-written letter (how will anyone ever right a biography of my life when I've had more than a score of e-mail addresses and the use of goodness knows how many servers? Can you imagine if Thomas Jefferson had access to Blogger?), but we're also losing perspective with the rush to upgrade and add more.

I wonder what my children will think is worth sharing and protecting from their childhood. Will it be a .WAV file of Entropy Girl singing "Feliz Navidad" with the words coming out something more like "May-lease Mah-bee-dah"? Or the songs that we sing together whenever we're in the car? Will anything be able to play such files in 50 or 60 years? (Hint: my dad has a box load of 8-track tapes in his basement, unplayed since I was about nine years old.)

I wonder what meals they'll remember most as they grow. Will it be the pierogie we make together, talking about their Polish great-grandmother and the first time I met her (when she complimented my generous figure as being "good for having babies" - turns out she was right, although I didn't love hearing it at the time). I can't believe that they'll look back and remember the hot dogs, mac-and-cheese or frozen ravioli.
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Or at least I don't want to believe that they will. Yes, I must do a better job of protecting and sharing, not just our photographs, but our history - familial and otherwise. Not doing so is the same as throwing it out with the arrival of the Next Cool Thing.

The children, in church several hours before being nestled all snug in their beds under brand-new blankets crocheted by their great-grandmother. I sit here in front of a 6' tree fairly dwarfed by piles of presents, nibbling on Santa's caramel crunch cookie and the reindeers' carrot, sipping the former's frosty bubbly cocktail (what? Santa doesn't get a mimosa at your house?) secure in the knowledge that sugarplums have likely begun dancing in their heads and I may take a moment to blog.

After the 4 p.m. service we drove around a bit, looking at lights and meandering our way to a nearby Chinese place for dinner. The kids were amused by waiters wearing Santa hats and the restuarant's gift to us of a 2007 calendar - cool enough to warrant fighting over and the quick intervention by one waiter in rushing a second to our table. We took a little detour through Brainiac's childhood neighborhood on the way home and were charmed by luminaria in front of most of the houses. He tells me that this has been going on since he was quite young and he became both sad and joyous as we drove, enjoying his children's exclamations from the backseat while also remembering his late father's role in setting up the luminaria that his family displayed. It's an odd place in which we find ourselves, still feeling as if we ought to eat at the kids' table and not yet finished being parented but now also parents ourselves. Christmas seems to make this neither-here-nor-there quality bolder, somehow, more stark.

And now we are home. The carrot and cocktail are gone, the last verses of Barbra Streisand's Ave Maria have faded from my little Pandora set-up, and Brainiac is pouring me a Frangelico. So.

We most definitely did not have a silent night, although in many ways it did feel holy. The gift of the blankets made by my kids' oldest relative, remembering to them a grandfather they never met, eating dumplings together as part of a tradition their father and I started before they were born and now sharing a drink and cigar with Brainiac as we putter away the remaining hours of Christmas Eve...yes, there has been something very holy in the day we shared.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Not long ago I was having One of Those Days. The kids were very tightly wound, I was somewhat less so and all efforts at a pleasant family morning were coming to naught. As I do every now and again I announced Quiet Time by saying, "Why don't you guys go see what's on channel 12?!" (Channel 12 is one of the two parentally sanctioned watching options in our house, our local public broadcasting.)

You can imagine my surprise to notice maybe five minutes later the calm that had descended. No more arguing, picking, instigating, throwing, screaming, tattling - it had all stopped. I was almost afraid to go check and see what it was they found on the television in case I would feel compelled to declare it inappropriate viewing and turn it off, with the inevitable result of a return to the morning's chaos. Steeling myself against bitter cathode ray dissapointment, I walked into the play room to find the kids snuggled up on the futon with a fleece blanket, staring rapt at the screen watching...

The Nutcracker.

I sat down to watch with them, remembering well my own girlhood fascination with Gelsey Kirkland and my despair at growing too tall and too, uh, large for ballet (my stature is rather more suited to softball than ballet). I wondered what they'd make of the show, if children more accustomed to animation and Disney spectacle would find The Nutcracker as compelling as so many generations before them.

They did. I provided minimal narration, just enough to help them follow the story and secretly (well, less so now that I'm writing about it on my blog, I guess) was pleased that they displayed such cultah in their attention. It was a distinct pleasure to share with them a holiday tradition that I enjoyed so well at their age.

Of course, when the ballet ended we were right back to craziness, this time with re-enactments of battles with the Mouse King, a part they alternated for maximum hysteria. Ah, so much for culture.

Still, happening upon The Nutcracker seems to have had an effect on them that I doubt it would have had if I had sat them down specifically to watch it, maybe a sense of discovery or ownership rather than something that Mom said was important to do. Both relish telling the story to friends and family, as if it were something that they themselves created and Entropy Girl practices her "steps" daily and asks her brother to play the part of the "guy dancer". The Boy Wonder is amazed to note that the male dancers can jump just as high as football players and thinks it beyond cool that battle scenes are not at all unusual within ballet - jumping with swords! Not to mention, of course, the constant source of amazement in the Christmas tree that grows! On stage! Or that so many dancers can do the same things at the same time, his constant search for synchronicity and symmetry satisfied. I am utterly charmed by their enthusiasm in a way that only a mother could be.

So now I'm on the hunt for Nutcracker-themed activities. I found a few at the Pennsylvania Ballet and, because they are intended for older children, they've inspired me to create a couple of my own - a wordsearch, an I Spy-type page and a bit of time making sugarplums.

It has been a wonderful gift for me to be able to share The Nutcracker with the kids and have them enjoy it so much. Despite knowing that the odds are against them developing a lifelong appreciate for dance, living as we do in the age of Wii, I'd like to think that the memory of this time will stay with them and someday, at least, they'll be able to share a little of the wonder with their own children.

(If you'd like me to send you .PDF copies of our Nutcracker games and activities, e-mail me at hotwaterbath AT gmail DOT com and I'll get them out to you. They're nothing super elaborate, just a bit of holiday fun to take advantage of youthful enthusiasm.)

Among the many, uh, charms of being involved with the public school machine in Pennsylvania is the requirement that every child in certain grades (K through fourth now, expanding each year by adding a grade until every grade is included) has a BMI measurement, which is sent home to parents along with lots of helpful advice about what to do should one's child's BMI be deemed not quite right. This program, called the PA Growth Screening Program, is a joint effort of the Pennsylvania Departments of Health and Education.

At first blush, this sounds no different than other screenings a child might receive in school (remember visiting the nurse's office for that annual scoliosis finger-down-the-back check?). And, indeed, that's exactly how the program is being marketed - no different than, say, a vision or hearing assessment or other useful tool for parents to use in evaluating their child's health.

From my perspective, this is a far cry from a vision or hearing evaluation. A very far cry.

The program literature includes boilerplate letters to parents, administrators and staff outlining the procedures and what will happen after the BMI measurements have been obtained. While the literature includes areas where school nurses may detail the ways in which the school and district are endeavoring to create healthier environments for kids - and, indeed, offers suggestions to nurses of ideas they might pursue in this regard - the program itself is not designed to offer solutions. So it's entirely possible that parents may recieve a letter that reads something along the lines of "Hey, your kids' BMI is XX. Good luck with that!"

So we have this measurement sent to parents, with the explanation that false readings are possible and that it should be discussed with the family physician and included alongside are all the ways that the school district is going to help keep/get the child healthy/-ier (one hopes, but maybe/maybe not on this point). The thing is, if I actually have a physician (assumed by the literature), why do I need this? If I am already required to submit a physical form filled out for each child by that same physician as a requirement of enrollment, what is this duplicative screening meaning to accomplish?

I also wonder the point of such a screening in an environment where children recieve 15 minutes a day per lunch (as is the case at my neighborhood elementary school), a 10 minute recess if they're lucky, and gym class once every six days. If the message of the Growth Screening Program is to encourage healthy eating and activity, isn't that diluted somewhat by the day-to-day message kids receive while actually at school? On the one hand, parents may learn that their son or daughter is over-/underweight but why bother to tell them what they likely already know when they have no control over a schedule that teaches those same children to either shove their food down their throats as quickly as possible just to finish or that they couldn't possibly finish so why bother eating when you can just go to the library and get something done?

I'm also troubled by the program's lack of attention to common root causes of both under- and overweight. Among the suggestions that school nurses ask the local YMCA what programs might be available for overweight kids and find sports programs to recommend there is no attention paid to helping families who need assistance in obtaining affordable healthy food, finding living situations that include kitchen facilities in which to cook and store said healthy food, or providing support for families when kids themselves are responsible for preparing their own meals because mom and dad are working long hours or otherwise aren't home (by whether by choice or necessity). Not to mention all the other issues that go into a family's food environment - maybe mom will only eat yogurt and lettuce or dad feels that a meal without meat is like a day without sunshine, etc. Or the prevailing model of the upwardly mobile, achievement-oriented family in which everyone is off accomplishing and no one is eating so much as a single meal together in any given week. Or that the very schools that are being required to conduct the screenings offer sports programs - hey! healthy activity! - that require kids to be away from their own family tables four or five nights a week. Or that even if we fixed all of what I see as our society's really weird attitudes toward food, we still won't teach people how to cook. (Insert your own neurosis here.)

(ETA: On the drive to pick the Boy up from school just after posting this I realized that today is the school's Market Day pick up. Market Day products are sold as a PTA fundraiser and the order/pick-up cycle runs monthly. Among the plain frozen veggies on offer are frozen french toast sticks, tacquitos, cheesesteak "kits" and bagel pizzas. And this month moms - there's that mom being responsible for feeding people thing again - were encouraged to by as many pies as possible since the company offered an extra $1 per pie profit to the school. Not all that compatible with a BMI obsession, you say? Yeah, I say, too.)

At the end of the day, this feels to me like just another message from someone with grant money to spend that parents aren't doing their job right. It's an easy position to take, after all, since all you have to do is declare that someone's son or daughter isn't healthy and, gee, they'd really better do something about it, when you aren't tasked with or even interested in offering concrete assistance or solutions. At least a vision or hearing test comes with some way to deal with the problem.

I don't see an opt-out for parents who do not wish their children to participate in the Growth Screening Program. So I plan on one of my own - an unopened letter, filed directly in the compost heap.

I've never been one for rebellion. I've also never been one for going-along-to-get-along. My position on most things is that to the extent what I do has no bearing on another, I don't expect comment. I have a pretty strong internal locus of control and don't require much in the way of others' approval. Luckily, Brainiac shares my feelings on the subject of, as he says, the coloring-within-the-lines thing and so we experience very little conflict between us on issues about whether or not we should do or not do X because everyone else does it or doesn't do it.

Does this make sense? What I mean is that we're pretty good at making decisions about stuff on the basis of whether or not it's right for us without worrying if it's not done, too alternative, too mainstream or too whatever. This is not to say that we don't have a sense of community responsibility, just that we'd rather bring our garbage cans in after trash day because it's a desirable thing to do, not because the home owners' association handbook says we must, you know?

There's one issue, though, that is bringing us up short in terms of what is expected versus what we believe to be the best choice for us and it's proving to be harder to manage the more we discuss it, rather than our conversations having an illuminating effect. Real-life friends and relations are sick to death of hearing us talk about it and, for reasons that will become obvious, subject-matter experts cannot be called upon for their objective views. As we have hit a standstill regarding this very large elephant in the room (see it there over in the corner? wearing a lampshade? and chaps?) Brainiac suggested that I take it to the blog, so here I am.

The Boy Wonder is enrolled in a half-day (half-day is a euphamism for 2.5 hours) Kindergarten program at our highly regarded elementary school. He wanted to go on the grounds that it was a guaranteed daily playdate with two of his buddies and has, for the most part, been positive about the experience. Reports back from the classroom (from teachers and other moms) indicate that he is happy and doing well.

But (you knew it was coming, right?) Brainiac and I aren't thrilled with what he's actually doing, school-wise. We're not all in with the Give 'Em Phonics in Preschool crowd or anything, but we've got a kid who started reading (C-A-T cat, S-A-T sat, M-A-T mat) before his fourth birthday and is now doing pretty well with independent reading, who is learning (at his request) how to add double and triple digit numbers, and who thinks that Beowulf is, like, the greatest story ever and read it again Mom! Please understand, I'm not making claims to giftedness or genius or anything like that, merely that he's had the benefit of two fairly geeky parents who spent a loooooong time in school and who have had the time and inclination to bring him and his sister along for the ride.

The activities he's toting home from school bring me up a little short in that I was expecting to have to defend him from too much academics (haven't we all heard that "kindergarten is the new first grade") and instead I'm in the position explaining to him why he's coloring in a picture of the number thirty as part of his math instruction. "Mommy," he said to me not long ago, "I think the plan is that we're going to play now so that we'll have time to learn later in the year."

The school has acknowledged that he is ahead of the curriculum for reading and math and has been quite frank in their plans to do nothing about it. They will not differentiate within the classroom, they will not accelerate, they will not enrich, they will not explain why.

My mother-in-law, a retired second-grade teacher, has pointed out that the kids on either end of the reading and math bell curves tend to join the kids at the top sometime around second grade and has suggested that this may be the basis for the school's disinterest in actually teaching the Boy. Such a norming may be a pedagogical certainty but I think it's actually irrelevant as an explanation - why is it a better educational option to let a kid sit around doing nothing for as long as two years waiting for his skill level to be at the median as opposed to reaching him where he is at the moment? It's clear to us that the Boy is squarely in a gray area where he is one of those kids who can be safely left alone, requiring little attention of any kind. These kids, if they're lucky, reach that top of the bell curve point without hating school as a boring, pointless environment. If they're unlucky, they reach that point with the understanding that being smart and motivated gets you nothing but hassle and make-work. Now there's a lesson I bet isn't in the formal curriculum.

Brainiac and I find this situation sad, angry-making and utterly unacceptable. For his part, the Boy is a little confused as to why he spends his afternoons cutting triangles, learning songs about Mr. M and having his questions about how the intercom system works go unanswered, although he enjoys that it all happens in such a bright and happy environment. He's asked, though, if we could find him another school for next year. "Maybe one that has more science." he suggests.

So. What to do? We're looking at private schools ($15K a year for first grade! and a first grade that's not really better than what we've got), magnet schools and homeschooling. Homeschooling seems to be the best answer, for us and for the Boy. We've essentially been homeschooling him from that moment we realized in the summer before he turned four that he was reading street signs and have continued to respond to his interests with all kinds of books, outings, experiments and activities. He has always responded well and enthusiastically to educational and informative stimuli wherever he finds it.

But man, homeschooling is coloring waaaaaay outside the lines. I have no fear of our ability to provide an excellent and thorough education for our children, none at all. I think, though, that homeschooling comes right up against my ability to do more or less what pleases me, sticks its toe on the line of not caring what people think and dissolving into tears over same and gives me a raspberry. It's one thing to choose a "love me, love my choices" sort of life for oneself but it's quite another to choose it for one's child.

You know, if the Boy Wonder were developing an enthusiasm for some unhealthy thing - a drug, maybe, or not eating enough, I'd move heaven and earth and spend every cent available to me to support him in healing. Why is it so hard to kick what I see as another unhealthy habit - this particular school and perhaps school in general - because it's "what people do". Why am I so afraid to be different about this, to take the plunge, to proclaim loud and proud "we are homeschoolers" when about so many other things in my life I do what I do with no thought or concern as to the general response?

Why is this different?

Entropy Girl was a dragon (me: Are you a nice dragon or a scary dragon? EG: I'm a TWO year old dragon!) and the Boy Wonder went as fireworks.


I decided last year that I would only commit to one time-intensive costume per year. This year was the Boy Wonder's year since he wanted to be fireworks and his sister didn't much care (although she's already announced that next year she will Trick-or-Treat as a puppy - a pink puppy. In a purse.) I wish we had his box all squared (ha!) away before snapping these shots because he really was darling. And he worked very hard on this - the idea was to paint a box that he'd wear hanging from his shoulders and then use gallons of glitter glue to put fireworks on all four sides. Then he wore a bunch of strands of those bendy wire foil star decorating things all twisted up as a kind of hat. Once he got the hang of walking inside the box he was quite happy with the effect.

The dragon came from last year's post-Halloween clearance from Target. And, really, what more could I possibly ask of a toddler's costume than to 1) fit over clothes, 2) eliminate the need of an additional coat and 2) be inexpensive cheap?

In other news, pineapple has been procured and weekend time cleared. We just might end up with some pineapple lime jam before too long. The mother of one of the Boy's friends heard of the plan and said, "Oh, what a wonderful gift that would make!" and all I could think was gift, schmift, this stuff's gonna be for me.

Today we hosted the Boy Wonder's sixth birthday party. In the event that my admitedly rudimentary cake decorating skills do not make this obvious, this was a NASA-themed party. This cake is meant to resemble the moon, although without the lunar landing module you would be forgiven for not quite getting that.

Sigh. My baby is six. This has been rather hard on me, perhaps because there's the whole "official school-age" thing, too. I don't know. In any case, the party was enjoyed by all, "all" in this case meaning seven kids ages five and six. The adults present are all now quite exhausted.

Because we have apparently entered the birthday party = a couple hours childcare zone with this event, I didn't plan on lots of adult entertainment as I have in previous years. This year's birthday party philosophy dictates that the kids must be kept moving for the entire two hours and under no circumstances should encounter an unprogrammed second. While lots of unstructured time was quite charming at ages 4 and 5, the amount and variety of trouble a bunch of six year old boys can find alarms me, so for an afternoon that involves drop-off playtime in conjunction with lots of sugar (see also: moon birthday cake) just call me Cruise Director Mommy.



I don't think it can be underestimated the joy that diet coke/mento rockets brings to the pre-K/K crowd (not to mention any geeky parents they might have lurking about). Followed by little foam finger rocket thingies, a paper airplane distance flight contest, a space shuttle pinata and something else I've already blocked out, well, in the words of one guest, "This is a great party! The mess is awesome!" And, really, isn't that the point?

Although my sister thinks it a lie my only excuse for not being around lately is just that I've been, as they say, overcome by events. Getting ready for Easter, taking the kids to Buffalo, getting ready to host 25 people I've never met at an Open House (more on this to come) and thinking deep scientific thoughts (ditto) have all taken up a great deal of time. As has trying to locate the cord for our new-ish digital camera so that I may post pics of the canning equipment that I use in my kitchen. Frustrating, that last one.

This is my third night in a row being awake at 3:00 a.m. (actually, if we're keeping track - and I am - it's more like my eighth since Entropy Girl and I shared a bed in Buffalo and she is a relentless night waker; like mother, like daughter perhaps?). Last night it was the Boy Wonder who brought my snooze to an abrupt and unwelcome end:

Boy Wonder (moaning weekly): Mommmmmmmmeeeeee (pause) Mommmmmmmmmmeeeeee

Me (nearly falling out of bed in an attempt to move as fast as possible): What? Honey, what? Mommy's coming, sweetie....hi honey, what's up? Are you sick?

Boy Wonder: Can you tell Daddy I want him?

The conversation went downhill from there. But that was last night and this is tonight and I'm up now because his sister clearly thought I needed to update my blog and so sounded the alarm for me about an hour ago. She's thoughtful like that.

So on the Open House. Brainiac and I thought it would be a nice idea to have a little something for our townships Board of Supervisors, since they are technically our landlord. While we're at it, we thought, why not also the farm, historical and open space committees? Each of these groups were involved in lengthy and at times contentious discussions and operations regarding the house and we thought they'd all appreciate a chance to meet these mysterious people inhabiting the subject of so much emotional wrangling. Plus maybe get a bite to eat or something.

Why I thought it would be a good idea to do this three days after returning from nearly a week away would be a great subject for analysis. No time for such navel-gazing, though, with food to be prepared and a house to be cleaned. Last night before bed I made two warm dips - one for veggies, one for tortilla chips - and will also put out green and red salsas, a relish tray, bruschetta, drunken wieners*, brownies, and a variety of nuts and sweets. I've tried to avoid the fussy and last-minute because the whole point of the gathering is to meet people, not to avoid them by being holed up in the kitchen for the duration of their visit. As always, I'm worried about not having enough food.

Which brings me, sort of, to the pondering of great scientific questions. As I relate this, please remember that of my many charms and wonderful qualities, an adept scientific mind is not among them, and that any laughing and pointing should be done with as much care and love as possible. Agreed?

O.K., so I know that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. Got it. Stuff changes or not - dust to dust, making compost, landfills filled with diapers - but the matter never actually goes away. Check. But as I planted sixteen bean seeds the other day I wondered about the beans (hopefully) to come. Where is the matter than will make them up now? Does the seed create the plant and its produce from, well, just the matter within its tiny walls? So does that matter come from? Surely it's not all scrunched up within the seed? Do you see where I'm going with this? To the unclear and uninitiated (that is, me) it would seem that growing things does, in fact, require the creation of more matter. And yet...well, now I've got a headache again.

I asked Brainiac about this and in response he merely gazed at me the way one might a slightly annoying but mostly adorable child, kissed me tenderly on the forehead and said something that I can't even reproduce here because it made so little sense to me. Meanwhile, those bean seeds are being rained upon even as I type this so I hope that whatever they're going to do in the way of growing and giving us green beans they're getting to it.

* The drunken wieners. Yes. Well. A throwback to the 60s perhaps but one that people seem to love whenever I dust it off. I'm pretty sure that my brother-in-law (known Internetly as Paco) appreciates a batch, as does my dad and, well, really despite the somewhat laughable name the dish just goes over, you know? I can only take one or two, myself, but I've known people who will bogart and the entire bowl if you let them.

To taste for yourself the wonder of the drunken weiner, start with a package of those little cocktail smoky hot dog things. They come sort of shrink wrapped which I find odd but which I suppose is fitting somehow since they aren't really food, after all. Anyway, prepare the sauce by messing around with various amounts of grated yellow onion, ketchup, brown sugar and a bit of some kind of whiskey or bourbon - Jim Beam or the like. I never measure any of this, but rather just throw it all together and taste until I figure it'll be good. Throw the little dogs in the mix and pour it all into an oven-safe dish that you'll also use for serving and heat until the weiners are heated through and the sauce is bubbly. Serve with cocktail forks and the expectation of applause.

I'm reading Mimi Sheraton's new memior Eating My Words, in which she recounts her career in food writing in general and restaurant criticism in general. For those of us outside the industry but who still enjoy a well put-together meal the book is a revelation. One part in particular that I read just before bed last night has been swirling around my head today. In it, Ms. Sheraton describes the complicated calculus, financial as well as psychological, that goes into menu writing and the setting of prices. This, as I serve my son buttered noodles and broccoli and try to convince my daughter to snack on a plain rice cake, has me ruminating on some of the more expensive meals of my life - as well as some of the cheapest.

According to Ms. Sheraton, when you sit down to a meal in a restaurant you are not actually buying food but rather real estate. That is why your appetizers, entrees and desserts come one on top of the other in your average low-range chain place - your Olive Gardens, Chili's and Red Lobsters. I swear I've eaten in some of these establishments and you simply cannot move for all the bread baskets, salad plates, empty soda glasses, paper napkin wrapper thingies and the rest of the flotsam and jetsam that makes up a mass-market dinner out. Your food comes fast because they need you in and out in order to turn over your table for the next $40 check.

Maybe this is why I'm increasingly willing to eat out less but pay more at nicer places when I do go out. So that I can rent that small piece of real estate for an ever-so-slightly longer period of time - life is complicated and moves fast and every now and again I'd like a meal that's better than what I can produce at home and is actually more relaxing. Sitting around a crowded table with my two kids and husband trying to grab someone's attention to take away the empty glasses before the baby knocks them over is not my idea of a good time and the last time we went to a national chain place a kid from a neighboring table amused himself by throwing tortilla chips at my husband.

On the other hand, one of my more concrete parenting goals is to make sure my children grow up suitable for polite society - that they know have to make dinner conversation, use a fork and knife and have diverse enough palates to eat just about anything that's served to them (or at least be able to fake it well). This goal is very often in complete opposition with my desire for a well-crafted, well-paced and pleasant meal in soothing/interesting (depending upon my mood) surroundings. Restaurants that offer these attributes generally aren't thrilled when customers show up with a small box of crayons and a request for a high chair.

Coincidentally, my husband sent me an article yesterday describing the new welcome that families are receiving in many new, upscale, suburban restaurants. One of those featured, a place called Christopher's, is among our favorites and is a place we get back to everytime we're in Philly and cruising down the Main Line. Their kids' menu treats children as if they have taste buds and the adult menu is nothing short of great. We get a good dinner with a glass of wine or two, our son gets either a "real" pizza (no frozen immitation here) or some pasta with housemade marinara and parmesan and the check comes to about $75. Spendy, perhaps, for your average suburban family dinner check but no one throws chips at you and nothing has been frozen or portion packed prior to its arrival at your table.

In this vein I can't wait to try Georges Perrier's new Georges'. That Georges Perrier has developed a restaurant that is 1) anything approaching casual and 2) includes a childrens' menu is something that simply astonishes me. Perrier is primarily known as the chef-proprieter of Philadelphia's Le Bec Fin, once regarded as one of the best restaurants in the country and still Philly's dream restaurant, although one with an increasingly hidebound reputation (its sister restaurant Brasserie seems to be aging better). Anyway, in his e-mail to me about the article in which Georges' is discussed, my husband stated, "Let me guess. There are Freedom Fries in my future at Georges'."

You betcha, cherie. And I won't forget the crayons.

Questions asked by a three year old while making chocolate chip cookies:

What is that? Why is it flour? Where is your bowl? Oh, there it is. Why is your bowl yellow? Why is that a bowl? What is that? Why is it brown sugar? Why isn't it white sugar? Where is the white sugar? What is that? What is vanilla? Can I smell the vanilla? Why is it vanilla? Why do I like vanilla? Why doesn't it smell like chocolate? Where are the chocolate chips? Why are they chocolate chips? What are those funny spoons? Why do they measure? What do they measure? Why is that salt? Are cookies salty? Is sugar good? Do we eat sugar? Why are you putting the oven on? Is the oven hot? Why is that an egg shell? Where did the egg go? Why do cookies have eggs? Do cookies taste like eggs? Why do you have to stir it? What are those? Why are they cookie sheets? Do cookies go on them? Why do cookies cook on them? Why are they rectangle? Why are they gray? Are they metal? Why are they metal? Why are you putting the cookies in the oven? Will the cookies cook there? Why do I have to stay away from the oven? Why don't you want me to get hurt? Are the cookies done? What is that? Why is it an oven timer? What does it do? Why are you turning the oven timer on? Are the cookies done? What is that? Why is it a spatula? What color is it? Why is it beige? What are you doing? Why do the cookies have to cool? Why are they hot? Are the cookies done? Are the cookies done? Are the cookies done? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie? Can I eat a cookie?