The Kitchen Table

B's, Baking, Blueberries

Mister's college (high school?) friend, Nora, came to visit last year, leaving behind a Mr. Potato Head who's since been joined by the Missus (thanks, Uncle Nellie!). She blogs over at Nonlinear Girl but is, of late, on an instagr.am kick. 

Nora started a #365 #alphabet project at the beginning of the year. A photo a day following hte alphabet. Which means 14 photos of A, B, C items until the year is over. I jumped on the train immediately. Some photos have been better received than others, which isn't surprising.

Some are better planned, like the blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History. 

And while I've been talking about baking scones for a week or so, because I'm baking more regularly overall, this was more of a happy accident. 

B/4: baking (she helped mix the flours and pat the dough out into shape, then cut the scones from the dough)

 

B/5: blueberry scones

[The recipe is from Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of the Rose Bakery. The bakery is in Paris. I like the sipmlicity of many of the recipes, including the scones. I modified this one, which asks for 3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour plus a handful of another flour -- whole wheat or cornmeal. I used 1/2 cup of buckwheat, 1/2 cup of barley flours, 2 1/2 cup AP, and handfuls (really, about 1/2 cup) of oat flour. We don't have any fresh blueberries on hand, so I used frozen. We bathed them in flour to help with sticking. The scones are fabulous.]

Blink

This time last year, my mom and stepfather were in town to help with Juniper while Mister and I set off for NYU to have number two. A baby about which I knew little except that it liked to kick a lot, wiggle like mad, stretch obscenely given the small space. 

I had in my head it might be a girl because we had a girl and two would be cute, right?

Out popped Rabbit. Light-haired like his sister, and like his sister, I had to adjust to something I wasn't sure of. 

I thought he might bring frankincense. 

Family portrait, the C-section way. 

Sweet. He had a good cry (I verified with Mister), big hands, a funny nose. I worried his belly button would be weird (it isn't) because drying umbilical cords are like shriveled alien connectors.

Already perfect. Health check with Papa in the next room. I could see them through the glass.

So big. 8 lbs., 13 oz.

We inked him twice. 

It's hard work, being a baby.

Bama holding Rabbit, a very important role for her: Chief Rabbit-holder.

This will be easy!
A visit with Grandmother.
Sister protector.

Clean. He is hilarious in the bath. He tries to climb in. He leaps around. He splashes. He is amphibian, I'm sure.

Cool kid on the swing.
Same kid eating dirt.
Look at the size of those hands. Seriously. Where did they come from? Mister and I have the same size hand (my palm is larger, his fingers are longer; perhaps Rabbit inherited the biggest from each of us.)

Cuddles at music in the park.

Music Together last summer. The music box is one of his favorite places to explore. He even cracks the rhythm sticks with rhythm. They also taste good.
One of his favorite places to be is on Papa's shoulders. Usually, he gives Mister a lick of appreciation.

Oh yes, pears are good. Two teeth is all you need!

Drumming!

Rocking horse fantasy at the library. He's quite good. 

Hi!

We were working on stairs. And then the ball just seemed more fun.

Cheeky bugger.

Rabbit's an incredible light in my life. He has a fast smile for people, a lovely sweet snuggle for us. He pats me on the back the way I do him when he needs comforting. Somehow, he knows when Mama needs a little love of her own. He is insatiably curious in a very different way from Bama. For one thing, this child needs to lick everything in his path. Ladders at the park, tables, sand, whatever. It's horrifying and funny. Mostly horrifying. I keep saying it's all about the anti-bodies.

Where Bama would study people, he will lick them. He is open in a way that is foreign to Mister but I recognize. I think he's a bit like my dad, the guy who will talk to anyone, anywhere. Bama does it now, and I think he'll be even chattier. Oh my.

I love watching him explore the boxes and cubbies of toys. He's deliberate. He'll take out a block, lick it, carry it around, take out some more, put the first one back. Maybe he's like a kid you know, but this kind of search, seek, wonder is new to me. 

He's not saying much beyond Mama and sometimes Papa, but he can sign for milks, water, more, and all done. He understands change (for diaper) and potty, stars, moon, cow, and a bunch of other animals. He, like Bama, loves books. He helps choose what we read (we offer two, he deliberates, then selects), and picks up books when he's playing, too. New fun, blowing kisses, touching noses, and waving.

He is a sweet and funny monkey, Rabbit is. I cannot claim any ownership to his generosity of spirit, his curiousity, his love, but I hope to nurture all the bits of him that will help him continue to be the lovely person he is.

Stretching

 

 

I was lucky enough to be invited into a book club last year. I'd been casting about, hoping ot find one that worked for me in my pregnant, temporarily in NYC state, and our friend started one with her soon-to-be-cousin-in-law. 

It's a huge group, with anywhere between eight and 15 people showing up to talk about books like Cleopatra (universally hated, only one person got past page 45, and she finished it out of sheer will; the NY Times is full of gas) and Super Sad True Love Story,  which I missed but am reading for a different book club.

What I like about book clubs is that they force the members to read. I haven't finished every book. In fact, there's a rule with our club now that if you don't finish at least 75 percent of the book, you probably shouldn't show (I might have inspired this rule, but I had a newborn!). It's a big group, as I said, and the chances of us getting off-topic are high, especially with that many members.

But the downside of book clubs is that you don't always read books you're interested in, even if you suggested them (Cleopatra, you charlatan). Our group had selected Isabel Wilkerson's Warmth of Other Suns, but kicked it after another failed non-fiction selection (Precious Objects, best described and read as a collection of vignettes that are individually (more or less) interesting but as a whole not as cohesive as could have or should have been). 

Several of us were disappointed by its dismissal. A couple of people had started Warmth of Other Suns, a couple had purchased it. I suggested a splinter group. Gasp! A splinter group. We met last night, four of us, in a tea shop near my house. Over creamy mushroom soup and shared pots of rooibos and a lovely white tea, we talked about structure, language, narrative, and the importance of voice. What Wilkerson did with this book is give an event, the Great Migration, and 6 million people who left the south and all they knew behind, faces and a voice. 

Voice. Stories. Narratives. These personalize and legitimize the incomprehensible. For example, we can be horrified to learn that a lynching, which I knew was commonplace, occurred every four days. Every four days. Then apply personal stories to the lynchings. Young teens like Emmet Till, men old and young, all seen as guilty of an infraction, therefore tortured and killed. (Wilkerson uses stories from people she interviewed; I mention Till because his story became widespread after the documentary cited was released and his name may be familiar.)

What I appreciated about the book and about meeting with friends is that I am reminded to stretch and that I can stretch my knowledge, my empathy, my vocabulary. Reading, and why it was important to teach it as well as I could when I was teaching, and to read as well as I can on my own, allows us to become better people on many fronts. 

And, selfishly, for two hours, I'm not a mama. I'm a reader.

Where We Went: Vermont

For Thanksgiving, we boarded the Amtrak Vermonter and headed to Norwich to see one of our favorite families. 

We left a pretty cold New York for a very cold Vermont. Snow started falling about an hour after we arrived. By morning, we had enough for sledding. But no clothes for Bama as I'd planned to get her snow gear up there as I had last year.

Luckily, the Ms are dialed into the town. Friends offered to let us use a suit, a jacket, and boots (ours wouldn't arrive from Lands' End until after we returned to New York). Wow! Bama wore the pants every day, even as the snow began to melt and drip in the warming air. There was enough on the playground to make snowpants feasible. I think, though, that it could have been 90 degrees and she would have insisted on wearing the suit she was so excited. (The friends, it turned out, didn't just loan the suit, they gave it to us. BaMa says there's a great tradition of handing down in town. The kindness of strangers.)

 

The village green is about a block from the house, next to the school, adjacent to the park, and all things good.

At Monshire Museum of Science, Bama explored airplay. This is one of several tables with tubes and airflow thrusting balls about. There's also a very cool table that does something similar, but with a maze inside. By opening or closing windows on the edge of the table, The child's choices affect the path the balls take. It's pretty cool, even if she doesn't get what is happening right now.

Rabbit explores one of the bubble tables. 

And here, he spins the wheel to make the caldera flame up or cool down. 

Baby snapping turtles, part of the rotating water exhibits on the first floor.

Insane and amazing leafcutter ants. Did you know there are multiple sizes and jobs? Soldiers are freaky big, with powerful heads and bodies that tower over the workers.

Montshire is one of those local spots that make you feel lucky to have it. In the bay area, the Exploratorium, the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and even Habibot are similar (the latter are not quite the same, as they are more strictly play spaces)

Montshire is worth a visit if you're in the area. For girls, it's an especially important destination. Dr. Ladyfriend, with a PhD from MIT, a postdoc with the NSF, and now a position at Carnegie Mellon, said she was on a diversity outreach board listening to presentations about potential fund allocations. The problem, we agreed, is that college is too late. Girls need to be encouraged early to pursue math and science (even if they don't choose those areas for a career) because they continue to track out of it by high school. By the time they get to college, many of them lack the math or science background to continue -- unless they are serious about science and doing additional coursework as some friends have done. 

 

Off the Needles

Since I'm all kerfuffled about posting these days, it seems, here is a quicky to show what's cast-off, woven in, and done.

An Irish hiking hat for Grandpa who's chemo-d head needs a bit of soft warmth this winter. Nice, don't you think? I modified the pattern a bit (one change was deliberate, one was accidental). More info on ravelry in my projects.

A tasty scarf for the wife of a high school friend. Six plus feet long, about 9 inches wide. I'm happy with how it turned out. Rumor is, she is, too. Two people from my NY knitting group gave me scraps to liven it up. Sweet.

Rabbit, a blur in his new Milo. Note to self: mark the right side of your projects so that you remember where you are. You have two small children, after all. It will eliminate the need to frog. 

Officially, Milo will be one of his birthday presents. It's a rich, dark burgundy brown color. The yarn is, wait for it, Lion Brand. Yep. Superwash Merino. Natch.

Happy Hack Hack Cough

This about sums up our past week. Bama went down with a massive fever and some vomiting, followed by broken voice that she whispered through, into an ear infection. Mister took her to see our pediatrician, along with a dozen other kids, on Christmas Eve. 

In the meantime, Rabbit and I tried to stay on teh side of the healthy while Bama and Mister struggled through the week. He has, so far, not succombed to his usual winter bronchitis (or, if we're really lucky, pneumonia). I'm not a very good co-pilot when he's sick because I am up every few hours in teh night, and less sympathetic in the day. I'm working on it. But, Mister says he loves me anyway. :)

The ham I picked up from Dickson's Farmstand is still uncooked, adn we never picked up the crab from Whole Foods. It took me a few minutes, okay, a couple of hours, to adjust ot our new Christmas plan: we're all sick and we're not eating anything but soup. By Christmas Eve, I was down, too, with a sinus infection that kept me up (I've taken three or four hot showers a day just to clean out my nose). And Rabbit was heading south fast.

By Christmas Day, Bama was on the mend, thanks to antibiotics, but the rest of us ... last night, I headed to NYU ER because of my own ear infection. So painful I couldn't sleep. In and out of NYU in about 15 minutes and then I took a long, ridiculous walk a mile in the cold to an all-night pharmacy. I thought my ear would split open. 

It's been a rough week with no end in sight. The sitter came today so that Mister and I could loll about in our cave of a room. Me, with my ear to the pillow hoping for more draining and less painful hiccups, and Mister resting his lungs. Upstairs, Bama and Rabbit are, despite feeling crummy, playing with each other, playing with their Christmas presents, and eating broccoli for dinner. 

Here's hoping for a healthy New Year! 

 

Quick, Get Me Some Sage!

I play Dungeons & Dragons once a week with engineers from the company Mister used to work for. Mister was asked, but declined and said, my wife will do it.

D&D: It's so silly it's awesome. 

Round One, I played a gnome thief with terrible thieving and sneaking skills. Seriously, in almost every instance, I failed to open a lock, pick a pocket, and when I tried to shoot a (ginormous) spider, I shot someone in my group in the back (with an arrow).

The glory moment came when all but one of our party were wiped out in an attempt to break into a fortress. The one who survived, our magician, was off learning spells. The retelling of the whole fight was hilarious. Could it be funny to anyone who doesn't play D&D? Here we are, four of us trying to overtake a fortress. Smooth walls guarded by wizards and fighters. While trying to eavesdrop on the guards,, I tripped and rolled into the tower. Then a rock squished me. I set off an alarm, which sent out fighters and mages casting arrows and spells until the others in my party fell one by one. As if that weren't enough, we were all eaten by a dragon.

Seriously, who talks like this?

A shot of the worst pile of dice ever. Need to roll high? You'll roll a three. Need to roll low? You'll hit an 18. There's not enough sage in the world to smudge the crappy rolls from these things. Of course, I could go buy new dice, but that means finding the store and getting there. With Rabbit and Bama.

The players were given a second chance. I came back as a centaur. Centaurs are perfect for me because they are, as a race, a little prickly. I am, in general, a little pricky. No need for acting!

I'd like to thank Dr. Nobody for introducing me to the geeky joys of D&D. 

Oh My, Apple Pie! (cookies)

I love pie. I love it. However, I do not love or even like apple pie a little bit. I'd like to, but I don't. 

But, when I saw this recipe for Apple Pie Cookies, how could I resist? I had a bowl full of apples and pears fresh from the green market. I could not resist.

One little pie fits tidily into the palm of even a smallish hand like mine (or Mister's, which is the same size). 

Smitten Kitchen says the recipe makes 24-30 pies, though she's unsure of the actual number because they ate them as soon as they popped out of the oven. My adjustment was to add pear. I put in a cinnamon-sugar-nutmeg dipped slice of apple with a slice or two of pear on top. Oh yeah. 

I made about 15 pies. I may roll the dough thinner next time and see how that works out.

Food photos taken with an iPhone in the ick light of a yellowy kitchen, not so good. Sigh.

Three, Just Us

A Tuesday birthday seems to stretch out like the miracle mile. A birthday party on Saturday, a class song on Monday, a real birthday on Tuesday, Mama didn't finish the birthday creation in time for any of it. 

 

On her actual birthday, neither of us baked the cake. Mister stopped at Dean & Deluca to pick up a beautiful gold-flecked chocolate thing. She didn't know why we turned out the candles.

She wasn't sure what to do with them. It seems the whole blowing out at the park thing was a ruse. She saw everyone else blowing, so she did.

Moocow birthday girl. 

I eventually finished the birthday apron, which had been shoved in the queue by the birthday bags, Halloween, and poor planning. I used Sew Liberated's Montessori apron, an incredibly easy and super cute pattern. (Argh. I had planned to sew up one of these from her revised and expanded pattern, but couldn't find it, couldn't find the link. In writing up this blog post I searched for sew liberated apron and ... argh.)

You can't give a budding chef just an apron, so she also received her own, Bama-sized whisk and two rubber spatulas. 

We're working on a kitchen. Our apartment just isn't very big, and we're running out of space for things. What goes, what stays? I look at photos of craft corners or craft rooms, play rooms, and sigh. Sew Liberated's Meg showed her son, Finn's, kitchen corner. It's about the size of half our living room. Sigh. But we have Central Park! ;)

Rainy Day Indoor Play

The Children's Museum of Art moved from the east side to the west side at the end of September. We'd never made it last fall, or winter, or summer, to try out the drop-in art classes. But now that it's a little closer, so close we spent two hours in line waiting for Bama to become a Baby Tiger, we've made it, GASP!, twice. 

The first time we went was nearly our last. The place was crammed in spite of its three floors of art areas well-maintained by an incredibly patient staff. Art for 45 minutes or so followed by frenetic but fun music featuring Tom, CMA's early childhood program manager, and Annie, one of the teaching artists. They have great chemistry and fabulous rubbery faces. Drop-in ends with a story. It's all a bit fast-paced for me, but it's also close and Bama loves art so ...

We went again yesterday.

It was busy, but not mayhem, and we saw friends from Bama's school, which made it more fun. They both got to have a drum, even though Rabbit opted to bang and lick his.

Bama can't get enough music. She loves her birthday guitar, she loves these drums. She made it clear that we are lacking a drum, a tall drum, in this house and that must be remedied. She put it on her Christmas list to Santa.