Eager Family Blog

Rachel's Excellent Adventure

2012-02-01T22:00:00.002-05:00

Over the past several months, I have thought of blogging about Rachel, but I never did because at first she was only applying, and what if it didn't happen?, and then...well, I think we all know how I procrastinate. But it is happening. Rachel has been accepted to a private school for the coming semester, and this Friday, she leaves for Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin!

Quick summary: I found a school called The Conserve School via a sidebar ad on Facebook and happened to click the link. What I read intrigued me: it is a private high school experience for juniors and seniors, focusing on environmental science. It is a semester school, meaning that all students go for just a semester at a time-so Rachel will be on equal footing with everyone else, not a situation where she is a homeschooler coming to a school where everyone knows each other already. Their mission is to inspire young people to environmental stewardship through academics and engagement with the forests, lakes and wildlife of Lowenwood. They provide a "diverse group of young people with a residential academic setting that fosters understanding of the science of natural resource conservation, commitment to protecting the environment, an inclination toward careers that help preserve the natural world, enjoyment of outdoor activities and love and respect for nature." TA-DA! It was like a school had been created just for us!

Matt and Rachel took a trip last May to the school for their open house, and were very impressed. Thus began the application process, which was like a mini-lesson in what we'll go through with college applications. She was accepted in October and we have spent the past few months preparing--gathering all the supplies she'll need for such harsh weather, getting her plane tickets, choosing classes, shipping boxes, etc. She will be gone for 18 weeks, although we'll see her for 9 days in April on her spring break. She will be taking a great course load, including AP Environmental Science, and will experience all sorts of outdoor activities, including ice fishing, cross country skiing, and a solo camping trip.

There have been moments of fear from all of us--she is understandably nervous at the thought of so long away from home, leaving her friends, meeting new people, and being in a school environment for the first time. Julia, Ben and Emma are quite upset at the thought of her being gone, and I know we'll all miss her terribly. I am feeling the pressure of knowing that as her teacher for all these years, I bear responsibility in some ways for her success or failure academically...but I know that she is very bright and a hard worker, and that those fears will almost certainly prove baseless. And I know that I am going to cry as she walks away at the airport on Friday. There just is no way not to.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is an important interim step for her college years--she will be living as she would at college, in a dorm, responsible for her own schedule completely, responsible for homework and studying without any parental input, eating at a cafeteria and attending classes...but with only 58 students this semester, it is a cozier atmosphere that will foster pretty close friendships, I think. Also, each student has their own room with a bathroom shared with just one other student, so she's actually going to have better accommodations than she does here! :)

Crazy to think it, but this is the first little step towards an empty nest, Someone said to me the other day, "give them roots, then let them fly," and I think Rachel is going to fly this Friday!

Happy Birthday, Julia!

2012-02-01T21:50:00.003-05:00

Today is Julia's 12th birthday! Wait....what? It seems like yesterday that this girl was a baby, a toddler, a preschooler...and now she is practically a teenager? Pull the knife out of my heart very slowly, please.

As always, we scrapped school in favor of birthday fun. This included a lot of playing outside, even for me. It certainly isn't often that Julia gets a sunny day in the low 60s on her winter birthday! So there was frolicking in the yard, a walk with the dog, and the kitchen door stayed open to let in all the lovely light. The birthday girl made pancakes...and before anyone asks why the birthday girl made US breakfast, let me just say that Julia loves to make pancakes. We watched a couple of episodes of "the Brady Bunch," in the afternoon, with popcorn made by Rachel, and Rachel made us pizza for dinner. We had a visit from our neighbor, who brought a card and turtle earrings, a package from Grandma with coveted books and art kits, and gifts from Rachel, too--a book, a Snickers and a lovely necklace.

After dinner, Julia opened books from us...her other present is going to be a rabbit! But we're still looking into that, so a bit of patience is required, much to her chagrin. We had a chocolate cake with marshmallow cream in the center (I made the middle layer using a bowl to form a ring, which was then filled and covered by another layer, sort of like a homemade Ring Ding. After dinner, Matt and the three younger kids went to watch "X Men 3" while I cleaned up, and they are finishing the evening with a game.

All in all, a wonderful day for a wonderful girl. Happy Birthday, sweetheart!

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T16:27:00.003-05:00

Emma made this picture this morning, in honor of New Year's Eve. The animals at the bottom are in silhouette because she knew that if they were watching fireworks, it would be dark and you wouldn't see them well.

Animals from left to right are: a skunk with a mouse on his back, a rabbit, a deer with an owl on his back, and a porcupine. In the top corner, she wrote: Emma 7 years old soon to be 2012!

Wishing you all peace, love and joy in the new year.

Happy Birthday, Sweet 16!

2011-12-08T12:53:00.013-05:00

too beautiful

At this time sixteen years ago, I became a mom for the first time. Rachel was the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen, and the love I felt for her was so intense I thought I could die from it. I didn't know before that minute that I could love someone so completely, with every single fiber in my body, that I'd willingly throw myself off a building if it meant saving her from harm. After I became a mom three more times, I understood the feeling better, but there's nothing like the first time, is there?

Matt looks like he's about 16 holding her! She is about 3 weeks old.

In the sixteen years that followed, there have been many ups and downs. There have been times that I have felt like a fantastic mom, and times that I've felt that I was the worst mom that ever existed. I have learned a little about patience--though it has never been my strong suit and probably never will be. I have learned more than I care to about how angry children can make you, and I have learned that I am about as far from perfect as it's possible to get. I have also learned that time is precious and passes too quickly, and that I am so very lucky to have this girl in my life.

loving the swings at 5 months old.

In Iowa, we used to visit these horses almost every day.

On her 3rd birthday

4 years old, camping in Pennsylvania

at 8 years old, on the beach with Julia and Evelyn

What do I wish for Rachel? I wish her every happiness in the world. I want her to find passion in every area of her life, from a career she loves and finds meaning in, hobbies she can pursue with zeal that bring her joy, all the way to finding love and happiness with someone. I hope that someday (far from today!) she will know what it's like to love a child, all the highs and lows included. I'll try not to say "I told you so!" when her child is sixteen and she cries at the drop of a hat, either.

Joy like this, every day!

and a smile like this one.

Letter to the Tooth Fairy

2011-12-07T16:05:00.004-05:00

Years ago, I bought a small silk pillow with a tiny pocket for a tooth. It has a pretty fairy on it and it's used so the Tooth Fairy can easily find a child's tooth in the dark, unlike the medieval way we grew up with just putting the tooth under the pillow and hoping she could find it without waking us up.

Emma just lost another tooth today, but when we went to my drawer where the pillow should be, it wasn't in the usual place. I searched the dresser to no avail, and told Emma she should just look upstairs because probably the last person to use it forgot to bring it back to my drawer. I still think it's up in the girls' room. However, Emma had a different idea, so I thought I'd share:

Dear toothfairy we cuold'nt find the toothfairy pillow. instead I have put my tooth at the bottom of the paper. I hope you get my tooth.

From: Emma Grace Eager
To: the toothfairy

I love the way she taped the tooth to the fairy's hand. Hope she can get the tape off!

Emma's Writing Assignment

2011-11-08T14:32:00.003-05:00

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Emma's writing program this year is fun. She chooses a photo from a pack, ranging from animals to family groups to landscapes, and then flips the card and picks one of three writing exercises on the back. Today she chose a picture of a sleeping orange kitten, and on the back the assignment was to write about the fun dream the kitten might be in the middle of. This is her story, in case you can't read it in the scanned image of her notebook....

My Long Nap

Once I dreamed I went to space. It was incredible! I had a shiny space helmet. Also, I had a gray space suit. Anyway, I met all sorts of things.

I met an indestructible blob. It just kept on oozing out of metal rock.

There was some space coral. They were all kinds of shades of blue, pink, yellow, red, black, green, orange and brown. Also, I saw planet squids. They were a blinding shade of scarlet. Then unfortunately, my dream ended.

I give her A+ for spelling, vocabulary and imagination....she could work on the plot a bit, but then again, dreams tend to be a bit open ended. Smiles.

Every Day is Mother's Day

2011-10-27T14:08:00.002-04:00

This morning I was checking my email and Facebook, as is my habit when we have nowhere to go early in the day. Julia, Ben and Emma were in the living room, reading. Ben came into my room and asked, "Did you hear what we're planning?"

Sounds like an innocuous question, unless you're a mom. I tried to remain calm as I answered that I hadn't.

"Well, just stay here for a while, OK?"

I made him promise that they weren't planning to burn anything down and then agreed. They are usually pretty sensible, after all, so I wasn't worried there'd be much I couldn't handle.

After about 15 minutes, they called me into the dining room. They'd set my usual place with a place mat, cloth napkin, china, a tiny goblet, a water glass, a coffee mug, silverware, and even a tiny china plate with an extra fork. There was a folded paper on the plate. It read:

To Mom--a token of appreciation that you can manage ALL the cooking, cleaning and work. We don't know how, though....you must be magical! --Julia, Ben & Emma <3 <3 <3

Look at all the choices! And note that everything is FREE! This was my lucky day. I had coffee, orange juice, cubed pineapple and a cheddar omelet made by Julia. Ben and Emma did the order taking, serving and sous-chef jobs. And they sat with me while I ate, and we talked.

I love those kids.

First Day of School

2011-09-12T10:52:00.002-04:00

The kids have been asking to start school for several weeks now. I have been putting it off as long as possible, as usual! This has less to do with school itself than it does with wanting to prolong summer and the long, lazy days I quickly become used to every year. However, it's finally time and I can't put it off any more. I am always amazed to see how a few months off can really improve everyone's skills. Handwriting changes for the better, or a math concept that seemed just out of reach in June comes easily. Growth in their brains and rest for their bodies helps across the board.

Emma is now in second grade--whatever that means as a homeschooler. I should say, I report Emma for second grade, but in all actuality I know she works mostly above that level. I got an interesting thing for writing this year for her. Over the years of buying curricula for the kids, I have noticed that finding good language arts programs are difficult for us because all my kids are great readers and they all have enjoyed writing too. So if it is labeled second grade, it's usually...boring! Spelling words are the "cat" and "man" variety, and writing is being able to write a three word sentence. Reading involves picture books--and not very interesting ones at that. So I need to find creative solutions in the language arts department.

I found something for Emma this year called "Writing Styles Photo Prompts," by Edupress. It's a simple pack of 5x7 photos of a variety of things. Animals, family groups, kids playing, a beach, a snowy landscape, etc. On the back of each card there are three writing prompts that demonstrate different writing skills. You could write a story about the family going camping, or a letter to this grandma, or a newspaper article about this county fair. You get the idea. Emma has been looking at these pictures for weeks now, deciding which ones are her favorites and which she'll choose first. My idea was that each time we do these lessons, I'll let her pick a card, and then she can choose which assignment on the back sounds best to her. The point is to get her writing, and I don't really care if she tends more towards creative writing, for example.

I was not surprised when she chose the card with two dolphins racing and jumping through the ocean, since dolphins are a big favorite of hers. What did surprise me is her choice of assignment. Two of them were creative: imagine you're a baby dolphin and tell about your underwater adventures or, pretend to be a dolphin trainer and write how you train your dolphin to do your favorite trick. I would have bet money she'd have chosen the baby dolphin story. However, she chose the third: Use an encyclopedia or book to find out about dolphins and write a short article telling about what you learned. Here is what she wrote: (I left the spelling/grammar mistakes in--she is only 7, after all!)

Dolphins

Dolphins are very smooth. It helps them to glide across the water. The fins are used for changing direction fast when chasing there prey. Dolphins have a toothy beak, helping it to grab hold of there prey. Compared to the adult human body, Dolphins are pretty big.

Dolphins are very loyal. If a Dolphin is sick, another from the Pod pushes the Dolphin up to the surface for air. The dorsal fin helps to keep the Dolphins steady. I think Dolphins are beautiful animals.

I guess we'll be reviewing homonyms and capital letters this year!

Great Adventure

2011-08-10T10:27:00.003-04:00

Kingda Ka

Summer is flying by. We had a week of beachy fun in Delaware with my extended family--30 of us in a rental house. We've gone swimming endlessly, to the movies, read in the hammock, enjoyed air conditioned splendor when it was too sticky outside, caught fireflies, collected shells, seen plays, spent time with friends, had Grandma here for a week from Georgia, worked in the garden, celebrated Ben's birthday and barbecued. There's still a lot more fun to come before we call summer over--but yesterday, we had what the kids have all said is The Best Day EVER. We went to Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, a place I haven't been since I was a teenager.

Being me, I have to get my complaints out of the way first. Beginning with ticket prices--which have gone up to $59.99 for a one day ticket! Excuse me?? That is, quite simply, insane. We got four tickets FREE because Julia, Ben and Emma participated in the (pathetic) Read to Succeed Program, where they read for 6 hours and got a ticket in exchange. What a joke--they completed that in days, but hey, we're not complaining, especially since I also got a ticket, being their teacher! The best deal I could find for Matt's and Rachel's ticket was $36.99 each, and then when you add gas, tolls, and $20 parking, $15 for a free-refill soda cup, and the left lung they charge for food...let's just say it's a good thing they have this reading program! Their other moneymaking scheme that pissed me off was the Great Locker Conspiracy. We brought a backpack with us--we needed sunscreen, an extra shirt, wallets, cell phones--the usual. What we didn't know was that many of the rides no longer allow you to bring ANYTHING with you! I have never seen an amusement park where you can't stuff your bag under your legs, but they take it a step further--not only do you have to rent a locker at a buck per rental, you can't even leave your things there half the day till you're through with that part of the park, because lockers have a 2 hour time limit! And yes, before everyone tells me the minutiae of Disney and all the ways they extract money from you, I'll say, Great Adventure is NOT Disney World!

That said, once I shoved all financial thoughts from my mind, we had a great time! The day began on a sour note when we realized that Ben's head didn't quite reach the 54" mark required for the most extreme rides--which he'd been desperate to go on. Nonetheless, he went off with Matt and Emma and rode other things while Rachel, Julia and I waited nearly an hour for the Superman Ultimate Flight coaster. I've never been on a roller coaster tipped forward before, and it was worth the wait! Ben was cheered by the fact that they were able to ride three rides while we only rode one, and happily, the park has plenty of roller coasters for 48"+. There are just six rides that kids under 54" are excluded from, so it isn't too bad. The girls and I loved Nitro and the Batman coaster--which we rode late in the day and went twice in a row with no line! And we all got to have a blast on Rolling Thunder, the Runaway Mine Train, Skull Mountain, and El Toro (which I just have to say I thought was fantastic, and I'm not sure why the under 54" crowd can ride this, but not the extreme rides--it was scary! I guess it has to do with the constraint systems not fitting properly.)

Two rides we found disappointing: the Dark Knight, which has a great setup for the ride, with a line that looks like the Gotham subway, giant TV screens playing Gotham news that Ben assumed was really a news station!, lighting effects and menacing graffiti from the Joker everywhere...but the ride itself was pretty lame. It was dark, but you could still see enough to know where the cars were headed, and there were twists and turns, but no heartstopping drops. The biggest letdown went to Green Lantern--I'd had such high hopes for this ride. I'd never seen a roller coaster where you stood up! And the upside down and twisting straight towards the ground effects looked terrifying. However, my head was rattling back and forth in my constraint like a piece of popcorn, which made it impossible to concentrate on the fun--I was trying so incredibly hard to keep my head and neck stable that the ride was over before I could enjoy it. Also, they adjust the height of the constraints depending on the rider, but there is an unfortunate bar between your legs to keep you steady...let's just say I don't see how men can be comfortable on this ride!

We got soaked on the Congo Rapids--all of us except Emma, who was really disappointed that she had the one seat in our 12-person boat that avoided a huge wave! And Emma loved the Twister, the sort of ride she's never been big enough for before--one of those spins-around-and-tilts-with-gravity-keeping-you-in-place kinds of rides. I asked Matt what he'll do in a couple of years when Ben and Emma can ride whatever they want, and he said that he'll stop going to amusement parks, because I can ride all the insane rides with them and he won't have to. Spoilsport.

We had a sudden rainstorm at lunchtime, which subdued the mood of everyone there. It poured for over an hour and closed many of the rides--the worst part, of course, being that we couldn't tell if it would ever stop! Matt was getting cranky, since walking in the rain is one of his least favorite things to do; but I was NOT going to sit under an overhang somewhere waiting for it to stop! We ate lunch during the deluge (along with everyone else, giving us a 40 minute wait on line for our incredibly pricey burgers and chicken!) but that was as long as I was willing to loiter. We waited in line for rides that were under cover that we probably would have skipped otherwise--tea cups and the carousel, for example. We went to Houdini's Great Escape, the closest thing we found to a haunted house and which has a really cool effect as if the room is turning upside down (in fact, it's just a buccaneer-type ride where the backdrop of the room turns upside down, but the physics of it makes your head spin!) Things were looking grim as the rain continued--but just as suddenly, the rain dried up--and the rest of the day was cooler and the lines were far shorter! I think people may have actually left the park, which was just great for us.

We had to leave around 8pm, which was good in a way as we were all getting tired. It's a 3+ hour drive back home, after all, and Matt went to work today. However, I am plotting that if we go back next year we should make it a long weekend camping trip so that we can use one of the middle days at the park, allowing us to stay till closing. An amusement park at night is particularly magical, and as I said, the lines had opened up ridiculously, which was fantastic. However, I think I can say that nobody was exactly unhappy to collapse into the car and feel the air conditioning!

On our next visit, we plan to ride the few extreme rides we missed. The lines made us avoid a couple of coasters that we thought we'd get back to, but we simply ran out of time. (Another reason to stay till closing!) First on my list will be Kingda Ka--which looks completely impossible! Seriously, it doesn't look like the car could even stay on the tracks. It is described as follows: "Experience the thrill of a lifetime as you shoot 45 stories high at 128 mph on our world-record-breaking Kingda Ka — the tallest coaster in the World, fastest in North America." Who wouldn't want to ride THAT??

Best Painting Tool Ever!

2011-06-06T17:00:00.002-04:00

A lot of work is going on at my house right now. The winter destroyed our front patio, and the resulting expense and home line of credit is allowing us to do other projects that we've needed and/or wanted to do, such as renovating our formerly horrible bathroom, installing a greenhouse window in the kitchen to replace the broken louvered window and allowing me to have a year round herb garden, and replacing our broken stovetop with a nice new five burner model. It has also made me remember my desire to get the bedrooms, kitchen and the hallway between the first floor bedrooms painted this year. Something about a shiny new bathroom with fresh and lovely paint made me remember that it's been five years since I last painted these parts of the house--especially when the workers painted the inner part of the bathroom door, but left the outer part with its old, crummy paint!

Anyway, I loathe painting. And I am the one in the house that ends up doing it. Matt is a superior painter, because he is far more patient than I am...but he does have a job, and as I just said, I have little to no patience! So once the supplies are in the house, I want the job done. Yesterday. The kids want to help....but I can't quite bring myself to allow them to. All I see is the potential for disaster, for drips on the hardwood floors, for freshly painted trim to be smeared with a careless switch of a brush, for sloppy corners, for missed bits. If Rachel volunteers, I think she could do a great job, and probably Julia could too, being artistic and having her dad's patient nature for details.....but it hasn't happened yet.

This morning I got up, determined to get some work done. We bought the paint over Memorial Day weekend, but because of various activities and the work on the bathroom, it's been sitting there mocking me all week. Primer was needed because the hallway was a bright lemony yellow (NOT the color I'd originally wanted, but a very long and old story that I won't go into...) so I started off doing that, and in about ninety minutes, I was finished. I took a break for a few hours to let it dry, and I almost allowed myself to slough off doing the color today because I'd changed from my painting clothes...but in the end I put them back on and decided to power through. At least when I'm putting color on the wall I feel like I'm making progress. I gathered all the new supplies, including a Shur-Line edging tool I'd picked up on a whim when we got the paint....

Oh. I. Am. In. Love. With. This. Tool! When we moved into the house in 2006 and I painted the entire house in ten days (not something I would recommend or ever want to do again, by the way!) I didn't have this tool. And so all the molding, the baseboards, the doorframes, the ceiling lines were a gigantic thorn in my side. No matter how carefully I tried to make straight, even lines, I messed up. Frequently. In the last five years I have noticed these mistakes constantly. They aren't the sort of thing that a guest would remark on; some guests might not even notice at all. But I did. When I asked the Home Depot paint guy if this was a good tool, he said it was pretty good, if I followed the directions rigorously (something I often have issues with) and was very careful.

Well, I am happy to report he was W.R.O.N.G. You do have to be sure you aren't putting too much paint on the pad. But as long as you make sure you're scraping off the excess, it is a dream to use this. I was able to whip along the door frames--and in this hallway, there are five door frames--two bedrooms, a bathroom, a linen closet and the doorway into the dining room--in less than twenty minutes, and then it was a snap to fill in the spaces that were left. Best of all, it looks quite professional, with nice sharp lines along the ceiling and no marks on the molding. I did the hallway in about an hour, so I definitely can't complain.

Next up, our bedroom. I am probably going to split that up across several days, just doing one wall at a time so I don't have to completely dismantle the room. Here's hoping for continued success.

Garden Growing

2011-06-01T14:37:00.011-04:00

Emma took this picture, love the angle on the rose

pink peony, too lovely

My weeding resolution is going reasonably well; I haven't quite managed to get out every day, but I'm keeping up with the perennial garden. I need to remember to handle the wildflower garden in front, especially since my beloved neighbor is an avid (and sort of obsessive) gardener who puts me to shame in the weeding category--he literally spends hours in his yard every day and no weeds are to be seen, so I get a bit embarrassed when he looks at my efforts! However, I kind of figure that once the wildflowers are tall and blooming the weeds won't be as noticeable--the cottage garden style lends itself to weed camouflage in a way that my orderly perennial bed does not.

roses the size of dessert plates

my lilacs seem to bloom later than other people's, even in my own town. Maybe they're a different variety?

The vegetables are coming along; we're picking snap peas and lettuce almost daily, and I'm trying to remember to use my herbs. This will be easier next week, after my greenhouse window is installed in the kitchen! Then they'll be in easy reach while I'm cooking...always assuming that the cats will leave them alone, of course. The tomato plants are getting taller, and the beets have great foliage; I was advised I can leave them in as late as December if I want the biggest beets possible (I only have 4 plants) and the carrots are coming along too. These I can't wait for, since I got a Carnival Blend with purple and white carrots as well as orange ones. Should be fun! One of our watermelon seedlings seems dead, but I'm frankly all right with only having one watermelon vine. I guess that's going to have to live in the perennial bed since our veggie patch isn't big enough to hold it.

can't resist a rosebud

pretty yellow roses

My climbing roses are doing wonderfully, which makes me really happy. There are blooms and buds all over it, and indeed, the roses in the perennial bed and at the side of the house seem to be thriving, too. My very favorites are the peonies and the lilacs. I'd really like to get more of those.

these pink ones are in the perennial bed

but these darker ones climb the back fence

Ginger & Bella Houses

2011-05-25T10:42:00.009-04:00

outside view of the house; notice the steps they made on the right, going up to an outdoor patio! The bundle of sticks is a camp fire, and behind that is a stool made from a rock balanced on twigs.

the pink flower at the right is in a vase made from the tip of a bamboo shoot. Bed on left, side table made from a scallop shell, with the inside piece of a conch shell on top for decoration. The big scallop shell at right is a table and also a place to cook.

love the moss pillows on the bark bed--they chose this spot because moss was already there for a carpet. Desk in the back right of the room, with a bark stool.

bathroom with seashell sink. A broken piece of flagstone from our patio is the floor.

outside view of bathroom.

Emma's newest creation--a sofa with rhododendron cushions, a seashell bottom and a lilac leaf for comfort. Not sure how long that will hold up, but very pretty!

I am so proud of the imaginative play that goes on in my house every single day, and one of the longest running games around here involve tiny animals (Only Hearts Pets, if you're a parent who keeps abreast of fad toys) of varying species. I can't keep all the names straight; cries of, "No, Mom! That's Kirby!" or "No, Mom! That one is a girl!" are frequently heard in my house. But the two stars of the game are Ginger and Bella, a cat and a panda. They own a very spacious dollhouse upstairs, they are the stars of coloring books, drawings and comics galore, and they also have a vacation compound under our dogwood tree. Emma was showing me some new features this morning, so I asked her to take some photos so we could always remember this game.

New Year's Resolutions--Yes, In May!

2011-05-12T14:58:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, it's May, not the time for resolutions. But really, I have a good reason, and that's my garden. You might recall that last year I overhauled the perennial garden in the backyard. When we moved into this house five years ago, I thought "perennial garden" meant that I never had to do any work in the garden, because after all, the plants are perennials...doesn't that mean they take care of themselves? That's what it should mean! I am the worst mix possible: I love having a beautiful yard and flowers to fill up vases in my house all summer long....but I really, really hate yard work! And after pricing out what it would cost to have landscapers do all the work for me....let's just say that if Matt had only cared about being rich, he should have saved himself the trouble of getting that Ph.D. and gone into yard work instead!

But I digress. I finally got tired of my formerly lovely perennial garden being an overgrown weed patch and last year I decided that I was going to do something about it. So I worked. HARD. And with practically no help from my family, I might add. Matt and Rachel gave me a bit of help when it came to buying the forty tons of mulch I needed and humping it from the store to the car and from the car to the back yard...but once it was in the back yard, it was up to me to heft it all over the garden. The kids helped a tiny bit, when it came to planting, and Matt dug a few holes when I needed a deep one for roses or peonies. He also worked with our neighbor's rototiller to turn everything over before I began. And the kids helped a bit collecting the three hundred thousand pounds of beautiful stones I collected from local beaches over the course of the summer, so I could ring the garden in (and hopefully keep the lawn from encroaching while I did it)...so okay, I STILL don't have that project completely finished...but in my defense, rocks are heavy, it's a pain in the neck to collect so many, and my garden is large--I'd say it's probably 30 feet long by 10 feet wide (but don't quote me, because I'm terrible at eyeballing measurements!)

My theory was simple. The former owner of the house was apparently a master gardener, or at the least she could afford to pay for people to do it for her. The perennial garden featured gorgeous flowers, but the problem was that I had a hard time telling weeds from flowers, so it all got very out of control. Also, she stuck to a pretty boring color palette of yellow, purple, and tiger lilies in orange thrown in--I happen to hate tiger lilies. I like them on roadsides, but I hate them in gardens. They are messy looking with their massive foliage and they don't make good bouquets because they wilt as soon as you cut them. I decided a better plan for my style of garden was to plant bushy perennials that might spread out...I used various butterfly bushes, coreopsis, roses, peonies, lavender, Montauk daisies and others of that nature (OK, yes, I've forgotten some of their names!) so that when weeds pop up, it would be easy to tell them from the plants I wanted. Then I could yank those troublesome little buggers before they became a problem. The fresh mulch looked so pretty, and I laid landscaping cloth underneath too...so really, weeds wouldn't be a problem at all. No sun, no growing.

Someone really ought to give weeds some kind of award. Really. I have had trouble many times in the garden--with veggies, herbs, flowers--I plant them and sometimes they just die. For no reason whatsoever. Really, no reason! And yet--I am a champion with weeds! Landscape cloth? Mulch? HA! Those weeds just come right through it. No trouble at all, don't mind if I do! I'd imagined that this year I could sit back and watch my beautiful garden, maybe spend three or four hours (all summer, as in three or four hours TOTAL) pulling out the weeds that would sprout, and finally finish up the rock collecting to border the garden at my leisure. All done. Finito. Flowers to enjoy and that's all. We bought a new hammock and I'd envisioned reading novels while I looked at that beautiful garden....I guess the lesson here is that gardening is a series of endless chores that make you want to stab yourself repeatedly. All those people who say they love gardening? I think they are either Stepford wives, compulsive liars, or are quite simply insane. What's to love about backbreaking labor that never ends? I just don't get it!

I should pat my kids on the back here and say that sometimes they are willing to help me. Emma and Julia, especially, will help me weed and plant things. They are all willing to pick things from the garden. And Ben can be counted on to pick yellow dandelions for me--at least that way they won't go to seed and make more of their horrible clones. Gardening is an area where I can say Matt is a terrible husband, however. (And this is not something I can say of him often; he is mostly a very good husband. But gardening? He is a jerk about gardening.) He mows the lawn, and will trim bushes if I nag him for a few weeks first. He will rake leaves in the fall (again, with the nagging) and he's aces at shoveling snow. But work in the garden? N-O-P-E. No can do. Never. Not in this lifetime. He tells me "I hate gardening, and I don't care what the yard looks like." I've tried pointing out that he enjoys vegetables and herbs that we grow. I've tried tantrums. I've tried the whole "if you LOVED me, you'd give me some help..." I've tried pointing out that this should be a family project, and by not helping me, he's subtly encouraging the kids not to help me....all for nothing. This seems to be the single area of life where I simply cannot budge him. (*sniff*)

This spring, the weeds have been really bothering me. Every time I went out in the yard and noticed new weeds sprouting in the garden, I wanted to punch someone. Every hour I've spent weeding has bred resentment in my mind, that I have to do all this alone, even though I already do so much for this ungrateful family....and every time I stop to buy four bags of mulch so that I can drag them home and dump them over the garden in the hopes that it will slow the growth of these pesky weeds (and I can only buy four bags at a time because otherwise we'll wreck the new shocks in the van that we had to put in because LAST year I supposedly wrecked them bringing home too many bags of mulch and beach rocks...blah blah blah...and by the way, four bags of mulch weigh about a million pounds and cover about nine square inches of the garden) every time I do this all I can think of is that it's going to take a hundred MORE trips to buy enough mulch to cover it all, and what's the point anyway because obviously the weeds grow right through it anyway...and so, here is the resolution part.

My resolution is simple and beautiful in its simplicity. Every day (assuming the weather is fine, and that I'm home, of course) I will get outside in the garden or yard, and I will weed. For half an hour, or possibly forty five minutes if we're home all day and I feel like it. I set the alarm on my cell phone and put it in my pocket, and I work like a machine till it rings. This is going to make all the difference in the yard and in my levels of psychotic rage, because it breaks the job into tiny pieces--rather than going out once in a while and spending hours working like a crazy person while the rest of the family does something fun--which is basically anything that doesn't involve yard work!--muttering to myself about how I'll never get it finished, how horrible it is, how nobody is helping me, etc. --I am working steadily and daily, and in short bursts of time. In half an hour, I can get a surprising amount accomplished, and more importantly, I know the job won't be finished, so I don't care that it isn't. I'll be back out tomorrow, and after I've worked for a month or so, maybe I'll even be scrounging around trying to find something to do. At least that's the hope. There I go, being terribly optimistic again....at the least, I can use it to make my husband feel extremely guilty that he's such a lazy sack when it comes to the yard, and maybe I won't have to nag quite so much when it comes time to trim the bushes again.

Easter Picture, by Emma

2011-04-23T12:14:00.002-04:00

Emma made this Easter bunny picture, so I thought I'd share.

Spring Craft, by Emma

2011-04-14T15:08:00.005-04:00

Emma wanted to make a spring craft for art last week, and she worked and worked for almost two hours to make this Easter egg. The bunny is made from individual pieces of paper she meticulously cut and glued--she discarded many parts before she was satisfied with her work. I really loved seeing her so intent on getting it just the way she wanted it!

If it's hard to read, she wrote "Emma 2011 (for art)" in the middle of the mosaic.

Spring, A Poem by Julia

2011-04-07T15:23:00.003-04:00

Spring
by Julia

The blossoms blooming on the trees,
shaking and bumbling and buzzing with bees,
the birds building nests will now take a small rest,
to kick back and eat a few fleas.
In the air, the butterflies flit,
and a few have alit,
on a few flowers out in meadow open.
The monarchs will lay their eggs in one day
on the milkweed bobbing in the breeze of the ocean.
The lambs frolic and play
in the green grass of today,
and bleating, stay close to their mothers.
But once they're done eating,
their fear is all fleeting,
and they go off to play with the others.
The rain will blow,
the flowers will grow,
and like so,
the clouds will pass on in the shape of a koi.
And spring is the bounciest, flounciest,
wiggliest, jiggliest,
twirliest, whirliest,
flingiest, springiest
season of JOY!

More Photos by Rachel

2011-03-23T17:18:00.004-04:00

Just a couple more photos from Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge. Because they're pretty.

Enchantment

2011-03-23T13:42:00.006-04:00

Yesterday we took an afternoon trip to Sag Harbor to the Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is small; the loop trail is only three quarters of a mile long with a spur trail to the beach, but it is a unique jewel in Long Island's crown because over the years, the birds there have learned that people bring them food, and will land right in your hands to eat! I have never seen this anywhere else; we have hand fed squirrels in Boston and used to do the same in college at Drew University, and we did hand feed birds at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh--but those weren't wild birds, and they didn't land on us, they flew by and snatched food from our outstretched palms. These are wild birds who have learned this trick, and we just never tire of it. Julia said a number of times that this was her favorite place in the world, and that she wished she could live right there.

We usually visit in the depths of winter, because of course you get the greatest number of birds on you when they have almost nothing else to eat. However, we had so much snow and such cold temperatures this year that I had to keep putting the kids off. It's even colder there because you're right on the water, and it just isn't fun to be there if you're freezing. Also, I wasn't sure if there was any sort of snow removal there because although it's a popular place, it's still a trail. Although it seems that many birds hang around right near the front of the trail, so I guess if you just walked in and stood you'd still get birds. Regardless, early spring is still fine--the woods are just beginning to green up, but the leaves aren't on the trees yet and I imagine there aren't too many insects yet, so our friends were still hungry.

The easiest birds to attract are the sweet little black capped chickadees. They are bold and brave, sitting in your hand and choosing just the right seed. The tufted titmouse, with its big eyes and cute little hairdo, is the next most common visitor to our hands, followed by the nuthatch. The last time we went we were lucky enough to have the red headed downy woodpecker land on us several times, but this time we didn't get that privilege, although we did see a few. The squirrels will follow and yesterday we saw a few chipmunks for good measure, but for some reason, the squirrels won't get close enough to hand feed--they will accept donations that you toss over, though. (This vexes Julia and Emma, who love to get squirrels to come and take nuts right from their hands in Boston.) Dozens of cardinals will follow you throughout the refuge, but they will never land on you. We have tried and tried, and they desperately want the seed--they will take what has fallen to the ground as soon as you move away, but they simply refuse to get close.

The biggest surprise yesterday was from our fellow visitors. We saw four other groups while we were there--ranging from couples to a group of five--and not one of them had come with seeds! One lady said they used to sell seed at the front, which I then vaguely remembered from one of my first visits, but they didn't have any out now. Luckily, we had a gallon bag of sunflower seeds, the birds' favorite, so we shared with everyone we met. If you ever go, don't bother with mixed seeds! We had chickadees flinging that seed around and only taking the sunflower seeds--they can afford to be picky, I guess, when they have devoted followers! Anyway, it was a wonderful time, and Rachel got some of her usual fabulous photos.....

School Year Winding Down

2011-03-04T09:53:00.002-05:00

It seems crazy to say that our school year is winding down at the beginning of March, but I can clearly see the end of the tunnel. The three younger kids are actually finished with a few elements of the year, such as health and some language arts books, and are within sight of being finished with others. Other subjects, history being the most glaring example, are going to need some intensive work in order to finish, but we'll get there. Rachel, having more work to do, just plugs away and will finish in June, but still, I am going to have to finish the requisite length of the school year doing more unschooling than bookwork with the younger ones.

This is fine, since I have always flirted with the idea of unschooling but am too A-type to actually implement it. Spring is gardening time, and gardening is a perfect unschooling science opportunity. We have shelves and shelves of nonfiction kids' books, which originally I started collecting with the idea that they would be handy for homeschooling but in actuality do a lot of sitting around because we forget they even exist, or we follow book lists in our curriculum. Sometimes it's actually easier to get books from the library than to look through our extensive collection! After all, the library is organized, and our bookshelves...are not. Rachel's most recent English assignment is Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth," and I was on my way to the library. Matt reminded me that we have that book somewhere--well, DUH! I was an English major! Of course we have that book, and many, many more classic works of literature--but finding it was quite another matter. Besides, as I pointed out to him, it was highly unlikely the book would be checked out of our library, and so we'd be helping by adding to circulation statistics. So with time at the end of the year, I picture letting the kids pull from a plethora of interesting subjects--from rainforests to birdwatching to the Salem with hunt to atlases--and just seeing where they lead us.

Creativity is also huge around here. Right now Julia is sewing a stuffed rooster from felt, fabric and buttons. She got a kit for her birthday but decided that rather than follow the strict pattern, she'd make her own--and I have to say, it's cuter than the kit's version. Drawing takes up copious amounts of time, and once I order more felting needles the kids have been loving that, too. Of course Rachel can spend hours with her camera, and the younger kids have been playing with mine, taking photos and making videos. Lola the hamster also provides hours of creative time, because Julia and Emma delight in making complicated courses for her to run out of recyclables, spending hours planning, cutting, taping and then playing with Lola in the run...when I was a child, I did this too, but the difference between me and my kids is that the mazes I made would hang around for months--I think that the kids actually prefer making the mazes, because they are constantly adding on or making new ones. Then there's writing, reading and the numerous pretend games they play. I think we can fulfill more than enough academic hours even when the workbooks are finished.

Rachel has found a place at the local community theater working the lights. This started a few months ago, when I volunteered at the theater as the box office manager. Rachel came with me a few times, and we had fun together. I told her I thought that she would have a lot of fun in the theater even if she decided she didn't want to be on stage, so we spoke with the lighting director, who loves sharing what he knows and is always in need of help. He called her for the next show, running now, and has been really encouraging and complimentary to her. She wants to keep working on that, and I am encouraging her to put herself out in the community. We are also increasing the social life of the homeschooling teens in our area by planning purely social outings like movies, ice skating, browsing at the mall, etc. This gives Rachel and her friends ways to simply hang out as they'd do if they went to school--with homeschooling, there are so many field trips and classes planned, but rarely time to just be together.

We are waiting to hear if she has been accepted to a volunteer position this summer, too, which would allow her to go camping with a group of peers somewhere in the country to work on an environmental project. We should hear about that in the next few weeks and are really hoping she can go. In May, she and Matt are going to take a road trip to Wisconsin together to check out the Conserve School, a semester school she hopes to attend in the spring next year, where she would get to learn all aspects of environmentalism as well as new sports such as skiing, ice fishing, canoeing, and extreme camping.

We have a big family reunion in July, which we're all looking forward to. My niece and her husband are opening their house in Delaware and we are also chipping in on a huge rental house; between the two we will house 32 people, ages about one month through 75 years. We're looking forward to the beach, the boardwalk, plenty of talk, food and card games and just being together, and are especially excited that my sister Amy and niece Chloe will be there, visiting from Vienna. We hardly ever get to see them, so it will be a treat.

Finally, to my extreme delight, we have decided to forego organized sports and are instead working with some homeschooling friends to start meeting at parks to play sports--you know, the way we USED to, just meet up with friends to play baseball or kickball or soccer or basketball, without all these horrible schedules and fundraising that you have to endure when you sign up for Little League or Police Athletic League or any of those other leagues. Don't get me wrong; I think sports are valuable for kids. However, since my kids don't have to abide by a school schedule, I REALLY loathe being forced to abide by school kids' schedules when it comes to sports! I have had enough of having every weekend from March until June or from September to November completely ruined by having to sit at ball fields half the day, and I have definitely had enough of the practices being scheduled two or three or four times a week at 5:30 in the afternoon, wrecking dinner completely. Not to mention that during sports times of year, even if the day has been warm and sunny, by that time of day it is usually windy and cold! I have had more than enough of freezing half to death watching sports and a bunch of kids I have no desire to know playing them! Call me snobby, but it's the truth. Playing sports with homeschoolers means we can meet during the day, when the spring days are gorgeous, and the kids can play rather than stand around with all the endless waiting that leagues entail.

Another year gone by in a blink. Can't believe it, but I'm kind of getting used to it.

Rabie Baby Comics, by Ben

2011-02-15T17:39:00.002-05:00

I have posted many pieces of art and writing by Julia and Emma, and Rachel's artistic bent is in photography. Ben has not previously showed too much interest in spending time drawing, though he does enjoy writing sometimes. So it came as a surprise to me when he spent nearly an entire day drawing comic strips featuring Rabie Baby. This may need some explanation to some: for several years now, Julia, Ben and Emma have played a hilarious game they call Rabie Baby, in which Emma is a baby who has--well, rabies! The rules are many and complicated and I'm not sure I know them all, but I know that Rabie Baby is afraid of water (hmmm...she IS rabid, after all, so she has hydrophobia) and can be tamed by being (lightly) whipped with a dish towel. She also loves to move in slow motion sometimes and she's very good at death scenes. It is a game that has brought us much laughter.

Normally I would post the comic for you to see, but since Ben doesn't spend half his day drawing as Julia does, his comics are a bit crooked and really too small to be appreciated unless you are holding them. (He drew the panels only about an inch square!) However, his prologue to the comic is too amusing, so I am putting it here with spelling intact:

Cover: Raibie Baby Comics Rabie Baby of the Many Nick-Names

Prologue: Lord of the Fuzzles

Fuzzles are cute, loveable animals that are often kept as pets. They are never evil at all. They do not bite, are good with children, but do not like loud noises. But one terrible roar scares them too much for them to run. Yes, it is the Legendary Raibie Baby. They worship her, hoping that the rabid Fuzzle will not eat them alive. She has only three weaknesses, and only two people know them. These two people are named Ben and Julia. And the weaknesses are: water, a dish towel being used as a whip, and furniture. They ward her off with their weapons--into the human world! Julia and Ben are the only ones who can stop her! List of Raibie Baby's nick-names: Rubba Bubba, Rubziti, Rubba Babeer, Rubba.

Weird? Yes, but imagination is a wonderful thing!

Cheetah, by Julia

2011-02-05T16:52:00.002-05:00

Can you tell Julia is having lots of fun with her birthday drawing supplies? :)

Lion, by Julia

2011-02-04T15:34:00.001-05:00

This one is my favorite in her series of cats.

Tiger, by Julia

2011-02-03T10:12:00.002-05:00

Julia's 11th birthday was Tuesday (can't believe it, but that's another post!) and she had asked for drawing paper. We buy computer paper by the ream, origami paper by the family pack and construction paper in two sizes, which covers most of our art needs. Sometimes the kids like notebooks, blank journals or sketchbooks, and I have gotten larger drawing paper on occasion as well. We were out of good drawing paper, and Julia wanted larger, heavier paper for her dragon pictures.

Rachel said that this was something she could give her sister, so we went to Michael's and Rachel had the good fortune to find nice, heavy drawing books that were buy one get one free, so Julia ended up with two. It ought to hold her for a month, anyway! Of course, I cannot walk through Michael's without buying anything, so while Rachel looked at paper I was poking around in the art supplies. Julia's main gift was MarioKart for the Wii, which came with the steering wheel control, and I'd gotten her more of the warm, long socks she loves with stripes, dots and bright colors. So I figured that while she didn't need much more, another small gift wouldn't hurt. I found a beautiful set of 24 pastels, and a box of sketching pencils, the kind that smudge properly for shading. Julia opened her gifts on her birthday morning, and was delighted--and was even happier when our beloved neighbors stopped by with an art book for her. We do have several books on how to draw, which Julia actually never got into because she felt that it was copying to use someone else's ideas, but perhaps because it was given to her by Linda and Dennis, she started looking through it right away, and when she came to the animal section, she was hooked!

She has spent much of the past two days drawing, and is working on a series of big cats. I will post them all, but she wanted the tiger to be first. Enjoy!

Emma's Revised Story

2011-02-02T13:39:00.006-05:00

My last posting was Emma's story about "PomPom's Day," her writing assignment last week. This week, she was supposed to revise her story to make it more interesting--which is something that greatly offended her, since she of course believed that her story was perfect and needed no changes. I felt a little bad, but I pointed out that her sentences, while perfectly spelled and grammatically correct, with excellent punctuation, lacked punch. I got the typical Emma Scowl, but she gamely went back to the old drawing board and produced this, which I do think is a worthy improvement.

Again, if it's too hard to read because it's in pencil:

PomPom is golden. She is a pomeranian. She slept late. Then--her owner got up, and had toast and orange juice. Then her owner got dressed and gave her some wet food. Then they went for a walk around the block.

Much more descriptive.

Emma's Writing

2011-01-26T13:46:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to put up Emma's story from writing today. She is too cute.

In case it's too hard to read the image (written in pencil), this is what it says:

PomPom's Day

One summer morning PomPom woke up. Then her owner woke up and fed her. Then her owner got ready, ate breakfast, and then went for a walk. Then they played until it was bed time. The End.

All the Reasons I Need Never Get a Life-Threatening Illness, OR Why I Should Have Been a Doctor (because don't they make the WORST patients?)

2011-01-12T17:23:00.014-05:00

Last week I thought I pulled a muscle in my inner thigh at the gym, and then got a virus, because I had a fever of 103*...to make a long story short, I was wrong. I somehow got cellulitis, a skin infection, from my left inner thigh down my calf and over my shin. It was red, swollen, and hot when we went to the emergency room on Sunday; I was admitted for observation and to be on IV antibiotics. The danger is that the infection can go into your bloodstream, which pretty much means you'll die unless you're very lucky. Also, I could have gotten a blood clot, which of course could travel somewhere dangerous. Matt and I both thought that antibiotics would be a dramatic cure-all and I would be home in 24 hours, but in actuality it took 72. And I did not have a good time. I was bored out of my mind, and so I took notes on everything that annoyed me in the hospital, in no particular order. Enjoy!

1. Lights on/all the noise while sleeping: This was HUGE! I basically managed 4 hours of sleep in every 24, which made me headachey and cranky and tired. Hospitals are never quiet. I used to actually fantasize about staying in a hospital when my kids were little, you know, because you have nothing to do and you can do nothing but rest. However, there is constant noise, voices, rolling carts, people screaming, snoring, moaning, people coming in and out of your room to empty wastebaskets or take blood or your temperature or change your IV. My IV drip would make noise if I somehow shut the drip by leaning on it or even breathing funny it seemed, and a different alarm sounded if they didn't change the drip in time. The lights in the hall are bright and the door can't be closed--I haven't needed a light in the hall since I was 6, and I have slept in the dark ever since. I tried to nap in the daytime but really the problem is the same. My first night, there was an announcement of "Code Blue, ICU" about 6 times in a row--but the key is, you have to imagine this said in a singsong voice like a cheerleader, not a typical voice over a loudspeaker. Very distracting and very bizarre. By the time they let me go I was feeling a bit mental.

2. Waking patients up at obscene hours: Seriously. I would finally get to sleep a few hours out of sheer exhaustion, and then, some time between 5 and 6:30 am, the lights would go on right in my eyes and a needle would be inserted into my arm, taking blood. Really? This is what passes for waking someone up? I understand nurses are busy and overworked, and they are doing their jobs and I should be blaming the freaking phlebotamists who order them to take blood that early for their own convenience. But it's difficult not to want to punch someone in the face who is doing that to you! And then when they were finished, my adrenaline was pumping and there was no way to fall back to sleep. Horrible.

3. Food: I know everyone complains about hospital food. This is because they are right to! HELLO-- we are supposed to be recovering and the food is the worst thing I have ever tasted. I admit, I am a cook, a foodie and a bit of a food snob, but really, this was practically inedible and they should be ashamed. It is rich that the menu I had to check off each day for the next day's "food" had a section called "Chef's Choice," because chef is absolutely absurd applied here. Any of my children could make better food--probably my cats and dog could, if they worked together! I truly felt like the world's pickiest 5 year old every time they brought a tray. Incidentally, I also found it annoying that they serve 3 meals in 8-9 hours' time, and the rest of the time you are stuck. Luckily, my family packed me snacks, at my request. (I was not on a restricted diet, unlike my poor roommate, who was on a LIQUID diet...I can only imagine the horror of that!) I asked them to pack me fruit, nuts and some crackers. They brought me Cheezits, caramel corn, dark chocolate covered cashews, a Snickers bar, and 4 apples.....well, I guess that's close. Don't get me started on hospital coffee! Luckily they also always brought coffee from home when they came over. Sunday, when I was admitted from the ER, I was so hungry because I wasn't feeling well so had only eaten a piece of toast that morning. I was hungry enough that I managed to consume the awful dinner...canned asparagus, ugh...but Monday was the worst day by far because somehow, even though I'd been there all day Sunday, they never let me fill out a menu because I wasn't in my room till 10:30 pm, so I had to eat Chef's Choice on Monday rather than pick and choose what I wanted to eat like Tuesday and Wednesday. Maybe they should name a dog food Chef's Choice!

4. Emergency Room: What a lovely experience. Uncomfortable seats, crowded, waiting unless your head is partially hanging off, and so inefficient it was laughable. First I was finally called by the triage nurse. Then we had to wait again, before being called in by the insurance/forms person. I was going to be admitted, but had to wait again..silly me, I thought: now I'm being admitted and will go to my room, but NO, I just was brought to a really uncomfortable stretcher in a cubicle where I waited for NINE hours! Keep in mind, the stretcher was not adjustable, and the back was at about a 40* angle, which is not comfortable for sitting and reading, and not comfortable (to me) for taking a nap. I shared a cubicle with one other stretcher, and had 3 different roommates--I couldn't see them but could hear them. The first was a man having chest pains. I'd seen him in the waiting room and had been worried, but they were just observing him and making sure he was OK. Well, he was very concerned that his cell phone was not getting a signal (mine did and so did Matt's, everywhere in the hospital) and kept asking repeatedly for a phone. When he didn't get one, he left the hospital without permission. With chest pains. The second roommate was a shallow, silly girl in her late teens/early 20s and her friend, who was there because she'd had abdominal surgery for an ovarian cyst and was bleeding too heavily. A very good reason to be there. After listening to many inane conversations, both on their cell phones and between the two girls themselves, they also left without telling anyone! And I think they were leaving because friends were picking them up to buy drugs from someone who wouldn't wait more than an hour--this is what we could glean from their talk. Unbelievable! My final roommate was there because she'd been in a car crash (not her own fault) and her airbags had saved her life. However, they had hurt her chest and her seatbelt cut her hips open. She was in shock and a lot of pain. We listened to her moan as they moved her and examined her, to the police interview, to the doctors, and to her endless retelling of the accident and her wonder what would have happened if her kids had been in the car. She was still there when I was finally brought up to my room at 10:30 pm. I know that she was told she'd have to stay 24 hours for observation, and I hope that she ended up okay. My final thought on the ER is the television they have in the waiting room. It was tuned to TNT, which while we were there showed two made-for-cable movies which featured rape, shootings, unwanted pregnancy, insanity, alcohol, bad language, and adultery. It is not that I personally have a problem with movies like this, or favor censorship, BUT there were a few children in the place, and they all were glued to these movies, wide eyed, with horrified looks on their faces. And none of their parents seemed to even notice it was disturbing them. I really think that they should tune to something a bit more innocuous for the sake of this possibility. I would even have welcomed football, and that's saying something!

5. Hospital Beds: You'd think that beds equipped to move up and down at the back and feet, with controls to affect even the firmness of the mattress, would be comfortable to sleep on. They're not. Also, for some reason, mine would move on its own, which we eventually concluded was to prevent bed sores or maybe to distribute weight evenly when the patient shifts, but I have to say it's creepy, like sleeping in a haunted bed. And pillows that are completely encased in plastic, even when covered with cloth pillowcases are also disturbing. I kept wondering how many bodily fluids had been all over that pillow and mattress in their time. CREEPY!

6. IV Drips: The entire point of my stay was to give me IV antibiotics, which were, of course, given through a line. The line has a pump which gave me 100ml of fluids and antibiotics per hour--each bag lasted 10 hours. However. The first line they put in was in the regular crook of the elbow, which was where I expected it to go--only, if I bent my arm, it would often stop the drip and the machine would beep. Even if I straightened it. Even if I begged the machine to stop. It would simply beep till the nurse came to reset it. Nurses are busy....I often had to endure the beeping for quite an annoying while. Finally my nurse was tired of this (because you don't realize how hard it is to keep your arm straight all the time till you're supposed to DO it!) and so she took out my line and reinserted it at the top of my wrist. This did almost eliminate the annoying beeps. However, I could feel it more in my wrist, sort of wriggling around, which was awful. And they used a huge swath of tape to hold it in place, which I can tell you was rather unpleasant when they took it off this afternoon. Also, when they allowed me to walk around the halls because I was so bored of sitting (and I was pretty much the only ambulatory patient on the ward, so I think they enjoyed my lively nature. Or at least I am pretending that) my machine was, of course, the one that squeaked and squealed its way around. I called it my GPS for the staff--they knew I wasn't staging a jailbreak, at least, because they could hear me walking. Finally, my nurse said that she'd take the line out of my port (which stopped my medicine, but I guess she found it worth it!) when I wanted to walk....

7. Asking to use the bathroom: When the whole IV pole thing was new to me, I rang for the nurse when I had to use the bathroom. It had to be unplugged, and I figured I wasn't supposed to touch any equipment. So I rang, and then I had to wait anywhere from minutes to over half an hour, depending on how busy things were for someone to come in and find out what I wanted. Eventually, sensing that my need for the bathroom was probably pretty unimportant to them--though this does not diminish the staff's happiness that at least they had me for one patient who could get to and from the bathroom unassisted, did not need to be cleaned up, and (ew) did not need her output measured or (gulp) weighed upon completion--I took to yanking the plug from the wall myself, walking to and from the bathroom to do what I needed to do, and plugging it back in myself before getting into bed again. After all, I reasoned, I am a mom of 4 who's used to being in charge most of the time, and I have been using electrical outlets for a number of years now without accident. Nobody ever said a word to me about doing it, so I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn't a bad little patient.

8. Showering: When I felt better and really wanted to take a shower, which was on Monday evening, I asked my nurse about it. She said it had to be on my chart for me to have a shower. HUH? I have no open wound, I am not restricted in my diet, they let me walk around unassisted...but I need permission to take a shower? However, I am a pleaser, so I was quiet till the next morning when my doctor checked me. I asked him if I could take a shower. He said, "I don't see why not--you seem pretty lively to me!" But then when I told my nurse he'd said it was fine, he hadn't written it on the chart. I was sure I'd have to wait till the next day, which was really making me grossed out, but I guessed she sensed my disgust because she actually hunted him down and less than an hour later I was taking what ended up being one of the best showers of my life. Except for the part where my port had to be wrapped (more tape!) so it would stay dry. That part was not so lovely.

9. Modesty: One of my least favorite things about childbirth, in retrospect, was that anyone around could see. I was naked, sweating, grunting, screaming, and I didn't care who could see me--I thought about it afterwards and shuddered, but at the time I could have cared less. However, this stay was different because it was not the extreme pain of childbirth, so I had time to think about how I had to sit around in underwear and a shirt and allow anyone and everyone to see up my inner thigh, basically sitting around with my legs open any time someone ordered me to. I don't consider myself a prude, but I don't really love that.

10. Lack of WiFi: Really? REALLY? It's 2011, people, get with the program! I could have written this very long blog post in all my copious boredom, but I couldn't get online. And yes, I am one of the last 25 people in this country who doesn't have a smartphone, so I couldn't get around it that way. I had to revert to the Dark Ages of just TV/books/puzzles and my cell phone for entertainment. Except texting doesn't count. Even if my fingers were falling off.

11. TV costs $7 per day: Again, I have to say really?? This is not per room, either, but per TV. I figure they easily make 5K a day just from television. As if it weren't already on. What am I, an idiot? But you have no choice because there is nothing. To. Do. So you pay the stupid money, and then if you're like me, you want to stick a fork in your eye because there's nothing good on anyway, and you always DVR everything and haven't sat through commercials since you were 10 years old and VCRs were invented, so what the hell is this anyway? And the remote is horrible because you have to scroll through the channels, there are no numbers to press. And sometimes the buttons don't work, so if you go past a channel you wanted and the down arrow won't work, you have to go through the entire 75 channels AGAIN to get back, making you want an ice pick to poke through your brain instead of just that fork through your eye. However, I made myself feel better by insulting the woman who made me pay for the TV, by venting to my friend on the phone while I paid her. My words were "Can you believe I have to pay $7 a day for TV that is already here whether or not I pay? Because apparently a hundred bucks for a Tylenol isn't enough of a profit. But NO, we don't need any health care reform in this country!" She said, "It's not my policy, I'm just doing my job." So, meanly, I said that it didn't matter because it's still the stupidest thing ever. And I meant it, so there.

12. Boredom: All those times I wanted time to myself, to do whatever I wanted? Well, clearly I meant what I wanted to do at home. Or on a Bermuda cruise. Or in NYC or Paris or Tuscany or a spa or Yosemite National Park or at a beach house or in Crete or Sydney or, or, or! NOT on a hospital bed tethered to an IV drip. In fact, I got so bored I went through my phone, and for every contact I changed my ringtone for calls AND texts to different tones for every person. I also changed the color patterns of the lights that flash for a call or text. From each person. Not that I would know that THIS light pattern means THAT person, or THAT ringtone means THIS person; in fact, I'm sure it's going to get as confusing as hell. But still. If you're in my phone, you're special. Another thing I did in desperate boredom? I watched a bunch of videos on the Patient Education Channel, channel 94. Some of their best? "Total Knee Replacement," "Atrial Fibrilation," "Bacterial Pneumonia," "Bone Fractures & Sprains," and my favorite, "Guided Visualization."

13. Roommates: I was actually in two patient rooms, the one they put me in at first, and then, for the last 24 hours I had to move next door because the first room had a handicapped bathroom and a patient came in who would need it. Since I was the much more ambulatory one, I had to move. I actually moved while talking on the phone. My first roommate, Carol, was a lovely older woman recovering from surgery for diverticulitis. She and I would talk, watch the same shows sometimes, and she kept the curtains between us open when she didn't need privacy so I could also see out the windows. Her husband was a hoot and would stay for hours, and he always offered to get me cookies when he went to get them for himself. My second roommate was in much more serious shape--I'm not sure what was wrong but I did hear she'd been in for over 3 weeks. She was from India, did not speak English, and her daughter stayed all the time including overnight. She snored with a hideous wet sound, slept almost all the time, wore a diaper...well. Let's just say that a private room would have been a beautiful thing.

14. Decor: Beige walls, no pictures hanging in the rooms, drab linoleum, mauve curtains around the beds, cheesy looking "wood" furniture and closets and shelves, ugly dorm-type easy chairs for visitors... let's just say the mauve made me think of Miami Vice 80s, and everything was just ugly and leave it at that. Plus, I sort of resented that in both my rooms I was the ambulatory patient, the bored climbing-the-walls patient, and yet both times I was next to the door rather than the window. When the middle curtains were pulled I had no natural light and no view--and in my second room that was all the time. It was hideous. I also didn't have enough furniture for guests or to put my flowers and gifts and books and puzzles on. When I went walking this morning so I could see the snow storm, I found a glass tunnel walkway that had several beds along the side--they had signs indicating they were being thrown out due to the fact that controls were broken. This hallway was the most peaceful place I'd seen in the hospital, very light with all the windows, bright because of the blinding snow, quiet because it was near offices rather than patient rooms and nurses' stations...I briefly thought about taking a nap on one of those beds, finally with some peace and quiet, but didn't because I knew they'd probably send dogs after me.

15. Germs: Since I am picky about sleeping, I asked if I could have a pillow from home, but my nurse said that if I did, I'd have to throw it away rather than bring it home, because hospitals are such nasty, filthy places. She told me a few horror stories about cellulitis and other awful diseases. I told Matt to forget about bringing me a pillow, and I was very happy that at least I was being pumped full of antibiotics, so I was probably safe. Gross.

16. Nurses who scare me: My first night in the hospital, very late, as I was wondering how I was going to go to sleep in all the light and noise, I drowsed off but was awakened by a nurse's voice, very scared, shrieking, "Oh my God, LISA?!?" I was thinking, wow, if a nurse sounds like that, it has to be pretty bad! My head was full of horrible things that could be happening to someone just feet from where I was, and I hoped I wouldn't see blood and guts or stray body parts. Then Lisa came to see what was wrong, and when she laughed and said, "It's only a spider!" I simply could not believe it. Not that I am much of a spider fan, but I think that if you're a nurse you must have a pretty strong stomach.

This tuned very long, but I have to finish with the story of how I was discharged. This morning we had over a foot of snow, and I was despondent because I was certain that, even though we only live 5 blocks from the hospital, they would never let me go today. The thought of another day and a half and another night in this place was making me kind of crazy. I was tired, I had a headache, I missed my family, I was bored senseless, I was tired of the food...and then at 9:15, Matt called to say good morning and see how I was, and I couldn't help it. I started to cry. I managed to pull myself together to talk to the kids, but when I hung up, I started really crying. Sobbing. The tech who was helping my roommate immediately tried to make me feel better, which made me cry harder. Then my doctor happened to come in, and he saw me crying--and got that deer-in-the-headlights look that men get when they see women cry. He asked what was wrong, and I lost it. "I just want to go h-h-home!" I sobbed. "I can't sleep, the food is horrible, I have a headache, I'm so bored, and I m-m-miss my family!" He didn't even look at my leg before he said, "You can go home today. We'll put you on strong antibiotic pills and you'll go home." This is the same doctor who said to me after yesterday's exam that I'd "enjoy spending the snow storm with them, it'll be fun!" and when I tried to say that I would not enjoy that, I wanted to go home, just said jovially, "Well, too bad--you're staying!"

He was as good as his word, and though I'd dreaded discharge, thinking that it would probably end up taking till 8pm to get out, it actually moved pretty quickly on a hospital scale--I was wheeled out by 1:15 pm. WHY didn't I think of crying the day before??

Resolutions

2011-01-05T21:08:00.002-05:00

I have decided that New Year's resolutions are pointless. Everyone makes them but almost nobody keeps them, which is why they tend to be the same ones over and over: lose weight/exercise/eat more veggies/ eat less processed food; be more organized; procrastinate less; help the homeless/hungry/needy/old; clean those junk drawers/closets/basements/attics and give away all useless stuff; stop smoking/using caffeine/drinking/cursing. Get more sleep; watch less TV and waste less time on the computer--blah, blah, blah. I think we should all just accept that nobody's perfect and stop trying to change ourselves when we're drunk.

That said, I resolve to do (or not do as the case may be) many of the above all through the year, which either makes me incredibly optimistic or incredibly dumb. I don't need New Year's to try and improve myself and I am realistic enough to know that I can do better, but really I try my best and that's all that matters. In the long run I don't think the state of my attic is going to matter--even if I cringe every time I open the door, and sometimes I just toss things in and run back downstairs!

Everyone should just resolve to give love and accept it, to be as kind and thoughtful as they can be, and to appreciate all that's good in their lives. And maybe exercise more.

....but really, I'm BUSY!

2010-12-16T10:27:00.002-05:00

So it's been pointed out that I haven't posted since before Halloween. Sigh. All true. When I began this blog, it was to keep track of memories that I didn't want to forget in all the myriad duties of having four little kids. I have always told myself I should write daily, but honestly, you know how it is. Busy, busy, busy. Some of the busyness is true--home schooling, field trips, social engagements, errands, ferrying around four children. Some of it is more like laziness. I admit, I love Facebook. I love IMing with friends. I love watching movies or TV shows with Matt or as a family. I love reading. I love writing too and I should do it more. There are also all the chores involved with a family such as housework, cooking, pet care, laundry and yard chores, and I try to get to the gym or jog or work out in the house 5 days a week....the days just don't contain enough hours for all I need to do and like to do and want to get done.

We lost the last of our former batch of hens in June, and we gave ourselves some time before getting more. Part of that was that Matt needed to build a raccoon-proof chicken run--after 4+ years of free ranging, I fenced them in halfheartedly because they were ruining my newly restored perennial garden--and almost instantly we had a slaughter. Poor girls. I think that Matt took a long time to build the run because he was waiting to see if we'd lose interest in having chickens--but on the contrary, as annoyed as I'd gotten with them wrecking plants and dirtying up my flagstone patio, I truly missed seeing them, and I was really dismayed at going back to store bought eggs! The kids begged and begged for chicks, and finally in August we got 8 of the sweetest babies ever...only to lose 6 to those devilishly clever raccoons! When at last Matt had turned the run into a fortress, we reordered 6 more chicks...and lost 3 of THOSE to illness! All's well now, though--we now have 5 sassy little hens who have learned to flock together. We miss the babies we lost and are determined to keep the raccoon away from our girls now. Buffy, Faith, Daisy, Penelope and Sirius Black are here and we hope for eggs in just 2 or 3 months.

The end of the year flies by so quickly. We start the school year and spend September working up a head of steam in all our subjects. Everything's new and the kids are excited to begin, and so am I, mostly. October arrives, the leaves start turning and then we have to focus on Halloween. Deciding and getting our costumes together--another thing I have gradually moved over to the easy way with, mostly buying instead of mostly making as I used to--and then there are parties and trick or treating and in between we have leaves to rake and still school to do. Once Halloween is done we get a bit of a breather, but I usually begin my Christmas shopping, thinking that for ONCE I will finish early. That never happens, because before I know it Thanksgiving arrives and we leave for our family celebration and then our annual week in Boston.

Boston is always fun. The week flies by with plenty of museums, walking the city, seeing friends from Matt's office and even one my best friends from grade school. We have nice dinners out, and this year instead of staying at a hotel (cramped for us even with a pricey upgrade to a "junior suite," as Matt's office will only pay for the regular room for him) we used an online apartment service and stayed in a Victorian brownstone apartment. The kids bemoaned the loss of the pool, but I am completely hooked and would far rather do that than ever sleep in another hotel room. It also has the huge benefit of being the same price as a regular Westin room--meaning we don't have to pay one cent!

When we return from Boston, there's the holiday decorating to do, because we always have the tree up for Rachel's birthday on the 8th. This year she turned fifteen, which is just completely insane. I simply do not believe that my little girl, who was just born really, is fifteen. Impossible! The shopping kicks into high gear as I realize I have nothing accomplished, as does baking. We include cookies and candies with our holiday gifts to faraway family, and we give treats to neighbors and Matt's office. Then of course there's our wedding anniversary on the 19th (this year we're celebrating 18 years!) and right afterwards the Christmas holiday fun begins. The new year turns before we know it and then time stands practically still until spring. None of this is a good excuse, I know, but I just want to explain (again) how it happens. (I think I do a variation of this post every year.)

Anyway, as always, I resolve to post more. Julia just discovered felting and has learned how to make stuffed animals from wool and roving. I am starting to felt soaps, which basically turns a bar into a loofah, and looks beautiful, too. Rachel takes wonderful photos, although she has her own photography blog, which means my putting her pictures in are a bit redundant. I have been cooking and baking new things too, such as candies for the holidays--I've made peppermints dipped in chocolate, bonbons and truffles, and now vanilla and chocolate bark with dried fruits and nuts. The kids are constantly drawing and saying cute things and writing poems--all things that would make sweet (and quick!) blog posts.

I'll just have to remember that a blog post doesn't have to be long and that I am missing memories if I don't post! You can all feel free to remind me to blog on Facebook, too! (Already I'm thinking I could regret that....)

The Red Hot Chili Pandas

2010-10-24T21:18:00.003-04:00

Julia spent quite a while on this picture--the kids were listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers the other day while drawing and reading in a fort made with blankets and our breakfast bar in the kitchen. Quite cozy with sofa pillows and blankets on the floor, a lamp borrowed from the living room, and Molly the cat as extra company. I always love Julia's art, but this one, with its clever take on the Chili Peppers name combined with some of her favorite characters for pretend with Emma and Ben--Ginger is the cat on the drums, Bella is the panda on guitar and is the lead singer (note the bleeped out words, since after all, they ARE the Chili Pandas!) and Kirby is the koala on bass--just cracked me up. Notice too that the unseen (except paws in air) audience is going wild, throwing flowers and hats at the band....

The Great Desert, a poem by Emma

2010-09-15T15:16:00.003-04:00

Today Emma wrote an acrostic poem for a project about the desert. We read "Around One Cactus: Owls, Bats and Leaping Rats," by Anthony D. Fredericks, which was not only well-written and beautifully illustrated, but full of fascinating facts in the field notes section that I never knew. For instance, kangaroo rats digest carbohydrates so efficiently that they never drink water, and the saguaro cactus doesn't grow arms till it's 70 years old! These giant cactus also don't need water for 2 years at a stretch, and can live to be 200 years old. Anyway, Emma wrote this poem (she did have a bit of help when she got stuck, but I still think it was a great effort, so I'm sharing) in the acrostic style. Enjoy!

Scorpion stings
Animals at night
Gila monsters' painted backs
Underground burrow
Arid and dry
Rat hopping like a kangaroo
Owl flying
Cactus in the moonlight
All the animals are adorable
Caves of bats
Tails of fox are bushy
Unkind rattlesnake
Sand is yellow

Summer Vacation, Almost Over

2010-09-01T14:37:00.002-04:00

One of the best things about homeschooling is that I decide when we begin again. So I always take the entire Labor Day week to finish up vacation, while school kids are generally starting back. And still, I find myself wanting more vacation. Part of it is that, well, vacation is lovely! Who doesn't prefer sleeping in, reading novels, going to the pool or water park or beach several times a week? Not having to enforce bed times, catching fireflies, planning day trips, camping, watching movies, IMing on Facebook any time of the day or night? Ice cream, s'mores, barbecues, carousel rides? I call all that F-U-N! And school work is...less fun.

Which is not to say we aren't excited about the year ahead. We thrill to new school supplies and books arriving daily for a few weeks. The kids like to set up their notebooks, and I love seeing my calendar be blank at first but then fill in slowly until there is somewhere to be many days of the week. The kids start complaining of boredom and asking when we will start work again, and I find myself marveling that they don't seem to want endless vacation as I do! I plan lessons and gather supplies we'll need, and everyone notes the first day (this year it will be September 13) and for some strange reason they will all get up and dress in "school clothes" and want to start at 8am...for the first week, anyway--then we will snap into reality and do work in pjs once more.

I am particularly excited at my new plans to do history, science, art and music in a one room school house format for Julia, Ben & Emma. (Rachel, being in 10th grade, must of course do a much higher level of work than the 6th, 3rd and 1st graders!) The materials are for Julia's level and the other two will absorb information like sponges, I hope--which will be a far cry from the usual suffering through boring "grade-appropriate" work that is frankly a waste of time. I plan to have the kids take turns reading what needs to be read aloud, and then we will talk about things and work on maps, projects, experiments, art, or music projects together. This will add interest for all of them as well as make MY life a whole lot easier! I just find I am burned out trying to switch between grade levels AND subject matter when everyone is doing their own thing. I feel like I can't take it any more.

We also have some fun plans, including heading back to the Bronx Zoo and the NY Aquarium, heading up to MA to go to 6 Flags when lots of public schoolers have switched gears to the school year and aren't thinking of amusement parks any longer, and going on one or even two more camping trips. This will, of course, depend on the weather since we have to wait till the last minute to take off--my family does not have good luck with planned camping; it always rains on us! Rachel and her friend are joining a Long Island-wide photography club, so that is going to be very exciting for her. Bimonthly meetings, monthly day trips and a photography contest each month--she is in heaven! Plus she will be attending the Comic-Con of the Anime world in October...though I can't remember the name of it--we have to get her costume for that together, too.

Sometimes I feel like it's lazy of me to want endless vacation--but then I remember all the parents whose kids go to school jumping up and down at the sight of the school bus, and realize it's the same for them--it's just that their vacation is longer than mine! Also, how lucky I am that I get 3 solid months of summer vacation when a lot of parents are working while their kids go to school. I guess we just get used to what's normal for our own families. I am lucky to be able to spend so much time with my kids, and if it entails the full time job of teaching them--that's how I like it.

Onion Rings

2010-08-22T17:27:00.009-04:00

Onion rings are popular around here, and really very easy to make. Plus they're just plain delicious! Mmmmm, fried food...

Ingredients:

a few large onions
1-2 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 eggs
vegetable oil
basic seasoning

Other things you'll need:

slotted spoon
2 bowls
large pot (we used a Dutch oven)

Begin by pouring vegetable oil into your pot (so that it's about 2-4 inches deep depending on how many rings you'll be making.) Heat on high for a few minutes, then medium. While the oil is heating:

Peel and cut your onions equatorially. Make sure each slice is between 1-2 centimeters thick; you're going to have to pull each layer apart. This way you'll get lots and lots of rings per onion you use.

After preparing the onions, put about 1 cup of flour (we just play it by ear!) and however much seasoning (salt, pepper, spices, etc) and sift thoroughly. In the other bowl, crack two eggs and mix until it is the same color all the way through.

By now your oil should be hot enough. If you want to test it, wet your hand and fling a drop or two of water into the pot. If it spits, it's definitely ready. (Watch out so you don't get burned.)

Dip an onion ring into the eggs first, coating completely. Then roll gently in the flour mixture and place carefully into the oil. You can do this with your hand if you're brave, or just place the ring on a slotted metal spoon. Repeat.

Cook the rings in the oil until the outer coating is golden-brown. The good thing about these is that the onions don't have to be cooked before eating, like potatoes or meat. Let your finished product sit and cool on folded paper towels until ready to serve. Enjoy!

photos credit to Rachel

A little advertisement..

2010-08-14T20:49:00.002-04:00

If you have the time, please check out my daughter's photography blog. :) Thanks!

The Red House And Beyond

Emma's Birthday List

2010-08-04T13:20:00.002-04:00

Emma isn't taking any chances after seeing Ben's barrage of gifts yesterday. She has the advantage of having a birthday two and a half weeks after her brother, so seeing his birthday always gives her all kinds of ideas. For a couple of weeks I'd been asking Ben what he wanted, and his response consistently was, "Oh, I don't know, I'm sure I'll like whatever you pick out!" He ended up with quite a haul--and I don't mean from only Mom & Dad...now that Rachel earns money herself, she bought him a new Calvin & Hobbes comic collection, which he loves and has already devoured, and then Julia and Emma both wanted to spend money on him, so Julia got him a Bakugan set and Emma got him a game called Cuponk, which involves trick bounces of a ping-pong-like ball into a cup that lights up and makes gorilla noises. Then, of course, there was birthday money and gifts from friends who spent the day with us, and he will get more when the family comes to visit.

Anyway, Emma got right to work making her list. Normally, I would scan it so the entire deliciousness would be understood--her handwriting adds a lot! However, our printer is not working with the new operating system--MATT, get on this problem, please!--so I am just going to type it in, spellings and capitalizations intact.
(My comments are italicized next to hers.)

My BirthDay LiSt

a shYoushYou this is one of Ben's gifts, those hamsters that run on wheels with their attachable habitats--it is actually ZHU-ZHU pets!

an iPod for once, her capitalization in the middle of a word is correct, but I don't think she knows that!

aNd A AQuAtic FRog LiKe Boeabuls at first I was impressed that she spelled "aquatic" correctly, but Ben said she asked him how to spell it. Oh, well. And "Boeabuls" is her version of "Bubbles," Julia's aquatic frog.

BY EMMa
Going to Be 6 Years oLd

Happy Birthday, Ben!

2010-08-02T12:38:00.002-04:00

Ben's birthday is tomorrow--he is turning 8 and I am crumbling. Yes, as usual, I am given to exaggeration, but every time my kids get a year older I find myself sad. I was just telling a friend that if you'd asked me five years ago if my life was going to change soon, I would have thought you were nuts. Five years ago Rachel was still 9, Julia 5, Ben 3 and Emma just 1. My life looked like an endless stretch of nursing, diapers, little sleep, ride on toys, chicken nuggets, Blue's Clue's and strollers. Bath time was a hurdle, forming a coherent thought just about impossible. What a difference five years make! Rachel is practically on her own, and Julia, Ben & Emma are a band of friends who play their own games, read their own books, talk on the phone to their own friends, and most definitely have their own opinions about everything.

Of course it isn't all bad! Independent kids mean I get plenty of rest, they do chores and can help me with things like gardening and painting things and can do a lot of their school work alone, too. Older kids are more reasonable and better able to empathize; they see the value in cooperation and although I sometimes despair over saying the same thing three hundred and ninety four times, in thoughtful moments I can see that overall they are caring, generous and will be lifelong friends. We can do a lot more now that we're unencumbered with strollers, diaper bags stuffed with snacks, extra outfits and toys--even Emma can walk all day now. We have more fun at museums, now that everyone can read and focus on signs and such, and we can do more programs geared to older kids, see shows and stay up late without worry.

But. When I think how sweet and gorgeous my babies were---when I think of all the hours spent rocking, nursing, cuddling, reading stories, playing silly little games, when I think of how a kiss could make the world right again and how easy they were to please---it just makes me sad. Sad because I know they have to grow up, sad because growing up means growing away before they can come back as adults, sad because having experienced it once already with Rachel, I am dreading the power struggles and inevitability of adolescence to make even the most easygoing child into a four headed beast with no coherent thought except, seemingly, to make everyone else in the family miserable. Sad, too, that no more babies means that I am no longer in the category of young mom--age doesn't matter here, either. Whether you're done breeding at 25 or 45, once all your kids are elementary school aged and above, you are in a different category of parenting. The fact that I feel young and look young for my decrepitude doesn't change the fact that having a teenager makes me...well, not so young. Let's face it, when you're toting a baby, you seem younger than when your kids are thinking about college.

So I am sad for many reasons. Why can't life stay the same, ever?

Happy birthday to my dear, sweet Ben. You are the boy I never knew I wished for, and my life could never be the same without you in it. I love you, and I always, always will.

Summer Planning

2010-07-18T17:08:00.002-04:00

I have been avoiding work lately. Part of it is the usual summer thing; enjoying vacation and not wanting to think about the school year looming ahead in September, but part of it is what is known as burnout. I just completed my eleventh year of homeschooling...but if you include all my kids, I have homeschooled twenty one grades! That is a lot of planning and reporting, and part of me is sick and tired of it. Not sick and tired enough to throw my kids to the school system, mind you...just sick and tired of the hoops and keeping all my ducks in a row. Next year marks the first year where I must report all four kids to the school district (although Emma has completed her Kindergarten year, she won't be 6 until August, so by law I only have to report her this coming school year) but thankfully, I only have to report Rachel for two more school years (you can stop at the end of the year the child turns 16, since school is not mandatory after that.) Still, two years of reporting four kids still adds up to 8 letters of intent, 8 IHIPs, 32 quarterly reports, and 8 end-of-year assessments or 8 standardized test requirements. Jeez.

As usual, I am reading the Rainbow Resources catalogue from cover to cover (although I am skipping all the religious topics and much of their science section-- allowing terms as "secular" and "mentions evolution" to catch my eye...the OPPOSITE of what they intend, but very useful for me!) I spent the first few years of homeschooling using various sites, message boards, and catalogues to plan my syllabus--but once I discovered Rainbow I never went back. There is so much information in there; because the family who runs the company is so vast, they have used almost everything and they describe in minute detail. I don't always buy my books from Rainbow--I can often find them gently used or cheaper somewhere else--but I use them for the decision making.

This year, as in most years, we are making a few changes. The best part of homeschooling is that you can change whatever you want depending on the needs of your kids. The first change will be in history and science. Now that I have three kids of elementary age (!) I have decided that we are going to work these subjects together. I am getting programs geared to Julia's age, since she's the eldest, and Ben and Emma will work with us at their own levels and pace. History Odyssey seems to be the program I will get; science is still undecided. It is quite simply too irritating to not only plan three levels of history and science, get all the books and supplies needed, but to actually help them along at three different levels is mind boggling for me. We can take turns reading things aloud and work on projects at the same time. I think this will cut our frustration levels to almost nothing. History Odyssey also has a high school program, so Rachel can work on the same meta-subject but at her own level.

The other major change is that I plan to cut out some busy work. Language Arts is the prime example. In the past, each child has had spelling, grammar, literature (reading and writing in whatever capacity) of various sorts, proofreading, handwriting and vocabulary in different combinations. While these are all worthwhile things and need to be studied, my kids are, quite frankly, really good at all of these things. I am seeing less and less value in workbooks that are at their grade level, but pose no challenge at all. I am going to focus more on the literature side of things and less on the time wasters, because reading helps all of those areas and endless drills are boring.

Hopefully I will have my IHIPs together in the next 2 weeks, and my books ordered. I hate walking into Target in the middle of July and seeing BACK TO SCHOOL all over the place, but I have to admit that summer flies far faster than any other season and I have to be prepared. And in the meantime, we are enjoying all that summer has to offer!

Summer (so far)

2010-07-17T21:16:00.005-04:00

Life Is A Blur

2010-06-24T21:38:00.002-04:00

I haven't written in a while, I know that. A friend and fellow blogger recently commented that the North Fork Bloggers have been verrrryyy quiet of late. I'm glad I'm not the only one! When I began this blog (at Rachel's urging) its original purpose was to be a family journal, something to look back on and relive all the memories we have as a family. I have kept "real" journals most of my life, although in a fit of self conciousness I threw the early ones away when I was about fifteen. I couldn't stand looking at my childhood self, all the things I thought were so important but that were really boring or truly humiliating. In my second half of high school I didn't keep in journal (which I truly regret now!) and then began to do it again in college. I still have those, and have not submitted to the urge to toss them, although some of what I wrote is embarrassing or boring or painful, in some cases.

When Rachel was born, my journal writing efforts started to change. I still wrote about my own thoughts and feelings, but there wasn't enough time in my day to mull things over the way I once did. And as my other children were born and the decision to homeschool was made....well, then time really became a precious commodity. I lived for several years on a kind of autopilot, with infants and toddlers and preschoolers and nursing and lack of sleep and play dates and homeschooling (and I put homeschooling last because really, homeschooling only Rachel in those early years was SO simple! One of those things that seemed hard when I was doing it, but as my efforts have multiplied over the years, I see how truly easy it really was...) However, even in my mommy-haze I recognized that the years are fleeting and that I wanted to preserve memories of what my beautiful children were like at every age, how they spoke and the adorable things they did, the vacations we went on and the birthday parties and Christmas gifts and the trials and tribulations. I usually wrote once every couple of months, but would fill pages and pages with anything and everything I could think of. It seems impossible to believe, but computers were only a part of life then. Sure, we used email and shopped online, and researched some topics when needed. But it was not the all-consuming presence it is now, for better or for worse.

When Rachel made this blog for us and told me I should use it like my handwritten journals, I was at first nonplussed. It seemed so impersonal, so self-important, like I was putting my family online and wanted people to actually read about us. Matt and I debated about using our real names, and whether or not photos should be included. I pressed for them, because in my mind this was a family scrapbook. I didn't intend for anyone other than family and far-flung friends to read it. But then that idea appealed to me--here was a way for relatives to see photos, artwork, and hear about the day-to-day, things that are easily forgotten when you're talking. Grandma would love it! So, slowly, I got into it. I still have the idea that someday we will print it all out (how much ink will THAT take?) so that we can have the satisfaction of actual pages in our hands rather than a website to browse.

My posts were almost daily in the beginning, and often very short. A snapshot of something that happened that day. These provide me with wonderful memories when I do look back. Now, however, my life has changed. My kids are growing up--Emma is finished with Kindergarten and will be 6 in just two months. No more babies! We have been finished with nursing and diapers for years now, something I could barely conceive of for ten years running. Everyone knows how to swim, to ride a bike, to read...everyone has lost two or more baby teeth.... everyone sleeps all night... Rachel is practically an adult...Julia is careening into preadolescence....the milestones are fewer when all this happens. They still do and say (what I think) are adorable and clever things, so in theory my posts could be similar to those first years of the blog. The biggest difference is, I guess, that I have much less time on my hands! Homeschooling four kids is a lot of work, there are always chores and errands to run, we have a lot of activities and friends to attend to--and hey, I like to have time to myself too!

We've finished school for the year, and as always, this is a huge relief. The routines were getting dull and we all needed a break--plus as the weather warms, there is nothing better than getting outside. We have been swimming and going to the beach and to Splish Splash and gardening and riding bikes and walking the dog and reading and sleeping late and having sleepovers and going fun places. I am starting to plan for next year--Rachel will be in 10th grade (!), Julia in 6th, Ben in 3rd and Emma in 1st. I am on the lookout for anything that will make our lives easier and more fun in regards to school work...my kids simply don't need all the busy work! I have resolved to look for books that pack a punch while not boring us, and to find movies, documentaries and books that will bring subjects to life. One of the reasons we homeschool is to give them a specialized education, but unfortunately, since homeschooling has picked up so much speed in recent years, and as more and more parents decide to pull their kids out of a not-satisfying school experience, homeschool curricula seem to have become more schoolish.

My kids all read and write above their grade level--not certain exactly how far above, but let's just say well above grade level. So this past year, when Ben was doing a spelling program meant for 2nd grade, he was understandably bored and frustrated (and I didn't blame him--I think that 2nd graders probably can handle more than 3-and-4-letter words!) Emma did 1st grade language arts material in November and was also bored. I am trying to make next year the year where nobody does a book just because it's expected of them at that grade, and where pointless activities are banished. A perfect example of this would be one of the language arts books I used with Ben this year. It was literature based activities using the "Magic Tree House" books, which if you don't know, are fantasy books about time travel that teach about history topics. Ben loves the books, so I thought it would be a great fit. However, I didn't take into account that most of the activities listed were a waste of time. Like school, they were geared to the average student, and Ben was beyond it. We tried for the first couple of books, and then finally I just got him the books and we talked about them.

When I was finishing up the school year, I was looking through one of Emma's workbooks and thinking about how she wouldn't finish this one--we'd started it at the end of winter when she was finished with what she'd been doing, and although she liked it it was one of those several hundred page "complete curriculum" books that a friend had given me. Even though it was 1st grade we'd already skipped lots of the material because it was a review of Kindergarten (really? Do we need a review of Kindergarten?) but still there were probably a hundred pages to go. I wondered if I should hold onto it for next year, or if we should go crazy in the last few weeks of school and try to actually get it all done...and then I remembered that hello! it's all busy work anyway! Emma can read anything she puts her eyes on, she can draw better than I can already, and she has an imagination that boggles the brain. She can learn more from taking a book off the shelves and reading it than she can in any workbook, and I let it go.

I will try to write more. I will try to post something cute the kids do or say at least once a week, and I will try to write about what next school year is shaping up to be like. These are my summer resolutions....though I also resolve to enjoy my vacation thoroughly because I know September will be here far sooner than I'd wish!

Emma

2010-05-22T10:31:00.002-04:00

(She had grass on her head, if you couldn't tell!)

Smeagol & Rabie Baby, a Picture by Emma

2010-05-06T19:15:00.003-04:00

Emma made this picture today, and I was laughing so hard I had to share. It says "I think that Smeagol is the most handsome boy EEEEEEVER...." If you are uninitiated, Smeagol is Gollum's Hobbit name from "The Lord of the Rings" Trilogy...and if you are uninitiated in Emma-speak, Rabie Baby is a character Emma made up for the eponymous game she plays with Julia and Ben. I personally love how they are kissing, and how Shelob (the spider from the LOTR books!) has a bow in her hair and is acting the part of the minister for their wedding: "You may kiss the bride."

This kid is a riot!

Emma lost her tooth! + Another note to the Tooth Fairy

2010-04-30T09:55:00.004-04:00

Yesterday morning, Emma lost her first tooth, much to my parents' dismay, I'm sure. She was very excited and promptly put it under her pillow in hopes that the Tooth Fairy would pay her a visit while she was sleeping.

Well, the Tooth Fairy was a bit lazy and didn't actually collect the tooth until after Emma had gotten out of bed. (oops!) But she did receive a dollar, so all is well....Or so we thought.

Then, Emma presented us with a picture she had drawn, and we were dumbfounded to tell the truth. Here it is:

In case you couldn't read it, she wrote: "Dear Tooth Fairy, I don't want money! I want my tooth!!!!! Thank you!" Complete with smiley faces and hearts. At the bottom, she illustrated a beautiful fairy, and her pet dog and cat.

Well, I explained to her that after the Tooth Fairy takes your tooth, you usually can't get it back. She was a little sad at this, but sprung right back into her typical cheerful mood when I reminded her that she still has plenty of teeth to lose, and next time she can keep the tooth if she likes.

A photo coming soon of Emma with the space in her teeth. (:

-Rachel

Emma's Note to the Tooth Fairy

2010-04-22T09:25:00.003-04:00

Emma got a loose tooth a week or so ago. Can I just say I was completely unprepared for this milestone? Ben hasn't been losing teeth for very long, so I was going along, thinking that it would be another year before Emma began. She is so excited--understandably, since she has been watching the tooth fairy in action her entire life! She has been longing for a fairy visit, so now she is wiggling that tooth incessantly, wondering when it will come out. Of course, she had to write a letter to express herself:

For those uninitiated in phonetic spelling, it says: "Dear Tooth Fairy: Please collect my tooth. It is loose. I can wiggle it. Thank you." I love the smiley faces and the hearts--they really show how happy and excited she is. She didn't bother to sign it, but of course, fairies know everything, don't they?

Lake Finback Dragon, by Julia

2010-03-29T13:49:00.009-04:00

Julia's art lesson today had her drawing along with a DVD. The lesson was on drawing from imagination, and the example was a dragon. Now, if I were taking this lesson, my dragon would be a pathetic cartoonish rendering...but not only is Julia a superior artist to me, dragons have lately become one of her favorite things to draw. While she did go along with the DVD and copy the example dragon, she really shone when she did the assignment to draw her own dragon from imagination. Her dragon is called the lake finback dragon, and he lives underwater and breathes bubbles instead of fire. Perfect! I love the way she did this so I thought I'd share.

Forest Friends, a Picture by Emma

2010-03-23T13:21:00.003-04:00

I love the fact that my five year old draws better than I ever have!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

2010-03-17T10:30:00.002-04:00

by Emma, 5 years old. Not quite sure what Pokemon has to do with St. Patrick, but somehow it does in her mind. I got the whole lecture about Charmander evolving into Charmillion and Charzard...but I never retain it. Just thought I'd share!

Ben takes fencing classes

2010-03-14T20:49:00.004-04:00

He loves them! And he is so focused and determined...

Right now, it's only foil fencing. But who knows, maybe he'll move on to epee or saber one day, if he works hard and stays interested.

Vegetarian Chili

2010-03-04T14:23:00.007-05:00

Add: beans and tomatoes,

Chili peppers,

Truffle oil,

Various spices like paprika and cumin,

Hominy (if you like it).

Chop up the peppers and some mushrooms, carrots, and onion,

Saute it a little,

Add the beans,

Stir in the tomatoes slowly at first,

Then a little faster.

Simmer over a medium flame for a long as you like, until the chili is warmed through. Enjoy!

Potato Chips

2010-03-01T12:11:00.003-05:00

They were yummy!

Green, A Poem by Emma

2010-02-04T22:07:00.005-05:00

Last year Julia and Ben did a writing/art assignment where they painted monochromatic abstract designs on large paper, then wrote a poem about the color they'd chosen. I liked them so much I have them hanging in my room, and this morning Emma was cuddling in bed with me and happened to focus on Ben's. She read it aloud to me, then announced that she wanted to make one of her own. She was at first disappointed because Julia had chosen blue and Ben had used red, but then brightened up and said, "That's okay, green in my third favorite color, so I'll just do that."

She had the table set up for painting before I'd even gotten out of bed, and immediately wrote "Green" across the top of the paper, then began making leaves growing from each letter. My heart sank a bit--I thought she'd probably end up thinking hers was not as good as her siblings', especially since she's never written her own poem before. I thought this might end in disaster, and I hadn't even had my coffee yet. I philosophically decided that no matter how well she did, it would be a learning experience in one way or another, and went about my business of the morning while she worked.

She did ask Julia for help in spelling a couple of words, but she made up the entire poem herself. And I have to say I am so proud of her! I think my sweet pea did a wonderful job. I took a photo because I wanted the entire piece of art to be visible, not only her words. Enjoy!

(In case it's hard to read, the words are as follows:)

Green

Green is the color of
the leaves on the trees
And the grass and the
frogs and the moss
And plants and peas
and green beans
But green is
the best
of all
of them.

By Emma 5 years old 2/4/10

Happy Birthday, Matt!

2010-01-07T19:38:00.004-05:00

Today, Matt is 40 years old. He claims that he doesn't feel older, just happy and full of ham and potatoes and cake. Lovely friends at work bought him a cake, cards, a gift card, chocolate...he's in seventh heaven!

We love you!

Fantasy vs. Our Real World, A Poem by Julia

2009-12-09T10:26:00.002-05:00

Dungeons and dragons and ogres and knights,
Unicorns and castles and torches for lights.
Basements and chickens and electricity,
Horses and houses and of course, geometry.
Some may go on a quest to rescue a maiden from her tower,
But some, like me, are happy as can be writing poems hour after hour.
Some go on quests to become a knight,
But some, like me, will read in a chair in the light.
Some go on a quest much too hard
For a girl like me, who climbs trees in her yard.
I think I like our real world more,
For who wants to be covered in guts and gore,
battling a dragon lying dead on the floor??
Who would want to is a mystery,
but me, thank you, I'm happy as can be,
safe in my chair, safe in my house,
reading a book about a dragon and a mouse.

Daily Quote

2009-12-09T10:23:00.002-05:00

I went into McDonald's yesterday and said, "I'd like some fries." The girl at the counter said, "Would you like some fries with that?"

--Jay Leno

Vegetarian Thanksgiving

2009-11-24T10:59:00.003-05:00

This will be Rachel's first Thanksgiving as a vegetarian. She is not insisting on faux meat for her meal; she is happy to eat vegetables and side dishes...she has never been a gravy fan, and she has never liked stuffing (whereas my entire Thanksgiving meal could be stuffing the way my mom makes it, with gravy on top and a side dish of cranberry sauce. That is all.) so she won't be missing any of her favorites. I know, I have it easy. In the spirit of vegetarian Thanksgiving, though, Matt found this article in Grist, an environmental journal. I found it so funny that I thought I'd post it. Enjoy!

A tasting of four meatless “turkeys” for the holiday table

by Lou Bendrick

Can such a “turkey” make your holiday feast soar?Photo courtesy of Jason HoustonGiven the ire I provoked in last year’s turkey column, it’s high time that this Grist columnist acknowledges that:

A. Meat-centric holidays such as Thanksgiving can be challenging for vegetarians and evoke all kinds of emotions—including, but not limited to, extreme irritation toward carnivores.

B. These carnivores are likely to get very defensive, harassed by the guilty knowledge that even a heritage-breed, biodynamic, locally raised, and gently killed bird probably isn’t as environmentally or morally justifiable as a plant-based meal—even if that plant-based meal is highly processed, lavishly packaged, and distantly shipped.

C. Any moral high ground gained by having a plant-based Thanksgiving may become absolutely meaningless if you screw up a happy, festive experience with a protein centerpiece that looks gross, or worse yet, has a flavor capable of sending guests, carnivorous and non, in search of a Butterball.

These facts, combined with a directive from my boss, have led me into the world of fake turkey. (Oh, I do it all for you, dear reader!) I went looking for a turkey-like main course that could please vegetarians and flummox the carnivores who insist that all faux meat sucks. And so I assembled a broad panel of tasters: three former vegetarians (including me, a former Michio Kushi-worshipping macrobiotic), one devout carnivore, and one actual full-fledged vegetarian (15 years running). The panel also included four children, whose ages range from two to nine, and whose approaches to eating run from adventurous to upsettingly fussy. Together we sampled several seasonal faux turkey products to see if any could produce the happy, bloated contentment of holidays past, whilst simultaneously embracing the spirit of change, earth-friendliness, inter-species kindness, and so forth.

How’d we do? Read on.

Box-to-table dining. Photo courtesy of Jason Houston Tofurky Vegetarian Feast
Ingredients: Water, vital wheat gluten, organic tofu (water, organic soybeans, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride), white beans, garbanzo beans, non genetically engineered corn starch, natural vegetarian flavor, expeller pressed non genetically engineered canola oil, shoyu soy sauce (water, non genetically engineered soy beans, wheat, salt, culture), spices, lemon juice, calcium lactate from beets.
Price: $24.99 for a total of 3 lbs of food—“turkey” plus sides—from Whole Foods. Note: You can buy a single Tofurky roast, but I decided to splurge on the “feast,” which for some odd reason included not only a Tofurky giblet (!) and mushroom gravy also but dumplings and a jerky wishbone. (Who says vegetarians don’t have a sense of humor!)

Tasters were not sure whether to be comforted or disturbed by the fact that this product had a skin, which one taster described as smelling like “art class.” All tasters struggled for texture descriptors for Tofurky (motto: “America’s Leading Turkey Alternative Since 1995”), but the most evocative was “squeaky on the teeth.” Two tasters described the taste as bologna-like and most concurred that this “bird” was salty. Strangest overall comment: “Carp would love this.” The most backhanded compliment came out of the mouth of a babe, who, to the chagrin of her parents, exclaimed “It tastes like McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, and I like those!”

Nothing says Turk’y like a box. Quorn Turk’y Roast
Ingredients: Mycoprotein (58%), rehydrated egg white, pea fiber. Contains 2% or less of autolyzed yeast extract, onion powder, tapioca and potato maltodextrin, natural flavor from non-meat sources, salt, dextrose, gum arabic, calcium lactate, sage extract, canola oil, citric acid, garlic powder, pepper, sunflower & palm kernel oil
Price: $8.59 for 16 oz roast at my local grocery store

This product came highly recommended from Steven, the frozen foods manager at my favorite grocery store who also happens to be a bona fide vegetarian. Indeed, our panel’s own vegetarian taster admitted that she ate it “voluntarily” and deemed it the most turkey-like, juicy, and “pure.” The devoted carnivore, meanwhile, agreed it was turkey-like, but added that it was “dry, like an over-cooked turkey breast.” Overall, the group applauded Quorn’s un-stuffed, putty-colored honesty: As one taster put it, “It’s not trying too hard to be turkey.” Tellingly, this was the only faux turkey product that the kids wanted more of, asserting that it tasted either like chicken, or, weirdly, like pizza. Thank god they didn’t know it was largely made from fungus.

Full disclosure: The cooking directions called for this roast called for it to be cooked in its plastic “film.” There was no way in hell I was going to heat food in plastic, so I wrapped it snugly in aluminum foil. If this compromised the taste or texture in any way, we were none the wiser.

How much will you give me to try this? Field Roast Celebration Roast
Ingredients: Filtered water, vital wheat gluten, expeller pressed safflower oil, naturally flavored yeast extract, barley malt, butternut squash, organic wheat flour, granulated garlic, apples, mushrooms, onion powder, garlic organic wheat flakes, yellow pea flour, lemon juice, red wine, tomato paste, irish moss (sea vegetable) extract, black pepper, rubbed sage, rosemary, spices, natural liquid smoke and paprika.
Price: $7.99 for 1lb roast at Whole Foods

Though it’s maketed as a “roast,” the manufacturer lists steaming as a method for getting this fist-sized, squarish product ready for the table. I associate the holidays with roasting, but got over my cultural baggage and gave steaming a try. The method wins points for quickness and ease—but probably didn’t help this product’s texture, which inspired descriptions like “unfortunate” and was compared to rubber, cement, and—oxymoronically—“dried pudding.” More than one taster declared its flavor spicy. More specifically, tasters said it was like “Vegeroni” or “varnished pine.” The most damning comment came from a kid who said, “I would eat this for $10.”

What’s that in the middle?!Gardein Stuffed Turk’y Roast
Ingredients: Water, soy protein, vital wheat gluten, bread crumbs (enriched wheat flour (niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid)), dehydrated cranberries, natural flavors (from plant sources), modified vegetable gum, potato starch, long grain white rice, wild rice, expeller pressed canola oil and/or safflower oil, dehydrated onion and garlic, parsley flakes, spices, pea protein, carrot fiber, organic beet root fiber, organic evaporated cane juice, sea salt. Breading: modified corn starch, modified wheat starch, corn flour, wheat flour, sugar, toasted wheat crumbs, wheat gluten, sea salt, sugar, garlic powder, spice, onion powder, sunflower oil, dextrose, guar gum, yeast, extractives of paprika, caramel color.
Price: Time for a “full disclosure.” I couldn’t find this product at my local grocery stores or the nearest urban Whole Foods (where it is allegedly found, seasonally), so I had to call up its Canadian producer and ask for some. I don’t normally like to take freebies because I think they compromise journalists, but I was in a jam and there you have it. Oh, and they sent me some chicken-y items, too, that we didn’t have the time or room to taste. Truth be told, after just four veggie products, my panel was pissing and moaning and very ready for pie to be served. (Btw: It was this pie, made freshly by the Devout Carnivore.) In any case, the suggested retail is $3.99 per individual Gardein Stuffed Turk’y Roast.

Although this product looked like a “dog treat,” as one taster aptly put it, it was the runner-up to the Quorn roast, at least for the adult tasters who almost unanimously found the taste to be smoky or hot-dog like. Most laudatory comment: “Nice crunchy coating.” Most frustrated: “What the f**k is in the middle?” It fared dramatically worse with the kids, who reacted to it with terrible faces. One child, perhaps owing to the fact that bedtime was approaching and dessert had not yet been served, even threw her chunk onto the floor and wailed that it tasted like “rotten eggs.”

All’s well that ends well. Photo courtesy of Jason HoustonOne more disclosure: I also ordered a Stuffed Faux Turkey Breast from Café Indigo to see if a local (New England, in my case) and more boutique product ($25 plus shipping) was somehow tastier. But because of a shipping snafu, this banana bread look-alike seitan “breast” did not arrive in time for the group tasting and therefore did not have the benefit of an expert wine-lit panel. But I will say this about it: Seitan products are all more alike than they are different. They tend to be chewy and, at least to me, they all smell like bullion.

The Bottom Line: Do not, under any circumstances, let your dinner guests see any faux turkey products in pre-presentation form. Use the time-honored technique for overcooked real turkeys: Serve it sliced and attractively fanned out, smothered with gravy and cranberry sauce, presented to appropriately hungry diners whose palates have been primed by way too much Beaujolais Nouveau. In that spirit, consider the unpretentious and affordable Quorn roast. Otherwise, consider starting an entirely new tradition, one that skips highly processed and packaged food products and bases the entire meal on, say, homemade pie. There’s a new Thanksgiving tradition I’m sure vegetarians and carnivores could all agree on.

Daily Quote

2009-11-24T10:54:00.002-05:00

The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents, the second by our children.

--Clarence Darrow

Sheep Audtions: Come One, Come All!

2009-11-09T19:41:00.004-05:00

Julia made this whimsical cartoon the other day, and it was way too cute not to share! I love the details she put in--the facial expressions, the fainting sheep, Miss Hannigan drunk out of her mind...when she told Emma about it, Emma said, "Miss Hannigan? I thought her name was Miss Anakin!" (Anakin Skywalker.....sigh!)

Daily Quote

2009-11-09T19:39:00.001-05:00

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

--Aldous Huxley

Crabby and Scrooge-y

2009-11-05T09:32:00.002-05:00

I think I say this every year, but I remember when Christmas was fun. Decorating the tree and the rest of the house, going to parties, baking cookies, dreaming in front of the fire, making lists, shopping, getting cards in the mail. Everything about it was fun, something to look forward to the rest of the year, something to be terrifically sad about when it was all over and back to regular old life in the middle of winter, no end in sight. It doesn't seem like so long ago, but it really was. Because Christmas was the most fun when I was a kid--when I wasn't in charge of the whole extravaganza!

That is not to say that the holiday season isn't wonderful. I love my kids' excitement, I love seeing their faces light up when we turn the Christmas tree lights on for the first time. I love that they look forward to our first fire of the season, drinking cocoa in front of it or spreading out a picnic dinner. I love that they want to collect kindling together, that they squeal with glee when the ornament tubs are dragged from basement storage and they see all the things they love. Hanging the stockings, cutting holly to decorate the table. Baking cookies with them and tasting the dough. Dipping gingerbread in dark chocolate and making plates for our neighbors. Hearing Christmas music playing continuously. The first day we can go ice skating, watching their improvements from the prior year. And on the day itself, watching them enjoy their stockings, their gifts. Watching "A Christmas Story" time and again on TBS. Spending time with Grandma and Poppy on Christmas Day, when the rest of the extended family is off with inlaws (we have our huge family celebration a day or two later), so we have them all to ourselves with the gifts, a huge dinner, board games and movies and long walks with the dogs.

I guess my problem is the extended lead-up to Christmas. We start school in September, and from there it's a quick slide into October and Halloween fun--and after Halloween is over, BAM! Thanksgiving is upon us, our annual trip to Boston, Rachel's birthday, our wedding anniversary, and there's no catching of breath till Christmas. My to-do list is packed to the gills, and with four kids there are constant parties and outings and activities--not to mention the gifts and all of that that need buying. Every year I try to simplify--we just don't NEED anything! We all have lots of nice clothes for every season, enough books to read, a closet full of games, rooms full of toys, and don't even get me started on stuffed animals! Of course the kids love new toys--but trying to buy for them is practically impossible. As I search stores and catalogues, I constantly think, well, we HAVE that....we had something just like that and nobody played with it....we had something similar to that and it broke immediately....well, do they need more dolls, stuffed animals, action figures, puzzles, outdoor toys? Rachel is the easiest one, finally, after years of being in-between...she sort of played with toys but you didn't want to get anything that she'd consider babyish, and yet wasn't old enough to want teenager-ish stuff like makeup, jewelry, designer clothes, etc. Well, now that she has a phone she wants phone cards! She'd be perfectly happy if she got nothing but phone cards, I think....well, maybe with a sweater and a few books thrown in! But the younger kids...impossible.

And then there's buying gifts for adults! At least with the kids, I know they will love the things I get them, even as I grumble that I shouldn't be spending so much money on things they so don't need. But adults are tricky! On the one hand, I love new clothes, jewelry, books and movies, pretty things, kitchen gadgets, perfume, handbags, and all that good stuff. But when I am shopping for other adults, my thoughts just go to how much we don't need any more THINGS, or I am panicking about whether or not this is something they will like or use. It is just stress piled on stress. And somehow I am the one doing most of the shopping! Why is it that women do 95% of the holiday preparations--yet men get kudos if they go and buy a couple of gifts for their wife and mother?? It's just like the whole barbecue issue....sigh.

It all boils down to the fact that being an adult is tiring! Just another ironic facet of life--as kids, we focus on wanting to be grown up, because look at all the fun they have. They can do whatever they want! They don't have a bed time! If they don't want to eat broccoli, they make a salad! They can buy whatever they want without asking permission! They're allowed unlimited computer time! Well, if there are any kids reading--enjoy it while you can because once you're an adult, you also get to be stressed out and too busy to enjoy all these freedoms you have. I'm beginning to think Scrooge was right on the money, at least about some things.

Daily Quote

2009-11-05T09:28:00.002-05:00

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English--up to fifty words used in correct context--no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

--Carl Sagan

This is why we keep our annoying cats...

2009-10-18T19:16:00.000-04:00

It's all for moments like this.

Kids' Art

2009-10-12T23:22:00.007-04:00

Ben, Julia and Emma were busy drawing this morning, so much so that they didn't settle down to school stuff till eleven--which was fine with me, because I am at the awkward planning stage anyway, and still had to get some plans down on paper for the younger two. So I had my coffee while they worked on masterpieces. These are some of their pictures:

Emma's drawing of "A Peacock, a peahen, and some chicks!"

Ben's "Abstract Labyrinth"....not sure what this is for, but HE knows!

Emma's "Halloween Cat with Jack O'Lantern"

Julia's "Peacock"

Daily Quote

2009-10-12T23:15:00.002-04:00

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.

--Charles M. Shulz

Photoshoot

2009-09-30T13:49:00.008-04:00

First Week of School

2009-09-18T16:13:00.002-04:00

On Facebook and on the streets, I have been hearing parents talking about how happy they are their kids are back to school. Yes, those would be the parents whose kids leave the house for school! Almost all the homeschooling moms were dreading the first week of school, because it means that vacation is over and it's time to go back to work. Of course, there was excitement, too. We all homeschool for a reason, and if we hated having our kids around and couldn't stand helping them learn, they'd be in school!

This year marks a few huge milestones for my family. It is our 10th year of homeschooling. Rachel is doing her first year of high school work. It is the first year I am homeschooling every one of my children, and of course, this means that Emma began Kindergarten. She has spent the last couple of years wanting to be one of the big kids, asking for lessons and worksheets and everything else. Since she was 3, I have given her pages to color or a craft to cut and paste, or a book to look at and called it her schoolwork, although she was never fooled. She would insist, "No, Mama, REAL schoolwork!" Unschoolers would shake their heads at my kids, who really seem to enjoy having "real" assignments.

So this week we finally took the plunge (I waited as long as I possibly could to begin the year, even though the kids asked me things like, "Aren't you BORED of summer vacation yet?" and "When is this vacation going to be over?") and started on Monday. As always, Rachel had the best of intentions and once again has decided that she cannot sleep late because she has to get her work done--I'll give this a week more, maybe as long as a month--then she'll happily decide that a huge benefit of homeschooling is making your own schedule, and we won't see her till late in the morning again. We were all up and dressed and sitting in various places by 9:30 am, something else that won't last terribly much longer, as the younger kids will realize, as Rachel does with sleep, that one of the benefits to homeschooling is that they can play games in the morning and not settle down till 11:00 for their work, unless of course we have somewhere to be in the afternoon.

All in all, everything went well. I managed my time pretty well, giving Ben assignments he can easily do on his own, such as handwriting, spelling and math, while I work one on one with Emma. Julia sits at the breakfast bar or goes into her room to her desk, close enough that she can ask questions, but separate from the others. Rachel largely works up in her room, especially now that she has her own laptop. She did watch some DVDs down in the family room, but other than that she is quite independent. After Emma was finished with book work, she would go play and I would work with Ben on things like science and social studies and the harder parts of language arts. To my very pleasant surprise, he has been doing history independently, reading and making notebook pages--as assignment which last year had to be almost spoon-fed by me. Then I call Emma back and we do some things that I can teach to both of them at the same time, such as art, music and health--makes it easier for both the planning and the execution!

After they're all done, I turn my attention to Julia, so we can work together on a few subjects--French, parts of her language arts, and math. Math is her "least favorite subject," but she has discovered that she isn't so bad at it after all. We are speeding through a text that is meant for advanced 4th graders into 5th grade (she is in 5th grade now) and she is ecstatic to see that it is all review for her. I am hoping this builds her confidence so that when we begin her "real" 5th grade text, she won't be as tense with it.

And in my copious spare time, there are all the fun household chores, trips to the library, going to the gym, errands to run, and activities to attend--plus anything I might enjoy such as reading, chatting on the phone, playing a game with the kids, watching TV or a movie with Matt etc. This week we had two separate science classes at Brookhaven National Lab, a meeting to kick off Emma's Daisy troop, an afternoon with friends--and Julia has a party to go to tomorrow as well, so we have to squeeze in getting a gift sometime in the next 20 hours.

I am beginning to wonder if I have committed us to too many activities...but of course, with four kids I don't have a whole lot of choice! What I need is a longer day, but unless I change my biological clock completely and start going to bed and getting up much earlier than I prefer, I don't see THAT happening. Anyway, one thing this school year will not be is dull. Next week Rachel is babysitting, has a library teen program and a book club meeting, we are spending Wednesday at Fire Island with friends, we have a Foreign Lands club meeting with our homeschool group...and this is in addition to everything mentioned above. Thirty five weeks till summer vacation!

Daily Quote

2009-09-18T16:11:00.002-04:00

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

--Doug Larson

Potato-Zucchini Pancakes

2009-09-11T13:47:00.005-04:00

Today we were watching a clip of Giada de Lorenzo's cooking show on Food Network.com. One of the recipes was for potato-zucchini pancakes, and they looked simply delicious! They have parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, onions, garlic, and egg whites mixed in, and then cooked in a pan with some oil. Then after you're done cooking the bottom on the pan, you stick it in the oven for 15-25 minutes to let the top brown.

So we decided to make it for lunch. And it was so good! We made so much that we cooked it in 2 pans, one frying pan and one dutch oven. All the kids at them, even though they have zucchini in them, which is a hated vegetable in our house. You can hardly even taste the zucchini, and the parmesan cheese melts through the whole entire pancake. It's delectable.

Mmmmmm. Cheesy goodness.

Crispy, oily potatoes.

YUM!

Working

2009-09-06T16:18:00.012-04:00

We are working in the garden.

Yesterday, we used the rototiller to clear the big garden in the backyard.

Now, we're pulling roots out of the dirt.

The chickens are leaving little footprints all over the soft soil while looking for bugs.

Some of us are busy with other projects. (Like making a rock-smasher.)

Even the littlest are helping.

But just think: next spring, we'll have beautiful flowers like these.

I think it's worth it.

Maybe Ben is the Next Alex P. Keaton?

2009-09-04T10:15:00.002-04:00

Last night at dinner we were talking about our day, you know, the usual family-type conversation where Matt told us some things that happened at work, and the kids shared what they'd been up to. I mentioned that while I was walking over to the gym, I happened to look down and see an envelope lying on a neighbor's lawn--but it wasn't trash, it was an unmailed electric bill. I picked it up, and noticed that the return address was a house across the street, so I returned it to their mailbox, since nobody appeared to be home. This is the conversation that followed.

Ben: "So, what was in that envelope again?"

Me: "It was a LIPA bill--that means the bill for their electricity. I don't know how it got in the grass, but it's important that it gets mailed."

Ben: "Why?"

Matt: "You have to pay your bills on time. If you don't, they could shut off your electricity."

Ben: (thinks a minute) "And you have to pay for electricity every month?"

Me: "Every month."

Ben: "What other kinds of bills do you have to pay?"

Me and Matt, alternating: "Lots! Gas, telephone, cable, internet, insurance--life, home and car--, the mortgage, taxes, credit cards, car payment, cell phone............and then there are all the bills you pay at stores, like groceries, pet supplies, gas for the car, stuff we want at Target or Border's or a toy store, clothes for everybody and shoes....and then there's money we pay to do fun stuff like movies, field trips, museums, extracurricular activities....." (Are you getting that this could go on pretty much all night??)

Ben: (with a thoughtful look on his face) "Is this how you avoid being rich?"

......insert roars of laughter, with tears practically streaming down Matt's face.

And yes, that's pretty much how we avoid being rich!

Daily Quotes

2009-09-04T10:13:00.001-04:00

Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.

--Jerry Garcia

A Request for Treats

2009-09-03T10:15:00.002-04:00

This is a real conversation that happened yesterday.

Emma: "Mama, when will you make Rice Kwispie Treats again?"

Me: "When we have all the ingredients in the house, I will."

Emma: "But you can just make them....."

Ben: (pacing as he talks, very serious) "Emma, to make Rice Krispie treats you need to melt butter and marshmallows together in a pan, then you stir in Rice Krispies and push it into the pan and then when it cools off you have them." (Thinks a minute) "Mom-- we have marshmallows in the pantry, I saw them. And we always have butter."

Me: "I know, but we don't have any Rice Krispies. We don't eat them very often. Next time I see them I can buy them for you."

Emma: "No! You don't understand what I'm talking about! You can just make the Rice Kwispies!"

Me: So you want me to make the cereal myself in the kitchen? Honey, I don't know how to do that. That's why we buy them already made.

Emma: (grumpy) I think you could if you really tried. Or if you Googly-ed it.

Daily Quotes

2009-09-03T10:12:00.002-04:00

If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.

--Ignacio Estrada

September

2009-09-02T14:25:00.002-04:00

So it's September. Again. This year's difference is that I now have FOUR kids old enough to officially be homeschooling--and I say officially because as we all know, every parent out there homeschools their kids from birth until they leave the nest, even if they don't want to admit it. Anyway, the fact that Emma is officially entering the fold as far as lessons go is exciting and terrifying at once. First I have to deal with the whole "I'll never have another newborn/infant/ toddler/preschooler" issue. But then of course she has wanted to do school for several years now, and seeing her sweet face light up when she talks about being in Kindergarten and joining Daisy Girl Scouts is just adorable. But then when I am trying to organize four sets of school work, and thinking about how I'll help four kids with four sets of school work, I start going into panic mode. But then I remember that adding Ben to the homeschooling routines wasn't too bad and I settle down again. But then I think about how when Ben was added, Rachel was independent, and Julia wasn't too far from being independent, but now I'll have Ben who is less independent because the age gap between him and Emma is only 2 years, not 2.5 years and I start to panic again......

In short, I have spent this summer resolutely denying that September even exists. I have lived in the moment, enjoying all the things we've been doing, enjoying days where we do nothing too. I procrastinated viciously when it came to deciding what books to buy, in doing lesson planning and am only now completely my IHIPS (Individualized Home Instruction Plan, in case you care--which, by the way, is simply a syllabus and takes about 15 minutes to complete, most of which is lugging the books in by the computer and sorting them into subjects...) I am sticking to my guns and not starting school until the 14th--an entire week after Labor Day, despite the fact that I have seen that Arizona kids began school in July (~horrors!~) and other friends' kids went back two weeks, a week, or a day or two ago, and despite the fact that I have plenty of homeschool friends who either school year-round or started mid-August to give themselves wiggle room--I remain unpressured by the peers. So my summer is longer than just about anyone else's..and still I have insisted to myself that it will never end.

However.....despite my best intentions, September has arrived, and coincidentally, along with it has come bizarrely autumnal weather for this time of year. We had some real heat in August, even had the air conditioning on for almost two straight weeks, which we never do. Then all of a sudden the humidity evaporated, and a few days later the temperatures dropped down to a level that we generally don't see till October....barely 70* in the day time, down in the low 50s at night, sleeping with comforters, using bathrobes and slippers, the whole magilla. This change in the weather catapulted me into fall against my will--I have been browsing through catalogs and looking at Halloween decorations and wintry clothes, I have been making lists of school supplies we need, I have been mentally sorting kids' clothes into give away, save for next summer, save for another kid piles....and I have been working on my lesson plans and paperwork.

Stop it right now! I officially have twelve days of summer vacation coming to me. I don't want to think about this stuff yet. Why do I do it??

Daily Quotes

2009-09-02T14:24:00.000-04:00

The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."

-- Maria Montessori

Emma's Fairy Picture

2009-08-30T12:57:00.002-04:00

Emma made this picture and I just love it. She explained that they are good fairies, fixing things to keep everyone happy. The first fairy is turning the raindrops into a rainbow, the second is turning the meteor into a shooting star, and the third is fixing a wilting flower. I love the hard work she put in, the care she took in coloring--and the fact that she knows the word meteor!

Daily Quotes

2009-08-30T11:06:00.001-04:00

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

--Henry David Thoreau

Emma's Dolls

2009-08-24T15:52:00.005-04:00

Tiny doll overalls,

Best friend dolls.

Tiny little doll feet,

Dolls pets too.

Sleeping dolls,

peaceful dolls.

And Emma is satisfied.

Happy Birthday, Emma!

2009-08-21T21:39:00.002-04:00

Today is Emma's fifth birthday. I simply can't believe she is this old! We have had a child (or several!) under five since 1995...it's really hard to contemplate the fact that I am now moving into a new era of motherhood. No more babies, toddlers, or preschoolers--moving into homeschooling all four of my kids in a few short weeks. I have to admit that I shed a few tears today, thinking about the fact that all my babies are growing up. I know, five is far from grown--but it feels huge!

My sweet girl is already so grown up. In the past few months she has learned to swim, to read, and her drawings have done that big leap that allows you to see what she means to depict rather than having to guess. She is waiting for her Kindergarten work, so happy to be included with the big kids, with her own notebook and plans for each day. She sits in an armchair listening to music and I can see the teenager she will one day become. It really is amazing.

We've had a great day. Matt worked from home this morning, and Emma opened her gifts with everyone around. She got stuffed bobblehead dogs on a bed that she's been asking for, some tiny fairy dolls, an art set and a tote bag with matching sunglasses and binoculars. She and Julia immediately took off with a huge fairy adventure in the yard and inside, complete with houses made of cherrywood blocks. After lunch, we headed to a play date with friends, where we played all afternoon and had chocolate cupcakes we'd made. The kids had a blast and the moms talked mostly homeschooling stuff--the usual late August conversations. Emma got 3 more Webkinz, courtesy of Rachel and Ben, who insisted on going shopping for gifts with me while Matt made dinner even though I told them she really didn't need any more gifts! They of course made Emma very happy, and she is already thinking about playing with them in the morning.

We have a busy weekend ahead--a pool party tomorrow afternoon, which includes Rachel and Julia sleeping over afterwards, and we're hoping to go to the beach on Sunday--if Hurricane Bill cooperates, anyway. Today is also the third anniversary of moving into our house, which we also are grateful and happy for. It's a good life.

Daily Quote

2009-08-21T21:32:00.001-04:00

Actual Headline: Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Happy Birthday, Ben!

2009-08-03T20:57:00.002-04:00

I can't believe that Ben was born seven years ago today! If having kids has taught me anything, it's that all the old ladies I used to hate--you know the ones, they pinch cheeks and exclaim how fast you've grown up--were absolutely correct. Time flies, babies grow and before you know it they are gap-toothed kids with scabs on their knees who know how to tell time and multiply and write in cursive. Of course I still remember being pregnant, I still remember the day he was born, how his neck smelled, how he looked up at me with his big brown eyes, his tiny mouth always nursing. I still remember him learning how to sit, how to crawl, how to walk. I still remember how he'd say "Wa yelcome!" rather than "You're welcome!" I still remember how he was fascinated by Matt's boss and friend Tony when he was a toddler. Matt and Tony played softball on the same team and we'd go watch the games--Ben was fascinated, and eventually decided that his name was Tony, too. If I'd call him Ben, he'd say, "Me not Ben, me Tony!" If I asked him if he was hungry, he'd say, "Me not hungry--me Tony!" And now he's at the age of reason, playing chess, loving math, knowing all the trivia a boy's head can hold. Of course I am happy to see him growing up so well-- but at the same time I have to admit a twinge of sadness to see my boy get bigger every day!

Sentimental rant--check.

Now for the day. It was a really nice one, though Matt had to go to work. (He surprised us by coming home at 4:30, though, so that was fine.) We always let the birthday child have one gift in the morning--we like to have the whole family around, but with Matt going to work and at least Rachel and I still asleep while he's still here, it only works when a birthday is on the weekend. So the gift Ben opened was a multipack of water guns, each with its own special shooting action. One has 3 nozzles, one has pump action, one has a rotating spray...I forget the other one, but they had fun playing! (And, I know, guns are bad etc., but honestly, I don't count water guns!)

Rachel went out with a friend, so Julia, Ben & Emma played one of their super duper pretend games until our friends came over to play, bringing ice cream cookie sandwiches and some wonderful gifts, including a handmade mobile for Ben with a knight and castle theme--she drew each of us as knights, with Ben as the commander, of course. He loves it, and we've put it on the chandelier over the dining room table for people to enjoy for the next few days/weeks (we'll see how many times we bump into it!) Then Julia and her friend had a library program, so Rachel stayed with Ben & Emma and we mamas went to the library and had a nice hour chatting while the girls did their thing. By the time we got home, Matt was right behind us, so Ben opened the rest of his gifts.

He got a watch (and I made sure, per his request, that it was NOT digital...but I couldn't find one with a Roman Numeral face, even in adult watches. He graciously forgave me!) which he put on right away, and told us the time about every three minutes for the rest of the day. He got dinosaur summer pajamas--with shorts. He'd informed me last week that he really wanted more pjs that were shorts instead of pants, because he only had one pair. I bought him a pair at Target, but when I was birthday shopping I figured he'd like another--and he did. He was as excited about those pjs as any of his other gifts, and put them on right after his shower before bed and showed everyone how nice they are. He also got a wooden cribbage set...he adores board games, especially ones with strategy involved, but we have so many games that I always find it hard to buy more. However, when I saw this I realized we didn't have it and because it's a classic game he should know how to play it...something else he can beat me at! :)

We went out for Indian food at a new restaurant in town, which I jokingly say Matt tricked him into....the kids like Indian food, but it probably wouldn't be their first choice of cuisine. However, I mentioned to Matt that this restaurant opened, and soon after told Ben he'd need to decide what he wanted for his birthday dinner--if I needed ingredients I'd need time to get to the grocery store, after all. We don't always go out for birthdays, because often the kids will want something like homemade pizza, spaghetti and meatballs, or the absolutely fabulous homemade Chinese dumplings that we make...but if they say they want to go out, we usually will. Well, Matt then asked Ben if he wanted to try the new Indian place, and Ben, being Ben and pretty agreeable, said "Sure!" We had a feast--naan, dal, chicken tikka, lamb biryani, chicken kebabs, salad, mango lassis, basmati rice galore....they even brought out dessert for us (which we hadn't ordered) of a sweet coconut rice with golden raisins and plums. We were stuffed--but still managed to find room for a bit of birthday cake when we got home! Ben chose vanilla with strawberry frosting, which I improvised, making buttercream and using strawberry jam that we made in June after strawberry picking.

We'd planned a game or three of cribbage before bed, but that plan was foiled when we couldn't make heads or tails of the directions that came with the game--talk about poorly written! I went to You Tube, remembering my success with crochet after watching videos, but unfortunately, none of the videos I found made much more sense, because they were either explaining the rules or showing people play the game--just not both at the same time! Would it be so hard to play an open hand, explaining why you play each card and showing the strategy involved? But no. So tomorrow I will have to find the rules online and try to match them up with these videos.....

All in all, I think Ben had a fun birthday. And he and Emma are very lucky, because they usually get to celebrate three times--once on their actual days, once when our friend Jenn visits from North Carolina and we have a kid birthday party, and once when we have the extended family for a big party and barbecue. Seven years old.....happy birthday to my sweet, sweet boy!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-08-03T20:54:00.002-04:00

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

--Anna Quindlen

Summer Half Gone

2009-08-02T13:17:00.003-04:00

How is it possible for summer to go by faster than the other three seasons combined? I demand that someone get on this problem for me.....seriously, I haven't been blogging much lately. Part of it I can blame on Facebook--I talk to friends all day there and they see my updates constantly, so this blog, which began as a way to keep far-off friends and relatives apprised of our lives here, has become less necessary. One of the problems I have with blogging is that I make a mental note of events I want to write about, but then life is so busy that I don't make the time to write it down, and then new events pile up and before I know it I don't know what to write about!

So, in a nutshell, we have been really, really busy! Building the tree house, scraping wallpaper and painting the living room and dining room, swimming and seeing friends, having house guests, attending programs and events all over the place, Emma and Ben both learning to swim without any floaties, Emma learning to read, Julia going to science camp, Rachel getting a lap top with money she's earned babysitting, trying to plan lessons for all four kids come September....it's been a whirlwind. And looking ahead to August doesn't lend me much in the way of peace and quiet, either.

Favorites? Going into NYC as a family and playing all day at the Central Park Zoo and Victorian Gardens (an amusement park set up in Wollman Rink every summer now), though the trip via the LIRR was something we'll never bother with again! Adventureland, a new summer tradition. Beach days, pool days. Seeing Kelly and Collin, finally back from Okinawa after 3 years stationed there (we haven't seen David yet!) A day in Port Jefferson with Amie, Evelyn and Sadie, which began with seeing a play at Theatre 3 with 20 or so other friends. Time in the tree house. Seeing "Guys & Dolls" performed in Mattituck with Matt after a lovely and romantic dinner at the Old Mill Inn on the water. Seeing "Harry Potter 6" with the whole family, and "My Sister's Keeper" with Rachel and Amie. Greenport with Grandma Barbara, where we rode the carousel as always but then took a sail on "Glory," a lovely electric boat--and all 4 kids got to drive!

Planning....Ben and Emma's birthdays and the annual family barbecue at our house. Jenn and the kids visiting from NC. A trip to the Bronx Zoo, our first in several years. A camping trip, if we can EVER see a weather forecast with no rain in sight! The library's "Battle of the Books," where Rachel is the team captain. A trip to the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary. Seeing "The Wizard of Oz" at the Gateway Playhouse.

This is what I mean by a whirlwind!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-08-02T13:16:00.001-04:00

I don't want immortality through my work....I want to achieve it through not dying!

--Woody Allen

Summer, a Poem by Julia

2009-07-18T21:06:00.002-04:00

She keeps writing them, I keep posting them. My award-winning poet!

Summer, a poem by Julia E.

Soft summer breeze blowing through warm night air
Butterflies flitting around without care.
Bees collect nectar for a golden honeycomb
While on warm, starry evenings, deer and rabbits roam.
Birds call sweet notes from the boughs of trees,
While squirrels rest on warm house roofs, fat, lazy and at ease.
At the beach, from their watery sand caves,
crabs watch old sand castles topple down from the waves.
On those warm, starry nights in the month of July,
bright, booming fireworks rush into the sky.
In the sweet, fragrant meadows of lilac and flowers,
hummingbirds flit and sip throughout the sunlit hours.
Slimy, happy frogs splash in the lilypad pond,
while a meadowlark sings, perched on a willow wand.
Rose of Sharon bloom, and orange tiger lilies,
and horses frisk in pastures with their yearling colts and fillies.
The yards are green and lush, perfect for catching fireflies
against a starry, moonlit warm and perfect summer sky.
The swimming pools, the hummingbirds, the butterflies and bees
The treehouses, the spiderwebs, the lush green emerald leaves--
Oh, summer is and will always be the best time of the year
and in all the other seasons I hold summer memories dear!

Daily Quote

2009-07-18T21:02:00.001-04:00

Genius is born--not paid.

--Oscar Wilde

Daily Quote

2009-07-08T22:06:00.001-04:00

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.

--Erma Bombeck

The Shoebox

2009-07-08T22:04:00.002-04:00

A man and woman had been married for more than 60 years ... They had shared everything. They had talked about everything ... They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover.

In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls and a stack of money totaling $95,000.

He asked her about the contents. "When we were to be married," she said, "my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll."

The little old man was so moved; he had to fight back tears. Only two precious dolls were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness.

"Honey," he said. "That explains the doll, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?"

"Oh," she said. "That's the money I made from selling the dolls."

The above is a joke sent to me by my friend Julie. After I was finished laughing at it, I started to think about it. I don't know how to crochet, and I don't have such a shoebox in my closet. But maybe I should learn--because it does show a certain wisdom that I seem utterly unable to attain. A lot of women have been raised to keep quiet when they are angry, and sometimes I am that way. I have certainly had my passive aggressive moments--you know, like I can be royally ticked and when asked what the matter is I'll say shortly, "Nothing." However, most of the time I surprise myself by my willingness to argue over anything, and my seemingly unlimited capacity for nagging.

Our recently completed tree house is a great example. Matt made the offhand remark about a tree house back when we first moved into our house, but cautioned the kids that it wasn't going to happen for a long time--we had to paint the outside of the house, for example, and he couldn't even think of it till then. That project is finished, but the kids hadn't forgotten his promise (I think he had, though!) and so I took it upon myself to point out that this project should be taken care of before the kids actually all graduated from high school and left for college or parts unknown. Matt is a wonderful man--but he is a procrastinator of the first order. He is also a meticulous planner, something that my impatient nature kind of hates. Those two facts, coupled with the stupendously lousy weather we have had this spring, stretched the tree house project out over five agonizing weeks.

I don't need to go into the nagging itself, and I am the first to admit that hey, it worked! We have a wonderful tree house, the kids are having a ball. However, contrary to popular belief, I don't actually enjoy being a harpy, and it was only because I knew how patiently the kids were waiting, and how much fun they would have in it, and how much I need Matt to help me get the living room and dining room painted that I rode him so hard to get it finished. Matt and I have the sort of relationship where we are the best of friends and he expects me to be in charge--kind of an extension of homeschooling and spending all my time with the kids while he works...it is natural that he doesn't want to step on my toes. So any picture you may have of Mrs. Oleson from "Little House on the Prairie" isn't on the mark!

However, what I'm trying to say is that I probably should try to have a mental shoebox of sorts, maybe save some of the really sarcastic remarks for myself. Or maybe I should learn to crochet and actually make the dolls. Ninety four thousand dollars wouldn't hurt, after all!

--Jen

More Swimming!

2009-07-07T21:07:00.002-04:00

No sooner do I say it than Ben proves me wrong...he has joined the club and is swimming on his own now! We went to the pool yesterday, but I elected not to swim--I'd had a shower and washed my hair, and had plans for the evening to meet a friend for coffee, so I didn't want to have to rush home and go through getting ready all over again in addition to the whole dinner thing. Instead I brought a book I need to go through to take notes on programs and books I need for the fall. I was minding my own business, in the shade of the umbrella and taking my notes, while occasionally looking up to watch one or the other of the kids do some fantastic feat--when all of a sudden, it was Ben clamoring for attention. He was paddling along like he'd been doing it forever--it just clicked into place!

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture. I didn't bother to bring the camera along--we were only staying an hour or two, and although he'd put on his suit, I didn't think he'd even get into the water since I wasn't swimming. As I've mentioned, he likes water the least out of any of the kids, and he'll often decide to play some sort of battle game in the yard rather than swim. I was glad he got into the pool--Emma and Julia always wonder why he isn't swimming and if he's having fun when he doesn't--but I didn't expect him to get adventurous.

First all the kids got out of diapers, then they were all finished nursing, then they all slept in their own beds, now they're all reading, all swimming--and in September they'll all be homeschooling. Bittersweet!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-07-07T21:04:00.001-04:00

Never put a sock in a toaster.

--Eddie Izzard

Swimming

2009-07-05T19:58:00.004-04:00

I have been lazy about blogging lately--but I have to write about Emma learning how to swim! She actually accomplished this over a week ago; one day we were at our friends' pool and she asked if she could take off her life jacket. I readily agreed--she can stand on tiptoe in the shallow end, and it was hot enough that I was in the pool anyway. So she did, and she allowed me to hold her hands and help her to swim along, kicking her legs behind her. Then she asked to try it herself--and off she went! She was absolutely tireless, even wanting to head into the deep end. I put two swim noodles under my arms so that she could paddle along and grab onto either my hands or the noodles--and she was fearless.

Now it should be noted that Ben does not swim without a life jacket, so he wasn't terribly happy to see his two-years-younger sister swimming along like a duck. The next day he said he wanted to learn to swim, too, so I did the same with him. However, he completely lacks body fat--whereas Emma is a chubby bundle, he's more like a bundle of sticks!--and he had a much harder time staying afloat. He gets cold far faster, he has to kick much harder, and liking the water much less, he is tenser than Emma is. He did graduate to the point where he would swim in the deep end with a noodle, something he was never brave enough to try before, but he is not paddling along the way Emma does. I reassured him that we have all summer for more lessons and he'll get it as soon as he's ready, and Rachel and Julia helpfully pointed out that they were both later swimmers, 7 or 8 before they were confident swimming alone.

Anyway, I'm proud of my little girl, and joked that we should change her middle name from Grace to Goldfish!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-07-05T19:54:00.001-04:00

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

--A.J. Liebling

Reading!

2009-06-23T13:09:00.002-04:00

Emma is a reader!

For over a year, she has been interested in letters, writing, and the sounds of letters, but has resisted actual attempts to help her learn to read. She took the approach that it was fine for her to ask as many questions as she liked, and it was fine to help her do pages in workbooks, but she didn't want to hear anything from us when it came to showing her how sounds went together to make words. She would write actual letters to people and to fairies, painstakingly asking how to spell each word and writing the letters carefully (sometimes backwards, sometimes circling the page if she ran out of room, sometimes vertically-- but if you looked the letters were in order) and because she has been read to since infancy, she has many, many books memorized--so she would sit and recite books verbatim. She just didn't want to go through any actual organized process called "learning to read." I kept thinking she would read any minute, because she was so good at all this other stuff, but she didn't.

Then last week, during yet another interminably rainy afternoon, we were snuggling on the bed in my room, just idly talking and playing around. She asked me to play a spelling game with her, and so I started spelling some 3 letter words--pat, dog, ran, red, set, etc.--and to my shock, she knew what almost every one was! She was also excellent at telling me other words: when she told me what P-A-T was, I then asked her how to spell cat, mat, hat, fat, etc. and she did that easily. I said to her, "Wow, Emma! You are so good at this, I bet you'll be reading soon!"

Her response was: "Well, technically, Mama, I can already read--I know what noises all the letters make!"

After I stopped laughing, I pulled out one of her favorites, "Bing Bunny". She read it to me. This wasn't too surprising, because as I said, she knows a lot of books by heart. So I made her a story on paper with simple sentences and my version of illustrations....we'll skip those! But the story was something like, "The hen had a hat. The hat had a bow. The pig liked the hat. The pig got a hat, too." She read it pretty well, just a couple of mistakes. So the next day we went to the library and picked out some of those dreadful easy readers--and by the way, do people get paid to write this garbage? And is it any wonder that most kids think reading is boring???--guaranteed material she doesn't know word for word. And she read those, too, with some sounding out and some mistakes. Yay!

She still isn't at the point where she'll allow me to trot her accomplishment out to people. She gets shy when I tell people she can read and will clam up. But she is on her way--and anyone who knows Emma knows she won't stay shy for long!!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-06-23T13:08:00.001-04:00

Life itself is the proper binge.

--Julia Child

Strawberry Picking

2009-06-09T10:38:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we went to Wickham's Farm in Cutchogue with a group of homeschooling friends for strawberry picking. We missed out last year--the time slipped by and before we knew it the berry season was over--and were determined to go this year, so when I saw the group trip I lost no time signing up. We've picked peaches and apples at Wickham's before, but we'd never had the farm tour. We got a great long hay ride all around the farm and our guide pointed out all the crops and told fun stories about the farm, which has been continuously farmed by the Wickham family since before the Revolutionary War! We saw peaches, apples, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, nectarines, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries....and I may have forgotten some! I was amazed to learn that they actually get rid of their trees after some time; the trees have a certain shelf life where they bear the best fruit. Maybe it's because I am such a subpar gardener, but I can't imagine ripping these beautiful trees up and throwing them on a scrap heap, then starting all over from seedlings! However, it goes without saying that they know what they're doing, and I don't!

The day started off threatening and overcast; the trip was nearly rescheduled. But in the end we went, thankfully--because the sun came out and it was gorgeous. Not too hot, light breeze, no bugs. After the hay ride, we learned about the bees the farm keeps and we picked our luscious fruit, then picnicked and played with our friends in an open field with a convenient picnic pavillion. I stopped in to the farm stand and bought honey (from their bees, naturally) and two dozen homemade donuts......talk about delicious. I am thinking of trying to make them here!

We each got a big quart box to pick, so we ended up with two gigantic bowls of berries. We used half for our traditional strawberry shortcake dinner, and now have enough berries to last us at least two days around here! My mom always had a day where we had shortcake for dinner--and this is the real deal--no crummy sponge cake or canned whipped cream, but homemade butter biscuits topped with sliced strawberries juicy with sugar and fresh whipped cream with pure vanilla added in. To die for, simply put. The kids look forward to it--but nobody can ever eat all they take! It's that rich.

I'm always kind of sad after we go strawberry picking--it's the first milestone of summer to me other than swimming. However, after looking at the Wickham picking schedule, we may be picking quite a lot of fruit this summer!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-06-09T10:35:00.001-04:00

You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again.

--Tom Petty

Enough With This Weather, Already!

2009-06-04T11:02:00.004-04:00

I am not going into a diatribe here--but come on, we have had the rainiest spring EVER here on Long Island. This weather is just plain inappropriate, and it is ruining our good time. I expect better of the months of May and June. They are generally two of the most gorgeous months we have...though, actually, Long Islanders experience nice weather most of the year. Still, I am pouting. We are almost finished with the school year, and have not been able to enjoy enough time in the yard, on the patio, or on the beach for my liking! We were supposed to head into the city tomorrow for a day at Victorian Gardens (tiny amusement park) and bumming around....rain date. We went to the Long Island Game Farm on Tuesday and endured standing in a downpour for about a half an hour--though thankfully, that blew over and we enjoyed the rest of the day. Our staycation last week had unexpected weather interruptions that didn't make me happy. Enough already!!

However, I will say that it hasn't been completely miserable. We have had days since April that have been positively summer-esque, and those have been real treats. They just haven't been as numerous as they usually are. I'll leave you with photos of the kids in our neighbors' pool...despite the rain, we have been swimming several times. And our lovely neighbors Linda and Dennis are away in Maine again till the end of June, so we have the run of their flower garden and strawberry patch, too!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-06-04T11:00:00.001-04:00

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

--Bob Dylan

Tree House

2009-05-31T12:10:00.002-04:00

The kids have wanted a tree house since we first decided to buy our home. We have a maple tree in our back yard that is visible at the side of the house--it must be very old, for it is one of the biggest maples I've ever seen. It has a huge trunk that splits into four trunks about five feet from the ground. It makes a platform there that Julia has used for fairy games, but we have always wanted to put a tree house in. I was never quite sure how to broach the subject with Matt, because of course he would be the one doing all the work on it! After he built the chicken coop from his own plans, I knew he could actually do the job, but wasn't sure he'd want to. However, some time ago he promised the kids that the tree house would be the next warm weather project after painting the exterior of the house. (Privately, I think this was one of those promises that is designed to get kids off your back--but a promise to children is never forgotten, and we held him to it!)

I prepped him all winter--well, okay, nagged would be a better word for it, I guess. At least, Matt would say it was a better word! We planned a "staycation" in May, where Matt would take the week off of work, and we'd do all sorts of fun things we'd always wanted to but never had, AND he would work on the tree house. This past week was the week, and we have had all kinds of fun. Visiting family, a pool day, Fire Island, the Children's Museum of the East End, seeing "Up" in 3D, eating out...and working on the tree house. The first thing to understand about Matt and a project like this is that there is a lot of thinking involved. He is not one to dive in and build something--that is more like what I would do if left in charge--and believe me, if I built a tree house it would be very likely to fall out of the tree in a week! So his thinking is very important, very necessary, and worth it in the long run. In the short run, however, it made for a very boring "family project"....and so, it has become Matt's project. His original idea was to make a platform between the 4 trunks, about 15 feet up in the air. He was going to hem it in with railings, and a rope ladder tethered to the ground would take the kids up. No roof, no walls. Sounds simple.

Well. There was the hurdle of getting high enough to actually work in the tree. We have a wonderful ladder (ever seen the infomercials for the "Little Giant"?) but what with the root system of the tree, it was hard to get the ladder steady and close enough to the tree to work properly. He solved that by wedging a piece of scrap lumber into the tree that he could stand on. Very clever. Kind of scary, in my opinion! especially since he kind of fell a couple of times before he figured out the very safest way to wedge it! Then there was the problem of getting the supports into the tree--and don't underestimate this, because as I said it ceased to become much of a family project after a while. Simple logistics demanded this too--we can't both fit on his improvised work platform. So imagine him trying to hold the wood, the screws, and the drill all at once....I respect him very much for making it work! He rigged ropes to hold the board in place so he could drill effectively.

After hours and hours of labor, yesterday he was able to lay the platform, then climb up and drill it into the supports. Keep in mind that he also had to saw the platform to fit into the tree, with curved edges to fit the trunks into place! I get a headache just thinking of it. Once the platform was up, we realized with some dismay that it was...well... smaller than we might have hoped for. And once he made the railings it would be even smaller. I was trying not to sound disappointed, because I knew how very hard he'd been working. However, my dismay was real because I imagined only two kids fitting on that platform at one time. We have four kids. Not to mention their friends. So I was picturing the bickering about who got to go up, how long their turn was, when do I get to come up, etc. etc. etc. Something else to add stress to our days. Yay.

And then, my brilliant husband came up with a brilliant idea. He was at first going to extend the high platform, build it out from the tree to make it larger, with beams under it at an angle to the tree to hold it in place. That seemed like a great idea, and I left him to calculate how he would accomplish this. Then he called me back to the tree with his more elegant plan--two levels! I had thought about two levels myself, but my thought was to put a platform under the high platform, like bunk beds. I hadn't mentioned it to Matt because after that thought, I realized that a lower platform would be that much smaller than the higher one--because of the trunks of the tree. His idea was far better. And that was to make a platform about 6 or 8 feet lower than the original one, against the tree trunk with beams at an angle underneath to hold it up. This would make it like a pirate ship, with a deck and a crow's nest, and when we added a rope ladder from the ground to the first deck and another from the first deck to the high deck, would also solve the difficulty we've been having finding a rope ladder long enough! Did I mention brilliant?

So now, he is at Home Depot, buying some more hardware and lumber for the extra platform. He will work the rest of today and then goes back to work tomorrow--so very unfortunately, this is going to have to be relegated to a weekend (dare I hope evening??) project. Which means it will be a while before the kids can use the tree house. However, I think it will be worth the wait!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-05-31T12:07:00.001-04:00

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

--Ernest Hemingway

Fire Island Lighthouse

2009-05-26T19:23:00.014-04:00

Today we drove west on Sunrise Highway to the Robert Moses Causeway, over the bridges to Fire Island National Seashore. It always amazes me how many things can be right in your own backyard that you're too busy to see! The lighthouse is at the end of a 3/4 mile boardwalk, a lovely walk in and of itself--surrounded by dunes, the ocean, birds and plants. We saw many hoofprints in the sand, but no deer, though signs everywhere told us how many there are and not to feed them because it helps them overpopulate the area and destroy the ecosystem.

Here's a good shot of the beginning of the boardwalk path. You can see the lighthouse the whole time you're walking.

Emma brought binoculars, and here she is watching a red winged blackbird. Below, she is being quiet, hoping to see deer. We never did--probably midday is the worst time to spot them!

Just one of the views of the dunes as we walked.

Lighthouses have always seemed very romantic to me. I picture living in one a hundred years ago, working to keep the light burning for the ships, storms raging outside. However, on the tour I realized just how difficult it would actually be to live in one! This particular lighthouse has 192 steps to the top, and the keeper had to spend each night in the watch tower below the light in order to keep the light filled with whale oil. There was still a small opening where the stove's pipe vented, though it wasn't there to keep the man warm; rather, it was to keep the oil viscous enough to pour into the chamber of the light! The walls of the tower are 11 feet thick at the bottom, and when you get to the top they have dwindled to just a bit more than 2 feet thick. The steps are a dizzying spiral of wrought iron, through which you can see the floor below...and the top 2 flights of stairs are more like a ladder than a spiral. I was surprised that coming down was scarier than going up, because the holes in the steps tricked the eye and I kept feeling as if I would fall.

These are views from the top of the light. It was very windy up there!

The weather was a bit chilly--only around 60 degrees and cloudy much of the day. It made me wish we'd done this trip yesterday, but there was no way we wanted to go there on Memorial Day! However, we were fine dressed in layers; I just wished that we'd been able to spend some time on the beach. The top of the tower was wonderful--we were allowed to go out and walk all the way around the light, which was made a bit less fun by the fact that both Matt and Rachel were freaking out at how high we were and somehow seemed to think that the kids could ooze out between the chain links in the fencing! But the view was spectacular and I highly recommend the trip for anyone living here or visiting...as long as you're up to the climb!

--Jen

Daily Quote

2009-05-26T19:15:00.001-04:00

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

--John Ruskin

Murdering Cat No More

2009-05-20T10:39:00.004-04:00

(this is not an especially great picture of Lila, but I think it emphasizes her ruthless side...)

Our cat Lila, who began life in a studio apartment in Manhattan with a working couple, then moved to Long Island to live in a house full of people and other pets, did fairly well for about four months. She was timid and wouldn't venture out of the basement family room, and I was the only person who could reliably get close to her, but for the changes she endured I'd say she was doing all right. Then, for reasons we never figured out, she stopped using the litter box--so she became an outdoor cat. That wasn't as harsh as it seemed, because when we moved in we inherited a dog house, and when she pulled this it was May (of 2007) and so it wasn't a shock to be put out. She also had ample time to get acclimated and grow a winter coat.

Surprisingly, she took to outdoor life beautifully, and to my great surprise, she became much friendlier. I was certain that once we put her out, she'd take off and we'd never see her again--something I was willing to have happen after what she did to our family room carpet! But instead, she stayed close to home and let the kids pet her almost every time they tried. She loved the flagstones on the patio when they warm from the sun, she loved her little house and would nest in the blankets and towels we put in for her comfort, and she knew where we kept the food and water. She spent her first year outside in perfect happiness.

This winter, it was unbearably cold around here. The eastern end of Long Island is generally quite mild; we always get less snow than the western end, and sometimes even the city gets more than we do. So this past winter was quite a shock, with frigid temperatures and snow that stayed on the ground from December till February. I pitied my now-favorite cat (think about it: she lives outside so there's no clawing at furniture, hairballs or shedding!) and brought one of our cat carriers up from storage and put it behind the front door. Lila still refuses a litter box, so she would come in and sleep by the radiator in her carrier, and when she meowed we'd let her back out till she would bang at the storm door to be let in again.

However, once it got to be April, she was spending most of her time outside again, and with that came the unfortunate influx of dead creatures. In her time outside, Lila has killed birds, mice and voles before--but this spring she turned into a serial killer of immense proportions. We were finding her offerings almost daily--which says nothing of how many there might have been in other people's yards or hidden among the ivy that blankets one side of our house. We found them in the grass, in the driveway, in her house and on our doorstep. We found them looking just like they were sleeping, gutted and bloody, and even headless. Aside from this being disgusting, it was getting traumatic for the kids. They got very upset at each fresh kill, especially when we would find robins. We love robins, for their cheery songs, their red feathers which the kids love to find, their exquisite blue eggs which are considered treasures, and for the simple fact that they herald spring. Emma cried at the thought of baby birds missing their mama, though Julia reassured her that daddy robins also care for the young, so at least they wouldn't starve (though she worried that only the mamas taught babies to fly....) The headless mice were a horror as well, and when a cat has ripped apart a bird on your doorstep, it's extremely hard to get rid of all the feathers, a grisly reminder of the crime scene.

So yesterday, I bought Lila a collar. She hasn't worn a collar in a while because she lost the last one and all our neighbors know where she belongs anyway. But we had to have bells on her neck so she couldn't be a stealth bomber any longer. I chose a red collar, studded with jewels, with a silver bell on it. But I was dismayed that the bell just didn't seem to jingle very well, so I asked the girl behind the counter, and she had extra bells in bunches of two that can be slipped onto the ring of the collar. Lila didn't really enjoy the collar going around her neck, but she tolerated it when I held her and scratched behind her ears a while, and just like that, the serial killer is collared...hahaha.

Just a note: I came home last night from running errands and Lila came over for some love. While I trundled back and forth from the trunk of the van to the garage with my purchases, she ran into our neighbor's dark yard--I couldn't see her at all, but I could hear those bells the entire time!

--Jen

Eager Family Blog

Rachel's Excellent Adventure

Happy Birthday, Julia!

Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday, Sweet 16!

Letter to the Tooth Fairy

Emma's Writing Assignment

Every Day is Mother's Day

First Day of School

Great Adventure

Best Painting Tool Ever!

Garden Growing

Ginger & Bella Houses

New Year's Resolutions--Yes, In May!

Easter Picture, by Emma

Spring Craft, by Emma

Spring, A Poem by Julia

More Photos by Rachel

Enchantment

School Year Winding Down

Rabie Baby Comics, by Ben

Cheetah, by Julia

Lion, by Julia

Tiger, by Julia

Emma's Revised Story

Emma's Writing

All the Reasons I Need Never Get a Life-Threatening Illness, OR Why I Should Have Been a Doctor (because don't they make the WORST patients?)

Resolutions

....but really, I'm BUSY!

The Red Hot Chili Pandas

The Great Desert, a poem by Emma

Summer Vacation, Almost Over

Onion Rings

A little advertisement..

Emma's Birthday List

Happy Birthday, Ben!

Summer Planning

Summer (so far)

Life Is A Blur

Emma

Smeagol & Rabie Baby, a Picture by Emma

Emma lost her tooth! + Another note to the Tooth Fairy

Emma's Note to the Tooth Fairy

Lake Finback Dragon, by Julia

Forest Friends, a Picture by Emma

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Ben takes fencing classes

Vegetarian Chili

Potato Chips

Green, A Poem by Emma

Happy Birthday, Matt!

Fantasy vs. Our Real World, A Poem by Julia

Daily Quote

Vegetarian Thanksgiving

A tasting of four meatless “turkeys” for the holiday table

by Lou Bendrick

Daily Quote

Sheep Audtions: Come One, Come All!

Daily Quote

Crabby and Scrooge-y

Daily Quote

This is why we keep our annoying cats...

Kids' Art

Daily Quote

Photoshoot

First Week of School

Daily Quote

Potato-Zucchini Pancakes

Working

Maybe Ben is the Next Alex P. Keaton?

Daily Quotes

A Request for Treats

Daily Quotes

September

Daily Quotes

Emma's Fairy Picture

Daily Quotes

Emma's Dolls

Happy Birthday, Emma!

Daily Quote