Just desserts

While leaving a comment on a blogger-friend’s post this week, I noticed the profile picture of a previous commenter who is also a bloggy friend of mine.  I’ve seen this picture before but I haven’t stopped to really notice it in awhile, and it made me laugh out loud.  It’s a drawing her daughter made of her that showcases breasts bigger than her head.  The always hysterical Wendy blogged about it last spring and you should go check it out because it’s quite funny.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

I probably shouldn’t have laughed at Wendy, because the universe saw to it that Tea proudly bring home an anatomically correct drawing of me from school today.  And, like Lily, he created a fairly accurate likeness of his Mama.  No waist.  Large tummy.  In need of a haircut.  Yep.  I’m going to focus on the positive and be glad that I’m smiling.  For the record, my feet are not that scary.

Part of me is glad that he came home with a drawing of something other than a firetruck.  I have 9,326 pictures of fire trucks from Tea’s school art projects.  Fire trucks with beads glued on for flashing lights.  Fire trucks from the front.  Fire trucks from the side.  Fire trucks with popsicle stick ladders. Fire trucks with macaroni firemen.  Once Tea picks a subject, he explores it to its fullest.  I can’t say I’ll be sad to see his Fire Truck Period end, but a part of me is nervous – once he latches on to a subject he doesn’t let it go very easily.  This could possibly be the first of 9,326 naked pictures of me.

The scariest thing is that I’ve seen his 4K class in action.  During “choice time” the kids flit from station to station working wherever they please.  The kids working at “art” create something and then file it away in a mailbox to get packed into a backpack at the end of the day.  They can recognize their own names and sometimes put their art in their own box, but more often than not, they file it away in the box of a friend as a”present”.  God only knows how many children in Tea’s class are also bringing home pictures of me.

I so desperately hope he learns how to draw clothes soon.

Thank you for smoking

One of my dad’s hobbies is building cigar box guitars and dulcimers.  He frequents cigar shops to ask for their empty boxes and comes home with loads of them for free.  The best ones, he sets aside for instruments.  The rest are packed away until he finds a use for them or accumulates too many and gets rid of them.  Occaisionally I ask for a half dozen.  Anyone with kids knows that nothing is more fun than putting things inside of other things.  And I’ll be honest – I keep a few for myself because some of them are pretty.

Tea and Pea have a stack of cigar boxes outside for collecting and sorting rocks, acorns, shells, and mud.  They have a stack of them inside for holding their “specials” – cards, pictures, drawings, beads, anything else they want to squirrel away.

The hinges are sometimes flimsy.  The boys are not especially gentle.  The boxes do not last forever.  I asked Dad to bring another load with him when they came to visit this weekend.

Tea latched on to one box in particular and sat with it open in front of him, poking at its insides, proclaiming it to be his very own laptop computer.    Without encouragement or guidance he taped a construction paper keyboard complete with a space-bar into the bottom of the box.  He asked for help making a screen that he could change, so I broke out my stash of large promotional magnets (I knew I was saving them for something).  I glued a big one (I think it listed the year’s schedule for a local sports team) onto the back of the “screen” and then he glued smaller, business-card-sized magnets advertizing things like plumbers and veterinarians onto the back of the interchangeable “screens” he drew.

Tea wanted an email screen to write to his dad at work, and he drew a picture of a zebra and a sheep on another “so I can blog about my trip to the zoo.  I didn’t really go to the zoo, but I’m going to pretend.”  He swaps the screens out depending on what project he’s working on.

Emailing in his jammies, just like his mom. I do not, however, wear a crown.

Of course, Pea wanted a laptop like his brother’s, so I helped a little more with that one.  They requested yarn cords and “plug them in” after working.

I might have to limit their screen time before they even have real screens.

I see more cigar box fun in our future, so keep smoking those cigars, people.  I hear they are totally, totally healthy.

The cake

Despite the fact that tradition in my family has always been to serve birthday pie, somehow it has now also become tradition that my mom makes the cake of their choosing for the boys’ birthdays.  Pie is vastly superior to cake in each and every way, but there is something to be said for a child getting a birthday cake in the shape of their current obsession, like a firetruck or an elephant, for example.  As long as they also get pie.  Did I mention that the pie is still necessary?

My mom asked Pea a few weeks ago what type of cake he’d like for his birthday.  His response was:

“Uuuuummmmm, a fire truck, elephant, train track, ABC cake with sprinkles, letters, a fire station, a tree, grass, and uuuuuummmmmm…..1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – FIVE cakes in January!”

Riiight.

We quizzed him a bit more and he narrowed it down to a “fire station ABC cake”.  We weren’t exactly sure what that was, but we were also confident that Pea wasn’t exactly sure either.

My mom, of course, pulled off Perfection in Pea’s eyes.

It only took him 12 tries to blow out 3 candles.

It was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and it was delicious.

And now for the pie…

Happy Birthday, Pea!

Happy birthday, Sweetie.  We love you oodles and can’t imagine life without your goofy antics.  Thank you for keeping us laughing every day.

About that jinx…

That sweater I’m working on for my 8-week-old niece?  I knit, knit, knit, knit like a crazy fiend to get the body finished.  I gave up precious sleep.  I neglected the dishes, the floors, and the fact that I haven’t yet planned anything for Pea’s birthday on Saturday.  I kept eyeing the way-too-rapidly diminishing ball of yarn I was working from in dismay, yet I somehow reasoned that if I just knit faster, I could finish before the yarn ran out.  A logical assertion, right?

As I removed the completed body of the sweater from my needles, I looked again at the puny stash of remaining yarn, took a deep breath, and told myself sternly that the sweater would also be cute with short sleeves.

I was focused on the wrong problem.

I spread the sweater body onto the table in front of me.  I smoothed it down with both hands.  Wait – was it a little big?  I tilted my head.  Hmm, surely my niece was a lot smaller than that?  I squinted my eyes and leaned in, smoothing and re-smoothing the fabric, as if the action might suddenly make it snap into a different size.  I put my hands in my lap and sat back, staring at it long and hard.  Time stopped while I retrieved a tape measure and compared the 21″ chest with a handy chart of baby measurements (hint – the chart only goes to 24 months – 21″ isn’t even listed).  Holy yarn balls.  During the 16 hours I’d been holding the sweater, I was so worried about running out of yarn for the sleeves, I had neglected to actually look at it.

The sweater fits a three-year-old.

I have been known to exaggerate.  A little.  But no lie – the sweater fits a three-year-old.  A smallish three-year-old, but a three-year-old nonetheless, and with room for him to eat a few dozen cheeseburgers to spare.  To avoid any embarrassment that a boy might feel about wearing a lacy pink sweater, I won’t identify which three-year-old it fits.

proof of utterly ridiculous bigness

I want to blame the pattern – knitting guru Elizabeth Zimmerman is known for her “pithy” instructions, but I find statements like “babies come in all sizes” to be a bit vague for my taste.  But I’ll admit that I also made some modifications and sized the sweater up based on things I read on Ravelry – I was  using a thinner yarn than the pattern called for after all.  But nowhere could I find any mention of actual finished dimensions of the sweater, using the pattern as written or as commonly modified by other Ravelers.  Lesson learned.

Please excuse me while I rip out 12,972 stitches.

On the up-side, the reknitted version should have plenty of yarn left over for sleeves.

Knitting storm

I don’t think I’ve ever worked on this many knitting projects in a row, but I’m on a roll.  I have also discovered a direct correlation between the number of objects I finish and the size of the piles of dirty laundry in my basement.  Here’s a sneak peak of something for Tea and Pea’s baby cousin.  My goal is to get it finished before her baptism in  about 10 days but I’m sure I just jinxed myself.

I am loving this yarn something fierce and kind of wish I was ambitious enough to tackle a sweater for myself with it.  But my list of other people to knit for is too long anyway – people just keep having babies.  The nerve.  ;)

Comfy dinner

Something about dinner the other night was just spot-on perfect for a winter’s night.  I can’t explain why this simple recipe was so incredible, but Kyle and I both had to cut ourselves off from eating the entire thing in one sitting.  It’s a white bean and tomato casserole topped with bread crumbs.  It was hearty, piping hot, flavorful and crispy on top.

It reminded me of the taste of Smitten Kitchen’s scalloped tomatos with croutons, which is divine with vine-ripened tomatoes, but this one was also a snap to make and the bread crumbs were only on top, so they were all extra- crunchy.  I have skipped past this recipe so many times when menu planning, thinking it sounded boring.  I’m glad I finally gave it a shot, although I can’t remember why I did – recipe burnout?  We’ll be happy to put this into our regular rotation.

What’s your favorite winter comfort food?

White Bean and Tomato Casserole with Bread Crumb Topping

2 cups stale (or toasted) french bread

2 T olive oil

2 med. onions, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 15 oz cans great norther (or other white) beans, rinsed and drained

2 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes

1/2 t dried thyme

1.  Grind bread crumbs in food processor until coarsley ground.  Mix in small bowl with 1 T olive oil, 2 pinches salt, and black pepper.

2.  Heat 2 T olive oil in large cast iron skillet.  Cook onions for about 8 minutes until golden, add garlic for 1 minute.  Add beans, tomatoes with their liquid, thyme, 1t salt, and 1/8t black pepper.  Boil for about 5 minutes until much of the liquid boils off.

3.  Top with bread crumbs and place under broiler for several minutes until the crumbs are starting to darken.  Don’t let them burn.  Serve hot.

adapted from Jack Bishop’s A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen

Child labor

My new favorite thing to do in a snow storm is watch my children shovel.  They were doing a bang-up job with their croquet mallets but I was afraid they might be out there until March, so I convinced them to switch to a shovel and broom.  (Note to self:  buy another kid shovel.)

They are in that golden window when they are old enough to almost make a noticable dent in the snow and yet also be thrilled to help.  I assume that window will be open for roughly 3 days, so I capitalized on their pride in their independant snow-clearing and let them go nuts while I stayed toasty warm inside.

 

 

The best part is I can pay them in hot chocolate.  Everyone wins.

It was about time

But I’m glad I’m watching the snow from inside.

Oh wait – I have to walk Tea home from school in 20 minutes.  Hmmm.  Maybe he wants to stay there and join the afternoon class, too?

There’s also a dog around here

Our cocker spaniel used to get 100% of the attention around here, but in the last few years she’s sadly resigned herself to playing second, and now third fiddle to the boys.  I used to take ridiculous numbers of pictures of her.  Now I’ve focused that energy onto the kids and I occasionally realize we have next to no pictures of her since June of 2008.  Poor thing.  After the boys are tucked in bed she snuggles up close to me on the couch and I am reminded of when it was just the three of us.  I think she forgives me because I share my pilllow with her.

I just knit a little dog cowl at the request of a friend, whose own dog happens to have the same neck size as Punkin.  So before I packaged it up I tried it on Punkin to make sure it would fit OK.  And as long as I had her looking so spiffy I thought she’d like to have her picture taken.  You know, in case I don’t get around to again this year.  She approved of the cowl, so I hope Jocy will too.

But she gave me the saddest look when I told her she didn’t get to keep it.  Now I have to knit another one.