weekly menu – Page 11 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: forest meanders

Tuesday the nine year old got her second COVID vaccine shot. Apparently a lot of her classmates got to stay home after their shots, but I figured since she didn’t have any side effects the first time, she could go to school. Because I had to drop her at school anyway, I decided to check out Blockhouse Point trail, which was in that part of the county. The Best Hikes for Kids book mentioned that it was a moderate hike with a great view of the Potomac. Figuring that the 2 mile hike might be a good way to spend the morning, the toddler and I went to check it out.

Our hiking backpack had been in the trunk of my car, and good thing too. When I had parked at the trailhead, I looked in the backseat to see that the baby was asleep. She got quite cranky when I tried to get her to walk, so I put her in the hiking pack, and set off down the trail. I hadn’t used the hiking pack in a while because usually it doesn’t seem worth it for less than a mile and a half, but I’m glad I put her in it this time – the terrain was a little rough and she definitely didn’t want to walk. The trail was a lovely woodsy path that ran alongside a horse farm. We watched some large horses grazing, then continued onward.

By the time I got to the first Potomac overlook, the baby was asleep. Figuring this was a good place for a break, I took the backpack off, sat down on some rocks, had a snack and decided to spend some time reading. The view of the Potomac was beautiful and on the tow path below was mostly empty, maybe a jogger or two passing seen passing by. The weather had warmed up, or maybe I was heated from the hike? (It was really quite remarkable how warm it was because that morning there had even been a sprinkle of snow.) I passed an hour like this, reading in the sunshine. Though I felt slightly guilty for taking such an indolent morning, I couldn’t find it in me to waste the weather, the sunshine, or the baby’s nap by heading back to the car so soon.

After the baby woke up, We had a snack and I managed to get her to hike the rest of the trail loop with me, about a mile and a half. There was one point where I could have taken the fork back to the car or continue the loop. The loop was longer, but I figured that I didn’t know when I would come back to this hike, so I may as well finish the loop with its spur to a second Potomac overlook. The second overlook had a selfie stand, a project of the county parks which I found really helpful and kind of charming. There are sixteen selfie stands throughout the county, and I think I might make it a project of mine to visit all of them. I love a good project to get me to explore different parks.

Thank you selfie stand! I very rarely have pictures with the kids, and this made it easy.

After the second Potomac overlook, we continued on our way, meandering at a toddler’s pace back to the car. We saw mountain laurel and chestnut oaks, examine moss and mushrooms, crunched through leaves and balanced on logs and hopped over a stream. There were a couple of points when I thought the baby would refuse to walk, but a few well timed snack bribes and we actually made it back to the car. When I looked at my watch, it was almost three o’clock! Our intended two hour hike, had turned into a five hour forest wander. It was certainly one of those days where I felt like the real luxury in my life right now is the luxury of time. But even then, I feel this panic about not squandering it.

On Thursday we took a seasonal adventure and went to visit the Seton Shrine for their Candlelight Tour of Christmas Past. The Seton Shrine is a basilica and historic site dedicated to Mother Seton, the first American born saint. They have a program where a tour guide leads a tour of one of the historic buildings then historical interpreters re-enact life at the girls’ school in the 1800s. There were demonstrations of dancing, domestic crafts, and a lesson in French. It was a quiet and lovely evening, though, being over an hour away, it was perhaps a bit of an ambitious outing for a school night.

candlelit campus and a dance demonstration.

Friday the baby and I went on another forest wander with some friends from he mom’s group. One of the local nature centers has trails. The trail we picked indicated that it was a mile loop, but it was certainly longer than that as we ended up on the trail for almost two hours. Even going at a toddler’s pace, I feel like a mile should not take that long! But we had snack and the kids walked on logs and had a good time and for the most part walked. We even saw a buck! He was sitting so quietly in the leaves that we didn’t notice him as we paused to eat our snack. Breathlessly we watched, certain that he would bolt, but he just watched us as we watched him. After we finished our snack, we continued on our path and looked up to see him gather himself up and slowly walk off in the opposite direction. I know deer are plentiful (almost too plentiful) and considered a nuisance in this area, but there is still something magical about seeing them.

One evening this week was the nine year old’s piano recital. Her first in person recital since the very first recital she played in two years ago. That 2019 recital seemed so long ago. I had missed it because the four year old was sick that day. Well… I missed this recital too. A mix up about bringing cookies to the recital reception had me going to two grocery stores (one which didn’t have a bakery department), and then to Trader Joe’s. I hadn’t been to Trader Joe’s since before the pandemic and I’d forgotten what wonderful things they had. Anyhow, I got to the recital just as the nine year old finished playing. I guess even though she was half way down on the program, kids at this age play very short pieces. Well, there is always this spring.

Fun things this week:

People are starting to put their Christmas decorations up. I was walking a friend’s dog, and saw this in their neighborhood. It certainly checks a lot of boxes. The baby really liked this one – it feature two of her favorite things: “Bacca!” which is short for Chewbacca, which is what she calls anything Star Wars related. And “Soopy!”

-At the four year old’s school they have a “question of the day” and I love reading all the answers the kids have. Michael’s answer below struck me as hilarious in its unintentional surrealism:

What We Ate:

Saturday: Chinese takeout with friends.

Sunday: Turkey pot pie made from leftover turkey. I use this one hour vegan pot pie recipe, adapting it however I need.

Monday: Cauliflower Salad from America’s Test Kitchen Vegan for everyone.

Tuesday: Sweet potato and poblano tacos from Dinner Illustrated

Wednesday: Turkey soup made with Thanksgiving carcass.

Thursday: Take out from Dumpling House after our trip to the Seton Shrine.

Friday: Quesadillas and leftover soup before piano recital.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Being Thankful

The baby trying to carve the turkey. She needs a bigger knife.

Thanksgiving week! The three days before Thursday was two half days and a full day off school for the nine year old. For the half days she went to basketball camp at the rec center – masked and with one COVID vaccine shot, I felt like it was an okay activity on my risk scale. Then on the Wednesday full day off, she had a friend over for a playdate and they baked cupcakes from the Milkbar Kid’s Only cookbook. (I find calling it a playdate when the kids are nine… odd? At this point, aren’t they just “hanging out”? Certainly adults don’t call them playdates when they hang out.)

We had been planning on visiting a friend in Boston for Thanksgiving, but at the last minute she told us that she wasn’t going to be home, so we had a quiet family Thanksgiving at home. As is our tradition, we watched the Macy’s Day Parade and then the Dog Show. The Husband made sausage balls. We watched a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Some things this Thanksgiving:
– Buttermilk brined a turkey breast and it turned out really good. I had to brine it two days ahead of time, and didn’t really have a bag to brine it in, so I used the InstantPot insert. Didn’t quite get the whole breast submerged, so I had to rotate it a couple times.
-I also didn’t have a rack or a roasting pan, so I just used a regular 13″x9″ Pyrex pan and made a little “rack” by laying some carrots, parsnips, and onions on the bottom of the pan. It worked really well, and the roasted vegetables were an unexpected bonus to the dinner table.
– The family being understanding and not at all cranky when I underestimated the amount of time it would take to cook the turkey. The recipe I had been looking at had been for half a turkey breast. ooops. We had planned to eat at 3pm, but it was closer to 4pm when we sat down.
-Playing Ticket To Ride. Well the Husband and the nine year old and I played Ticket to Ride. The two little watched, then ran around, then started flinging the spare trains across the room. I’ll be very excited when they can start to play too.

picture taken by the baby… surprisingly well done.

-two pies. I’m sure glad I wrote a post last year about the perfect pumpkin pie recipe so I could recreate it. Though the pie still cracked. For the apple pie, I used the apple pie filling I had frozen in October. For some reason, the bottom of the pie didn’t bake through and I had to stick it back in the oven after we had cut into it. I need to troubleshoot that. It wasn’t even that the crust was just soggy from the filling; it was still raw while the top of the pie was beautifully baked. Still everything was tasty.

two pies – imperfect, but still tasty. and fresh whipped cream.

The Friday after, a friend who lives around the corner had us over for hot pot. This was such a brilliant idea for a small outdoor dinner party! We set up our camp stoves outside in the backyard, had one pot with mild broth and one pot with spicy broth. The spicy broth was filled with red peppercorns and various hot pepper flavors, making my mouth tingle happily with each slurp.

I love hot pot. One of my favorite restaurants pre-pandemic was a place called Urban Hot Pot. Everyone had their own burner, and there was a conveyor belt that ran next to the tables with the raw food and you could pick what you wanted off the belt to put in your pot. You could also order off the menu but that wasn’t as seredipidously exciting. On the one hand, one wonders at the novelty of paying to actually cook your own food, but on the other hand, the variety and ability to just eat what you want offsets that for me.

Not wanting to show up empty handed, I brought a container of cut fruit (persimmons, grapes and the good Korean pears – seemed like the traditional fruit offering) and some homemade Hong Kong Egg tarts. I love having egg tarts when we go to dim sum and I’ve often wondered if I could make them at home. When you get egg tarts at restaurants they always seem so delicate and fancy, and I was afraid of not getting the right silky smooth texture for the filling. Turns out they are pretty simple, to make. Granted, I did make a layered pie crust rather than a truly flaky laminate crust, but the filling tasted just as good. I didn’t have tart tins, so I used the muffin tin, and I thought that worked really well.

And now we go into the Holiday Season. Advent starts in November this year, On Monday I stopped at the library and checked out a whole slew of seasonal books for our Advent Book Tradition. Between the library books and the books we already have, I feel like we have more than enough books, but some nights we can read two.

We have candles… last year we’d forgotten to buy candles until the night before so right then and there I put a reminder in our calendar for the first of November this year: “Buy Advent Candles.” And so this year they were ordered in plenty of time and we are ready.

After dinner on Thursday night I let the Husband clean up the Thanksgiving feast and took a walk outside. It was getting dark, that pinky dusk sky, and the weather was still quite warm. I put the toddler in the stroller and went for a 45 minute walk. I hadn’t been out of the house all day, and was starting to get antsy. (The Husband had taken the kids to the park before dinner.) Things were pretty quiet at 5pm, but I loved walking around and seeing houses lit from within, and some already lit from the outside with Christmas lights. I looked at some houses with long lines of cars parked in front, and realized that for a lot of these families this must be the first gathering in over a year and a half. Over a year and a half of lonely holidays, cautious celebrations, small gatherings, and assessed risk just to be with family. I pictured the full tables and hugs and love that these houses were filled with. It was a great way to start the holiday season.

I’ll leave you with this bit of randomness while out on a walk – a persimmon on a postal box:

What We Ate:

Saturday: Pizza (take-out) and Holes. We had read the book this year, and the nine year old wanted to see the movie. I thought the movie was well done, but I was disappointed that Shia LaBoeuf was cast as Stanley. He did a great job, but in the book, Stanley is overweight, and that’s a pretty important character point. I guess that’s a fault with the adaptation, not with the movie itself. Still, the book is really so perfect in how it unfolds, that the m

Sunday: Leftovers.

Monday: Stir Fried Tofu and Mushrooms with Fermented Black Beans. This was kind of a not-quite-Mapo Tofu recipe – not really what I expected, but still really tasty. We ate it with noodles.

Tuesday: Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup (from a box).

Wednesday: Chicken Soup with rice and farro, loosely based off a recipe from Dinner Illustrated. Only I added parsnips and butternut squash because we had a bunch of that to eat up.

Thursday: Thanksgiving!!! Buttermilk brined turkey breast *loosely following this recipe), fennel salad with oven wilted grapes (I was the only one who like this), roasted carrots and parsnips (roasted with turkey), cranberry sauce, sauteed green beans (the Husband’s garlic soy sauce method), rolls, gravy (from turkey drippings),

Friday: Pizza (take out) and A Christmas Movie Christmas. This movie was actually kind of funny – two sisters, one of whom loves Christmas movies, magically get transported into one and get to live out all the Christmas movie cliches. The ending was a little flat for me, but as Christmas rom-coms go, I thought this one was pretty fun and original in it’s familiarity.

Weekly Recap+ what we ate: Miles to go before I sleep

Through a coincidence of scheduling, this week I had signed up each of the three kids for hiking programs with the county parks department. The weather was up and down all week – mostly down – so I was a little nervous they might be miserable. But I bundled the kids up and each excursion was quite fun. In terms of bundling, this year, I bought the older kids HeatTech underlayers from Uniqlo to layer under their clothes and they seem to be really happy wearing them. The baby has wool underwear hand me downs from the older kids. I also bought them all SmartWool socks when they were on sale last month. I’m hoping that between the underlayers and the winter coats, hats, gloves, and scarves, we will be well equipped for outdoor winter excursions.

The weekly forecast – quite a range of temps.

First up was the baby (okay, toddler) and a ramble through the woods. It was chilly, but we had fun. We looked under logs and found snails and beetles, and crunched through the fallen leaves, and enjoyed the fall colour and bare trees, and sat and had a snack on a pile of logs. The naturalist also pointed out ar eally cool tree that had really been two trees growing together, but one of the trees had fallen away, leaving some above ground roots like a scraggly wizard’s beard. I was utterly fascinated by the tangle of tentacles.

Discoveries in the woods.

At the end of the week was the nine year old’s turn. I had signed us up for a Full Moon Hike at one of our Nature Centers. The hike started at 7pm and actually wasn’t as cold as I had feared. Or maybe I was just overly bundled. The naturalist who led the hike was really enthusiastic and pointed out all sorts of ways for us to “observe” things on a hike using our sense of hearing. I was really surprised how bright the moon was – the only time we used flashlights was when the naturalist was doing a show and tell of some animal furs that she had brought along to illustrated the kinds of animals lived in the area.

The four year old’s chance came over the weekend, with a hike that the nature center called “Wild Child Hike”. The naturalist took the kids off the trail to find fallen trees and logs and rocks to climb and jump over and balance on. Some of the fallen trees feel in such a way that one end was wedged on other trees, creating tree trunk ramps that rose quite high off the ground. The four year old also spent much time just poking at termite soften stumps with a stick.

I was struck by how kids are happy to repeat actions without purpose or end point. The baby was at a toddler play group recently and there was a ball ramp toy that she played with endlessly, dropping ball after ball down the ramp and watching balls fall from one track to the other. Similarly with the four year old and his fierce stick poking and poking and slashing at rotten tree stumps. In Kieran Setiya’s Midlife he talks of telic and atelic activities – the former are things that you with with and end point in mind and the latter are activities without end points. He points to being able to engage in atelic activities as one of the keys to satisfaction in life. It occurred to me that this idea is one of those things that children have figured out, but which they lose the sense of as they grow up. Or perhaps they are taught that only telic activities have value. I feel like one of the luxuries of unemployment is being able to reconnect with the atelic activities in my life. It seems horribly self indulgent. But perhaps that’s the problem?

Something I Googled this week: “How to remove a doorknob with no screws”.

The baby has now figured out how to lock doors. Quite intentionally. This is a problem. She locked the door to the kids’ room this week. Twice. The second time, the nine year old managed to pop the lock with a butter knife. And that’s when we realized that it wasn’t a fluke and the baby was doing it on purpose. So we decided that the door knob had to come off. Only there were no visible screw by which to unscrew the door knob and remove it. Thank goodness for YouTube videos. It’s been a little strange to not have a doorknob. We will eventually replace it, but our house has these vintage (or retro, your pick) brass knobs with that irreplaceable patina of age and life, so, like many things with us, it might be a while before we figure out what we want to do.

Growing things:

I snapped a picture of this tree in the front yard of our first house. We are lucky enough that after we moved to our current house, we were able to rent out this house. Our first little house holds a lot of memories – we moved in right before we got married, had our rehearsal dinner there, brought two of our kids home from the hospital to this little yellow house… The Husband and I sometimes think we will move back there after the kids are grown and we need less space. This pear tree had been about half the size when we first moved in eleven years ago. It was a little sapling, almost haphazardly placed in the front yard. The Husband and I used to joke that the previous owners put it there to cover up a dead body, its presence was a little random bit of landscaping. Every spring the tree would explode with white blossoms and I would insist on taking pictures in front of it. We moved out of that house three years ago. This week when I was over doing some maintenance, I was struck by that feeling you get when you don’t see someone for a long time, and suddenly you see them and realize that they’ve been growing and flourishing while you weren’t there.

Growing siblings:

Usually the Husband picks up the kids after school, but I did the pick up run one day and decided to walk. It’s getting darker now – technically sundown comes just as the bus pulls up around 4:50pm. Even though the walk home is pretty short – less than half a mile – some days the walk is like herding cats. There is usually one kid who doesn’t want to walk, one kid who wants to explore every leaf and stick and one kid who is charging ahead. The other day, I was not in the mood for the walk to take 20 minutes, so I told the nine year old and the baby to hold hands. The nine year old, nose buried in her book, managed to hold her sister’s hand all the way home. I don’t know if it was the reading while walking, or the firm grasp on her sister’s hand, or the gorgeous winter sunset, but something about the whole scene made me want to burst with joy.

Speaking of heart bursting:

One morning, in the mad dash to get out the door and to school, I forgot something inside the house. I can’t remember what now. But I ran inside to grab it off the dining room table. And I looked up and something about the way the early winter sunlight streamed low and intense through the curtain just made me stop breathless. The room was bathed in this beautiful orange light, as if the curtain weren’t just cloth and thread, but the stained glass of a cathedral. And it didn’t matter, the half eaten cereal bowls and banana peels left on the table from breakfast, or the mismatched chairs, or the mess of papers… for that one moment, the dining room was the most perfect place in the world, and even though we were late and the morning was chaotic, I felt frozen, and I almost wept at the beauty of it.

Not the moment, but the same scene captured later in the day.

What We Ate:

Saturday: oooh can’t remember. It might have been leftovers.

Sunday: Leftovers. Grilled cheese Sandwiches for the kids.

Monday: Black bean soup and quesadillas.

Tuesday: Pearl Meatballs (pork meatballs covered with sticky rice), sauteed bok choy, and Breakfast at Shuko’s noodles (from Meera Sodha’s East). These noodes were pure saucy tasty comfort for me – udon noodles mixed with raw eggs and soy sauce. Sounds odd, but raw eggs and soy sauce is one of my favorite dipping sauces for hot pot, so it was actually a very nostalgic combination for me. Hot pot places don’t let you do the raw egg/soy sauce combo these days because of concerns of food safety, I guess.

Wednesday: Lentil Salad from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone.

Thursday: The Husband cooked – breakfast sandwiches.

Friday: Bah Minh sandwiches take out. No movie tonight because of Full Moon Hike.

Weekly recap + what we ate: little completed things and fun things

This week I finally installed the pencil sharpener. It’s one of those old fashioned hand crank sharpeners that had come with the house that my parents had bought. We actually already had one, but our was a vacuum seal one that never quite stuck and didn’t sharpen very well. Using it was always a frustrating endeavor of wedging and turning. When I was growing up, we had a pencil sharpener that my father had mounted on a piece of wood with a protruding rim on the bottom so that you could actually just put it on any table and the rim would sit flush against the edge of the table and keep it in place.

Anyhow, it has been a great debate between the Husband and me where to mount the pencil sharpener. I kind of wanted to put it in the coat closet. I used to work at a summer festival and there was an old fashioned pencil sharpener mounted inside the storage closet in the rehearsal hall. It wasn’t an obvious place to find a pencil sharpener because the closet was used for furniture storage from artist housing so no one every really went in there. Whenever someone would come up to me in rehearsal, asking, “Do you have a pencil sharpener?” I would point them to the closet. The nostalgic cry of joy and delight that usually resulted always made me really happy.

Despite my fond memories, the Husband pointed out that the coat closet was actually rather an impractical place for the pencil sharpener. He wanted it in the basement. Too far to go , I said. What about the linen closet, I countered. Still a closet. Back and forth. Finally we settled on just screwing it into the nine year old’s drafting table. We figured it wasn’t a permanent solution (I’m big on non-permanent solutions…), and at least it would be mounted then.

Two weeks later, I finally got the drill out and attached the pencil sharpener. It was one of those quintessential little tasks that gets put off but really takes only a few minutes to do. Although to be fair, it took the better part of an afternoon because I was also trying to keep the baby out of trouble. But it is mounted now and we can sharpen pencils with ease and convenience and it’s a lovely thing.

The other little “get it done” task I finished last week was replacing the zipper on the four year old’s hoodie. My Sister in law had given him this super adorable dinosaur hoodie, but the zipper broke earlier this year. I had been resigned to the hoodie never being worn again, but then I texted a good friend of mine who runs a costume shop.

“How difficult is it to replace a zipper on a hoodie?” I asked.

“Not too difficult. Except the hoodie might be stretchy and the zipper isn’t. Maybe hand stitch it first before running it through the machine.”

With those works of encouragement and after watching a few YouTube videos, I went to Joann’s and picked up a new zipper. Taking the old zipper out was a little scary, but I figured throwing out a hoodie with a broken zipper and throwing out a hoodie with a botched attempted repair was probably the same thing, so I might as well try. And it wasn’t as terrible as I thought it was. I had to find the zipper foot for my sewing machine and then google how to use it because my sewing machine is ancient. And an afternoon sitting in the sun with my seam ripper and an evening with my sewing machine and it was done! It’s not terribly pretty on the inside, but no one sees the inside anyway, I guess. And the four year old gets to wear the hoodie again. Frugal win and another thing for my “Things I learned to do” list.

Speaking of “Things I learned to do” list … on Thursday, the Husband had the day off for Veteran’s Day and we spent the day together, picking up spicy jerk chicken sandwiches for lunch, eating in a park and then running errands. One of his errands was a visit to a local music store. Earlier this month, I saw Steve Martin play the concertina on his new Hulu series Only Murders In the Building, and was instantly charmed. Well, the Husband thought that this would be fun and was going to buy me a concertina for Christmas. While at the store, though, we found out that they actually rent concertinas, and figuring that that was a lower price point for entry, we went ahead and did that. I’m really excited.

The weather this week has been up and down. Tuesday was sunny and 60s. I took the baby on a little walk on a local trail. We found some big leaves, bare trees, falling leaves, and rocky outcrops.

Also, randomly, a bench:

I would love to know the story of how this bench came to be placed by the stream. The path on this side of the trail is quite overgrown and narrow, so I imagine it must have taken some effort. I picture someone (or some two) deciding this was a lovely spot, and what it needed was a bench. And then lugging a bench through the grass and bramble and depositing it here, a little hidden, but not to hidden not to be found and enjoyed. It was much appreciated, though, for it made a lovely spot to sit and have a snack with the baby. Eventually the baby got tired of walking, so I put her in the carrier and she soon fell asleep. As I walked, I tried to capture pictures of the falling leaves, but that proved difficult, so I just sat on a rock while the baby slept in the carrier, and spent half an hour just watching leaves fall. It seemed hugely indulgent. But then again, who am I to wake a sleeping baby?

I capped the morning off by accidentally locking the keys in the car with the baby. Luckily the Husband works nearby and could run home and get my keys, but my morning outside stretched into the afternoon as I stood outside the car trying to keep the baby amused while she was strapped into her car seat inside the locked car. We watched a lot of videos from this website, including this beautiful and fascinating one showing insects taking off into flight. I’ve always resisted using a screen to amuse the baby, but I guess when she is locked in a car one learns to make exceptions and not stand on principal.

Other things to savor this week:
-Drizzly rainy walk to school, despite some complaints.

-This backpack, from my college days, still very much in use. I never guessed when I bought this backpack to cart textbooks and note books that twenty years later it would be my go to back for snacks and diapers and wipes. It’s had a lot of good adventures and shows no sign of stopping.

-This ever shifting reflection of morning sunbeams, bouncing off the creek and dappling the footbridge and rocks.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Mac and Cheese (the blue box) and Butternut squash soup (also from a box)

Sunday: Leftovers

Monday: Vegan Gnocchi Soup. This was really tasty and the Husband asked that it be put into our regular rotation.

Tuesday: Black beans nachos. I always forget what an easy meal nachos is. I guess it always seems like an appetizer to me, but it does make a really fast simple dinner.

Wednesday: Kale Paneer from Meera Sodha’s East. My favorite way to use up a plethora of kale.

Thursday: The Husband made fried rice.

Friday: Pizza and Fireman Sam and Snoopy. It was the four year old’s turn to pick the movie.

Weekly Recap + what we ate: adventures and advances

I feel like we hit a parenting milestone this week when the Husband and I helped the nine year old with her long house model. There was a bit of arguing and tears and probably more than a little co-opting of the project by the grown ups. I’m sure the latter was cause for the former. In the end, we had a lumpy, twig, bark and hot glue structure in a base of modelling clay.

I never had to do models or dioramas when I was in school. I do remember my mother helping my brother fashion a puppet of White Fang out of toilet paper tubes held together with cooked white rice as glue since white glue wasn’t something we kept on hand. My mother was endlessly and optimistically creative. She could see the possibilities in so many mundane things, a artistic combination of clever and frugal.

The Husband suggested that we send the nine year old on the bus with her model, but I couldn’t bear the possibility of our hard work getting crushed or dropped, so I drove her to school the next day, her longhouse safely ensconced in the passenger seat next to me. I’m sure (I hope) that I will become less possessive of the school projects.

In my habit tracker, I have a category for blog/art. The “art” category was leftover from this past year when I was taking the drawing class… a reminder to spend time every week creating. The art boxes on the habit tracker have been woefully unchecked since spring. But I realized that this week and last thatI have been making art. I mean these cardboard and tape and twig and glue concoctions… That’s art, right?

The rest of the week was a combination of drizzly days and mild days. On the drizzly day, in my effort to spend time outside, I took the baby to a new to me park – it wasn’t really a park; it was an old golf course that is no longer in use, but which the city took over. The city is still trying to decide what to do with it, but in the meantime, it features a mesh of walking paths. It’s interesting to see the vestiges of the sand traps from the golf course interspersed with over grown natural vegetation.

Wednesday was chilly. We awoke to frost on the ground and ice on the windshield. I pulled out the hat and mittens and winter gear. There was a frustrating moment of stress when I couldn’t find the ice scraper as the kids were loading themselves into the car on the way to the nine year old’s 7:15am piano lesson. I texted her teacher to know we were running late, turned on the heat and fans, and tried to figure out how to clear the windows. “Use the windshield fluid!” The Husband reminded me, and luckily the icy layer was thin enough and that did the trick.

We have a (admittedly arbitrary) rule that the heat doesn’t get turned on until November, and we certainly didn’t need to this year. In the past, getting through October without turning the heat on was always a challenge, but this year I’ve been lulled by the mild, summer-like fall. Its kind of like the temporal equivalent of hedonistic adaptation.

Anyhow, I’ve located the ice scrapers and I’ll be ready next time.

Thursday the nine year old was off school so we took our Fall trip to Longwood Gardens. I had a fear of the children being cold and then complaining and immovable, so I made everyone wear long underwear, hats, and gloves in addition to their coats. Turns out it was a little bit of overkill. The weather was sunny and brisk and beautiful.

I’ve been doing these mediations with the four year old on the app Smiling Mind, and one of the practices is about noticing colour. In the meditation, the voice slowly recites the colours of the rainbow and encourages the listener to find each colour as he says them. I’ve found this also to be a great game to play with the kids. I always think of Fall as a colourful season, but one of a limited palette. But while, there certainly was a riot of oranges and yellows, the other colours proved easy to find too. Except blue. I didn’t find any blue plants, so the blue sky will have to do.

Rainbow!

On the way home, there was this beautiful evening sky, which I thought especially fun juxtaposed against the red taillights.

I had written last post about how quickly the county and pharmacy’s 5-11 COVID vaccine appointments booked up super quickly. Well on Thursday while we were at Longwood Gardens, I checked my email and our pediatrician’s office had sent an email saying they had vaccine appointments available. The Husband got on the phone immediately and was able to book the nine year old for her first shot the next day! And to be super efficient, we also booked flu shots for her and the four year old. (The baby got her flu shot at her 2 year check up.) I’m so excited and relieved that this is done. There seems to be new appointments opening up every few days so I know I ultimately didn’t have to worry about not finding her an appointment, but still it’s good to know that the first shot is in her arm. We have the second shot scheduled for after Thanksgiving so by Christmas she’ll by as fully immunized as she can be at this point. Hooray!

The whole process was quick an pretty painless. A 9am appointment. 15 minutes waiting in the reception area afterwards for side effects and then we were on our way. The nine year old said that the flu shot actually hurt more than the COVID shot. The four year old was so cute… he thought the Band-Aid was the flu shot and refused to take it off. And when he took a bath he was so worried that the Band-Aid would fall off. I had to explain the whole thing to him several times and eventually he did let me take the Band-Aid off.

Things I’m looking forward to for the nine year old:
– eating in a restaurant. Her favorite restaurant is having live music again and the Husband and I are thinking this might be the place to take her on a special daddy-mommy-daughter celebration date.
– joining a basketball league. She has been taking indoor dance and swimming, but somehow the close contact nature of basketball seems more risky, so we’ve been putting this off.
-maybe having a birthday party for her. She has a winter birthday so there aren’t a lot of outdoor options. Of course this means I’ll have to plan a birthday party, which I’m not terribly looking forward to. (But I’ve been reading Oliver Burkeman’s book 4000 Weeks, and he says that once we confront the finitude of our lives, we learn to feel fortunate for even the most painful and mundane tasks…. I’m trying to embrace that.)

So a very full week, but not much knocked off the to do list. Many tasks just got migrated to this week. I did do my emissions test (and paid the late fee) and picked out tile for a rental house repair. I guess two things on the “Done” list is okay. And we did finish watching Schmigadoon, which given our poor record for finishing anything on TV, does feel like an accomplishment. And it was a delightful show too.

Oh: a haiku from last month that I just now found randomly in my time log journal:

September apples
A two bushel haul. Transformed
to October sauce.

What We Ate: The nine year old wanted to plan the menu this week

Saturday: Pizza leftover from the previous night. And Star Wars finally.

Sunday: Halloween – not quite sure. It was probably leftovers and lots of candy.

Monday: Mac and Cheese and Cucumber Tomato Salad. The stuff in the blue box.

Tuesday: Salmon Burgers and Caesar Salad.

Wednesday: Cornflake oven fried chicken and roasted veggies (Squash, sweet potoates, leeks, and potatoes – basically kitchen sink)

Thursday: Chipotle on the way home from Longwood Gardens

Friday: Pizza (Husband made) and Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. I hadn’t seen this when it originally came out in 2005 and it’s surprisingly less dated than many other movies from the time. Afterwards, I saw that it had been directed by a man, and that struck me as interesting because it feels like this kind of female friendship movie is something that would most definitely be directed by a woman these days. And it made me wonder about how so much of the movies that I watched and loved in the 80s and 90s were directed by men, and whether of not the way I saw myself reflected in the media I consumed was influenced by the male gaze. Would my ideas of what is considered attractive been different?

Weekly recap + what we ate: outdoor adventures

I’ve been inspired by the 1000 hours outside movement. At least for me and the baby. I don’t have as much control over the two older kids since they are at school for most of the day. I know they definitely don’t get outside as much as I want. I often rant that when I was their age (*eye roll, sigh*) we had recess twice a day, plus at lunch. The nine year old currently gets 30-45 minutes of outdoor time at school all day. And none if there is even a hint of moisture in the air. At any rate, I can do my best to make sure we get out during the weekends, and that they have the right clothing to brave the elements come colder weather.

This weekend, we managed two outdoor adventures. One was planned weeks in advance and the other was a rather impromptu affair.

The impromptu trip was prompted by a project the nine year old had for class. She had to build an indigenous dwelling. There was also an option to make a poster or design a pamphlet, but we regarded those options with scorn and declared that we would b building a model. I never had to do a diorama or such model when I was in school, but the Husband did. And, given that his father was an architect, the Husband actually did very little of his own building.

I’ve come to the conclusion that diorama and model assignments for fourth graders are really a long term learning experience so that forty years later they can build dioramas and models for their children. Yes, we may have co-opted her assignment a little.

Anyhow, Saturday morning, my husband did some googling and it turns out that there is a reproduction of an American Indian Village at Patuxent River Park, about an hour and a half from where we lived. So after soccer and dance lessons, we piled into the car and went on a spur of the moment jaunt. (With three kids, I feel like three hours advance planning counts as “spur of the moment.”). When we arrived, only one of the housing displays was still up, but luckily it was the shelter that the nine year old had planned to make anyway: a longhouse. After checking out the longhouse frame, we went on a forest ramble. The trail map indicated that the trail went to the water, but in reality, it went to an overlook of marshland with a very tree filled view. Once could catch sight of slivers of water between the branches. But it being fall, the foliage made the view pretty great anyway.

Slight view of the water, but still some neat moments of nature

The next day came the planned adventure: a family hike at a local park lead by a naturalist. The baby and I had gone on one of these hikes before, but this time the whole family came along. Only the baby fell asleep on the way there so the Husband stayed behind and went on a little ramble with her when she woke up an hour later.

Going on a hike with a park naturalist Katrina was really eye opening. I think it’s one thing to wander the woods on your own and do some forest bathing, but there is something really special about going with someone who will point out all the little details in nature that I would have missed otherwise. Like all the tiny variation of mushroom. And the sliver trail left by a slug on a leaf. And even though I’ve always let my kids climb on trees and fallen logs, there was something to not only having the park authority tell us it was okay, but even point out the best logs for climbing. She also, upon hearing of the nine year old’s longhouse project, pointed out what she thought would be the best tree bark to use and helped us gather some. And when the four year old started losing steam, Katrina pulled out a deck of nature games to play.

My third big outdoor adventure last week was going on a hike at the nearby nature center called “What’s that Tree?” For this hike, a naturalist taught us how to identify trees by looking at the location, bark, leaves, and buds. Looking at buds, I found really hard at first, but eventually I started to see how buds all grew in different patterns and angles. The nature center leads a winter Tree Identification hike which is all bark and buds, and I think I might sign up for that one; it sounds like a really great challenge. Even though this was billed as an adult hike, I put the baby in her carrier and brought her along. And the Husband even took the morning off work to come too… it was almost like at date! I think I can now identify a boxelder and an American hornbeam, two trees that I wasn’t even aware of before the hike.

The other big project this week was the Halloween costumes. The nine year old had a class Halloween party, so there was a bit of an earlier timeline for her Princess Leia on Hoth costume. Luckily everything arrived in time and then I made a braid on a headband for her to wear and also the badge. The badge was a print out from the internet modge podged onto a piece of cardboard and then attached to a magnetic name tag from a former job. I had a moment when I was trying to decide whether or not it was worth it to give up this name tag, this relic of a on of my favorite gigs, for my child’s Halloween costume. And then I realized I was being silly and putting too much pressure on a a little name tag so I covered it in hot glue and slapped the badge on it.

The Millenium Falcon was chipped away at a little every night. I feel like it kind of deserves its own post because it was kind of huge but also a lot of fun to make.

Good things this week:

-Promising vaccine news for the kids. (Even more promising by the time I hit “post” on this.)

-Rainy Friday. I feel like the weather is finally turning to cold and wet autumn after unseasonably warm temperatures so far. But I love the crisp cold nip of air, and the shiny sheen of a rainy day. I’m so glad I finally decided to get rainboots last year.

-Pumpkin #1 is carved. The nine year old designed a cat face. I always dread carving pumpkins because of the mess and the time it takes. But this only took half and hour and clean up was pretty easy. So maybe I’m getting better at the whole pumpkin thing. I do actually like the carving process, it’s just that thinking about it is worse that the actual doing.

Notice the baby doing the nine year old’s homework.

-The baby will not require speech services. Hooray! We had her re-assessed by the county’s Infants and Toddler’s program since she still wasn’t talking much at her two year appointment. To our surprise, she actually was not showing the required 25% delay to receive services. She’s more like 10% delayed Turns out, that while she doesn’t have a lot of words, the way in which she is using the few words that she has is actually on track for her age -things like matching picture and words with real objects, being able to answer “where” questions, being able to name people, consistently using the words that she does have, and being able to whisper, using words to represent actions. Her lowest scores, since she was assessed in a variety of developmental areas, was in soci0-emotional areas. But the therapists said this was not uncommon for babies who have had such limited interaction during the pandemic. I still feel like such developmental assessments are somewhat arbitrary and can cause undue concern, but it is good to know what boxes are being checked off. The therapists left us with some tips for helping to grow her vocabulary and went on their way.

-Apple pie from September’s apple picking adventure. And finally getting a pie server. No more awkward attempts to serve pie (or cake!) with a butter knife.

-Inspiring thought for the week – I was listening to the Life Kit episode featuring Oliver Burkman who wrote a book 4000 weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I really liked that his approach to time was so different from the manic ultra-high productivity that seems to be so common in time management writing today. One thing he said in this interview – a thought which he attributes to James Hollis – is that rather than asking if something makes you happy, ask yourself “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me.” He goes on to say how parenting rarely makes one happy, but that it certainly can fall in the “enlarge” category. I feel that in our current climate of almost radical self-care, the enlarge/diminish question is perhaps a truer way to answer questions of what is worth spending our time on.

What We Ate:
This was a fun week because the four year old planned the menu this week.

Saturday: Take Out Indian following out Patuxent River Park Adventure.

Sunday: Leftovers

Monday: Request from four year old was “Pasta”. I made Eggplant Pasta from the America’s Test Kitchen’s Bowls cookbook.

Tuesday: “Rice and Green Beans!” Clean out the veggie drawer stir fry. I think in addition to green beans there was bok choy, broccoli, red bell pepper, and I’m sure there was something else too.

Wednesday: “Chicken Soup!” Chicken Bok Choy soup. Pretty easy improvised recipe: boil chicken tenders in chicken stock, remove and shred. Throw mushrooms, carrots and sliced bock choy, soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil and star anise into chicken stock, boil until veggies are just tender, then throw in chicken dumplings and the shredded chicken and simmer until dumplings are done.

Thursday: The Husband make Spanish rice and black beans. (The request from the four year old was “Black beans with sprinkle”) He is trying to cook his way through the Betty Crocker’s Cooking Basics cookbook that he received in college.

Friday: Pizza and and failed attempt to watch Star Wars. Which might have been related to a failure to do chores. Sigh.

Weekly recap + what we ate: invention and solutions

Even though the kids have activities on the weekend, I’m trying to make the most of the activity-free time. For me, that’s a blend of family adventures, chores and unstructured time. Self care is a bit of a trendy thing these days, and I’m finding that chores actually do constitute self care for me. Knocking things off the looming to do list does more for my mental health, than, say, a massage. (That might be a little unfair because I’ve never really liked massages, but you get the point.)

Last weekend, I took the kids to the local farm park. They were having a “Fall on the Farm” festival. It was drizzly and wet, but we still managed to make corn husk dolls, learn about soap making, and listen to an old time string band. I was fascinated by the musician playing the jaws harp – such a little instrument… I wonder if there was a sense of futility in playing it in a large open barn. The soap demonstrator too was particularly fascinating. She was a scholar whose primary focus was on soap in the Colonial times and she had all sorts of knowledge and theories about soap, how it was manufactured and how it was used. We stopped for Rita’s frozen custard on the way home. “We always get ice cream when we go on adventures!” the nine year old insisted.

I’ve started on the Hallowe’en costumes. I love making Hallowe’en costumes. I’m going to admit that. I feel almost abashed about saying it because I feel like Hallowe’en costumes have become one of those rocks in the maternal mental load, particularly for working mothers. When I tell people I’m making the kids’ costumes, I get this look of wide eyed disbelief, like I’m trying too hard. But here’s the deal: I make them because I like making them. I like the puzzle and the engineering and the crafting something out of nothing. (See previous post about making rehearsal props out of cardboard.) There was a year or two when the nine year old only wanted purchased costumes from Costco and I was a little sad about that. So as long as my kids will let me, I will continue to make them costumes.

This year, the nine year old decided that everyone is going as a character from Star Wars. She chose Princess Leia. The Husband suggested Princess Leia from Hoth since that would be the easiest costume to source. He was right – white pants, shirt, puffy vest have been ordered. I’m making a yarn braid as well:

The four year old, when asked who he wanted to be, answered, “The Millenium Falcon.”

I told my friend this. “I see a lot of cardboard in your life,” she said.

Indeed:

The baby will be Han Solo, or she will just wear her R2D2 pjs, depending on what I have time for.

I took the car in for an oil change also. It was supposed to be one of those drop it off and come back affairs. But then I mentioned that the drive side headlight was out and could they look at it since I had replaced the bulb recently. I had had this issue before and when I took it too the dealer, they said they didn’t know what the problem was, so I almost didn’t mention it to my new mechanic. So he said he would take a look. The baby and I wandered the town where the mechanic was, we went to the park and the children’s library. We stopped at the fancy bakery and bought ham and cheese croissants and cookies. Then we went back to the mechanics. Well turns out, he had figured out the problem but needed to wait for the part to come in. I was so excited that he could fix the issue that I wasn’t at all annoyed that it would be another hour and a half. We wandered to the adult library three blocks over, sat in the garden and ate our croissants in the garden and then went inside to looked at more books.

It’s funny – what was originally supposed to be a two hour errand unexpectedly turned into a five hour errand, but despite that, it was a pretty good day. Libraries, parks, croissants and a wonderful mechanic – hard to go wrong there. I think, though, what really made the day feel decadent was that I luckily had the luxury of time. Certainly for many people, a two hour appointment morphing into a five hour appointment can really wreck havoc with one’s day. So perhaps it’s the silver lining of my current unpaid work status.

Other things to savor this week:

Full moon and hospital – as seen on one of our evening walks.

This inspirational and creative rock garden that we see on our neighborhood rambles.

Watching the baby grow by leaps and bounds

The baby helping to sweep, then actually picking up each individual Cheerio and placing it carefully in the dustpan.

This little creekside spot where we go to throw rocks when the playground is too wet with dew.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Dumplings.

Sunday: Leftovers.

Monday: Vegetarian Bibimbap. This was a “use up all the veggies” meal. I always think bibimbap is going to be complicated, but it’s always comes together much faster than I expece.

Tuesday: Shrimp and Pasta from America’s Test Kitchen’s Bowls cookbook.

Wednesday: Chickpea Noodle Soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan For Everyone. This was really tasty.

Thursday: The Husband cooke and he made fried chicken salad.

Friday: Pizza and some random sit com with puppies. It was the baby’s turn to “choose” the movie and I had started with All Dogs Go to Heaven, but then there was this awkward Asian caricature in it and I decided that we didn’t need to watch anymore of that movie.

Weekly recap + what we ate: routines to lead us back to fall

Trying to get back in the habit of recapping our week and dinner menus.

And here we are in October. September seemed a blur of finding the rhythm of new routines. But actually I feel like it’s October when things finally find their pace. Of the four weeks in September, I think there was only one week where the nine year old went to school for all five days. Each weekend, too, brought a new activity – Soccer and Mandarin for the four year old, dance and swim for the nine year old. Two activities for each older child didn’t seem like a lot when I was doing the sign ups, but since I opted to place them on the weekend rather than spread over the weekdays, they are starting to add up to a chunk of our weekend. We’re still trying to figure out the right balance of “fun” time vs. “free” time.

Lest she feels left out, while her siblings are at school, the baby is doing a music class – meh – and a swim class – actually very fun. And we go on lots of walk and visit the playground frequently. Fall colour is starting to make an appearance, a little at odds with the 80 degree weather some days.

In the “made my life easier” category, the school district added a bus stop for the nine year old’s bus just down the street. In fact, it is in front of the four year old’s school. Even though we have to leave five minutes sooner than before to be able to walk to the bus stop, I think there is something psychologically easier about walking fifteen minutes rather than driving ten minutes as we used to do. After the bus picks up the nine year old, the four year old and the baby go to the nearby playground for twenty or thirty minutes before I drop the four year old at preschool. I’m finding it a really relaxing way to start the morning, particularly after the rush and hustle of morning routines.

And the afternoon drops off in the same location too. There was a little bit of mental calculus to decide if it was worth having her take the longer bus ride so that we could pick her up closer to home. On the one hand, it makes for one pick up location for both kids. On the other hand, she’s now on the bus for about an hour coming home. I figure we’ll try it until it turns out not to be a great solution. But I have to admit being able to walk to drop off and pick up has been kind of ideal.

The baby turned two in September.

She has started to nap somewhat consistently if I lay the day out right. Namely, if I don’t put her in a car between the hours of 11am and 1pm, I have a reasonably good chance of getting her home, putting some lunch in her, and then having her go down for a nap. Of course, often we are out and about in the mornings so putting her in a car during that window is unavoidable. Then I am stuck with the dilemma of letting her sleep and get her nap in and being stuck in the car, or waking her up to get her lunch and hope that the nap train has not left for good. With the former, it does allow me to get some reading done. With the latter… if it works that she does nap, then I can get some things on my to do list accomplished. Of course, most of the time the nap doesn’t manifest itself with the latter.

I’ve become used to doing more mental calculus for the repercussions of waking the sleeping baby. It usually goes something like… “Is the stuff of my to do list doable with a baby around? Is it computer tasks (then, no because she is very good at climbing onto my chair and swiping at my keyboard). Is it pick up or meal prep – in which case it’s okay to let her run rampant through the house…” Tasks are ranked in my head according to ease of execution with a toddler around and level of importance. Of course some days, she falls a sleep on me and then nothing gets done. I’m trying to savor the sweet weight of a sleeping baby in my lap. I’m getting a lot of reading done.

I’m trying to find adventures for us to go one. I found out that the nature center at one of our regional parks has toddler appropriate story times and hikes, so we’ve signed up for many of those. The naturalist who leads them is wonderfully engaging. She approaches every log, leaf, and hole in the ground with and infectious curiosity and enthusiasm. I’ve come to realize that my kids (and I as well, let’s be honest) can more easily distinguish a FedEx truck from a UPS truck than they can distinguish the many variety of trees that surround us. That seems unfortunate to me. The park naturalist gave me some great resources for identifying things in nature and I’m excited to explore that more.

We also managed to go apple picking, one Saturday in September. We came home with a ridiculous amount of apples. In addition to the apples we picked, we brought home an enormous bag of seconds. The Husband reasoned that the apples we picked should be for pies and eating out of hand, shuddering at the idea that we use it for apple sauce. The four year old was quite excited by the prospect of making apple sauce, however. Hence the bag of seconds. Half of the seconds have been made into apple sauce and frozen. Some years I can the apple sauce, but having canned a bushel of peaches in August, I didn’t have any more jars left. So into the freezer for this batch of sauce. If I get my act together, maybe the next batch will be canned. There was also apple pie filling made, and one actual apple pie. There is still filling for a second and third pie.

At the beginning of October, there was an art installation down on the Mall to commemorate the lives lost to COVID. 600,000 flags were planted at the foot of the Washington Monument. Some of the flags were inscribed with messages from people in honour of a lost loved one. When the exhibit was over, the artist asked for volunteers to help take down the flags, so I took the baby and we drove downtown to help. We went the second day of the strike, when about half of the flags had already been removed. Even still, what remained of the installation was still a heart stopping sight. Seeing the sea of flags fluttering in the breeze, all light and movement, quantifies the lives lost in a way that merely looking at number on a dashboard couldn’t.

I have to say, I miss being able to jump on the metro and pop down on a whim to the Mall to see the monuments and museums. The clean white marble lines, the vast expanses of green, and the buildings full of things of note, being able to meander through at my own pace because I know that I can come back easily. This is one of the aspects of pre-pandemic life I miss the most.

What We Ate – So far in October:

Monday: Falafel and Greek Salad – Falafel is from America’s Test Kitchen Vegan for Everyone Cookbook. The door on our toaster oven broke – and we finally decided to replace it. The new toaster oven comes with an air fryer function. I’m learning that this is just a fancy way of saying high heat convection. Anyhow, I tried and experiment with the falafel where I fried half of it in oil and used the air fryer for half. The falafel fried in oil tasted better. No surprise there. But… the air fryer did a great job of reheating the falafel the next day. So I guess that’s a win. The falafel recipe was also delicious. It called for using soaked dried chick peas rather than cooked, and a touch of cinnamon.

Tuesday: Quesadillas from Dinner Illustrated. By which I mean I used their method of cooking them in the oven rather than in the frying pan. The filling was my own inspiration – black beans, peppers (from the garden!), corn, pepper jack cheese.

Wednesday: Eggplant with Coconut Rice from Meera Sodha’s East.

Thursday: Mac and cheese from Dinner Illustrated. The recipe features chard and there was much skepticism going in, but everyone declared it tasty in the end. Yay.

Friday: Pizza and Curious George. We’ve been making homemade pizza again now that the weather has somewhat cooled and turning the oven to 525 degrees is something we can contemplate. It was the 4 year old’s turn to choose the movie. This was a version of Curious George from 2006 and there is some awkward dated bits, particularly the colonial tone of the parts set in Africa.

Saturday: Dumplings and cucumber salad.

Sunday: Leftovers. We are trying out having leftovers for Sunday dinner. The purpose is twofold: 1) clean out the fridge, and 2) getting dinner on the table with minimal effort between the 4 year old coming home from Mandarin classes and the 9 year old’s swim practice. I’m learning that there are leftovers no one is ever going to eat. But at least this way it won’t be because we forgot about them.

Monday: Tofu Scramble on Toast from Meera Sodha’s East. A vegan version of breakfast for dinner.

Tuesday: Take out since we got home late from flag gathering. Chinese. Really spicy, but super delicious.

Wednesday: Harvest bowls – Farro, lentils, roast sweet potatoes, apples, cranberries, feta, and kale. From America’s Test Kitchen’s Bowls cookbook. I’m really liking this cookbook. Everything is so customizable. It’s kind of more like a book of ideas.

Thursday; Carmelized Onion Ramen from East. Tasty. I always like eating noodles. Apple pie for dessert.

Friday: pizza and Baketopia. We recently discovered that our favorite Italian Deli also sells pizza dough. It’s really good. Much better than anything I can make – it bakes up super puffy and crispy. Game changer.

Weekly recap + what we ate – back to work

My camera roll is surprisingly empty this week. Well, empty of pictures that I took myself. It is somehow filled with selfies taken by the nine year old. Sometimes she loops her brother and sister into her shenanigans. As a result, I get surprise photos and videos in my feed when the iPad synchs with the cloud. I find it a cute, even while I am annoyed that she is co-opting my iCloud storage. The other day we had words about something and she recorded an apology on the iPad that popped up in my photo roll on my phone. It was hard to stay mad at that.

Anyhow this week was kind of a fresh start. The nine year old started camp and I started prep for my next show. I had enrolled the nine year old in a county camp – nothing fancy, just arts, crafts, games and plenty of time outdoors. The main virtue of the camp, quite honestly, was that it was incredibly inexpensive – $275 for six weeks, when most camps charge at least that much for a single week – and also that it is about a mile and a half from our house. She did walk to camp one morning with my dad, and I’m thinking I might do the walk with her on mornings when I don’t have to be at work in the morning. The one shortcoming of the camp is that it only runs until 3pm. This isn’t a problem for me since my parents pick her up, but I do realize that this makes this super affordable camp a non-option for many working parents.

For me, it was a combination of working from home and a day or two working on site. I’m learning to be more efficient with my time when I’m working at home. Working from home was definitely much easier this week since my parents were in town and could help watch the kids.

Even though I try not obsessively document my life in photos, I do notice that when my photo roll is empty, it means I’ve been particularly immersed in the “doing” of life, rather than remembering to take time to find the things to be savor or to be grateful for.

Good things this week, then:
– long visit with a friend whose kids are at the camp adjacent to the nine year old’s camp. It was great to catch up and talk about deep and frivolous things. The two younger kids came along and the four year old plays cars by himself for ninety minutes. I love that he can get in such a flow state of play. Also – I showed him a transformer and he was adorably amazed. “It’s a truck that turns into a robot!!!!”
– The nine year old had a couple swim meets this week. I took her to one and the Husband took her to one. I’m still finding it a little awkward to make conversation with other parents at these meets, but I do enjoy seeing the event management and planning that goes on to make the meets happen. The parents are all assigned tasks at the meet; I was a timer. Putting stage management skills to work, I guess. I find it interesting to see other pools as we travel for meets.
– I am really excited for this next opera I’m working on because it reunites me with a colleague whom I absolutely love working with. Actually she was one of the reasons I decided to take this job.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Snack dinner – hummus, crackers, cheese, whatever I could scrounge from the fridge. Still recovering from the camping trip.

Sunday: Burrito bowls from Dinner Illustrated. Pantry meal.

Monday: Hot dog at swim meet and Chipotle afterwards

Tuesday: Cacio e Pepe udon noodles and cucumber salad.

Wednesday: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and cucumbers. (Another swim meet night – the Husband took the nine year old, and I stayed home with the kids)

Thursday: Rice Pilaf with corn and shrimp from Milk Street Fast and Slow. InstantPot recipe to eat after swim practice

Friday: pizza take-out and In the Heights. Big movie – big dance numbers, big bold colours, big emotions, big voices.

Weekly recap + what we ate – running away to the woods

View from the hammock. Relaxing for five minutes at a time.

I had a week off work so I took the kids camping for three nights, along with my parents. It was also the first full week of summer break, and I thought a little unplugging would be good for everyone. Also – for some reason, I had thought that the nine year old had camp last week, but nope.

My brother, an avid backpacker and hiker, says that three nights is the minimum for camping because it takes at least two nights to adjust to sleeping outdoors. In the end, I kind of wished that we could have stayed for even more nights.

We went to Swallow Falls State Park. A friend had suggested it as a good hike for kids because it is short (less than two miles) and has three water falls for the kids to play in. Luckily we went mid week so I was able to book campsites. The weekends seem to be booked up all summer.

We drove out on a Tuesday, leaving much later than I had planned. We arrived at the campsite around 7pm. But as the camp site was 170 miles west of home, the sun went down about an hour later, so we had plenty of light by which to pitch our tents and set ourselves up. The campsites themselves were on the small side. I don’t know that I could have safely made a fire on our site since our tent took up most of the camping pad. Luckily I had booked my parents the site next to ours, so we spent most of our time on their site. Also, our site was rather close to the road. Next time, too, I would pick a camp site on the inner loop – those seemed a little farther back from the road.

In the morning, we went hiking at Swallow Falls Canyon Trail. We had been here a couple of years ago with my sister-in-law’s family. Back then, though, the kids were younger so we only made it to one waterfall. This time, the kids hiked the whole loop. Well, the baby did about half of it, and then spent the return portion of the loop sleeping in the Ergo.

The trail loops through some woods, and then along streams, rivers and waterfalls. I know some hikers hike the path clockwise, trekking along the stream and then through the woods. I didn’t quite read the map correctly so we hiked through the woods first and then meandered back along the water. I think, though, I kind of preferred this way – the gentler, forest walk first then using the more interesting terrain on the return trip as kind of an incentive for the kids to keep going.

All in all it was a great hike for the kids – there was water to splash in, rocks to climb, and the trail was nice and shady. The hike was quite popular, even on a weekday. I probably would avoid it on a weekend if possible. And at the trailhead, was an ice cream truck!

The rest of the day featured ice cream, lazing in our new hammock – my camping gear splurge for the year, and absolutely worth it! – dinner cooked over the camp fire, and smores. Also a fairly late bedtime what with the late setting sun and all.

Our second day, we went to Herrington Manor State Park. There is a lake beach there and I though it might be a nice way to spend the summer day. Going to the beach on a lake is a little bit of an odd experience – there is sand and water, but for me the absence of wind and waves and sea salt air was conspicuous. It took me a while to realize what was missing from the beach experience, and finally I put my finger on it – it was much too quiet without the constant crash of the surf. Nonetheless, we had a great time. We even rented a canoe and my dad and I took the nine year old and the four year old out for a paddle. It was a little tricky since none of us really knew how to paddle, but we did eventually figure it out. I remember when I was in elementary school, during one swim lesson, our instructors put a canoe in the pool and taught us how to paddle. That was a long time ago, and I’m sorry to say I don’t remember much of what we were taught. Once my father and I figured out how to get the canoe to go (somewhat) the direction we wanted, the nine year old also had a turn at paddling, which I think she really enjoyed.

On the way home, we stopped at Misty Meadow Creamery for lunch and ice cream. Last week, I had put out a call on our local parents’ listserv for favorite frozen treats in the area. A couple parents shared that every summer, our state has an Ice Cream Trail every summer, where they print a map highlighting Maryland dairy farms. The idea is that if you visit all ten dairies, you can be entered in a drawing for prizes.

Misty Meadow Creamery was somewhat between Swallow Falls State Park and home, so of course we stopped. It was actually a really nice pit stop. They had some play structures to climb, farm animals to pet, and some ride-on toys to play with. And of course, ice cream. I had a cone with root beer ice cream on top and black raspberry on top. The root beer is a seasonal flavor, and it was like a root beer float in ice cream form. It was a hot hot day, and our ice cream almost melted faster than we could lick it.

There was also this really neat gazebo with four gliding chairs. I immediately texted the Husband a picture saying that I wanted one. Though, of course, I have no place to put it.

I want this for my new reading nook. Not sure where to put it, but it screams summer to me.

It was a great trip overall. I wish we could have stayed longer, but unfortunately the weekends were all full up. We’ll put it on our list of places to visit again.

What we ate:

Saturday: Can’t remember. Though we got Indian Take Out for lunch.

Sunday: Chinese Take Out for Father’s Day.

Monday: Kale and Tomatoe Saag Paneer from East. Our friend Renee came over for dinner and brought a really delicious blueberry crumble as well.

Tuesday: PB& J Sandwiches, after getting to the camp site kind of late

Wednesday: Breakfast – oatmeal
Lunch – PB & J Sandwiches, hummus wraps, apples, carrots, cucumbers, watermelon
Dinner – Fish foil packets cooked over the campfire. Cod and Salmon over celery, peppers, parboiled potatoes and carrots. S’mores.

Thursday: Breakfast – pancakes (from mix), and bacon (a camping treat!)
Lunch – at the beach, sandwiches,
Dinner – Tried to make hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls over the campfire, but that didn’t work so well. The pastry didn’t really cook all the way through. Also had baked beans and corn. All cooked on the fire.

Friday: Snack dinner, thrown together with minimal prep the night we arrived home. Tuna fish, carrots, cucumbers, cheese, and crackers.