weekly menu – Page 11 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: Christmas and COVID

The post-present carnage. Can you find the children?

Welp. The week was a blur of last minute Christmas errands and regular life routines. Then Wednesday night, the baby was super fussy, and just wanted to cuddle. And then she threw up on me.

The next day, Thursday, was the first day of winter break for the two bigger kids. I took the baby to the pediatrician in the afternoon. She was back to her regular sunny self, no fever or other symptoms, but these days you can’t take even minor symptoms for granted. The pediatrician declared the baby to not have anything bacterial and then ordered a rapid and a PCR COVID test. Then pins and needles until about an hour or so later when the pediatrician called to let us know that the rapid test was positive.

Again.

It being two days before Christmas, testing sites were all booked up. I think a lot of people were wanting to get tested in anticipation of holiday gathering and travel. The soonest appointments we could get for the rest of the family was for Sunday afternoon. Fortunately we had not planned on going anywhere. We had to cancel some playdates and the one day of winter break camp for the nine year old – luckily they gave us a credit.

So now ten days of isolating at home. At least, depending on the results from the rest of us.

Despite everything it was still a lovely Christmas. We were all together and the weather was beautiful – sixty degrees and sunny. We opened presents, did lots of baking, video chatted with family… all things that were on the agenda anyway.

Some fun things from this past week, including some pre-COVID test adventures:

-A lovely day downtown. We went downtown to see the trains at the Botanical Gardens and then went to the TubaChristmas concert – both things that were seasonal traditions for us, and which this year were outdoors. The theme for the Botanical Gardens train display this year was agriculture around the world. I always love this particular train display because all the structures and buildings are built from plant materials. It’s always great fun to not only look at the intricate detailed displays, but also to try to figure out what plants they are made from. My favorite this year was the Florida orange grove.

Since we had a bit of extra time, we also walked over to see the Capitol Christmas Tree. It’s always a little humbling to see the Capitol building and think of all the work that happens there. This time, though, there was also something a little sobering to see the protective fencing that has been put up around the building. January 6th was almost a year ago, and it seems like such a strange and horrific day that feels close and distant at the same time.

Sign of the times.

The Husband and I have gone to TubaChristmas almost every year since we started dating. It had been cancelled last year, so we were really excited to see that it would be held outdoors this year. There was an open tent, though we stood outside on the plaza out of an abundance of caution. There were only 200 tubas, sousaphones, and euphoniums this year – usually there are over three hundred. But even still, they made a beautiful noise and I loved hearing them play holiday favorites.

-Awesome shopping experience: We decided that we wanted to add some games to our collection for Christmas. My friend had long sung the praises of a local store, Labyrinth Games & Puzzles, so I checked out their website. Turns out they have a service where they will recommend games for you. I filled out a form giving details about whom I was shopping for – ages, types of games we enjoy, price range, etc. Two days later, they sent me a list of four games they thought would suit us. I read the descriptions, chose two, and went to pick them up less than 24 hours later. As much as I enjoy (a little too much) the process of picking out a perfect present with slow thoughtfulness, there is something so beautifully easy about having someone knowledgeable just send me a bunch of options and then clicking “buy”. The concierge service felt almost decadent. Is this what people who have people do? I will definitely do this again, and seek out shops that have this kind of service. I think our local independent bookshop will do this too.

-Celebrating our anniversary. I didn’t really plan anything special, and what with Mandarin class for the four year old and doing the swim practice run for the nine year old, was gone from the house most of the day. But after I got home from the swim clinic run, I whipped up a batch of Smitten Kitchen’s chocolate pudding. I love this recipe because it is so fast and easy and I almost always have the ingredients on hand. There are definitely other recipes that are a little more lush, but none that beat this recipe for it’s high ratio of ease to deliciousness. I got home at 8pm, had the pudding chilling in the fridge twenty minutes later and by the time we were on our second episode of Succession that night, we were enjoying chocolate pudding. Not a fancy anniversary celebration, but sweet and simple. Which seemed appropriate.

-continued mild weather and beautiful morning sunlight at the creek as the baby throws sticks in the water just to watch them drift downstream:

And Christmas memories from 2021:

-Staying up late the night before to make cinnamon rolls and watch the NORAD Santa Tracker.

-This is the first year that I had the nine year old buy presents for her siblings and for the Husband. Seeing what she picked out and how she thought through the process was really fun.

-The baby raiding everyone’s stocking for chocolate. I had to pull the last four chocolate peanut butter cups and put them on a high high shelf.

-matching pjs for Christmas:

-making cookies. We made gingerbread, shortbread and peppermint candy cane cookies this year. The candy cane ones are fun and the kids had fun helping to roll the different colour stripes.

-Jello-O a traditional holiday side dish for us. The nine year old made it this year from a recipe that we thought was Aunt Sara’s, but turns out it wasn’t. Apparently hers is entirely cream cheese and Jell-O powder, without the just Jell-O layer.

-My first attempt at Cornish Game Hen. Which did not go well. They were not cooked all the way through initially so I had to put them back in the oven for twenty minutes. Which was just enough time to learn how to play one of our new games, one which has already become a family favorite. It is simple enough that the four year old can play it with a little bit of help, but also the nine year old can play without getting bored. And it’s short. So you can play it while waiting for dinner to finish cooking…

-Beautiful, incredible sixty degree weather on Christmas day. I will be always grateful for our backyard, but doubly so when we have to isolate. After we opened presents, we went outside and hung out in the backyard for a few hours – the kids with they new toys and the Husband and I with our new books. And the concertina – I’m still attempting to learn to play, and so far I can play a C major scale and a G major scale.

-Then we watched It’s a Wonderful Life, as per tradition.

There were definitely things we didn’t get done this year – we made cookies, but didn’t decorate them, we didn’t get to church or see friends, I didn’t make rolls for Christmas dinner because the dough didn’t rise in time, we didn’t read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas on Christmas eve (my favorite tradition). But it was still a lovely day – organic and unrushed – and we were all together, so I guess we did achieve the most important thing, even with a positive COVID test.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Dumplings, quick cucumber salad, and ginger-scallion noodles

Sunday: leftovers

Monday: Tofu Pad Thai from ATK Vegan for Everyone

Tuesday: Brussel Sprout Fried Rice from Meena Sodha’s East

Wednesday: Mushroom and Leek Tart. I meant to make a galette, but didn’t get around to making the pastry crust, so I used some puff pastry I had in the freezer, and it turned out beautifully. Will remember for next time: puff pastry + sauteed veggies = easy tasty dinner.

Thursday: Pizza and Polar Express. Movie night early this week because we had anticipated going to church on Christmas eve. Wump wump.

Friday: Roast teriyaki salmon and napa cabbage salad.

Saturday: (Christmas Dinner!) Cornish Game Hen roasted w/ potatoes and leeks, roasted zucchini, jello. Sticky Toffee Pudding for dessert. and all the cookies.

Weekly recap + what we ate: striving for festive

Drive through lights – picture taken by the nine year old!

Another mild week weather-wise. After working the week before, I really wanted to make sure to spend lots of time outside and managed to get two hikes in with the baby.

The first hike was another naturalist led hike organized by a nature centers. I had bundled the baby up, but the weather got increasingly mild and by 11:30am, she had shed almost all her layers except her turtleneck. We’ve done several of these hikes before, but the naturalist always takes a different path and points out different things. This time, she led the children to build a fairy house next to a hole at the base of a tree. Then there was some walking along fallen trees, and throwing rocks and leaves in the river and tree identification.

My second hike was as the end of the week. Inspired by the selfie stand overlooking the Potomac I came across a couple weeks before, I decided to go find another of the selfie stands that the County Parks had put up. The closest one was on a trail called Burnt Mill Trail. This trail ran next to the shopping plaza with the Trader Joe’s and I’d been on the southern part of the trail, but not the northern part where the selfie stand was. According to the selfie stand website, there are actually four selfie stand locations along this trail, but we only found two. The baby was an awesome hiker. There were some parts of the hike where I lost the trail, and she determinedly scrambled up through bramble and dirt paths, sometimes on her hands and knees. Funny how on the straight and easy path she wanted to be carried, but on the steep and overgrown paths, she forged ahead fearlessly on her own. We were never in danger of truly being lost, as the trail more or less followed the curves of the stream, but there were definitely parts where what I thought was a trail was not really a trail.

Aside from those two hikes, the rest of the week was kind of … bleh. I think something about the kids being in school right up til two days before Christmas makes this year’s holiday season seem kind of… rushed. I’ve checked a lot of the usual holiday boxes. The cards got ordered at the beginning of the week (finally) and surprisingly arrived by the end of the week, so they are ready to be addressed and sent out and hopefully most people will get them before Christmas. We have a ton of Christmas books to read, and even if we aren’t reading Christmas books every night, we manage to do it several times a week. We’re watching Christmas movies. (Last week was While You Were Sleeping. I love this movie so much. There something about Sandra Bullock’s smart and sweet Lucy and Bill Pullman’s rugged pining Jack that checks all my rom com hero/ine boxes. I consider this a Christmas movie, definitely.) The tree is up, the mantel is decorated, the Christmas lights are up outside the house.

We went to a drive through light display this past week. I made a thermos of hot chocolate and picked up treats from one of our favorite Asian bakeries. It was a bit of a slog through rush hour traffic to get there, but the lights were beautiful, we enjoyed our treats and listened to Christmas music as we drove through the display, and we got Indian take-out for dinner on the way back.

But something… not sure what… makes it feel like just going through the motion. I think the stress of continued COVID living (omincron!!), the pace of having to still maintain the everyday schedule right until the last minute, and the stress of trying to decorate the house while having a small destructive toddler running around… There was a snow globe accident that was a real low point in our, “We can never have nice things again.” narrative. I mean that was probably overly dramatic, but the snow globe had been a Christmas present when the Husband was nine, so he felt the loss pretty acutely.

Anyhow.. it all feels like a slog. I don’t know.. perhaps it is just a pre-holiday low and once we actually get to Christmas I’ll feel better. We have tentative plans to go to Christmas even service, and that’s always been a bright point for me.

Two fun things this week:

I always like the serendipity when my kids match the playground equipment!

The baby has gotten really good at putting away the silverware. She managed to put away the whole basket… and for the first time, everything ended up in the right slot!

What We Ate:

Saturday: Dumplings and Dan Dan Mian, made by the Husband. The homemade chili oil was amazing.

Sunday: Spaghetti and vegan meatballs with garlic bread. Easy, jarred sauce and pre-made meatballs. This meal was by request of the four year old.

Monday: Squash Malai Kari from Meera Sodha’s East. I had some butternut squash that needed to be used up so I made this curry. Really tasty.

Tuesday: Korean Tacos with Napa Cabbage Slaw from Dinner Illustrated. The Dinner Illustrated recipe calls for red cabbage slaw, but I had napa and some watermelon radishes, so that’s what I used for the slaw.

Wednesday: Teriyaki Tofu from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. Served with Sichuan green beans. This was a baked teriyaki dish, and I added mushrooms because I didn’t have quite enough tofu. It was really tasty and I had leftover sauce! Can’t wait to use it on something.

Thursday: Take Out Indian after seeing Christmas Lights.

Friday: Pizza (made by Husband) and The Little Prince, the opera by Rachel Portman and Nicholas Wright. Such a beautiful beautiful score.

Weekly Recap + what we ate: wiped out then up and at ’em

4pm on a Tuesday in December. The days continue to shorten.

I got my booster on Sunday, and was completely useless on Monday. I wonder if it was because I got a Moderna booster? Originally, I had gotten Pfizer vaccines with no side effects aside from a sore arm. I had read that there were some negligible benefits from mixing and matching boosters. At any rate, I got the booster at 5pm on Sunday. Compared with getting my original vaccine, which seemed like an EVENT with a site run by the National Guard in a huge white tent, the booster was kind of a very banal affair. I got my shot at the county health center and the fifteen minute waiting period was self monitored – no large wall clocks or health attendants.

At any rate, Sunday I felt fine, but Monday was rough. Despite it being 60 degrees and sunny, I felt chilly all day and could barely function. I took the kids to the bus stop and daycare, and then attempted to take the baby to the park. I pulled up to the park parking lot and couldn’t get out of the car, I was so cold and achy. We went to the library instead – the cleaners were at the house so I didn’t want to go home just yet. At least at the library I could sit while the baby did puzzles and read books. After the library, we got home and had lunch and then I gave up on actually doing anything and spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch watching This Is Us. I usually think of the basement/tv room as the Husband’s domain and rarely go down there to watch tv when he isn’t home. But if there was ever at time I wanted to just hunker on a big comfy couch in front of a big screen… well the day after my booster was it.

That evening we had planned to decorate the tree, but I was so out of it that I just moved from the downstairs couch to the upstairs couch, stopping to make two brie en croutes on the way there. (Or is it bries on croute? actually it’s not relevant because the Husband bought camembert by mistake – so I guess it was camemberts en croute.) We had planned to have snack dinner and trim the tree. I guess snack dinner still happened, and the tree got trimmed. My hazy memory of it was lots of squeals of excitement from the baby. Apparently every ornament was a new source of delight for her.

Christmas Tree – step one is the lights.

Tuesday, I felt somewhat better and ready to deal with life. Namely meeting the locksmith because over the weekend, the baby managed to lock the door to the toy room, and we DIDN’T HAVE A KEY!!!! Which isn’t really a big deal, except that we keep the baby’s clothes in the toy room. Anyhow, the grumpy old man of a locksmith opened the door and then chastised us for having keyed locks on our interior doors and re-keyed the toy room lock.

I have to say that I was tempted never to tell the kids that we had unlocked the door to the toy room. Even for the two days that the toy room was locked… no one asked about it. The kids found plenty to play with around the house – a box of blocks, a cardboard box or two, books. I think we actually got to Thursday before the four year old discovered that he could actually get back in the toy room. It really made me realize that we probably don’t really need an entire room just for toys. Or even the toys themselves. I don’t know that I’m ready to embrace such a minimalist mantra, but I think knowing that it’s possible is a good thought to have in the back of my head.

The rest of the week was taken up by… paid work!!!

Oh green sticky tabs! How I’ve missed you!

I got a call the week before asking if I was available to run the supertitles for a new jazz opera. Initially I was reluctant because finding childcare for the baby always feels like a huge hurdle. But the Husband said that he could take one afternoon off work so that I could go to rehearsals, and the company presenting the work said that I only had to come to one afternoon rehearsal. So I agreed.

I haven’t run titles in a while, but it’s pretty straightforward. It’s basically running a 300+ slide PowerPoint presentation set to music. This piece was a little tricky because some of the slides were stage directions or descriptors rather than just the sung text, so I had to watch the stage as well as read the music. And also the piece was more jazz than opera in certain parts. That’s not a genre that my ear is used to, so it was sometimes challenging to follow. But all in all, I had a great time. I described it to my friend as “All the fun parts of calling a show, without a million other people asking you questions about other things.”

The laptop I was given to use, was one the same one the Opera uses for their title needs, and I was a little sad to see the home screen still had the supertitle files for the three shows we were working on in March 2020 when the pandemic shut everything down. Staring at those files made March 2020 seem both like yesterday and of another time altogether.

It was weirdly familiar to walk into the building again.. to check in with the security guard, to talk to the crew, to hear another voice on headset calling cues and giving pages. To wearing my blacks again. Though none of them fit after all these months and I just settled for dresses and leggings. There is something about sitting through a tech that is so familiar yet still sends gives me chills of anticipation.

The other funny thing about this gig, I realized, was that even though it was my first job back in this building, everyone else had clearly been back at work for a while. There was an ease and acceptance about constantly wearing masks and checking vaccine cards that, while it still felt new for me, was clearly the normal for everyone else I saw… the audience, the crew, the performers. I know I had worked this past summer, but even still, I didn’t think we’d be masking indefinitely. Yet here we are.

Fun things this week:

The older kids have been teaching the baby new phrases. Favorite ones – the four year old has been really into making up knock knock jokes, which have been hilarious in their banal lack of knock knock humour. Like:
“Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Truck!”
“Truck who?”
“There’s a truck on the road!”
Anyhow, he’s been teaching the baby to go around saying, “Knock knock!” and it’s hilarious because that’s about as far as she gets.
The nine year old has been teaching the baby to say, “Rock, rock, rock!” As if it were some alternative version of “Rock Paper Scissors!”
I mean objectively these things aren’t that amusing, but when you have the older kids egging on the baby to yell these things as loud as she can, it’s kind of adorable. And loud.

The produce situation has gotten out of hand, so this week I spent an afternoon making kale chips and zucchini muffins. So satisfying to use things up rather than just throwing it in the worm bin!

Quote of the week – we were at a birthday party for the boy across the street – one of those affairs where we didn’t know anyone so we hung out in the basement with the kids. There was a high school student there too, the son of a friend – tall, gangly, and so very game for whatever antics the younger kids wanted to put him through. Anyhow, at one point, the nine year old became very fascinated by the idea of his being a high schooler and asked, “Is high school fun?” And he replied with this huge grin, “Yeah. You gotta have the right friends then high school’s a lot of fun. Good friends and playing sports.” Something about the way he said it made me so happy – like he knew high school wasn’t about grades or your future. I mean sure those things are important, but that’s not what you’re going to carry in your heart about those years.

And this photo from the building I work in… how I’ve missed it:

The building is wearing it’s honors garb!

What We Ate:

Saturday: Birthday party at neighbor’s – Peruvian Chicken and birthday cake– a gluten free, dairy free, egg free cake that tasted amazing.

Sunday: Leftover night

Monday: Snack dinner – camembert en croute, sausage, cheese, crackers, fruit – and tree trimming

Tuesday: Curry noodle soup, adapted from Thai Coconut soup in Vegan for Everyone.

Wednesday: I had soup and sandwich from Whole Foods on my dinner break. The Husband made pork and eggplant stir fry for the kids.

Thursday: Butter Chicken from Urvashi Pitre’s Indian InstantPot

Friday: Pizza (take out) and movie for the family while I went to work.

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.