weekly menu – Page 13 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate – sunshine and spring

Easter weekend – it gave me pause to think that this has been the second Easter we have spent socially isolated. Usually we go over to a friend’s house and dye eggs and eat a lot of food. For the second year, we stayed home and looked for eggs in the living room. During Easter service, the father talked about how this is the first Easter in two years that they’ve been able to have people celebrate in person. While I do miss church in person and hearing the music live, there is admittedly something easier about streaming church in our living room. At any rate, singing is still prohibited at our church’s in person mass, so at least at home I can sing at the top of my lungs. I do love the music at our church. Lately they’ve been having a small hand bell ensemble and the ringing musical texture seems appropriately joyous.

I like having ham at Easter. And the past couple of years the nine year old and I have been making my mother-in-law’s rainbow jello. Technically it’s a recipe from the box, but the recipe has been carefully hand written onto a recipe card and kept in her recipe box. This year, everyone got to pick a jello colour, so it wasn’t strictly rainbow, but still beautiful.

Monday was still spring break, so I took the kids to a nearby nature center, one we hadn’t been to before. I feel like nature centers are somewhat hidden gems here; everyone knows about the playgrounds, but the nature centers, with their outdoor nature playspaces and kid friendly trails are usually less crowded.

The nine year old was delighted to discover a vine for swinging and the other kids loved playing in a wooden plane. This nature center also has a trail that leads to a pioneer homestead – a collection of buildings that recreate a post-Civil War farm. The buildings are closed, but I always find it fascinating to think about how early Americans lived in such simple structures. I suppose there was no need for many rooms because so much time was spent outside working. Leisure surely was some impetus to have multiple rooms for habitation.

Then it was back to school for the nine year old and back to … not quite sure what for the rest of us. Back to mornings at the park, and afternoons trapped under sleeping babies. And pick ups and drop offs. And seeing friends. All this and the beautiful weather too. The weather this week was warm and sunny – actually this would be my ideal summer, but I know that it’s just spring. At any rate, it has meant lots of time in the garden (for the Husband) and out on walks with friends (for me).

In our continued exploration of the parks in our county, we came across one that was next to an old trolley line. The trolley line has since been converted into a walking/biking trail, and it goes over the major freeway. The day that we visited, there was a fender bender on the freeway just where the trail overpass crosses. We stayed for quite a while on the overpass watching the police cars, fire engines and ambulances with their flashing lights. I watched the state highway worker try to clean up some of the debris with a push broom, sweeping pieces of fallen tree off the road, into the ditch. Something about his actions struck me as so exactingly diligent and slightly out of place. Afterwards, we stood on the overpass and pumped our arms to get the truckers to honk for us. And to our delight, many of them did.

Art class assignment this week was to create a surrealist drawing from reference pictures:

This image is a combination of a drawing of a dog made by the nine year old, the baby’s sonogram image, and an avocado art print. For this assignment, I spent much time on this website of images in the public domain. The site reminds me of the picture collection at the New York Public Library – I remember in college going there one day and spending an afternoon just pulling random categories from the files and looking at images.

COVID moment – So the nine year old is supposed to be learning recorder for music class. Only, now that she is in person, they are not allowed to use their recorders because of the aerosol factor. The students were told that they could use pencils, but the Husband and I decided that we could do better and made her a fake recorder out of a dowel we had lying around the house:

I feel like this will come in handy one day when I’m back at work.

Inspired by the Science of Well Being Course (which I am still slowly working my way through) – I’ve been keeping a list of things I’m grateful for. I feel like it’s a very cliched thing to do these days, but I like the exercise of it, so here are a couple things that made the list so far this month:
– dental insurance – finally got a cleaning after a year and a half and it felt so good.
-the hanging pot rack in our kitchen for allowing us a way to store pots easily and visibly
-vaccine eligibility opening up
-the nine year old’s kindness towards her siblings
-the former owner of this house, who planted hyacinths and tulips bulbs – colourful harbingers of spring. I always forget that they are there and then I’m always surprised when they pop up every year.
-Truckers who honk to make a little boy’s day.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Nachos – the Husband made them. They were tasty. We should have nachos more often.

Sunday: Easter Dinner – ham (basted with Coca Cola), garlic and herb marinated zucchini (one of my favorite ways to eat zucchini, though it requires frying so I don’t do it too often because I don’t like the mess of frying), green salad, Sally’s rainbow jello, chocolate pudding (an easy yet extremely satisfying recipe – I like making it with really dark chocolate and minimal sugar). I also made chocolate walnut scones in the morning and a carrot cake the night before. The Husband and the nine year old had given up chocolate for Lent, so I wanted to make sure there was chocolate dessert for Easter dinner.

Monday:Brussel Sprouts and Rice from East. While I won’t say the family dislikes brussel sprouts, it isn’t their favorite vegetable. This recipe, however, was really good and everyone ate it with zest.

Tuesday: Smashed Squash with Cilantro Pesto from Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone. Eh. The elements of this dish were better than the combination. Or lack of combination – the flavors just didn’t seem to meld.

Wednesday: Butter Garlic Noodles with Mushrooms from Milk Street’s Cook-ish. Noodles and mushrooms are two of the four year old’s favorite things. This was really really good.

Thursday: Cider Braised Lentils from Milk Street’s Cooking Fast and Slow. Made in the InstantPot. The Husband said this dish defied expectations. French lentils cooked with leeks, apples, and apple cider and garnished with pickled apples and radishes. There was an option to eat it with goat cheese or yogurt, but it really didn’t need it. Adding to our rotation.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and The Lion King. The Lion King has never been my favorite Disney movie – mostly because I find Simba a pretty week character and the plot without momentum. But I have to say, I did enjoy this more than I remembered.

Weekly recap + what we ate – Spring break and all the colours!

The children picked some spring nosegays for the kitchen window sill.

It was spring break, and even though we stayed in town, I think we packed a good number of adventures in.

I took the kids on a new to us hike about 45 minutes away. The trail was part of a County park, one of those wilderness areas that you find in the suburbs – felt remote but you could still hear the traffic. A couple months ago, I got a book that listed hiking trails in our area that were child friendly – the book even lists whether or not something is passable with a jogging stroller. I’ve been using that book to plan a lot of our outdoor adventures. On this particular hike, the baby managed to walk for almost two hours before asking to be picked up and then promptly fell asleep in the sling. It was a pretty solitary hike -perhaps because it was a weekday. But we did meet some beautiful dogs and one person on a bike. I’m not sure I stayed on the trails outlined in the book because we did not reach the shores of the lake, but we did see some other pretty neat touches of human existence in the woods:

We also went to a petting farm in our area for their Easter Egg “hunt”. While there we saw a kangaroo, turkeys, pigs, all manner of bovine, alpacas, and guinea pigs. The kids also fed some goats and climbed on play structures refashioned from large tractors. I was fascinated by the eggs that one of the workers there collected from the chicken coop – they were perfectly pastel Easter colours straight out of the chicken.

The Husband also took a day off during Spring Break, and we went up to Longwood Gardens. It was a beautiful mix of bare trees and riotous blooms, and the weather likewise alternated bitingly cold and windy with warm sun. The blue poppy display in the conservatory were apparently a very rare treat and so striking. We’ve decided to go to Longwood at least once a season so that we can truly see the panoply that the gardens offer.

For drawing class:

One day a couple weeks ago, the Husband came home with this mini watermelon.
“What’s that for?” I asked. The Husband is not terribly fond of watermelon, so I was a little perplexed by the purchase.
“I thought you could draw it. See all the cool green stripes?”
And the watermelon sat there for a couple weeks because I was busy drawing toys. And then this week, while looking for some fruit to eat with lunch, I saw the watermelon. The kids love watermelon. So I decided to cut it up for them. But then I remembered. I was supposed to draw this watermelon for my husband. But the kids were waiting for watermelon. What to do?
Now in class, our teacher is quite adamant that we need to draw from life, and not from a picture. It was the middle of lunch, however. I wasn’t going to not feed them the watermelon. So I took a picture. And later that night I drew the Husband his watermelon.
I find seeds make the watermelon eating process very inconvenient. At the same time, a picture of a seedless watermelon still somehow looks… off. Like it’s missing something.

It’s April.

I made some indulgent purchases this week:

I love drinking tea. Piping hot tea. The problem is, however, that it always cools by the time to get around to drinking it and then I have to run the kettle again. Also the baby loves to play in my tea cups if I leave them out. She sticks her hand in the cup, fishes out the tea bag and the proceeds to wipe the table with the tea bag until it breaks. What was once a relaxing ritual has actually become quite vexing and stressful.

So I did something about it. I bought an insulated cup with a sealable lid. It’s been amazing. Definitely an “added value” purchase. Hot tea all day, and no baby tea bag art.

I also went on a planner binge and treated myself to two new weekly planners. I usually do my planning in a Muji notebook, but they seem to have discontinued the ones I usually use, so I thought I would try something new. I bought a twenty four hour planner so that I could track my time and wellness habits, and a small weekly planner to plan my weeks. So one planner is for plotting my weeks and one planner is more for daily reflection. I’ve been feeling a little unproductive lately, and I find that tracking my time and planning on paper helps me focus my time. As much as it can focus while chasing a toddler.

Goals: Read some poetry every day. April is National Poetry Month, and I’ve decided to read at least one poem each day. I already get a poem in my blog feed every day via this website – though I don’t often read them, or when I do I only read them in a cursory fashion. This month, I’ve decided to really take time to read the poems which show up in my feed and I’ve also checked out some poetry books from the library both for the kids and for myself. Sometimes I find poetry challenging and dense, and I’m never quite sure that I “get” it. But I love the way words fit together to form super concentrated thoughts and ideas and images.

Good listen: I was listening to the radio obituary for Dick Hoyt on NPR a couple weeks ago and the story of his life has really stuck with me. Hoyt came to prominence for pushing his wheelchair bound son Rick in hundreds of marathon and races. Together they were known as Team Hoyt, and their perseverance and selflessness is inspiring. Listening to their story made me wish that if one of my children ever ends up in a wheelchair, I hope, like Hoyt, I never get tired of pushing them.

Oh, and the week began with a rainbow. It’s hard to hold a grudge against rainy weather when it produces such things as these:

What we ate:

Saturday: Burrito Bowls – black beans, corn, rice, avocado

Sunday: Panang curry – tofu, green beans, potatoes, cauliflower… It was a “clean out the veggie drawer” meal.

Monday: Leek, mushroom and kale subji from Meera Sodha’s East, eaten with chapatis. Kind of like an Indian stir-fry. Another “clean out” meal, that miraculously we had all the ingredients for.

Tuesday: Eggplant polichatttu from East, and chaat salad from Made in India. The pollichatu is basically eggplant layered with an onion/shallot/garlic mixture and then baked. It involved two of my favorite ingredients – curry leaves and tamarind. Tasty, but a little time intensive so I’m not sure it will be repeated.

Wednesday: Take out. Wednesday was rough and mid afternoon I texted the Husband and suggested that he bring home take out.

Thursday: Leftovers after returning home from Longwood gardens.

Friday: Pizza and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. To be honest, I didn’t much pay attention to this movie.

Weekly recap + what we ate – vaccine impatience

Trees and Rocks – another of our weekday park adventures.

It feels as if everyone is impatient these days to get the vaccine, and it seems like such a fraught topic. So many of the eligibility requirements are deeply personal so even as I am curious as to how people my age are getting their shots, I feel like it would be intrusive to ask. I’m trying to remind myself that I will get my shot soon – our governor’s goal is to open eligibility for everyone over 16 by the end of April – and that I just need to practice safe habits til then. Having the prospects of getting my shot in sight has given me a little sense of momentum, but I feel like our state has been slower than many other states and that makes me restless. Restless momentum. Seems appropriate.

Whenever I try to look into it, it appears like the pathways to a vaccine appointment are varied and scattered. There are so many options and websites to check. I am amazed and grateful for the people who have the time and know how to help others find the vaccine and who are working so that those without internet or other such resources can get their appointments. This grassroots type of vaccine hunting is really inspiring. I suppose there is no easy way to vaccinate hundreds of billions of people and everyone is doing their best.

More sign of spring:
The birdsongs are incessant these days. It reminds me of the days when I was in college, staying up all night to finish that paper that had been put off too long and was due imminently. I usually got into such a deep sense of flow writing that I wouldn’t realize that I had pulled an all-nighter until I heard the first bird calls of the morning. And the whistle of the Dinky train.

There is something about hearing birds that will always be associated with mornings to me. Although I do love how birdsongs change throughout the day.

The birds have returned to nest in our eaves.

Rainy days. There was one very very rainy day. It was the nine year old’s half day and by mid afternoon, I had had it and forced everyone outside for a little walk. The little walk turned into an hour in the light rain. I hadn’t expected to be out that long, so I didn’t bring the stroller for the baby. Before I knew it, we were at the local park, much farther than I thought she would walk. She did need to be carried the last half block home. In the long run, though, her stamina and determination to go onward on her own two feet does make for the whole process of the daily walk to be a lot more impulsive now that I don’t feel the need to drag the stroller out too.

“If all of the rain drops were lemon drops and gumdrops….”

Sunny days. Seventy degree summer weather on the heels of the rainy day. We continued to explore parks while the nine year old is in school. This one was particularly interesting because the land used to belong to one of the prominent families in the County and the original houses still stood nearby, though they are still privately occupied. In addition to the playground, there were some large boulders which the kids enjoyed climbing.

The baby turned eighteen months this week. We had a little cake to celebrate. She had a check up and a shot, this latter made her cranky and tired all day. There is still some concern about her language development, so I might have to be a little more aggressive about starting services for her than I would prefer.

In drawing class, we continued working with colored pencils:

We were to draw a still life, and I chose to set up some of the kids’ toys. The classic Fisher Price phone was the first object I chose, and then I went through the playroom looking for other toys with faces that I could gather. I feel like finding the right colour match is still difficult for me, but I’m realizing that colour is relative. So even if the blue of the police car doesn’t completely match the real thing, it just needs to be the right color relation to the rooster, say.

The slice of life I want to remember:

The four year old is very good at entertaining himself. He will play with his cars and trucks endlessly on his own. He has also always loved books and spends large chunks of time just looking at books. I love watching him as he flips through books, taking in all the illustrations and repeating the words from memory. In those moments, I envy the life in his man bubble. Also – he’s been obsessively wearing that Doc McStuffins coat.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Can’t remember. I do remember it wasn’t as simple as I usually do.

Sunday: Leftover Pav bhaji, with a mango salad on the side.

Monday: Lentils with Roasted Broccoli and Goat Cheese from Dinner Illustrated. On Saturday, we were running some errands in a certain part of town so we stopped at the fancy grocery store -kind of a local Whole Foods. It had been so long since I had been to a grocery store, that I went a little crazy and stocked up on all manner of grains, beans, and legumes. Also – they seemed to have the entire Bob’s Red Mill catalogue in stock… and I might have gone a little overboard. If I could only shop one brand for the rest of my life, it might just be Bob’s Red Mill. Anyhow, one of the things I picked up were French Lentils (Puy lentils) – I had long heard about these as being a really sturdy lentil, but never had the opportunity to try them. I made a recipe from Dinner Illustrated, and I think they are now my favorite lentils – they don’t get mushy and taste somehow fresher than brown lentils. Definitely going to try to find more ways to use them.

Tuesday: Salmon and ginger green beans.

Wednesday: Asparagus “Risotto” from Milk Street’s Cook-ish. The Risotto is in quotation marks because this recipe actually uses Israeli couscous – another purchase on my exuberant grain shopping spree. Cook-ish is the latest in my obsession with Milk Street cook books. The recipes are supposedly very simple with not a whole lot of ingredients.

Thursday: Ordered Foodhini. Foodhini is a company that delivers food prepared by immigrants. They currently have chefs from Laos, Afghanistan, The Ivory Coast, and Eritrea. It was our first time ordering, so we tried something from every country. It was all really delicious.

Friday: Pizza and Toy Story (the first one). Watching the featurette on Toy Story, I am reminded about how utterly groundbreaking this film was. They showed clips of the animators working, and I think it’s the first time I fully grasped the fact that a lot of the animation was done by manipulating numbers.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to school!!!!

A welcome sight – the school bus fleet back on the roads! And also – the trees starting to bloom!

On Monday, the nine year old went back to in person school. It’s such a fraught decision, and no one-size fits all choice; every family needs to see what is best for them. So we looking at CDC guidelines and weighing our sense of risk against the stress that distance learning was causing for everyone – we knew that sending her back was the right choice for our family. She was so happy to see her friends again, though only about a third of her class elected to return to in person learning. The look of joy on her face at the end of every day helps me know that we made the right choice. At least the right choice for now. It might not be the right choice in two weeks, or three week, or what not, but it is the right choice for now.

So this week was about, again, adjusting and finding a new rhythm.

There is the commute to school. I don’t love having to drive up and down the freeway four times a day – actually only twice because I come home on local roads – but it felt like a more controlled environment than the school bus.

There is the morning routine and having to get used to leaving the house again.

There is the way my day is now defined by drop off and pick ups – which I think is helpful for me to focus my energy, but at the same time I still feel a little lost on how best to use the time.

I’ve decided that I want to visit as many of the parks in our county as possible, so after drop off, I will take the four year old and the baby to a playground.

The baby is frighteningly adept at climbing play structures. She loves going down slides. The four year old has gotten used to being asked to catch her at the bottom. He stands there with his arm outstretched as she come wooshing down the slide, colliding with him. He valiantly tries to keep upright while not letting his little sister hit the ground, and usually he succeeds. Watching sibling interaction has been one of the great joys of the pandemic.

My phone finally had to be replaced this week. I’ve had the same iPhone 6 for almost five years and The Husband tells me that it’s time. I’m a little resentful because I feel like things should last longer than five years, but the touch screen stopped working, so I guess he’s right. I tried to get by using voice command for a while, but it was getting a little ridiculous.

The whole process of getting a new phone was somewhat frustrating. I remember it being a lot easier five years ago – but now it seems that you need a lot more additional things just to be able to function. I feel like a curmudgeon about the whole thing.

Anyhow, I have a new phone and everything transferred smoothly, except for my Whatsapp which I didn’t realize had to be backed up separately. Oops. Actually there is something almost disappointing in how seamless my new phone set itself up. The new phone looks almost exactly like my old phone and I find myself missing that sense of “new” that usually comes with upgrading devices. It’s an odd sensation – like the new phone is wearing the same clothes as the old phone.

Some fun weekend adventures:

The husband had to work over the weekend, so I took the kids to the local Botanical Gardens and playground. So many signs of spring! The nine year old spotten some frog eggs in the stream. There was sunshine and fresh air and trees still bare, but starting to bud. The baby went down the slides at the big kids playground. Not the two story high one, but the smaller big one.

And there was this meditation that I found lovely:

On Sunday, we tried to take the kids to watch planes land; there is a playground near the airport where you can almost get your eyebrows shaved by landing planes. Unfortunately the parking lot was full, so we went to a playground around the corner though the view of planes wasn’t as spectacular at that playground. On the way, we got milkshakes and fries. It was probably in truth a touch too cold for milkshakes, but they were still tasty.

Steak ‘n’ Shake! Mid-afternoon indugence.

The baby has started asking to wear a mask when we go out. By “ask” I mean she hands it to us and makes her little insistent seal barking sounds. (She is still not talking, though she will repeat “dada” and “mmmm” (milk), and “baba” (for bao bao, Mandarin for “Pick me up” or “Hug)). I feel a little self conscious about her wearing a mask; is it overkill? – but on the other hand, she will have to start wearing one in six months, so I’m glad that she is okay with it, and it seems safe.

Fun project: Inspired by a conversation with my friend Kristen, who is a preschool teacher – I decided I wanted to try my hand at making butter. Holy cow it actually works! I wasn’t sure it was going to work because it took a lot of shaking and since I used a stainless steel jar I couldn’t see the progress. The kids lost interest after a couple minutes, so I kept going. It was a somewhat act of faith for me to keep shaking. I had made whipped cream from shaking before, so going from liquid cream to the smooth and thick whipped cream was expected. But then I thought – where does it go from here? And I keep shaking and shaking, the jar is soundless as I shake it. And then it becomes this kind of rough, chunky whipped cream. And I think, “That looks gross….” But I close up the jar and keep shaking. And at some point, there is a sloshing sound, and I open up the jar and see:

I’m sure there is some kind of metaphor here for theatre and art – about shaking and shaking and and having faith that the results will be consumable, even if the midway point looks chunky and clunky and messy.

What we ate:

Saturday: Pasta with jarred red sauce.

Sunday: Tofu banh mi Bowls with noodles

Monday:Chickpeas and Kale on Barley from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Fast.

Tuesday: Shrimp, Fennel and White Bean Stew from Mark Bittman’s VB6 cookbook.

Wednesday: Green beans and tofu stir fry w/ brown rice.

Thursday: Pav Bhaji from Meera Sodha’s Made in India. The Husband called this Indian Manwich – basically it’s a vegetable mash of eggplant, cauliflower, and potatoes cooked in cumin, coriander, garam masala, tumeric and amchur (we used chana masala powder instead). The whole things is slathered on buns and eaten topped with red onion and cilantro with a squeeze of lemon. Everyone asked that this be put into our meal rotation!

Friday: pizza and That Darn Cat! I’ve been borrowing from the library some of the Disney movies that I watched growing up. The four year old thought this movie was hilarious.

Weekly recap + what we ate – getting out of town

Sunrise on the C&O Canal tow path and the lockhouse where we stayed.

The nine year old had a surprise non-instructional day at the beginning of the week, followed by two days of asynchronous learning. In layman’s terms that meant she didn’t have to go to school for three days. So we left town.

I booked us to stay a night at a lockhouse. These are historic houses along the C&O canal that were built to house the lock keepers and their families. Seven of them have been restored and furnished with period appropriate furniture by the C&O Canal Trust, and can be booked for a stay. I had read about these a while ago and something about the historic and rustic nature of them really appealed to the romantic in me. So when I was looking for a place to take the kids for an overnight, a lockhouse struck me as the perfect pandemic get away since they are remote and only one party stays in at a time. So after dithering for a couple days, I booked one about an hour away and packed the kids up for an adventure.

We first went hiking at Catoctin National Park. I chose a hike that was less than a mile so that the baby would be able to walk the whole way. The hike was colder than I had anticipated – I had forgotten how quickly a change in altitude and make temperatures plummet. There was still a good amount of snow cover on the ground. In the end, though, we didn’t get too far. We came across a pile of boulders and the two older kids just wanted to spend their time climbing and scrambling. Seeing them figure out how to scale to heights was actually pretty awesome.

We got to the lockhouse mid afternoon. It was spare and rustic, and oh so quiet. The house had electricity, but no indoor plumbing. I knew about this going in, but I don’t think I fully realized the simple luxury of indoor plumbing until I had to spend a day without it. I had anticipated having to use a portable toilet, but then there were things like washing dishes and hands, draining pasta, and brushing your teeth, that are definitely easier when the water has a place to drain away.

We spent our daylight hours strolling along the Potomac and walking along and in the abandoned locks. The locks have been abandoned for almost 100 years an in that time forests and meadows have grown in them. Looking at them, I was really struck by how little time it takes for a forest to grow if people let nature do its thing.

In the evening we made a fire – I hadn’t brought marshmallows because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make a fire. The kids really wanted one, though, so I did make one after dinner. And then another one the next morning. I did have some sliced apples, so I wrapped them in foil, brushed them with honey and bacon grease (the only kind of fat/oil I had on hand) and cooked them over the campfire. They were really tasty. Though, I suspect most things are tasty when eaten outdoors and by a roaring fire.

We didn’t sleep much that night. The kids weren’t used to being somewhere so dark and quiet and it was a little unsettling for them. We ended up sleeping with the lights on. I felt for sure that the trip was a failure, but in the morning, they were all smiles and excited to explore and run around outside.

It was by no means a fancy get away. But it was quiet and screen free (though, I did read my book on my phone after the kids went to bed). We hadn’t gone away since before the pandemic had hit, and I was getting a little stir crazy, to be honest. It was just nice to be surrounded by a different four walls for a little while and to imagine what life was like in this little community of Four Locks.

On the way home we stopped at Antietam Battlefield. I was never much of a Civil War buff, but being at Antietam, and seeing how vast an expanse it was, and thinking of the number of lives that were lost in this one battle… it made me realize how crazy difficult and horrible the Civil War must have been. I mean any war, really. But thinking about how lacking in technology they were and how difficult military strategy must have been given that lack…

Burnside Bridge and the sycamore tree that saw the Civil War.

And it’s not a road trip without a stop for ice cream. Two cones and a milkshake for less than seven dollars. We were definitely not in the city.

This week’s drawing assignment: We got to work in colour finally! We used pencil crayon (which, I think are called colored pencils in America; pencil crayons is what I called them growing up in Canada). Working in colour is definitely harder than one would think. Like learning to draw, I’m learning that working in colour is about breaking down what we see into parts rather than thinking of them as a whole. So, for example from below, shadows are not just darker versions of the table, but their own colour. Something being darker or lighter is not a matter of black and white, but of blue, purple, yellow, red… it is about the colour, not the light. Just as with drawing I had to learn to draw the lines of the object, not the object itself, I think the same applies to using colour – you draw what is there, not what you think is there.

The rest of the week seemed pretty heavy on life admin stuff as we get ready for the nine year old to go back to school. It fills me with excitement, worry, doubt and hope. As we round the corner of one year of staying at home, I’ve felt like the past twelve months have felt impossibly long but also it’s gone in a blink of an eye. I feel like I’m in much the same place I was, but the baby has gone from being immobile to scaling table tops and the middle child is (mostly) potty trained. Things move forward, even when I can’t.

More signs of the onward trudge of time – this tree that I took a picture of last month is no longer quite so bare:

What We Ate:

Saturday: Can’t remember. Maybe takeout?

Sunday: Roast Cod and Vegetables.

Monday: Tortellini and Ravioli. Carrot Sticks and snacks. Dinner at the lockhouse.

Tuesday: Breakfast Sandwiches. The Husband made dinner.

Wednesday: Penne with Broccolini and Goat cheese from Milk Street Tuesday Nights.

Thursday: Cauliflower Curry Soup from ATK Vegan for Everyone.

Friday: Pizza (homemade. I put anchovies on it, but I had forgotten which side and got it mixed up…. that was not popular) and Loony Tunes.

Weekly recap + what we ate – Spring peeks in

In a final attempt to get a hike in for February, we took the kids to a local woodland sanctuary. Though when we got there, half of it was closed for restoration. Nonetheless, we did enjoy some lovely signs of spring and had a nice amble/romp through the part that was open. We also saw some interesting rough shelters. More and more we are letting the baby walk. She is usually good for about 45 minutes of walking, admittedly at her own pace, so we don’t necessarily get too far.

Last weekend I introduced the kids to the ten hour BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I had forgotten how much of the movie is Colin Firth staring broodingly, and how very little he actually speaks. And how swoonworthy I find that. Though I’m sure in real life such behaviour would actually frustrate me greatly. But I guess that what’s literature (and excellent adaptation of literature) is for.

sleeping baby, cuddling nine year old, and Colin Firth. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Last week, I had an opportunity to be a guest for an opera company’s Zoom workshop for children. I was asked to talk about stage management. Dusting off my stage manager’s brain after almost a year felt like revisiting an old friend. I pulled out my work tote bags and my SM kit to see what was there for potential show and tell. I seem to have misplaced my stopwatch and my drawing template. I also had to create some marked up score pages. I had, in a fit of cleaning last fall, thrown out a whole box of old scores that I had been keeping for who knows what reason. Those scores were almost twenty years old and I decided they were no longer serving me. Welp…. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I regret tossing them – the inner wanna be purger felt quite liberated to have the space back. But then something like this comes along and the inner “keep it just in case”-er feels vindicated.

So I mourned a little and then got to work making a fake score page. There is something so soothing about placing calls in a score – the orderly calm of it, the rhythm of writing, and sticking…. I’m sure I used to take for granted the great satisfaction I get from putting post-its in the right place.

Initially I was a little nervous about the class because I feel like a lot of what we do as stage managers is more internal than demonstrative. It’s not the glamorous storytelling work of singers or dancers or designers. Do we tell stories? We certainly help create and communicate stories. In the end, we taught the kids about stage directions and taking blocking. And also how to say “Thank you, five!” I feel like though these are not creative skills, they are probably good life skills.

Art homework this week was bout the technique of frottage – basically making rubbings, very like what one did in elementary school with leaves and what not. I had hoped to get some outdoor samples for my rubbings – like leaves, or bark, or rocks or sidewalk – but the weather was quite wet all week. Instead I had to look for indoor objects of texture- which is not as obvious as one would think. It seems our current domestic life is one of smoothness and lack of texture. I became quite obsessed with finding items with words that made good rubbing projects. I went around the house touching all the words or lettering I found, to see if it would make a good frottage project. All the letter hunting inspired me to this drawing which I call “Alphabet Soup.” I think, if I were to do it again, I would add a spoon or some more objects of context.

I am trying to mentally prepare to send the nine year old back to school. There is a lot of information out there, but also so much is unknown.

Fun Sunshiny things:

I bought the nine year old one of those shirts with mermaid sequins – the kind where you can flip them back and forth and they change colours. The other day she was wearing her shirt and:

…. she became a human, late afternoon sun disco ball! This shirt and the nine year old’s discovery of the science of reflection – has brought many impromptu moments of sparkle.

Speaking of late afternoon sun and the nine year old, here is another moment of “resistance”. I feel like either it’s a statement about homework, or idly surfing while doing homework.

I put the baby on the tricycle this week for the first time. She seemed to love it. Both the tricycle and the helmet were from when the nine year old was a toddler, and now all three children have gotten use of them.

The four year old peeled a sweet potato all by himself for the first time. He was so proud of himself. I will say he’s been the most reluctant chore-doer of the kids. Even the baby loves to do chores. I read this article from NPR last week about children and chores, and the article talks about giving children three subtasks per hour – the idea being that these really small yet specific jobs helps to foster a sense of inclusion and responsibility. I think this might be the way to go with the four year old.

Pre-COVID I would sometimes go to the library and sit and read magazines for an hour or two. I love magazines. I love leafing through the glossy pages. I love the bite sized articles. I love the longer, more in depth articles. I love the shiny perfect pictures. I love information consumption. I love, let’s be honest, not having to pay for my own subscriptions and not having the paper clutter in the house. Needless to say leisurely magazine reading hasn’t happened for a while. So when I peeked into the Little Free Library by the park this week and saw a copy of Real Simple, I snatched it up. Never mind that it was four months old and talked about Thanksgiving. My brain kind of reacted as if the magazine was a Twix and I had been on a sugar fast. Immediately I pictured myself sitting in a comfy chair with a hot beverage, idly turning pages while planning meals and life organization tactics. This relaxing magazine reading with my cup of tea experience I’d envisioned has – surprise! – yet to happen. But there is a lot of hope invested in that magazine. If I can manage to keep the kids from hiding it.

One last message that appeared in my life this week, peeking at me from the edge of some fabric I was sewing into masks:

What We Ate:

Saturday- Sausage and grapes – the Husband cooked. This is one of my favorite dishes that I never remember to make.

Sunday- Steamed rice and veggies with Tofu from Milk Street Tuesday Nights

Monday- mushroom noodles from Milk Street Fast and Slow

Tuesday- Coconut cod curry and rice from Made in India

Wednesday- fennel and cannelloni bean soup from Milk Street Tuesday Nights.

Thursday- quinoa nori wraps from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone

Friday: pizza (with anchovies!) and Annie

Weekly recap + what we ate – winter sunshine

Even with snow on the ground, we explored a new park last weekend. I haven’t quite been able to have a proper woody hike this month, but I did try really hard to make it outside every day for at least twenty minutes. This park came up on the county recs Winter Activity Bingo sheet. The park had been newly renovated with new play structures and some eye popping murals. The murals were such a joyful burst of colour on a drab winter day.

The kids had a particularly fun time on this disc swing. There is something really happy about seeing two kids on the same swing, the older one holding the younger one up. The swing went pretty high and I found myself a little anxious, but then I reminded myself of the laws of physics.

By midweek the temperatures were into the 40s and the snow was almost all melted. I’m trying to develop a personal metric for when I need to wear my winter coat. 40s is definitely too warm for my winter coat. High 30s is puffer vest layered under winter coat. Low 30s is all that + fleece, boots, and silk long underwear. Hats and gloves throughout, though.

But, signs of spring continue to be seen:

Art class assignment this week was to adopt an artist. This was mine:

I chose Magritte. Ultimately this drawing felt a little derivative to me. I feel like I copied his subject matter more than his style. Though the instructor said with surrealists subject and style are intertwined more so than a lot of other genres.

I had two bunches of kale growing limp in the fridge, so I made kale chips. The last time I had kale chips was over a year ago. Some random friends from college all ended up living in this area and we decided – after ten years – that we should actually get together. Who knew it was the last dinner party we’d have in quite some time.

I’ve had mixed success with kale chips, but this batch turned out pretty good. I seasoned them with coconut oil and curry powder and baked at 275 for 30 mins, flipping half way through. I think I had always baked them at too high a heat and they always burnt. The America’s Test Kitchn recipe said bake at 200 for an hour, but I felt like the results weren’t spectacularly better enough to merit the extra half hour in the oven.

Interesting read this week about why we shouldn’t celebrate the death of Rush Limbaugh. This sentence particularly resonated with me:
“I’ve stopped referring to people as “racists,” “misogynists,” or “homophobes,” detailing their words and actions rather than reducing them to labels. After all, when you call me a name — “snowflake,” “social justice warrior” — I stop listening. I don’t think I’m an outlier.”

This also resonated with me, but for different reasons: I’m a short afternoon walk and you are putting too much pressure on me.

The four year old saw this heart in the wild and made me take a picture:

Weird food thing of the week: Dumpling water soup. We ate the last of our frozen dumplings from our favorite dumpling house this week. After we had the dumplings, I ladled some of the water from boiling the dumplings into a mug and sipped the hot liquid. It’s a habit I learned from my parents. On the one hand it’s a very frugal thing to do, but on the other hand it feel really indulgent.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Roasted Shrimp and Broccoli

Sunday: Pad Thai (recipe from ATK Vegan for Everyone) with sauteed green beans on the side.

Monday: Brussel Sprouts Risotto with dried figs. From Bittman’s VB6 Cookbook.

Tuesday: Black Bean, Corn, Quinoa Salad with lime dressing from ATK Vegan for Everyone.

Wednesday: Salmon burgers and roasted carrots.

Thursday: Cilantro Scallion Chickpeas from Milk Street Fast and Slow. The baby loved this. And the chick peas were the perfect texture. I had been struggling with making chick peas in the InstantPot, and this time they came out uniformly tender. I think adding baking soda as recommended in the cookbook really made a difference in texture.

Friday: pizza (take out) and From the Earth to the Moon – documentary about space travel. I hope that we never look on space travel with anything less than awe and amazement.

Weekly Recap + what we ate – still winter

The weekend arrived… plink plink plink. The sound of freezing rain. It covered everything in a sheen of warped glass. The Husband, from the Midwest, is a big believer of scraping ice when you can, not when you have to. (Actually this is his philosophy for many things). So every couple of hours he went and scraped off the cars. Towards the evening I put my earphones on, bundled up and took a turn at ice scraping. It turns out to be a rather soothing and invigorating task. Moreso when I only did it once the whole day. The slow, persistence of ice scraping and the puffer coat cocoon that encased me allowed me to acheive a sense of flow.

Of course I would probably feel differently if I were in a public parking lot at eleven pm after a long rehearsal. It does somewhat inspire me to scrape the ice off my car during a dinner break to make that 11am experience not so prolonged. That whole future self thanking past self thing….

Monday was President’s Day. Originally I had wanted to go hiking, but snow and ice made that not a great idea. So we had a cozy day at home, doing I don’t know what. The husband and 4 year old planted scallion bulbs. We played Parcheesi. We did manage a walk mid afternoon.

We had a lovely respite from the freezing weather with two days of sunshine and weather in the mid 30s – 40s. I took full advantage of this and took the kids to the playground. I’ve realized that three weeks of quarantine and then weeks of unending snow, freezing rain, and general wet weather has made me a little less precious about letting the kids play on a wet muddy playground. The mud will wash and things will dry. Of course things will probably irreparably dirty, but… oh well.

The two days of sunshine were followed by more snow. Enough to have a snow day in the city, though our school district continued to have virtual schooling. I miss the idea of a snow day. The things that bothers me somewhat is that the school district closed the Equity Hubs and the schools that were hosting care programs. Understandable given the weather, but then why not declare it a snow day for everyone? It is not much of an equity hub if the students who rely on it are pushed further behind. This school year has been so hard on everyone. There is a glimmer of hope in that in person schooling is set to begin again next month but even that is

I had my first art assignment. We were to make an abstract drawing by enlarging something, zooming in on the detail.. I chose a frozen raindrop on a branch, though it didn’t turn out to be as abstract as I wanted. Also – the drawing is on 24″ x 18″ paper, and during our critique session in class, I felt like it’s hard to really understand a picture without knowing the original size. I’m growing to love the fuzzy, forgiving nature of working in charcoal. Having a project to work on feels really great right now.

Fun food for Valentine’s Day. My mother makes beautiful food creations. She taught me how to make radish roses and bunny rabbit carrots. And one Thanksgiving she made this amazing fruit turkey. In that spirit, I made the kids special Valentine’s Day ramen.

Indoor art activity. I find letting the kids do art projects very stressful… the mess!! But they have fun and it’s a good way to pass the time indoors.

This week in the 4 year old’s preschool cirriculum we are talking about the five senses. Later in the week, his older sister was reading Little Red Riding Hood for class (What big eyes you have! What big ears you have! etc.), and the 4 year old says, “Mommy… The wolf is using his four senses!”

What We Ate:

Sunday: Dumplings (the frozen ones from our favorite dumpling place) and braised bok choy. While not as good as getting them from the restaurant, they were much better than any other frozen dumplings you can get at the supermarket.

Sunday: 1 Hour Vegetable Pot Pie from Minimalist Baker – vegan recipe, but I did use regular milk and butter. I love this recipe because it really does take an hour to make, and always tastes like you slaved for hours making it.

Monday: Vegetable Curry with Lemon Peanut Rice from Fresh India. I might have to buy that cookbook – everything I’ve made from it has been really good. Also I managed to find fresh curry leaves – often one of those “optional” ingredients – and I was excited to use them. They made things taste… I don’t know.. fresher? Hard to describe, but I could definitely tell the difference.

Tuesday: Mushroom Ragout with noodles from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone. This recipe is in the Mapo section – it’s Bittman’s vegan take on Mapo Tofu. The four year old loves mushrooms and devoured this.

Wednesday: Roasted perch and catfish and roasted veggies. For Ash Wednesday.

Thursday: Vegetable Barley Soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. I didn’t have turnips, so I subbed radish and it was really tasty. Good food for a cold snowy day.

Friday: Takeout pizza and Brigadoon. Despite being disappointed that so many of my favorite songs were cut (Come to me, My Mother’s Wedding Day, From this Day On… actually I love all the songs in this score), I still really enjoyed this movie. There’s Gene Kelly for one – so elegant and poised. And also – plaid leggings on the men! It was LuLa Roe worthy.

Weekly recap + what we ate – SNOW!!!!

Saturday we went to the park for the first time in weeks. The four year old took his new scooter and the nine year old rode her bike. At the park the kids climbed and ran and swung and hopped. We worked on teaching the four year old how to pump his legs on the swing. There was sun and 40 degree weather (which feels warm these days), and fresh air and a change of scenery and neighborhood dogs playing catch in the tennis courts.

It proved a good thing because it snowed the next day. Beautiful white snow! A thick blanket of it, covering everything.

The snow gave us several days of fun, despite the fact that distance learning has done away with the idea of a “snow day”. I’m a little bit in mourning about that, though one of the teachers had a virtual snow day that consisted of the students throwing wadded up balls of paper at their screen. IRL (as the kids say these days) we bundled up and went outside and built snow forts, shaped snowmen, made snow angels. The kids even helped the grown ups shovel. The four year old found a “snowchair”- a divot in the snow bank left next to our drive way by snow plows. The baby discovered the joy of eating snow… she would find chunks of snow and carry them around in her hand, chomping it like a snow cone. The nine year old delighted in throwing snow balls.

As for me- I loved the quiet and the cold. After the kids went inside, I would just stand outside, letting the cold envelop me, the snow muffling the sounds of outside and day. It was like being in an isolation chamber. And I could breathe and for two minutes not be responsible for anything except my own breath.

Afterwards, there is a quiet satisfaction to seeing all our snowy boots lined up next to the door and our snow suits hung in a row to dry in the bathroom.

The listservs exploded with snow gear for sale and free, a lot of it posted as “like new” and “barely worn”. I guess a lot of people had stocked up in snow gear last year. And then it hadn’t snowed.

I’ve been doing some more cardboard building. When we got our new stove in December, we acquired a new appliance sized box for projects. Also- when the stove was delivered, I asked if they had other boxes and they left a refrigerator box as well. Around the end of the year our cardboard box UPS truck finally collapsed and went out for recycling. For weeks the four year old has been requesting a FedEx Truck while the nine year old wanted an ice cream truck. And because he wanted to give me a challenge, the four year old requested a door in the back that went up and down. Well. I guess I was going to get serious about carboard box building so I did some internet research to find better ways of attaching cardboard together and found these screws designed for cardboard box building. Between those, packing tape and brass fasteners, I feel like I have a decent variety of tools for cardboard box construction, and my cardboard box construction game has been upped.

The back door on the truck is manually operated, but it does go up and down! It took a bit of making and testing and trouble shooting, but a fun challenge.

Also on another day, I made the four year old and airplane as well. There are many modes of transportation inside our house.

Despite the snow, the hyacinths have started to poke their green heads up. Perhaps the warmer weather has confused them. It is so deceptive to see them push their way through the ground so soon. I hope they survive.

Hearts found in nature:

We did some kitchen reorganizing and, taking stock of what I was using and not using these days, I packed away our lunch boxes and lunch containers. I realized that we haven’t really used them in a year and they were taking up a lot of accessible space that would probably be better occupied by things we actually did use. I’ve been seeing articles about pandemic fashion and how that has led people to minimize, and I feel like that’s what I did this week with our kitchen too. When I had pulled out all the containers and stacked them, they seemed like a lot, but I guess back when everyone was packing a lunch, I often felt like we didn’t have enough.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, I really got into making these window clings from an art kit the nine year old had gotten for her birthday. Last spring, it seemed like window art was a huge source of solace and connection. Our neighorhood had various scavenger hunts where people would put things in their window for people to look for on their walks – there was a Bear Hunt and a rainbow hunt. I made all sorts of pictures and designs and one day, I asked my husband what word we should put in our window. And he said, “Resist.” It seemed appropriate at the time: resist implied health and resilience.

Making the word was a lengthy project – each letter took two to three days to make becuase you had to make the outline and wait for it to dry, and then add the colour and wait for that to dry before you could peel it and stick it to the window. But back then I was eager for tedious projects that required patience. It seemed at the begnning of the shutdown all we had was time and ourselves.

RESIST has been on our window for almost a year now. Some days, the late afternoon sun comes through the window and projects the word onto our walls. The colour has faded somewhat, but the word still shows up loud and clear. A message and a reminder. I’m contemplating adding another word to it. Not sure what, though.

What we ate:

Saturday: Brisket and Salad. On of our good friends has a smoker and he brought us some of his smoked brisket.

Sunday: can’t remember. ugh. Maybe take out???

Monday: Broccoli tofu panang curry with rice noodles.

Tuesday: Potato curry and a fennel apple salad from Fresh India.

Wednesday: Black bean burgers (from Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow), green salsa (from Bittman’s VB6 cookbook) and coconut lime cilantro rice.

Thursday: Cod soup based off a recipe from from Milk Street: Fast and Slow. This was actually a vegetarian soup leek, carrot and potatoe soup from the Milk Street Instant Pot cookbook. I threw in some cod for protein. And just used onions for the leeks.

Friday: Pizza (home made – dough from Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone cookbook) and Once Upon a Mattress – the 2005 television version of the musical. Charming and sweet. The four year old would get up and dance during the dance numbers. The double dance routines going on was adorable.

Weekly recap + what we ate – Birthday cake and back to the world

The three year old is now a four year old.

Four years ago, the country was trying to find its footing under a new administration. There were protests and shock and anger. And into this, a little boy was born. It’s funny, for the past four years, his life and the Trump administration were somehow intertwined in my head – I counted his years as I counted the years until the next election. And now here we are, the administration he was born into has turned over, though its ghosts still linger; the little boy is still here and growing.

But he is his own person, of course. A imaginative, curious, happy-go-lucky little guy. He loves trains, trucks, dancing to his own music, singing at the top of his lungs, books, and going for rides in the car. He drives his sisters crazy, but then gives them big hugs too. I love watching him puzzle out the world in his quiet perceptive way.

A couple days before his birthday, a box arrived at our door step:

Inside was a cake and a tin of cookies. I mean a cake in the mail!! How decadant is that?

The gift receipt indicated that the cake was to celebrate the two older kids’ January birthdays. And the receipt was unsigned. I did some Holmes worthy thinking – the birthday message used the diminutive form of the nine year old’s name, which very few people still use – but finally wrote to Milkbar customer service and asked them. Turns out it was my cousin in LA.

I remember when my cousin was born – and what a cute round eyed baby she was. I have so many great memories of hanging out with her when she was a baby. And now it’s certainly a little strange to realize that my baby cousin is grown up and does adulting type things like send birthday cakes during a pandemic to cheer up a couple of kids. She is an awesome person. And so are her parents (my uncle and aunt) – I’ve always known that they would raise pretty decent kids and it’s turned out to be true.

In other news this week, the baby was evaluated by the County Infants and Toddlers program for some developmental delays this week – primarily speech. It turns out she is on track in most developmental areas, except expressive language and socio-emotional development. The two areas are closely related, though. All our children were quite late to talk, so I’m not terribly concerned. Still, the baby was evaluated to have the verbal skills of a four month old, which is much more delayed than the other children were. It was a little discouraging to have the results broken down like that. However, she is so bright and capable in all other areas, that we are taking a “wait and see” approach, and declined to pursue an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) with the county.

In normal times, if we refused services we would have to get back in the cue and be re-evaluated down the line if she didn’t show developments progress. But given COVID times, the County Infants and Toddler program has a new system where you can check in with a case worker once a month and they will put together an IFSP when you feel ready for it. I perhaps tend towards the “low to no” intervention end of the scale, but I’m really grateful that the county provides these services for when we are ready.

The whole family went to get COVID tests again this week. It was probably not completely necessary, but we did it anyway. I took the two younger kids and had planned to go to the drive through testing site, tossing the baby into the car sans coat and shoes. Of course it was raining. And of course the drive through site wasn’t open. Change of plans! I took us all to a different testing site and had to carry the baby in without shoes or a coat. I definitely not one of my best moments, but oh well. We went in, got our nasal swabs – without fuss or crying from any of the littles! – and went home. Two days later:

Thank goodness.

We had quarantined the appropriate amount and then some, so we were pretty sure we would be negative. But it was reassuring to have the confirmations – if “not detected” can be counted as reassuring.

It’s been a slow emergence from quarantine. After almost three weeks of having gone no further than the end of the driveway on trash day, getting in the car was a little strange. I was almost reluctant to do even that, but I did have errands to run and the two older kids had their yearly check ups.

I was texting with a friend and saying how there is something nice about quarantining in that it’s been giving me an excuse to delay some bigger life decisions, and instead some days I’m just focussing on getting the family from meal to meal.. And my friend wrote back:
“I think what you are doing/ thinking makes total sense… See this thru w/ your family first and worry about anything else later.”
It is probably not sustainable – I mean I do have to file the taxes and figure out what I’m doing with my life, and we have some decisions to make about childcare and schooling and potential summer plans. I feel the the vaccine looming, like a pin that holds the dam in place, the deluge of decisions to be made roaring behind those floodgates.

Well… speaking of meal to meal…

What we ate:

Saturday: Tortellini with Sausage and Red Sauce. Cut up carrots and cucumbers on the side. With birthday cake.

Sunday: Oven Fried Chicken – the nine year old cooked, from the America’s Test Kitchen Young Chef’s cookbook. This was really really tasty – breaded with Corn Flakes. I made some garlic green beans to eat on the side.

Monday: Grain Bowl Marinara with Cannellini beans and Spinach from Mark Bittman’s Vegan Before 6 Cookbook.

Tuesday: Cauliflower Korma with burnt raisins from Fresh India. I found some chapatis in the freezer and we had these on the side.

Wednesday: Sausage and Peppers (the Husband cooked)

Thursday: Leftover Soup day. Realizing we had amasses many containers of leftovers in the fridge, I declared that we would have “eat down the fridge” dinner.

Friday: Pizza and The Peanuts Movie. I was going to make pizza, but then we had car issues so we ended up getting take out. The movie was fine, though I kind of missed the hand drawn charm of the original Charlie Brown movies.