Colds, Yogurt and Birthdays For Recluses

Spending the afternoon indoors in various kinds of rodent-style hibernation activity: organizing the larder, reading books, folding clothes from the dryer, tucking kids in for naps, roasting meats in the oven, and brewing more coffee and tea. I feel like Moley from Wind and the Willows. :)

Valentine's Day approaches. I have a sheaf of paper doilies  and a good stock of red and pink construction paper. Must make a note to get some glitter. I am hoping to make some valentines with the boys soon. Forethought it good. This was the moral of Christmas. I have a post cogitating about things I plan to change about our holiday celebration as a result of Christmas/New Year's this year.

The boys all have light colds so we are keeping the kleenex handy, making many rounds of tea with honey and rapidly going through Children's Tylenol bottles: lots of sniffles and a few coughs, extra sweaters, snuggles on the couch and a few extra Disney movies to while away recovery. Its a good time of year to go to bed early and catch up on sleep. The baby is starting to pretty reliably sleep through the night....or he was....before he got so stuffy. :)

The weather has gotten super cold again and we had another big wallop of snow. There are big sparkly piles on either side of the driveway and the picnic table that I meant to take inside for the winter looks like it is frosted with a foot tall layer of marshmallow cream. Our poor, wimpy chickens are staying inside the coop around the clock. They don't trust the white stuff. I worry about them and keep going out to check on them but they seem perfectly healthy and content, just staying inside together.

And crockpot yogurt is a fabulous thing! It worked! See?

We are on our second pot-full. New one in the works as soon as I buy more milk! Next up? Flavors!!!

Dee has started dreaming up his birthday party and I am hoping to get some time soon to Amazon him a couple of small gifts. He wants a Peter Pan birthday....or else Legos. Hard to say right now. The first week of February isn't for days and days...plenty of time to change his mind 6 or 8 times between now and then. The only firm request is, "No extra people, Mommy." The introvert has spoken. I want his birthday to be enjoyable so I think it will just be a family dinner but I do feel a twinge at allowing him to be too reclusive because people make him nervous. I want him to feel confident and to learn to appreciate friendship and celebration. I am thinking about sending the brothers out for the afternoon with A some day soon and sponsoring a quiet playdate with just Dee and one good friend in honor of his birthday too. We'll see. Am I manhandling my quiet little boy?

Slow Days

Sometimes I just need a break. Last week was one of those times. I would have warned you all that I was going to take a hiatus if I had known I was about to need one. Life is occasionally quite impromptu and you know, as in life, so in blogging.

The weekend was exciting. Crazy, gorgeous dump of snow, cancelled birthday parties and then a frantic/worried/bizarre day which we spent huddled over our sweet late-guinea pig Jenny. I never could have imagined that it would be possible to be obsessing worriedly for an entire day over the aliveness or deadness of an animal but that's what happened. They are so very small and she was clearly very sick or else dead....we were rather avidly hopeful. Alas, by this morning I could firmly say she was gone and we said our goodbyes including a custom dirge, Nib wrote and sang "Jenny, come back your friend, you are gone away Jenny, poor, poor Jenny, she did die." and a little postmortem portrait tribute from Dee complete with little stick figure legs poking out of her tiny crayoned body.

This morning after we dropped A off at work the boys and I marched bravely to the pet store after praying for a new friend for our remaining, lonely Sarsparilla. It broke my heart this morning to be greeted by silence instead of the usual friend whistles and tweets and find Sarsparilla moping in her little wooden shelter at one end of the cage. We are the proud new owners of a fluffy black and white piggy and I am pleased to tell you that Sarsparilla appears to have taken her in and is already back to making some of her usual noises. We've named the new little fluff ball Chamomile.

Pom has finally pushed through his two, giant from teeth and is the proud owner of opposing ivories. I heard him gritting them together in that horrible, scraping way all babies experiment with just this morning. Heh. I hope his sleep and irritability improve a bit now that he has put the big chompers behind him for a while. Maybe his body will give him a rest for having started a bit early.

Its slow times at our house. Planning the mythical vegetable garden, roasting beef slow and slower in the oven, drinking vats of milky tea, snuggling the baby and forcing the trimmings from the fruit trees in the yard as I slowly hack away at pruning.

Why November?

November is one of those maligned months...it isn't very colorful, its the end of fall and before winter. And then the holidays come tromping and stomp right over whatever is left of November's own personal identity. Today we sing the unsung hero...what makes this month lovely in its own right?

10 Good Reasons To Love November 

1. All the leaves fall down and reveal vistas we forgot we had......suddenly the world looks all new again, even out our own familiar kitchen windows.

2.The bird feeder goes up in the window like ours did today. Its great to get personal with some of the birds again just as so many other are leaving for parts further south.

3.You can reliably light a crackly fire in the fireplace for the first time.

4.Our own local New England cranberries come into stores again! I love cranberries for their bright color, the way they naturally thicken when boiled down for a sauce or a jam, for their tart tang (I'm a tangy girl!) and the fact that they come so unmistakably from here. We don't get cranberries shipped in from Chile!

5. Hot tea becomes the thing again! I get to dig out my favorite, cozy mug and try to decide between English Breakfast, Chai and Earl Grey. Tough problems.

6. Roasting vegetables in the oven, low and slow sounds like a good idea again! Toasty carmelized parsnips and carrots and cauliflower and butternut squash is divine munching material. Toss any veg in olive oil and drop in snips of thyme or rosemary, generous doses of salt and spread them on a cookie sheet. Bake at 450 until toasty and fork tender!

7. Leaf kicking starts! October gets all the attention with the pretty displays but all through November the leaves are accumulating in drifts and piles and everyone is raking and leaf blowing huge heaps of crackling leaves. No time like the present to jump in!
 
8. Ticks, mosquitoes and other pests of the woods go away! I love being outside in crispy, worry-free November on a hike! Sets my mind right at ease.

9. Its stargazing season again! One of the things I love about summer night is their long light but it doesn't make for good star watching; for that you need early nights. I love that by the time we've come home from getting A from work the sky is dark and we can walk to the house with our heads tipped back enjoying the show.

10. The air gets cold enough to play dragon! I tell my boys that's what we're doing when we blow big clouds of misty breath in the cold. :)