Neighborhood Dress-Up

Our Halloween was grand. All rustling leaf kicking, mulled cider and laughing murmur of conversation. The big boys (demonstrating our slide into video games this year) were a Mario Luigi duo. They are the most innocuous and classic of video game characters so I couldn't complain too much. How upset can you really be when your four year old is standing there grinning with an enormous faux handlebar mustache happy as the day is long? Not very upset. Mama picks her battles.

There was an astounding and record breaking amount of candy gathering. The big boys are getting to be very stout walkers and Ru in particular is quite enamoured of ringing doorbells which all winds up meaning three gigantic jars full of candy on my top pantry shelf. And this after The Great Binge when we returned to the house. Gah! Yipes.

I think I will continue investigating candy-free stocking stuffers and Easter Basket contents and find pretty little paper-cutting ways to celebrate St. Valentine's Day lest our home be mistaken for Willy Wonka's great factory! Good for me anyhow...gives some starch to the direction I was leaning and the ideas I was hoping to eventually work into. Sugar mustn't be allowed to be the only way to celebrate.

The leaves are coming down fast now. There's a shivery chill on the wind and I find myself noticing it extra now that several of our friends are out of power and shuddering along in the dark wondering when the power company will get to their road. Seemed like just last I was thinking to myself that even though it was technically fall the  weather didn't feel like it had really turned much yet. I'm not sure if I started paying attention or if the thermometer is starting to get serious now that it is officially November.

We're almost to the weekend and its going to be one of those crispy, pink nosed ones where you have a log fire in the morning on Saturday and then go off to pick apples later in the day. My friend, Nutmeg brought me a box of Indian Spice tea and I'm thinking a big pot of chai would hit the spot in the thermos on the way!

Six Times Around

He's having a great day and he's been around the sun six whole times now! Today Ru turns six years old. We're celebrating some today (lunch at the local cafe, cake and special dinner at home and maybe, maybe a short romp at The Children's Museum this afternoon) and then a little more on Saturday after Daddy A has had a chance to get out and do a little top secret shopping for the man-of-the-hour.

Am so pleased to have shared a little over half a decade with this spunky boy. He's all buzz and high octane, has taught me a lot about myself and about children and been the source of loads of wonderful memories already. I cannot wait for another year of them. Am reminding myself of all the little ways I'm thankful for this boy with the twinkly eyes and the dimple and trying to keep things cheery for him in the midst of this really busy week. BUT...that said, I can't stay long....its nap-time which means it is time for all good birthday fairies to get busy with balloon arranging and cake decorating and burger prepping for all manner of party goodness which will go down tonight!

Letting Go On My 31st

I am not sure exactly what to say about my birthday this year. I love birthdays. I love celebrations and milestones and accomplishment. I love the concept of aging and reject our culture's adoration of the young and the new. I know that true celebrating is done in little ways with simple expressions of love. But, there's no real denying that sometimes life is still hard and sometimes birthdays aren't as warm as you hope they will be.

We're planning a homebirth for this fourth baby, as we have for all three of our children and have successfully experienced twice. Losing our much-loved midwife and our insurance policy changing to specifically exclude homebirths have meant some serious re-shuffling to orient ourselves to some vague new plan. We've been interviewing midwives and trying to narrow it down to just the right provider and I had just finally made my first appointment scheduled to happen yesterday, on my birthday when A told me to cancel it because of insurance snaffoos. Am feeling so frustrated so down and so upset. Tara Wagner's recent writing over at her blog, Organic Sister about her 30th birthday is really hitting home. I'm not entering a new decade, I'm just letting go of things. I hate living up-in-the-air and not being sure what will happen. Pregnancy makes me irrationally emotional and desperate for settled, carefully pre-arranged plans. I have so little buffer in my head for waiting or throwing out the plan or not having things figured out....and it's Christmas and it's my birthday and I was doing so well! Argh! I feel so peeved about this whole prenatal-care mess falling right in the middle of my smoothly flowing holiday plans. Darn it! Am trying to figure out how to stop crying and just find a way to let go of what I had planned and expected and hoped and wanted and accept whatever mysterious thing actually is instead. So. Dang. Hard.

How to Blow Easter Eggs

Everyone I know hard boils their Easter eggs, but I like to blow them. To be perfectly plain we usually split our bounty in half and hard boil some and blow some because who doesn't like a good hardboiled egg, right? When I was a girl my mom taught us all how to blow an egg and it was part of our roster of special family traditions. Growing up I didn't know anyone who decorated hollow eggs and now, as an adult I have still, fantastically enough, never have knowingly met a single person who knew how to blow eggs much less anyone who really does it. Kind of fun to have a corner on something small.

I love the delicacy of the finished product:  such a feather light form of natural sculpture. I also love that you can keep the eggs out at room temperature. You can use them to decorate, keep them around for keepsakes or even give them as gifts because they are really art, not food; nature brought inside for appreciation....every bit as beautiful as driftwood sculpture or framed pressed flowers.

A finished, hollow egg.

I also love the niggly work of spearing the tiny blowing holes with our pearl-headed sewing pin (the pearl is key!). I think of how it must feel to be the tiny baby chick inside one of these shells, digging at it for your very life. Kind of a daunting task. It must be a major boost to see that first pin-prick of light shafting through the walls.

Here is how to blow your own hollow Easter eggs:

1. Stab a single tiny hole in one end of a raw egg.
2. Stab repeatedly at the other end in a circle about the size of the head of your pearl-headed pin.
3. Put the tiny hole to your lips and sealing tightly to the egg like a trumpet player, blow! (Be careful to hold your egg firmly but gently it is easy to get carried away with the exertion of blowing and crush the shell in your hands.)
4. The white will stream out first which is the hardest part to expell (Perservere! And occasionally shake the egg!) and then the yolk will come in golden rivulets, it's the easy part at the end.
5. Then rinse the eggs to remove all traces of yolk and white and leave to dry....then decorate away!

 

Ru was big enough to do one himself this year for the first time.

The "scrambled egg" leftovers we'll cook and eat on Easter morning.

Slightly over half a dozen, transluscent, hollow eggs. :)

The Photo Booth Lives On!

We had a big party over the weekend and there was an accidental benefit that I didn't expect. One of the ideas I had for this party was setting up a little makeshift photo booth. Amid the furor of trying to get the house ready and set up all the goods before the party-goers arrived, a very sweet friend knocked on the door and very impromtu, threw her soul into helping me not lose my mind and instead turn out a thoroughly successful bash. In the process my little photo booth idea went from wincingly unplausible to super fun.

My pal rocks and she realized that I needed more interesting costume finery in the booth for people to play with for their shoots. So she went home and came back with a trunkful of fabulous disguise booty. She is a really cool friend. I dare you, find a friend like that.  So then....and although I forgot to write up an instruction sheet, demonstrate how it worked or encourage people to try it out...and my poor little photo booth idea was virtually ignored during the party....it was still ultimately a big win.

Party is long over, all the decorations have been packed away and most of the cake got polished off...but that bin of photo booth paraphernalia has just begun to live! Thank you photo booth, you made my boys discover dress-up.

Hee hee! Too bad we have to return all the fabulous accessories...time to start our own collection I think. I dig this parade of characters and I don't want them to go away anytime soon! And I think the photo booth will make a return appearance at another party someday. It was an idea too good to do just once. 

Ru: At The Moment

Our oldest turned five two days ago. Five years old. Unbelievable. Party and real celebration is forthcoming (enough time for mommy to feel sane after returning from our trip) but in the meantime, we're busy prepping and talking about all the fun to come, working and re-working his birthday Legos over and over. His first big boy Legos, he's old enough to work the little bitty kind and not just the big variety.

Fun to see what he is developing to be. Time for another listy snapshot, don't you think?

Here's our oldest boy at the moment:

He Likes:

• Animals, especially dogs and horses
• Guns (not Mommy's favorite...not really sure what to do with this one)
• Competition
•  Donuts
• His own private water bottle
• Making faces
• Doing yard work with Daddy
• Lemonade
• Tools 
• The color red
• Washing dishes
• Video game arcades (which he calls "art caves")
• Climbing trees
• His sunglasses
• Bow ties
• Showers
• People

He Dislikes:

• Socks that are too long
• Seafood
• Raisins
• Being put on the spot
• Storms
• Buttoning his pants himself
• Saying goodbye
• Sleeping
• The end of reading time
• Sitting still at dinner
• Small forks
• Having people see him naked
• Spicy foods
• The ends of movies
• Visible herbs in his food

Sugaring Festival

Image via Wikipedia

We drove a great deal this weekend and managed to get all the way up to the top of the state to the part of Connecticut where there is still snow. Far away, up there it is still the end of winter and the maple sap is flowing. A generous farm decided to host a local sugaring festival for free for anyone who wanted to come celebrate. We had a grand time.

There were pony rides (Ru was a very smug fan. I wish I still could fit on a pony.), there were sap and syrup tastings, there pancakes hot off the griddle, there demonstrations of maple cookery and a big evaporator steaming up the attic of the sugar house with the effort of cooking down the farm's arboreal takings.

And then they made sugar-on-the-snow, just like in Lara Ingalls Wilder's story about sugaring off in Little House In The Big Woods.

I've never actually seen it made or tasted it, although I grew up in a family that made maple syrup. I totally get why it is described so fondly in the book. Wow.

The syrup turns into this lovely, moist taffy stuff that is a glowing gold as it spins on your fork (you twirl it up off the snow after it is ladled out) and it mixes with the cold crystals from the snow and ice and gives you this warm/cold feeling as you eat it. So great.

We left remembering just exactly how fond we both feel of this local, American product and decided that next year, maybe we'll try tapping the  maple trees by our house. There are two that would be unobtrusive to tap, in our back yard and then if we got brave we could tap the two others along the street in the front yard. Do you know any stories of urban tapping?