Monthly Archives: December 2011

The mouths of babes

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 (With apologies for repetition to anyone who’s read my or my husband’s Facebook status updates recently.)

 Mabel was looking for a library book.
- Tits, tits! she exclaimed.
- Um, I prevaricated.
- Tits. I want tits. You go into dem tits!
 Then I realised she was looking for the book called You’ll grow into them, Titch.

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The kids got one of those swirly hooded chairs from Ikea for Christmas from a generous aunt. They have amused themselves ever since by pushing each other around, demanding to be pushed round by us, pushing themselves around with hands or feet, or closing themselves both in and doing I don’t know what.

This last was going on the day after Christmas, with – apparently – something they were using as a pretend screwdriver, when I heard the conversation go something like this:

- Stop screwing [it?] around!
- I’m not screwing.
- You have to stop screwing now.
- Now I’m screwing! Screw, screw, screw…

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Lately, Dash’s fourth-birthday presents of Zingo and Junior Yahtzee have been experiencing a resurgence. Mabel is perfectly well able to play Zingo, though she gets bored with Yahtzee and wanders away after a few throws of the dice. A few days ago Dash and his dad were playing Yahtzee. They got to the end, when you have to add up the scores to find out who won.

Dash: Now for some math!
Mabel: No it’s no-ot!
Dash: You don’t even know what math is.
Mabel: Yes I do. Granny goes to math.

Revolutions

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I introduced Dash to the idea of new year’s resolutions today. He liked the concept and immediately announced we should resolve to give more cookies to everyone. Laudable, though maybe not exactly somethijng that will jibe nicely with other people’s weight-loss or healthy-eating aspirations.

Ironically, I think deciding to run – jog, whatever – on a regular basis and actually doing it might be the easiest of my resolutions. The other changes I want to make depend more on my children and less on just me; except for those that are good for the kids and make my life harder, like the one about letting them watch less TV.

But then there are the things I want to get the children to do, like getting Dash to eat more foods, and getting Mabel to sleep better. This is trickier, and requires wiles. (You’ll note I say nothing about toilet training. She’s on her own for that one at the moment.)

Dash and I decided that he’s going to try a new food every day, even if it’s just a tiny taste that he spits out, or another taste of something he didn’t like before. If he doesn’t, his regular bedtime game of superheroes won’t happen. If he does, he’ll get the superhero game and also a star on his chart. After ten stars, he’ll get a dollar. So far today he’s tried a cracker he didn’t like before, and carrots; steamed and plain, and steamed and tossed in butter and salt. He didn’t like any of them, but it’s a start.

So there’s that. The ultimate threat to keep him on track is that if he doesn’t make an effort, we’ll have to take him to a doctor or a therapist or someone, because I do think he’s a lot worse than the average picky eater. I don’t see that a therapist would be able to do any more than what we’re trying now, but Dash would hate it, so the concept serves its purpose. (I found an SPD ( Sensory Processing Disorder) checklist yesterday and really, though a few of the many behaviours listed could have applied to him at times in the past, he doesn’t send up big red flags for anything, even in the “Oral Defensiveness” section, except this one:

picky eater, often with extreme food preferences; i.e., limited repertoire of foods, picky about brands, resistive to trying new foods or restaurants, and may not eat at other people’s houses

Yes, that’s my kid. And lots of other kids too, I think.) 

Then there’s the sleeping and the Mabel. For the past two nights she’s been up till almost 10pm, after protracted nursing-not-to-sleep, leaving alone to yell a bit, sending up Daddy, more nursing, more yelling, finally bringing downstairs because I wanted my coffee, and eventual dropping off. I think this means it’s time to nix the nap. Much as I love my hour of peace in the middle of the day, and much as I think she can still use it, I need my sanity and my two hours on the sofa at the end of the day even more. We’ll work through the afternoons of crazy until she gets used to it, and when Dash is back at school it should be easy enough to instigate an hour of quiet play (though not in her room, I fear) after lunch.

I reviewed my options, discussed it with friends and spouse, and decided to start with the tactic that’s probably least likely to work, but involves the least crying. Because I can’t take the crying, and in the middle of the night I know exactly which of us is more likely to back down. We’re going to try putting them together tonight, on mattresses, both in Dash’s room. For a sleepover. Yay! Sleepover! Mabel said that she won’t need me to go to sleep with when she has Dash there. So it must be true.

You may see I’ve created an entirely new category for this type of post, called Best Intentions. So you needn’t point out that I’m always promising to do things that don’t pan out. I’m painfully aware of that. But here I am again, writing from the point of view of unalloyed optimism, as we’ve yet to try which means we’ve also yet to fail. There’s probably only a tiny chance it will help, but heck, here goes nothing. Again.

Saving myself

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And so it came to pass on Christmas morning that I opened my present and lo, there was a pair of running shoes and a marvel of sartorial engineering sometimes known as a sports bra , and thus I could avoid my self-appointed destiny no longer and on St Stephen’s Day (also known as Boxing Day or December 26th) I donned my new apparel and went out for a run.

Why does nobody jog any more? In the 80s, when yuppies were invented, everyone who did that sort of thing went jogging, with their Sony walkmans and their Adidas, didn’t they? People only ran from escaped lions, or the Feds. My mother’s vocabulary is still stuck there: when I tell her that B goes running she expects him to be sprinting from start to finish. (And winning. My mother expects him to be sent to Mars and/or win a marathon at any moment.) “You mean jogging,” she says, to clarify. “Yes, Mother. Jogging. Except it’s called running these days.”

Anyway. When I came downstairs all togged out in my running bottoms and my running top and my running fleecy hoodie and my new bouncy shoes, B grinned admiringly and said I looked great. Taller, even. I very nearly went back upstairs that point, because clearly the gear had done its job already. Magical. I probably looked smaller in volume because the bra was squishing me as I had never been squished before, that was all.

Anyway. Out I went. And I have to say that the constricting upholstery did its job and the only parts of me bouncing as I set off down the hill (always good to go downhill first, so long as you can work your run so you never have to come back up) were my cheeks. The cheeks on my face, I mean. And my bum.

Too many years of cycling to school and to work have left their mark on my psyche, and I always think running downhill should take no effort at all, but the truth is that you still have to put one foot in front of the other, even with gravity helping. I apply this principle to everything actually, assuming that once I’m past the halfway mark, the rest will do itself. Sadly, not always true. Not even mostly true. But still, the downhill gave me a nice boost and I got around the rest of my 1.6-mile route running a bit and walking a bit. I was still able to run to the front door when I rounded the corner to our road, so I felt pleased that I hadn’t overdone it.

As if there’s any chance of that. I vividly remember Mrs McGoldrick’s enraged tones yelling at me from the other side of the (field) hockey pitch: “Stop saving yourself, Maud,” as I pootled around in the idle backwaters of “defence” and tried to look as if I gave a hoot. When it comes to exercise, I have a history of saving myself. Women and children first, you know. 

But that’s not the point. The point is that the shower afterwards felt like I’d earned it, and yesterday my legs were that good sort of sore, and even though it hadn’t completely worn off this morning, I went out again and did the same thing, and I could swear I was able to save myself just a tiny bit less.

Mabel declared that she doesn’t want me to go out for a run again until she’s four. But then, she says she’s not going to wear underpants till she’s four either. I hope she’ll be proved wrong on both counts.

Meringues and gingersnaps

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Finally, some baking updates I owe you.

Gingersnaps going in

One afternoon when the kids were otherwise occupied, I rolled out the second half of the gingerbread dough as thin as my OCD little heart desired, to see if I could make crispy, crunchy gingersnaps. They turned out perfectly.

Gingersnaps all out

And these are the meringues I made to use up the egg whites left over from the other cookies. I whipped the three egg whites (should have been four, but one absent-mindedly went into the cookie dough) with my hand-held electric mixer until they were stiff. Then I mixed in three tablespoons of white sugar and folded in another three of light brown sugar. ( ‘s suggestion to make them chewier.)

Brown sugar meringues

I dolloped them artistically onto parchment paper on a cookie sheet and baked them in a very low oven (140 C or 275 F) for about an hour, then turned the heat off and left them there until they were cold. (Again, Nigella’s instruction.) Easy as pie. In fact, much easier, I’ll wager. The only thing is that they do occupy the oven for a long time so it’s probably best to cook them last thing in the evening and just leave them overnight.

They stay fresh for up to a week in an airtight container, so they’re the perfect lazy dessert for a special occassion – just add cream and fruit.

Mmmm

The hare, part II

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The hare is the Christmas cake, and part I is here .

So. In November I made the cake, and put it away in an airtight container and conveniently forgot about it for a month. That was easy.

About a week ago, I bought some marzipan in Ikea. I painted the unwrapped cake with warmed apricot jam (to help it stick), rolled out the marzipan, and stuck it on. Because this is just the inner icing – the undercoat, if you like – you don’t have to be very particular about how it looks, but it’s good to aim for a fairly uniform thickness.

The cake looks shiny because this was after I’d done the thing with the jam

You can see here how the marzipan was pieced together, Frankenstein-like, to cover the whole thing. Don’t worry, I did that last bit before I put it away again.

Then it went back into its tupperware for a few more days, until I was ready to make the royal icing. It turns out that royal icing is much like making meringues, and just as simple. I whipped two egg whites, gradually adding about a pound of icing sugar (confectioners’ sugar) as I went along, and finally mixed in a teaspoon of lemon juice. (I don’t know why. Because the recipe told me to.)

It starts out runny, but as you add the sugar the expanding egg can’t quite keep up and eventually it becomes the right consistency to stick onto your cake.

I went for the rustic look, because making this smooth was way beyond me and my new red spatula (not pictured). In my parents’ house, this is the point when I’d put my little Christmas scene on top, or at least sprinkle some sugar silver balls in festive fashion, but I have no cake decorations and had neglected to buy any silver balls for the task. I’m also missing the vital cake wrapper thingy, usually red and white and gold with fringey bits, to wrap around the outside. Maybe I’ll pick one up next time we’re home. (You have no idea what I’m talking about, but the cake in the photo is wearing one. I think it keeps the cake fresh once it’s cut into.)

And finally. After Christmas dinner, and our Christmas meringues, we cut the cake. This is how it looked. Personally, I think it’s a tiny bit dry, but B sighed a sigh of nostalgia at his first bite, so I must have done something right.

Here’s the kicker, though. He doesn’t eat the icing.

Next year, I’ll make it bald.

Merry whatsit

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Eighteen people have visited my blog today, so clearly my audience demands that I post something.

They weren’t even here as the result of some random Google search, unlike the poor misguided person who, according to my stats, recently looked for “French lesbian tube” and somehow – really, I have no idea how – ended up here. Maybe they saw the error of their ways and decided to stay and read about my thrilling life instead. Let’s hope.

As predicted, it’s been a much quieter, more relaxed Christmas Day than our usual whirlwind of courtesy calls and extended-family dinner and mince pies, but the basics of crazy-excited children and something containing fruit juice and alcohol with breakfast remained unmovable. (In Ireland, at my in-laws’, it’s always buck’s fizz, or what Americans call mimosas – champagne and orange juice. We rang the changes just a little with bellinis – peach juice and prosecco. Because we’re rebels.)  I made buttermilk pancakes and bacon; Dash ate one bite of pancake with a lot of maple syrup, and Mabel ate an orange segment.

However, this evening we all ate dinner together at the dining table, which was a feat in itself. We had to partake in a game of I-Spy to keep the kids in situ, but, probably, conversing about the situation in Korea and Mitt Romney’s election prospects are beyond a three-year-old and a five-year-old. And I-Spy was more fun. (My words were “brussels sprouts” and “wine”, because I didn’t extend myself too far in finding things to spy. Mabel made us guess the blue shoes on her baby in the other room, which was a little tricky. B had us trying to pinpoint the red stripe on his sweater, which merited a slap, but my end of the table was too far away.)

I roasted a chicken, and potatoes, and did sprouts with bacon. It could probably have profited from gravy, but hey, whatareyougonnado? Dash has recently taken a vegetarian stance on behalf of the poor dead animals, which I laud from an ethical point of view, but really when you’re a peanutbuttersandwichatarian, anything else is purely hypothethcal. I keep telling him I’ll be delighted when he’s a vegetarian, but he’ll have to actually eat some vegetables. Mabel ate a lot of chicken and nothing else. Then we had the last of the meringues with cream, and cut into the long-awaited Christmas cake.

Photos tomorrow, when I’ve had less wine. I’m told I still have to help finish the bottle.

Happy whatever-you-want-to-celebrate to you and yours.

Elephants

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When you invite people over for food, it’s usually important to have something to eat in the house. Similarly, when you invite friends over for drinks, it’s customary to have more than just our usual milk, water, or fruit-and-vegetable juice available. And so it was that I went to the shops again this morning.

B and I, as many people do, spent our twenties expanding our tastes for drinks both fruity and hoppy (though not at the same time), well-chilled or mulled, spicy, bold, well-rounded, Russian, slammed, shot, bubbly, flaming, muddled, colour-changing, or with a slice of clove-studded orange floating in them. Whether it had a nice creamy head or came in a fancy glass, we were probably happy to try it.

Then we had a baby. First there was the ritual giving-up-of-alcohol-during-pregnancy for me. And then the cautious re-introduction of just a little alcohol while nursing. And then we moved from Texas to Maryland and somehow I felt as if we were moving trans-Atlantically and couldn’t take anything comestible with us, so I gave away our few bottles of spirits and we arrived here without so much as the makings of a gin-and-tonic to our name.

And thus, almost, we have stayed. We like a beer with dinner, we drink wine now and then, but hard liquor has not been a part of our lives recently. My aunt and uncle stayed with us before Dash turned two, and gifted us with a bottle of gin – for some reason – when they left. It has – I kid you not – sat unopened in the freezer ever since.

(B would like to point out that that’s not strictly true. We’ve only lived in this house for 18 months. Before that, it sat unopened in the freezer in our old house. And there was probably some period when it was in transit from one freezer to the other and therefore was in no freezer at all.)

My point still stands. We’re pathetic, that’s what. I had great intentions of having gins-and-tonic this summer, because what could be more refreshing, right? But then I was stuck looking for tonic water that didn’t have high-fructose corn syrup in it, because I couldn’t believe that was necessary. And when I finally found it, in the organic supermarket, I couldn’t believe it was that expensive, so I didn’t buy it. B eventually circumvented all this by going out one day a few months ago and just picking up a bottle of Schweppes, HFCS and all, and that has sat unopened in the fridge ever since.

So today we said, “Right. Let us have on hand this Christmas the makings of cosmopolitans . And maybe bellinis .”

I went to the supermarket that has alcohol. I needed more sugar for icing the Christmas cake anyway (more on that in a few days, I promise) and more bread for Dash’s interminable peanut-butter sandwiches (guess what he’s having for Christmas dinner?), and a bottle of wine for the day that will be in it, since we’ve already started into the one I got before. (Note to self: should stock up with more than one wine bottle at a time. Maybe need to throw a party so people will bring us wine.) I got a lime, for the cosmo’s. I got peach juice for the bellinis. We already have a bottle of prosecco in the fridge that needs to be used.

Then I realised the supermarket-with-alcohol doesn’t stock spirits. So I got back into the car and drove to the liquor shop. At least this isn’t Pennsylvania, where no supermarkets have any alcohol at all, and you can’t even buy beer and wine in the same establishment. And nothing on Sundays.

I picked up a bottle of Guinness to make beef-and-Guinness stew with for Christmas-Eve dinner. And a bottle of vodka for the cosmopolitans. I contemplated the Cointreau, but it was too expensive. (I have only just now looked at that link up there and discovered that’s meant to go in the cosmo too. I think we used to make them without.) Where’s duty-free when you need it? When will we ever be travelling light enough to think it’s a good idea to add a heavy glass bottle to our luggage on the way home from the airport?

I came home. We still need at least cranberry juice for the cosmo’s, and there are only two beers left in the fridge. Entertaining will have to wait for another trip to the supermarket. In the meantime, would anyone like a bellini? I think we’ll be having some with our bacon and pancakes on Christmas morning.

Mabel raiding someone else’s Christmas drinks stash two years ago

Seezun’s greetings

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At our little parent-teacher conference a month or so ago, while waxing lyrical about how wonderful Dash is (of course), his teacher did say that she wished he was a little less of a perfectionist sometimes (oh, so do I… huh?). He was very reluctant, she said, to try to write anything by sounding it out – he insisted on asking for every letter. Which is fine at home, but I can imagine that a class of twenty-three five- and six-year-olds all asking you for the next letter could get tiring.

On Tuesday, Dash sat down to make a card for his beloved teacher. I oversaw the drawing of the picture:

[Draws a big curve]
- What’s that going to be?
- An earring. Because we’re giving her earrings.
- Um. No, we’re not. Remember I said that wasn’t the best idea? We’re giving her a gift card.
[Erases curve. Draws a big rectangle.]
- No, you really don’t have to draw the gift card. Why don’t you draw something Christmassy?
- Okay, I’ll draw a present. On a reindeer.

Then I was distracted in the other room while he started with the writing. I could hear him sounding out “Happy Christmas,” but he didn’t ask me anything, so I didn’t offer.

I think his teacher should be happy with the result. I loved it.

Slow down

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And now we’re for it, rushing helter-skelter head-over-heels into Christmas as if there were no tomorrow, or Friday or Saturday for that matter. Things were progressing in a fairly orderly fashion until suddenly the last weekend before was gone and there’s no stopping it now. We haven’t been to a carol concert or seen The Nutcracker or put up lights outside the house (not for want of trying, but for want of sockets in the right places) but now it’s follow-through-or-bust time for everyone with all those little plans of things you thought would be nice to do or make or give, and we’re rapidly coming to the day when we’ll all throw up our hands and wish Christmas had never been invented because it does nothing but stress everyone out and cause massive rifts in families that were otherwise happily chugging along in mutual indifference but have now been thrown together and ordered to be not just civil but extra nice to each other because of the season that’s in it, and sometimes that’s just too much for anyone to handle.

Things would go so much more smoothly if we could just hunker down and get through the darkest time of the year without this annual requirement to decorate, to shop, to spend, to wrap, to give, to recieve, to entertain, to cook to bake to mull to spike to sprinkle to keep up.

You don’t have to keep up. Nobody is making you do this. Nobody except your mother, your husband, your in-laws, your children, their friends, the economy, and the media. Stop. Breathe. Revise your plans. Do the least you can get away with. Do less than that, because your harshest judge is yourself and everyone else is too busy wondering how much they have to do and what they can get away without doing. Give yourself permission to take something off your to-do list. Simplify. Delegate. Outsource.

See the people you like. Give presents to your friends, if you want to. Dress up if it’s fun to dress up. Bake if you like to bake. Make your children happy by sitting on the floor to play a game. Make one fewer side dish.

Give yourself a break. It’s Christmas, after all.

Commute

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Three to four o’clock every weekday is not exactly my finest hour. It’s then that I have to disturb Mabel in her avid viewing of Angelina Ballerina or her complicated play scenario involving all the horses living in the dollhouse (you’d be surprised), stuff her into the stroller, with a snack if I’m feeling magnanimous, and get Dash from school. And then shepherd them both home again.

Most often, Mabel does not feel like putting on a coat when we set out. Quite often, she doesn’t want shoes and socks either. This is okay in September, or even October, and we’ve had a very mild November, but nowadays it’s pretty chilly and shoes would really help, I think. The biggest concession I can get from her is usually to hide her bare tootsies under a blanket so passing motorists won’t call Child Protective Services. It’s very considerate, really.

On a good day, she’ll eat a snack or play with some toys all the way there. I can’t really let her out to meander or we’ll be late. So apart from the nagging feeling that I’m giving my child pneumonia, this is really the easy part. Half a mile later we get to the school.

Mabel attempts to hop out, and I take my moment to swoop in and deliver a shoe ultimatum. She acquiesces, and then, finally shod, she’s off to climb a tree or run up and down on a bench in some dangerous fashion, leading younger, more impressionable friends into temptation as they too wait for their big siblings to exit the hallowed doors of learning. I chat to some other mothers for a brief moment of relative peace.

The doors open and Dash is released as if on a spring – he runs down the ramp to hug me, and his sister, if she’s in our orbit. How sweet, I think they all think. And then we set off, homeward bound.

I am hampered immediately – it’s a conspiracy, like when someone in an Italian railway station distracts you by rustling a newspaper in front of your face while their accomplice runs off with your luggage – by Dash pulling his folder out of his backpack to show me some wonderful worksheet he completed or drawing he coloured in, while Mabel sprints towards the road as fast as her little marathon-runner’s-daughter legs can carry her. Luckily, so far she has always stopped at the kerb, and the nice crossing guard would probably catch her even if she didn’t. I wave Dash and his pages away and run after her, catching up just in time to stop her crossing the road, and turn right instead. We wend our way along the path, Mabel running ahead and Dash insisting on plonking himself in the stroller.

“Get. Out. You’re five and a half. Why are you in the stroller?”
“Did you bring snacks? Where’s my water? Did you not bring my water? Why does Mabel have water?”
“It’s the middle of winter. You don’t need water. You’re not going to die of thirst before we get home. Didn’t you just have a snack after recess?”
“I didn’t like my snack at recess. I’m thirsty.”
“How was school?” Trying to reclaim the cheerful, interested-Mommy ground.
“Fine.”
“What did you do today?”
“Work.”
Listen to that, he’s fourteen already.

We may or may not stop at the playground at this point, depending on the weather and how clothed and shod Mabel is, but it usually becomes clear that Dash wants to sit in the stroller because he can’t hold his need to go to the bathroom once he starts walking, so I soon pry her out of the baby swing and we set off again. I try to put her in the stroller, but she rebels. He tries to sit on the front part, where there is no proper seat and his five-year-old legs now trail along the ground. (I believe I described this a year or so ago. He hasn’t got any shorter since.) I rebel. They both run like crazy towards the second road-crossing of our daily odyssey.

Yesterday, around this point, as I slogged along pushing my giant child like a young rajah travelling in state, in the wake of my smaller, overtired, hopped up on, I dunno, air or something, speck-in-the-distance one, Dash hummed a little ditty of his own composing. The lyrics went, “Dash is the best one in his family-y-y…” I restrained myself, with great difficulty.

Then we turn the corner and have to navigate a fine line between the house whose owners are going to sue me one day for letting my children walk on their wall, off which they will no doubt one day fall, before I sue them for having a wall that children like to walk on; and the house a little further on on the other side of the street where the children like to steal the ornamental stones and bring them home. At some point I lose patience and stuff Mabel into the stroller, clicking the straps to keep her there. The day she figures out how to unclick herself, I’m toast.

Finally we turn onto our court, and I unleash the beast. I mean, Mabel. They both run haphazardly towards the house and, just when I think we can finally go in and be in a somewhat controlled environment again, they swerve off course and head for the scooters and bikes instead of the door. “Noooooo,” I lament.  “No, we are not staying out. We have to go in… oh, all right, just for five minutes…” And they’re specks in the distance again.