Bumblebee Sweet Potato

Well, we’re recovering from Thanksgiving here in Landisville. I managed to eat turkey every day, and drink quite a lot of good wine. Hope you and yours had a lovely time, too.

As I mentioned a few days ago, my MIL came and stayed with us over Thanksgiving. She brought books for the kids, along with excellent mushrooms for the adults. And the book that she brought for the Bee was so extraordinary, that I just had to share it. It was The Old Country, by Mordicai Gerstein. It was the first time that the Bee just demanded that we read a book all the way through until it was done, in that fanatical way that I (and I suspect other book-lovers) get. They zipped through it in just under two days, and after it was over, the Bee clutched it to her chest and said, “I’m keeping this book forever, and I’m going to read it to my kids when I’m a grown-up.”

That made me so happy, because I know two things now. #1 is that the Bee is listening when I talk to her about books that I read in my childhood. One of my major regrets about the dissolution of my childhood home, is that all my books were lost. Landisdad has acres of books that he read in childhood, which we got when his mom sold their house (right before the Bee was born). I’m not really sure what happened to the books that I owned as a kid. There was only so much stuff I could take when I moved in with my dad. I guess I thought my mom would hold on to stuff like that, but she hasn’t (and she’s moved several times herself). It’s one thing to buy new copies of books that I loved as a child. It’s another for my kids to read the actual books that landisdad had (most complete with inscriptions from his parents).

Thing #2 that I now know is that she understands that reading is something to share and enjoy, not something to keep to yourself. And those are pretty good lessons about books, as far as I’m concerned.

The Old Country is an allegory about the Holocaust, told through the eyes of animals. There’s a substantial fantasy element, with humans turning into animals & vice versa. The review of it that I read (after the fact) says it’s recommended for kids 11-14, and there are some disturbing scenes of war in the book. It’s a bit advanced for the Bee, frankly, and I wouldn’t have bought it for her myself. But it is an incredible piece of writing, and I highly recommend it for older kids. Gerstein’s other books all seem to be for much younger readers–on the strength of this one, I’m buying the Potato his Alphabet book for a Hanukkah present. Gerstein was apparently an animator before he got into children’s books, and I’m really looking forward to some interesting illustrations.

Scarlett tagged me with this Thanksgiving meme. It’s pretty time-sensitive, so I’m doing it right away! Here you go…

1) What are three items you have leftover from Thanksgiving that are in your refrigerator right now?

#1 At least four pounds of turkey
#2 About 2/3 of a pound of cranberries
#3 Some beautiful apple crisp

2) What kind of leftover treats will you make with the three items you listed?

Well, my regular readers will know that the answer to this question is, “none”

Here’s what landisdad will make.

#1 Some kind of Russian turkey pot pie, with rice, gravy & egg called kurnik (well, he actually made this yesterday–delicious!)
#2 Turkey tetrazzini (yum!)
#3 A delicious cranberry bread (okay, he made this today too)

3) How long will you keep the leftovers before you toss ‘em out?

Probably we’ll keep the turkey for a few more days. I’m guessing everything else will be gone tomorrow.

4) Now that we’re done with the leftover talk it’s time to spread some linky love.

Okay, I’m thinking that by the time most folks will read this, it’s gonna be too late (or reveal too much) to talk about turkey leftovers. But if you’re not afraid to admit you’re still hanging on to the goods, leave me a link!

I’m not sure what the blogosphere protocol for cross-promotion is. But I’ve started blogging at a community blog, the Bored Housewives Network (thanks for the invite, Doppelganger!). Here’s a link to something I just put up over there. I probably won’t keep cross-listing posts–that doesn’t seem to be the way things are done–but I wanted to let folks know you can find me (as well as some other smart, funny women) over there sometimes.

It’s a common conceit of mine that I am ‘handier’ than landisdad. Partly, that’s backed up by evidence–I’ve actually had jobs that involved manual labor and tools, and he’s been a ‘knowledge worker’ all his life (lucky bastard!).

But his knowledge worker tendencies do conspire against me sometimes. For example, I never ever read the directions for anything, until I’ve tried to make it work on my own at least once. His initial response, on opening any package, is to get the directions out and read them.

Since I’m not the genius that I think I am, 9 times out of 10, he’s figured the thing out (whatever the thing happens to be–computer game, furniture to assemble, complicated baby toy) before I have, and I’m reduced to asking him for the directions.

Last night, we were all in the Potato’s room, and the Bee was reading him a story. I bought a new nightlight for the Potato last weekend, and I wanted to install it, but it’s the kind that is attached to an outlet cover, and needed to be screwed on. In order to install it, I had to unplug the light and do it in the dark. “You should wait until morning to do that,” he said.

“I’m sure it will be fine!” I shot back.

Then I dropped the screw into the heating duct. Where it still sits.

He never said “I told you so.” Not even once.

I’m predicting this will be a slow blogging week, given the Thanksgiving holiday and the fact that my MIL is coming to town for a few days. But I wanted to take a minute to give some props to Grace from I Am Dr. Laura’s Worst Nightmare, for her work on the Katrina relief blog, Family to Family. The F2F blog provides info on families to folks who are looking to give direct material contributions for those affected by Katrina. The families are identified anonymously (for example–A Single Mom in Bay St. Louis), and there are very specific items requested, including sizes of clothing, particular appliances, etc. There are also links to online retailers and shippers, and addresses for churches or shelters to send the goods to.

I know that I’m going to spend a lot of this week overeating, and then will probably start my (mostly online) holiday shopping after that. I’m planning to include one of these families in my Christmas shopping this year. It’s been a hard year for planet Earth, between the tsunami, the war in Iraq, the hurricanes and earthquakes. At this time of year, it’s easy to succumb to compassion fatigue, and turn inward. In our family, there’s a lot to be thankful for. I don’t want to forget that.

Last year, on one particularly cold winter day, I got tired of telling the Bee to hurry up on the way to school, and I invented a game called “Who’s in Front?”. The game mostly consists of me growling, “I’m gonna get in front!” while the Bee giggles and runs ahead of me. When we turn the corner to the street her school is on, she likes to hide behind various trees. Under no circumstances am I to look for her. I am, however, allowed to say, “where’s the Bee? I’ve lost her. Oh no!” (This last is a rule of the Bee’s creation.)

Then she comes running up, giggling, and hides all over again.

It’s great fun for her, and it means I don’t have to spend a half an hour walking the four blocks to school in the freezing cold. We’ve played it on and off during the fall, but somehow, it’s less compelling on a warm day.

Yesterday, the Bee invented her own walk-to-school game–”don’t step on any leaves.” At first, she told me I was allowed to step on small leaves, because my feet are so much bigger than hers (jeez, thanks for pointing that out, btw). Today the rules changed, and I had to jump over the smallest leaf too. I made a point of asking for several clarifications–are acorns okay? what about sticks?–because I know that she likes to make up rules.

It got me thinking about all those games in childhood that we play, just to have the power of rule-making. Kids spend so much of their lives listening to the rules of their parents, the rules of school–is getting to make up the rules for a game with an adult that much more fun?

What games did you make up when you were a kid? How many elaborate rule variations were there? Did you just make up games with other kids, or did your parents let you make up rules for them, too?

This morning, when landisdad dropped the Potato off at daycare, his teacher stopped to chat with him for a bit about how well the boy is doing in class. They had a few minutes of conversation, and then she said,

“yeah, he’s so smart, when we color with crayons, he NEVER eats them!”

I about fell off my chair when I heard it. I guess the toddler bar is set pretty low.

We had the Bee’s parent-teacher conference today. Since I posted so much last year about our bad experiences with the kindergarten teacher, I thought I’d better update on the much more positive time she’s having in first grade.

Backing up, though–on the first day of school, we found out that the first grade teacher was pregnant, and would be going out on maternity leave in October or November (come on, we’ve all been there, we know it’s not an exact science). After the first couple of weeks, we went to back to school night, where I peppered this poor woman with questions about who the sub would be, and how various things would be handled in her absence. (I did apologize later for being crazy.)

I was really worried about what would happen with the transition. The Bee has her high maintenance moments, and I thought this might trigger one. My fears were all for naught.

In addition to the great academic report that we got from her regular teacher (which was read by the sub), the sub (who has now been there for a week and a half) talked about how the Bee always participates in class, and is always polite and helpful to the other kids. Landisdad and I sat there, unable to say anything as we beamed with pride. She showed us some of the Bee’s classwork, including her journal, and raved about how she writes much more than is required, and uses complicated, descriptive sentences.

I present to you the thoughts of a six-year-old girl, rendered in her own words (MD, you might want to skip this part.) You’ll have to imagine the kid print & illustrations.

“Look at what I’m doing in First grade! I’m ruyting (writing) in my jrnul evrey morning befor morning mesig (message)! I am a good friend. I help my friend plant a gardin. I could not swig my self. Now I can!”*

*For those who are not the parent of a kid learning to write, let me tell you that the current preferred method of teaching kids to write is to let them write free form, not to correct their spelling and grammar at every chance. I like it–it’s making her love to write stories, because she’s not worried about doing something wrong all the time.

So I had my first-ever blog play-date yesterday. Oddly, neither the other blogger or I managed to discuss whether or not we would blog about the experience. So I’m gonna let her out herself in the comments, if she’s so inclined, otherwise, you’ll just have to keep guessing until we come to some agreement. It was a lovely day, and a lovely time with much playground equipment.

Most of my weekend was spent trying to keep landisdad from contaminating the wee bairns. He came home early Friday with some kind of awful fever & stomach virus thing, and spent most of the next three days wrapped in a wool blanket and whimpering for mercy. It wasn’t pretty.

We’re getting ready to host our first post-kid Thanksgiving here. For the last six years, we’ve always gone to NYC for Thanksgiving, as landisdad’s grandmother wasn’t able to travel. This year, we decided that we should give his mom a break from the cooking, so we’re having her over, plus possibly some other family members. Unfortunately, that means I’m going to have to take apart my ‘office,’ which is currently located in our dining room. Grrr! I’m not looking forward to it very much. It’s a major cleaning job. On the plus side, maybe we’ll finally move the seven boxes of photographs out of this room…

Also, for those of you who arrived here via some search for a sweet potato pie recipe or other sweet potato cooking problems? Sorry, I’m not the cook in our family. Try here, here or here.

The Bee had the day off from school today, so I kept the Potato home from daycare too, and made a mommy-kid day of it. The Bee had a playdate this afternoon, but the morning was mostly relaxing at home, marred only by the ginormous temper tantrum that the Potato threw in the coffee shop, forcing me to carry him home the four blocks. There’s nothing quite like hauling a screaming, back-arching two-year-old to bring a certain luster to your day.

After that ended, we all sat on the porch for a while, me with my coffee, the two of them with their pumpkins.

Yes, my kids spent an hour this morning playing with the leftover Halloween pumpkins (whole, not carved). First, they carried them down the front steps and lined them up on our walk. Then, they carried them down to the sidewalk to ‘wait for the bus.’ Then, the bus came and took the pumpkins to the airport, where they flew to Florida to visit my mom. And so on.

It was definitely one of those moments where I thought, “and why do we buy toys?” But at the same time, I was amazed by their (particularly the Bee’s) imagination. It would simply never occur to me to send pumpkins on vacation, and it was truly wonderful to see her invent a game that her brother could play too.

The afternoon was slightly more difficult, as the Bee and her friend decided that they had to lock the Potato out of her room (and when I put her to bed tonight, I found a note they had written that said, “my brother is being a pest,” which I was amused by, partly because I didn’t know she knew how to spell ‘pest’ or ‘brother’). But then they ended up all playing soccer in the back yard, so it was okay.

It felt like today is going to be one of the last nice days of the fall. I’m hoping that it’ll stay okay through the weekend, because I have my first blog play-date on Sunday, and we made a plan to meet at a local playground. If it turns into a rainy day, I’m not sure what we’ll do.

I’m kind of curious about meeting someone that I only know through her blog, especially with her kids in tow. Metrodad had a great post about blogfriends earlier this week, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Will let you know how it goes!