The Magic of Seven

"When you ask me how old I am tomorrow when I wake up, I will say, "SEVEN," my beautiful girl announced the night before, slipping into a clean pink nightgown.

"Gueth what?" the normally shy girl who's missing her front teeth asked the clerk at the checkout counter. "My birthday is in two days and I'm going to be SEVEN." Or THEVEN.

I can't help but love that about her. She was fine with her presents, but has never been a squealer. She cheerfully accepted the fact that it's not her year for a party (we alternate birthday parties with special outings with a friend, and this is her Special Outing year). She wanted to frost her own cake with her cousins, and the results looked loving, but not professional (she is her mother's daughter). But above all, the point was that she had now crossed the threshold into a brand new year, full of newfound maturity and promise.

At what point, between ages seven and thirty three, will that feeling pass?

In the meantime, she can stand as tall as she wants to.

P.S. In the photo, Eliza and her doll are wearing their birthday outfits, handmade for them by Shelli of Butterfly Egg Designs (we know how I am about sewing clothes; thank goodness there are gifted people out there). Shelli did a rush order for me at no extra charge and did a bang-up job. Hooray for Shelli!  Hooray for supporting work-at-home moms!

P.P.S. You can find another story about my girl's birthday rite of passage here.

We Made It

It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon …

HA!

Not even close. The only thing that’s been relatively quiet has been this blog, because when you’re falling asleep at 7:30 p.m., then bolting to your feet at 8:15 p.m., terrified that you’ve slept through a vital responsibility, the following truth applies: you do not really have the capacity to write anything anyone would want to read.

Things I have not been doing this week:

-Repainting my toenails (it shows)

-Reading for fun

-Reading aloud

-Responding promptly to emails, voice mails, etc.

-Noticing whether there are clouds in the sky

-Cleaning my floors/bathrooms/insert-household-surface-here

Things I have been doing instead:

 -Hosting two homesick nieces on their longest stay away from home

-Cleaning up a night’s worth of vomit (see above)

-Keeping five kids busy enough that two of them will be too distracted to think about being away from home

-Dealing with an especially hyperactive child (my own)

-Having pleasant discussions about using our kind words to treat each other with respect

-Feeling highly ineffective (see above)

-Co-teaching a class of sweet, precious seven year olds girls for a week of Bible Camp

-Feeling highly effective (see above)

-Confiding in a couple friends about a situation that’s been eating at me for weeks and getting exactly the right spiritual and emotional supply

-Being bullied by one of those friends, who’s one of the few with ground to do so, into calling my doctor and getting my thyroid prescription refilled (She actually Googled my dr., wrote down the number, and made me promise to call within the hour, because she likes to make sure I’m taking care of myself. Note to self: Pay that forward.)

-Reading picture books at night to a bed full of kids and snuggling them off to a peaceful sleep

-Having a husband on bedrest and IV antibiotics all week thanks to an infected lymph node

-Celebrating a certain someone’s birthday (that merits its own forthcoming post)

-Reminding the Lord every morning that apart from Him I can do nothing. 

OK, still not sure I’ve written anything anyone would want to read, but at least the agony and the ecstasy is now preserved for posterity. Good thing I’ll get to sleep in in the morning and just take it easy all weekend.

HA again!

What's Special About Wednesdays?

Well, this, for one thing.

And this. 

Wednesday brings a box of mysterious delights from local farms thanks to Greenling. Maybe not the bestest thing in the world for our grocery budget, but excellent for our vegetable intake. After all, when you get all that produce, some of which you've never heard of before, who's going to waste it? 

Hungry yet?

Lily and Thistle

Recently I discovered the most deeee-lightful purveyor of hand-drawn paper dolls and accompanying wardrobes. If you have a daughter (or hey, if you have a son; let's not discriminate) you must get your charm-loving self over to Lily and Thistle post-haste.

 Photo by Lily & Thistle

Not only will the artist, tastefully named Hannah, draw a custom creation for the child in your life, but also she offers both paper and downloadable versions of her dolls and outfits. Plus a few freebies on her blog.

Including, perfect for the reading family, this line of girls-in-literature outfits. I know a couple girls around here who'd love to dress their paper doppelgangers like Lucy Pevensie from Narnia!

Photo by Lily & Thistle

Since I don't trust my printer (we have issues), I ordered the paper version of a doll package, and you will not believe how fast it arrived in my mailbox. No fancy express shipping, either. I strongly suspect Hannah had it delivered by elves.

And the packaging was gorgeous, too.

Good thing a certain someone has a birthday this week.

And by "a certain someone," I do refer to the dainty creature who looked like this when I last checked:

Just giving you the straight facts. Or would that be the straight dirt?

P.S. As always, this is not a paid advertisement. I have no relationship with Lily and Thistle other than as a very satisfied customer. 

Adventures in Art

On Thursdays, the art museum attached to our illustrious university campus offers free admission to the public.

"Free" is a word that really resonates with me. I totally grok it.

Also, I sometimes feel that I'm a bit slipshod in the art department with my kiddos. Their exposure to the fine arts isn't exactly consistent. Please don't tell my grandparents about this. They own a Picasso and various other works, and would probably disown me if they knew their great grands couldn't tell a Monet from a Manet and haven't ever visited the Met.

So when we go, we go on Thursdays, and we seem to always manage bump up against their taekwondo class, so we're in a bit of a rush. The silver lining: We have to quit while we're ahead. The kids complain that they didn't get to stay long enough. This is a good thing.

We get a sampling of sculpture, classical, Renaissance, and American Impressionist paintings -- and a bunch of modern art, like the installation above. It's like a whirlwind tour of the past two thousand years in art. 

I never know exactly what to say to my young tourists as we wander around. Even though I loved the few art history courses I took in college, it's tricky striking a balance between, "Oh, look, what a PRETTY PICTURE!" and delivering an erudite lecture that would make their eyes glaze over. 

So my strategy is to say just a little -- to point out a couple things and let their senses do the rest. The goal at their ages is to enjoy art, to absorb it, to find what fills them with wonder or what makes them squawk, "I COULD DO THAT IN TEN MINUTES AT HOME!" ...  but not to necessarily comprehend what makes it work. 

And on that note, the girls and I have been reading this lovely book this week:

Linnea in Monet's Garden

It's a completely charming blend of fiction and non, part travelogue and part art history through the eyes of a young Swedish girl and her grandfatherly friend. Experiencing Paris through her eyes brings back memories of taking Ian there as a toddler -- but that's a story for another time. Anyway, there's hope. Maybe they'll know a Monet from a Manet after all. 

In Which I Dismember a Chicken and Do Not Die

No, not one of our beloved pets, of course. But STILL.

So, I volunteered to make a dinner for a mom from our homeschool co-op who had emergency surgery. Here's the catch: Their family does not eat dairy. My family (read: I) does not eat gluten -- I don't make separate dinners for myself and my family. Here's the other catch: This friend? Is? A CHEF.

Awash in a wave of paranoia, I could not think of a single transportable meal to cook. Therefore, I did what any self-respecting person would do and posted a desperate status update on Facebook. Within minutes, I was informed that I should be making Chicken Marbella, from the Silver Palate cookbook. (Personal Note: If I were marooned on a desert island and could only have three cookbooks with me, my Silver Palate would be among them. It's that crucial to my survival.)

Armed with a couple of hormone-free broiler hens from Costco, I checked my directions this morning and found that I was supposed to have marinated them overnight. Yay me. But here's the kicker: I had to quarter them first.

I quailed. Please! Give me dental surgery! Give me waiting in line at Sea World! Give me walking barefoot a public pool in puddles of warm, slightly slimy water! Just ... not ... the quartering of a poultry carcass.

Normally I foist this job onto the Professor, in fact I'm pretty sure that figured somewhere in our wedding vows, but he had the gall to go to work and abandon me to my own devices. It's just me versus the bird. Again to the Internet I go. VideoJug offers an instructive video in which the cook neatly, tidily, renders the chicken into six perfect, juiceless parts. And talks about popping joints. Deep breath. I can do this.

So there I am, in my kitchen, averting my eyes from the view of the yard, where our five cheerful hens are innocently strutting around eating mosquito eggs and earning their rent. Do not look at the chickens outside. Do NOT. 

And as I attack the bird, I discover that the VideoJug chef was using a super-awesome, super-sharp knife, while I am using a knife that was awesome and sharp in its glory days. My friends, I am here to tell you, this makes a difference.

Also, nowhere in the VideoJug feature did I see a four year old helper uttering the following sampling of helpful phrases every few seconds:

"Mom. That is DISGUSTO. I am leaving the room." [Oh that this would actually occur!]

"Ew. Do you know how gross that looks? What is the skin for? Is that fat, Mom? Is it? Why don't you eat it? What do you mean it's not good for your heart? What would happen to your heart if you ate it?"

"Mom, Bear Grylls ate a DEAD SHEEP once." [Terrific, honey. Could you get him on speed dial for me?]

As I saw away, mimicking the VideoJug chef's work in the way that a pigeon resembles a peacock, I consider profanity, but God and the four year old being on the premises, I resort instead to creative visualization and yoga breathing. I picture the friendly smile of the mom for whom I am cooking. I do not picture her wearing her chef's hat. I picture the sailing excursion the Professor and I took years ago in Hawaii. I do not picture my sunburned toes.

Of course, every two minutes I have to scrub my hands in hot water and soap to go consult VideoJug again. Turns out, when your mind is in Hawaii, it's not really retaining much information that's actually relevant to your current situation. 

Half an hour later, I have two fully quartered chickens happily marinating away in a delightful sauce. I have a clean, sanitized countertop. I have broth simmering on the stove, fragrant with bay leaves and elephant garlic. The house smells almost heartbreakingly wonderful. To all appearances, it's been a June Cleaver kind of morning.

Oh, how deceiving appearances can be.

Remembering our Heroes

What does Memorial Day mean to you? I used to think it was just a Monday off, a day free from work or school, a time to inaugurate the summer grilling season and begin wearing white without fear of arrest from the fashion police. 

In the past couple years, we've made more of an effort to honor the true significance of Memorial Day. It seems one of the rare opportunities we have to put patriotism into tangible action with our children. 

We started off the day by meeting other Cub/Boy Scouts and their families at a nearby cemetery (personality quirk I may have mentioned: I love cemeteries. They're quiet, serene, and silently brimming with untold biographies.) We had a short speech, a prayer, and then the flag planting began. Every grave belonging to a veteran was marked with a small sticker, and for the kids, armed with flags, it was like a giant treasure hunt. 

Eliza took it upon herself to add a few flowers. 

Later that day, after more creek play with friends, we continued our family tradition of remembering our family's veterans. The Professor has a Prisoner of War journal kept by his grandfather, Pop-pop, during his tenure at a stalag during World War II (he eventually escaped, narrowly -- a story we wish we knew much more about). Like last year, we brought it out for a little show and tell, along with a map to illustrate Pop-pop's journey. 

This year I added a read-aloud from my own grandfather's recently published memoir, in which he devotes a chapter to his service on a troop ship in the Pacific theater toward the end of the war with the Japanese. 

It's not something we reflect on as often as we might, but I think we all went to bed last night feeling a fuller measure of thankfulness for the sacrifices -- of lives, of innocence -- of our own ancestors and their fallen compatriots. 

It's a tradition worth keeping.