The last time I left the house was on Tuesday, to go to the pediatrician with all 3 kids. We came home with a diagnosis of RSV for everyone.

It's been a long five days. Very, very, very long. My parents were planning to visit this weekend, but we postponed that until everyone is healthy (a wise choice, but still, a big let-down, because I'd been building up to it in my mind all week).

I finally crossed my doorstep again today--to go to the pediatrician again. We came home with a diagnosis of secondary-to-RSV double ear infections and nasal infections for Isaac. The pediatrician said to continue our lovely little quarantine until all the coughing is gone. In the mean time, she said, expect "vast quantities of mucus drainage."

Let me tell you this: "vast" is an understatement. Everyone is very sick. Isaac's eyes are swollen and red. Everyone is coughing constantly and I'm wiping noses literally every five minutes. Nobody is sleeping well. I am very, very, very tired. Neil started getting sick today too.

The most frustrating thing about all of this to me is that I feel like we try so hard to be healthy. We eat really well. Neil and I exercise a lot (the kids run around like crazies so I think that counts). We all take vitamins every day. I've breast-fed all three kids to try to transfer all those nice immunities. We're up-to-date on shots, we wash hands regularly, all that jazz. And yet I feel like we are sick all. the. time. Seriously. It's one thing after another and I just can't catch my breath. The longest we have gone all winter between doctor visits is three weeks.

I'm just feeling very weighed down today. I'm frustrated with teaching--I always get emotionally invested and I don't understand why people just don't even bother turning in assignments. I don't like having to be the bad guy who hands out failing grades and then has to endure all the ensuing drama. I wish I could sleep for more than four hours at a time. I wish all my kids could be healthy for just one week all at the same time. I miss going to playgroups and storytime and even just the grocery store.

Well...I better go give Isaac his last breathing treatment and his evening set of 4 medications. :-( On the bright side, his oxygen level was high enough today that he wasn't hospitalized. Which is a definite plus.

runner's high

why yes, I did take a picture of my bathtub.

This morning when Isaac starting yodeling at 6:30, I was exhausted. Listening to his wheezing breathing and sad little cough all night hadn't made for very restful sleep.

Please, baby, just give me another half hour, I thought.

But I fed him (then I went back to sleep while Neil did his breathing treatment).

And I got him dressed. And gave him his cereal and bananas and more medicine. Made breakfast for the girls. Ate a banana myself; too tired to eat anything else. Wiped everyone's nose for the bajillionth time. Put Isaac down for a nap.

Then I staggered over to the treadmill and ran my 5 miles.

Now I feel like a million bucks. My mind is whizzing and I have a million projects I want to do this weekend. Finish building the bed. Repaint my bedroom. Paint the laundry room. Sew some cool funky fabric animal hangings for the girls' room. Paint their headboard and dresser. Bake cranberry bread. Break out the Play-Doh and paints. Venture to the mall with all three kids and pick up a new pair of running shorts. Finish clearing out my closets and take a huge donation sack to the thrift store. Take the kids to the library. Go to the greenhouse and buy everything I need to start my seeds. Go out to the garden and hack at the frozen dirt so I can start planting in two weeks. Pick up my just-arrived bulk order at the health food store. Help the girls build a covered wagon in the living room for their ongoing Little House in the Big Woods game. Plan an all-out circumnavigate-the-globe vacation.

Too bad endorphins can't last forever, right? I think mine had better carry me along to the shower.

a post about meals

I was thinking last night that I should post about food, because I like food. I still need to find the time (somewhere, somehow) to write a longer post about how much I love our new plant-based whole foods diet, but with a house full of tiny sick children, there's just not time for that right now.



Last night we had a super-simple meal that didn't require much hands-on time, since it was a loooong day with lots of different let's-keep-you-out-of-the-hospital treatments for Isaac. So for dinner I baked a loaf of whole-wheat bread, washed some grapes, made baba ganoush out of an eggplant I roasted a couple of days ago, then chopped up an onion, eggplant, 2 carrots, 3 parsnips, half a pound of mushrooms, and half a pound of asparagus, tossed them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary, then roasted everything for 20 minutes at 450 degrees. So delicious--we ate every single scrap. Juliet, as you see, could not wait for me to take a picture before she started eating. Isaac was a big fan of the eggplants, parsnips, and bread.



As a sidenote, one thing I LOVE about eating this way is that I can give Isaac whatever we're eating and not worry about whether it has meat, eggs, or dairy in it, all of which he's too young to eat. I still feed him baby foods for breakfast and lunch, but at dinner he usually eats whatever we're eating right along with us (breakfast things like steel-cut oats are a little beyond him right now, as are cut-up fruits and vegetables for lunch, although he is partial to black beans and torn-up bread or mushed banana). A few days ago we had the pictured quinoa chili for dinner, and Isaac downed his bowl more quickly than the girls did. Yum yum!! (btw, this chili is seriously fantastic.)

wordless wednesday

my three little lovies.

so cute.

especially right now with their extremely rosy fevered cheeks, all three of them.

a rant

I wrote a post, but I deleted it. short version: Isaac has RSV, a bottle of nail polish thought it was a hot pink grenade and utterly defaced my bathroom (serious ricochet out of the cabinet, onto the back of the toilet, cue spectacular you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it explosion), and I spent three hours today dealing with students who are confused as to why they received a zero on an assignment they never submitted.

The end. I am going to go curl up in the fetal position under my desk now.

go for it!

finalized my training schedule today for my first half-marathon. the race is April 24th.

I am so pumped! I've been feeling like I wanted more of a goal to be working towards--I've been upping my pace and my mileage, but I needed something more. So this is it.

I didn't sign up for the half I'd originally been planning on, since it's an hour away and I was worried about feeding Isaac before and after the race [nursing timing ruled out the possibility of a full marathon], but also having a nice place for him to be while I was running. So today I was super excited to find a race in my parents' hometown, and that was just the incentive I needed to finish drawing up that training schedule (fortunately, while I only have 9 weeks to train, my regular runs put me on week 4 of the training scheme I'm following).

Wish me luck!

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breakfast

sitting at the table with Juliet this morning eating our steel-cut oats and blueberries after everyone else is gone...





Meanwhile...Isaac wants some "man toys."

those lashes

I keep dressing him in very masculine things so that nobody looks at his eyelashes and thinks he's a girl.

Frankly, we had enough gender confusion with Juliet. Poor little cue ball-head Juliet.

making changes

some thought-provoking words from my mom here.

I'll post more about this later on; I was just thinking today that I should do an update. the quick version: I have way more energy, I'm less cranky, I can get by on less sleep (not by choice, but I don't feel as awful), and I don't get the killer headaches which used to plague me all the time.

threads

I must say, it's so fun dressing a little boy. I don't know why, but I really love all the little ties and sweater vests and collared shirts and overalls (not that my girls don't wear their fair share of overalls too). But is he not so darling? I can almost forget the fact that he is refusing to sleep again (more teeth?)




Tonight we're going ice-skating as a family, courtesy of the mechanical engineering graduate student association. There are definitely some perks to the Ph.D. program! I'm really looking forward to it, especially since there's a nice heated building overlooking the rink that will be stocked with pizza and grinders (we'll take a break on our whole foods plant-based diet for an evening, I suppose. although usually they're really good about having tons of veggie burgers and salads at the grad student cookouts, probably because the majority of the students are Asian and Indian and hence primarily vegetarian due to religion or culture).

As a sidenote, since I never really talk about it, I'm so grateful for our opportunities here in graduate school. We love the area so much and I will be so sad when we leave--this has really been a wonderful place and experience for our family. We've been blessed so much during our time here--can we say no student loans!!--and it's just been an amazing opportunity. Although we probably have at least two years left to enjoy it...

Plus, isn't it so cool that my husband is going to be Dr. Neil?

ps--if you haven't yet read yesterday's post on children's books, keep scrolling! it's a good one, I promise!

a public service posting

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Over the last few days, the kids have been eagerly watching the mail. It must seem like magic to them; due to the fact that I bought books from different sellers all over the Internet, we’ve been averaging a package or two every day. They are super excited every day to find out what new book will arrive; it’s going to be a letdown when we’re all through! Yesterday Paul Heins and Trina Schart Hyman’s Snow White arrived (which has the most gorgeous illustrations, plus it follows the Brothers Grimm storyline rather than the saccharine Disney version); we dropped what we were doing and sat down right there in front of the door to read it. Abigail promptly declared that the Disney Snow White was “yuck Snow White, let’s throw it away” and slept with the new version under her pillow. Can’t say that I blame her. And must confess I was right on board.

Anyway, I was thinking today about the hours I spent recently reading over lists called things like “The Best Children’s Books of All Time” or “Don’t-Miss Picture Books” and how some of them were great and some of them were basically a Berenstain Bears catalogue.

So with that in mind, I present to you my favorites out of the nearly 400 children’s books we own. These are the ones that I look forward to reading. J There are lots of others that I enjoy or like or think are fun, but these are ones that I’d recommend adding to your collection.

• The 20^th Century Children’s Book Treasury, selected by Janet Schulman: one of the very best books we own.This is jam-packed with classics and always comes with us to the doctor’s office or anywhere that we may be waiting.This book is SO good that nurses at aforesaid doctor’s offices have written down the title and editor so they can purchase one of their own (really, I’m not kidding). A sampling: Madeline, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, GOodnight Moon, The Snowy Day, Make Way for Ducklings, Guess How Much I Love You, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad DAy, Curious George, Where the Wild Things ARe, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Bedtime for Frances, The Story of Babar, Stellaluna, Harry the Dirty Dog, Owen, The Sneetches. In paperback, it's just under an inch thick and about 8.5 x 11 inches with 300 pages of stories.
• Beatrix Potter: get yourself a good big treasury.
• Jan Brett: we own six of her stories. I love the pictures; the text can be a little much sometimes for short attention spans. Our favorites are The Gingerbread Baby and The Mitten.
• Margaret Wise Brown: The Runaway Bunny and The Big Red Barn
• Eve Bunting: A Turkey for Thanksgiving, The Valentine Bears, and Night Tree
• Virginia Lee Burton: better known for Mike Mulligan, but my favorite has always been The Little House. Now that Nathan has joined our family, Katy and the Big Snow is a huge favorite. 
• Eric Carle: The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear
• Joanna Cole: My kids LOVE the Magic Schoolbus books. I think the new ones are kind of weird, but you can’t go wrong with Lost in the Solar System, Inside the Human Body, Inside the Earth, etc.
• Barbara Cooney: Miss Rumphius, Roxaboxen, and Ox-Cart Man. My favorite author.
• Tomie dePaola has written a gazillion books; our faves are The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush and The Quilt Story.
• Judy Dunn: a whole series about baby animals and the little kids who take care of them. I especially like that it’s photographs and jam-packed full of interesting info along with the story. Our favorites are The Little Duck and The Little Pig.
• P.D. Eastman: Go Dog! Go! and Are You My Mother?
• Ian Falconer: Olivia (the original)
• Joan Heilbroner: Robert the Rose Horse
• Trina Schart Hyman (as illustrator or author): Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Merlin and the Making of the King, St. George and the Dragon, the Kitchen Knight, plus a whole lot more
• Kevin Henkes: Owen, Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse and Chrysanthemum
• Russell and Lillian Hoban: My other favorite author(s). We own every single Frances book and I must also recommend Charlie the Tramp and The Little Brute Family. If you’re going to pick an author(s) to buy all their works, the Hobans should be it. 
• Hilary Knight: The Twelve Days of Christmas
• Mary DeBall Kwitz: Little Chick’s Breakfast and Little Chick’s Big Day
• Brian Lies: Bats at the Beach
• Astrid Lindgren: The Tomten
• Leo Lionni: Frederick
• Arnold Lobel: any of the Frog and Toad books
• Mercer Meyer: our favorite Little Critter book is Just Go to Bed. Little Critter seems to be a real hit with the 2-year-old set.
• Robert McCloskey: better known for Make Way for Ducklings, but I’ve always loved Blueberries for Sal
• Elsie Minarik: any of the Little Bear books
• Arlene Mosel: The Funny Little Woman
• Jane O’Connor: Fancy Nancy (the original)
• Bill Peet: The Caboose Who Got Loose
• Alice and Martin Provensen: A Book of Seasons and The Year at Maple Hill Farm
• Peggy Rathmann: Officer Buckle and Gloria
• Cynthia Rylant: The Relatives Came and When I Was Young in the Mountains
• Richard Scarry: The Bunny Book (he’s written two by this title, the one I mean is the one about what the baby bunny will be when he grows up).
• Maurice Sendak: Where the Wild Things Are
• Dr. Seuss: oh boy, where to start? We own twelve and love them all, except for Hop on Pop, which I can’t stand. My favorite is probably Fox in Socks.
• William Steig: Dr. de Soto
• Jane Yolen: Owl Moon

Did I miss any of your favorites?

Oh, the humanity!

Yesterday was Not Fun. Neil didn't get home from the lab until 11 pm, the kids were just kind of wild all day, and for the first time since I left for college I found myself doing the breakfast dishes after dinner. (Seriously. That is a low point for me. The abyss.) Isaac didn't nap longer than 45 minutes all day, Juliet never napped, and I didn't eat lunch until 2:30. I ran early in the morning, then washed and folded eight loads of laundry, helped Abigail paint valentines for her preschool class, read stories to the kids for almost an hour and did some grading and honestly? I don't think I did anything else all day.

So I was so relieved to go to bed last night. Finally. Sleep. Bliss.

And then I DREAMED ABOUT DOING HOUSEWORK AND GRADING ALL. NIGHT. LONG.

Excepting, of course, the THREE times that Isaac woke up. This morning I pulled all the pillows over my head and pretended very hard that I couldn't hear Isaac crying and the girls playing. I lay there coughing and feeling sorry for myself for as long as I could (in other words: until Neil left). I have a lot to do today and I don't want to do any of it. Here is what I want to do: go back to bed. By myself. Just for an hour--then I'll get up and take care of everyone else.

Also, would someone please make me breakfast?

Okay--done whining now. I'm going to pull myself together, go put Isaac down for a nap, vacuum, wash the breakfast dishes, take a shower, and read stories to the girls.

Isaac @ 7 months, Juliet @ 2.5 years

Miss Juliet is officially two and a half now. She is willful, charming, infuriating, adorable, precocious, and absolutely delightful. She has a very large vocabulary and loves, loves, loves books, either listening to stories or looking at them on her own. She tells the funniest little stories and her reasoning is getting quite complex--she uses "if then" statements all the time to bargain with me (although it sounds more like "if den"). Right now she is "seeping in my own bed" in a bed that she made out of a laundry basket lined with a sheepskin and her special blankie with my baby blanket on top of her.

She is a definite mommy's girl and comes up to me all the time saying, "Mommy, I hold you." Yesterday she didn't want to go to nursery--I'm not sure why--and she cried for awhile while I stood outside the door waiting to see if she'd settle down. When I opened the door again she turned to me with a frantic expression and said, "Mommy, get me OUT of here!" It was so funny that I couldn't help laughing. She always wants to me on my lap or cuddling with me or right next to me whatever I'm doing, which is usually fun but can sometimes get a little exciting.



also, she wears her tutu every. single. day. everywhere we go. I think it's darling.

And Isaac hit the 7-month mark yesterday...a charming little Valentine.


He continues to ham it up whenever he sees a camera--you can't see it here, but his first little pearly whites are through his gums. Very darling.



Isaac is eager to try any and every food. we feed him dinner, then he usually sits on someone's lap while we eat and devours any little morsels that he can. so far he's a big fan of spinach/kale soup, French lentil stew, and guacamole. plus that kid can down fresh whole-wheat bread like nobody's business. he's also learning to feed himself Cheerios. I'm a little scared of what our grocery bill is going to look like when he's a teenager, since he has an apparently insatiable appetite--no matter how much you feed him, he always wants more. And if you aren't feeding him fast enough--so fast that you think, "Is he actually swallowing between bites?" he will kick his feet and yell really loudly until you pick up the pace. He knows what he wants.



The girls are welcoming him into their play world whole-heartedly.




Fortunately, he's a good sport.


A few other things:

• officially, solidly, thoroughly on the 4-hour schedule now. love it. such a relief. He's sleeping twelve hours at night now with one nursing period at about 3 am--which totally rocks.
  
• rolling over both ways, sitting unassisted quite well, and scooting around (maybe rotating is a better descriptor) in circles to get toys.
  
• still super happy, mellow, and easy-going. absolutely delightful little chap.

It feels like they're all growing up so fast--Abigail will be 5 in two months and starting kindergarten this fall. I told Neil yesterday that I want a tiny little baby, and he looked at me like I was crazy and said, "We HAVE a baby. Who still wakes up at night," and he's right. But it still feels like they're all getting so big. Oh well. I have another half-year, doctor's orders, before I can really even think about another baby. I just really hope that we can have another. Lots of others. A few people have said something to me casually about how Isaac is probably our last after all the complications, and it makes my heart ache to even consider that as a possibility.

making it over

went to the home improvement store to pick up some lumber on Saturday--came home with the lumber and some spur-of-the-moment paint.

our bedroom is now blue. very, very blue. not 100% sure if it's the color that we'll keep, but I can tell you this: buying high-grade paint makes a world of difference. it's easily the best-painted room in our entire house. no leaks onto woodwork. perfectly even lines on the ceiling.

it really would be a shame to paint over it. it's just that it's a little brighter than we'd anticipated...

in any case, things are in the works for the Great Bedroom Makeover of 2010. color scheme: blue, black, silver, and white. goal: soothing.

next up: building that bed. and let me tell you, it's going to happen sooner rather than later, because there is a pile of lumber in my bedroom (wouldn't fit in the garage).

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books part II

In answer to your question, Ashley, (after some modifications and deleting and adding) I ended up purchasing these books (Neil's very thoughtful "thank you for doing our taxes, why don't you pick out some of your favorite books" gift).

I should say that while I am super excited for all of these books, we already have quite a large children's book collection, which holds many of my favorites. So this isn't necessarily the list of the books I would first recommend to build your stash. I should also say that we are definite bookworms around here, and regard books as a sound investment. :-) Our kids will literally sit for hours--HOURS--looking at books, so the sticker shock is something that we're willing to work with. Not excited about, but recognizing that it's a trade-off. Some people buy shoes or necklaces or CDs, we buy books. Just one of those things.

• Trina Shart Hyman's The Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Merlin and the Making of the King--possibly my favorite illustrator ever. Unfortunately, just about everything she's done except for Saint George and the Dragon and The Kitchen Knight is now out of print or prohibitively expensive. Incidentally, Saint George was one of the first two books in our children's library [Bread and Jam for Frances was the other, of course]. But if you don't have those, they are very affordable at Amazon.
  
• The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren
• The Polar Express by Chris van Allsburg
• The Year at Maple Hill Farm (Provensen)
• Night Tree (Eve Bunting)
• The Little Pig (Judy Dunn--not a literary classic, but I remember reading it over and over when I was little)
• Doctor de Soto (William Steig)
• When I Was Young in the Mountains (Cynthia Rylant)
• Owl Moon (Jane Yolen)
• Twelve Days of Christmas (Hilary Knight--absolutely entrancing illustrations)
• Veganomicon (a cookbook for me!)
• The Ox-Cart Man (Barbara Cooney, also the author of my very favorite book Miss Rumphius)
• The Big Red Barn (Margaret Brown--this is a replacement copy because we have loved the other one to shreds)
• The Little Brute Family (Russell Hoban--this is seriously one of the awesomest books I have ever read, by the author of the Frances books. I laugh on every page of this book).
  
• James Herriot's Treasury for Children (love, love, love his books for adults. so excited for this!!)
  

If you're just starting out, I would highly recommend checking the children's book lots on eBay. Look for award-winners, you can usually get a great batch!! Plus the library book sales are the cheapest way to go; our library sells children's books for 50 cents each and I just went to one last weekend in my parents' town where they were 3/$1. We're just at the stage now where we have most of the popular ones that are sold at these kind of sales, so I'm having to do more searching and paying closer to full price to get the ones I'm really hankering after.

And now I must go add all these to my Excel home library catalog!

foraging

When we were at the library yesterday, I checked out a copy of Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus and The Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants (US Department of the Army). I haven't had the chance to do much more than flip through both of them (last night at dinner I entertained the kids by reading aloud some of the Army book; did you know, for instance, that pine resin can be used as an emergency dental filling?! Abigail was entranced), but I really want to learn more about harvesting wild plants. Especially mushrooms. One of the things I read in Gibbons' book is that he lived for five years on what he foraged. FIVE YEARS!

When I was helping my grandmother to weed her garden the summer before last, she gathered up a big heap of purslane from our weed pile and took it in to cook for dinner. Neil spends a lot of time every spring digging up nettles and thistles from our lawn and garden; we raise the best crop of dandelions in our neighborhood. I love the idea of putting things like this to (edible) use, although I must confess I'm a little hesitant about the idea of nettle soup (although I did see it featured in Martha Stewart Living a few years ago).

Do you do any foraging? Are you one of those lucky people who can identify mushrooms at a glance? Do you have an asparagus spot? Or does this whole idea just sound a little too far-out for you?

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my goodness! you must have so much time as a stay-at-home-mom!

1:35 am: finally get teething wheezy Isaac back to sleep. fall into bed. have not yet gotten to sleep tonight.
5:00 am: feed Isaac
7ish am: Isaac wakes up again. pretend it's not happening
7ish sometime: Neil gets up, quiets Isaac, and goes out to shovel snow.
8ish sometime: realize in panic that it was time to get up an hour and a half ago. check email--federal tax return accepted! hurray!
8:19 am: start laundry
8:23: feed Isaac
8:46: preschool is cancelled, due to insane amounts of snow.
8:48 am: doctor's appointments are not. rapidly repack purse to accommodate needs of all three children.
8:51 am: change over laundry
8:52 am: start kids eating breakfast and run to shower
9:16 am: leave the house
9:32 am: arrive at first doctor's appointment (Juliet)
10:15 am: arrive at second doctor's appointment. read stories to the girls while waiting for 45 minutes. nurse repeatedly comments on how well-behaved and quiet the girls are. thankfully agree.
11:15 (finally): leave second doctor's appointment--Isaac needs another round of breathing treatments and steroids.
11:23 am: drop off prescriptions
11:27 am: take kids to library. blissful interlude.
11:58 am: pick up $80 worth of prescriptions. send a small prayer of gratitude up for insurance.
12:12: arrive home with kids. get mail, change over laundry, settle Abigail and Juliet with library books.
12:17 pm: feed Isaac
12:35 pm: change Isaac's diaper
12:42 pm: start Isaac's breathing treatment. feed girls lunch simultaneously.
1:05 pm: put poor exhausted Isaac down for a nap (he, of course, only napped in the car for 15 minutes this morning).

things I still need to do today:

eat lunch. fold laundry. read library books to kids. go to THIRD doctor's appointment (optometrist for me). do a bunch of stuff for my calling. make dinner. take the girls out to play in the snow. clean the house. run 4 miles. grading.

retail therapy

I spent a lot of time reading cover letters and emailing feedback to my students. I grew increasingly frustrated as I was reading them in order of posting on the website, which meant that I ended up reading all the good ones first.

Then I went to Amazon, still feeling very jittery, and filled my cart with $112.31 worth of children's books.

Does it count as retail therapy if it's all online and you don't push the button?

snowbound

Five or six inches of snow with up to a foot to come. It's utterly silent outside--the road is just a dimple in the thick white blanket. The windows are partially obscured by thick swoops of white, and everything outside is misty through the falling snow.

It's a perfect day to read lots of stories, live in dress-ups, and munch on granola bars hot from the oven.

(except tonight I have to go to the grocery store.)

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food and some things

after Rosalind's play--hence her makeup

It's one of "those" days--Neil left at 6:30 AM and won't be back until midnight, Isaac is teething and ENRAGED, I have grading to do, the snowplow dumped so much snow at the foot of our driveway that I had to get out of the car and shovel it all out to get up the driveway, etc. Monday, Monday, Monday.

Moving on.

We went up to my parents' house this weekend to see my little sister's musical. It was so fun, and she was one of the main dancers, which is a pretty big deal (and especially exciting because none of the other four of us have anything resembling dancing skill). She was amazing and it was so fun! (except for the part where insane Isaac didn't sleep at night). My mom made really fantastic vegan food all weekend (like really amazing!! really, really amazing!!). At dinner yesterday Abigail said, "This [tempeh] is actually pretty delicious. I think, if it is healthy, that I would like to eat this every day."

Speaking of which, Abigail is very concerned about whether everything is healthy or not. She's always asked me to read labels in the grocery store and puts it right back on the shelf if I tell her it has "yuckies" in it; lately that's extended to anything she eats away from home. She came home from preschool today and informed me that she had told everyone in her preschool class that the snacks they bring are not healthy (she was in charge of bringing snack today and brought whole-wheat banana muffins). I cringed a little to hear that. I think we need to work on tact; I love the fact that she's concerned about the things she eats, but I want her to learn how to avoid alienating her friends!

And while we're on the topic of food, and because it's my mom's birthday today--

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!!!

--and because she asked me to scan through the cookbook I gave her for her birthday and tell her things that she should make--here's a quick look at what we're eating this week. Courtesy of Veganomicon.

Monday: Black bean soup with sauteed vegetables (p. 135) /spinach salad with oranges, avocados, portabellos, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, and red onion dressing

Tuesday: Baked sweet potatoes, chickpea and quinoa pilaf (p. 115), green beans with almonds, and salmon (sorry, Mom, the fish isn't vegan...)

Wednesday: Black bean burgers (p. 98) with homemade whole-wheat buns, roasted fennel and walnut salad with dried cranberries and shallots (p. 86 & 87)

Thursday: Tomato and roasted eggplant stew with chickpeas (p. 179), served with poppyseed polenta (p. 115)

Friday: Whole-wheat waffles with fresh fruit (babysitting for date night)

Saturday: Whole-wheat bread with assorted vegetables and fruits

Sunday: Red lentil and cauliflower curry (p. 186) with samosa-stuffed baked potatoes (p. 60), homemade whole-wheat pita bread, and fresh hummus

Happy eating!!!

caramelized carrots with rosemary and beans

a quick note to self for future replicating purposes:

caramelize 1/2 c. shallots in olive oil. remove.

slice 2 cups carrots on a deep bias. saute with plenty of rosemary (10-12 minutes), then add a bit of brown sugar to caramelize those as well.

add 3 cups white beans. more rosemary, drizzle with olive oil.

toast 1/3 c. walnuts. toss everything together and splash with a tablespoon or so of lemon juice.

so divine.

resolution: start writing down things I make up for dinner.

(like that kale and white-bean soup with rosemary that a lot of people asked me for but guess what?! I forgot how I made it. so now I need to make it again and write things down as I'm going. and then I will post a real recipe.)

note: this recipe was a wintertime riff on this, which sounded delicious but a little too springy (and too much olive oil).

I served this with a spinach salad (with baby portobellos, avocado, sunflower seeds, and raisins plus a freshly-made red onion dressing) and homemade whole wheat bread. really really yummy.

this is the kind of neighbor I have

A couple of weeks ago we had a ton of snow after Neil left for work in the morning. A LOT. I ran out while Isaac was napping that morning and shoveled a foot off of the driveway, but since we live on a corner lot I didn't have time to shovel the (seemingly) miles of sidewalk.

I looked out the window a couple of hours later, a little frantic after a long morning--and there was my neighbor--out shoveling my sidewalks. Please note that she is a Ph.D. student finishing her dissertation this semester, and she doesn't exactly have all the time in the world.

I was so touched.

"Thanks," I said. "You don't know how much this means to me."

"No problem," she said. "You've got a lot going on."

****

When I had surgery last April, she had just broken her ankle.

She showed up at my door one night with three covered dishes. Her boyfriend carried them since she was on crutches.

"I made some Indian food," she said. "I thought you'd like it."


****

Last week she came over to use my phone. We talked for a few minutes about yoga. I told her that I had taken some yoga classes last semester that I'd loved, but that this semester I was trying to do it at home on my own.

I woke up this morning to find a bag of eight yoga DVDs on my doorstep.

A note was attached.

"Have fun, Rach! I don't need these back until I pack up to move--thought you'd like them."

So this morning I am doing yoga, and plotting something nice I can do for her.

I want to be this kind of neighbor.

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random bits

I really like knitting. It's very soothing (now that I think I've finally got the hang of it). This morning I ripped out the last 45 rows of practice knitting and cast on and started on a "real project." I'm finally good enough at it that I don't have to stare down, so today I tried knitting while I read the third batch of stories to the kids. Hurray!

I think I'm getting Neil's cold. I started feeling a little weird after the third mile this morning so I ended my run early and had a little session with my neti pot.

I like teaching online. I respond to emails right away, but other than that I just spend an hour or two every couple of days commenting on everyone's posts and giving constructive criticism. It was a LOT of work to set everything up, but it's really quite peaceful now (want to read my take on writing an awesome cover letter?). I miss the face-to-face interaction with the students and the boundless energy I get from teaching, but let's be honest--it's REALLY nice not to have to walk to the bus stop at 6:45 am through the snow.

Does anyone have a good pad Thai recipe? I made some last night but I wasn't thrilled with it, although everyone else was. It was a little too spring-y and the sauce didn't have enough depth. Mostly it showcased the bean sprouts that Abigail has been growing in a jar for a week now. It made her really enthusiastic about eating dinner yesterday! This is a great kid project--I have a actual sprouter thingy that I use for alfalfa, but for the longer bean sprouts we just use a quart jar with a piece of nylon mesh cut to fit the mouth of the jar.

I am feeling very project-hungry lately. Things I want to do: build a new bookcase for the girls' room. Make a clock out of a gorgeous old plate. Cast a "stone" tabletop like the one in the March issue of Martha Stewart Living. Paint my bedroom. Paint the laundry room. Build a console table.

In addition to projects, I also need to start a list of children's books I want to add to our library. Lately I'm really into books like The Ox-Cart Man or The Year at Maple Hill Farm that talk about how the world changes with the seasons and what different things go on at different times of the year. (Plus I really like that little perspective on self-reliance.) Abigail is at the age now where she is soaking up information like a little sponge, so I've really been trying to look for books that are kind of teaching along with the story, if that makes sense. And books with good illustrations like the Brambly Hedge series, or Hilary Knight's The Twelve Days of Christmas. I love love love the intricacy of those pictures! Like I was saying...I need to start a list. A lot of times I feel like we check out absolute gems from the library, but I never can remember the titles later...

It's cold today. Perfect for curling up with my seed catalogs in front of the fire on the sheepskin. And knitting. :-) Does that sound a little too pioneer-ish?

Now that I'm thinking about it, what are your favorite children's books? Our kids love love love love books so much (as I type this Abigail is lying on the floor surrounded by a huge pile) that I'm always on the hunt for new favorites.

an old essay I found on my computer while cleaning out files

verbatim, no edits. I think I wrote this when Abigail was about five months old. If I recall correctly, it was in response to a contest prompt about your experience being "a Mormon and ______ (fill in profession here)."

****

I found the flier advertising this contest in my in-box. As I walked to class, I mulled the question over in my mind—a Mormon and…what? A Shakespeare? A scientist? A feminist? I considered a lot of things, but what finally stuck in my mind was the question I came up with putting my daughter to bed after hours of class, grading, thesis revisions, and housecleaning—how can you be a Mormon and a guilt-free mother?

At first, I argued with myself that this didn’t fit the limitations of the prompt. After all, wasn’t it about being a “Mormon professional?” Yet on the other hand, what is more inherent to the idea of a “Mormon professional” than being a mother, something which our religion actually views with the same degree of respect as that reserved by other denominations for practitioners of a more conventional full-time job. And there are few ideas that are more problematic and relevant for Mormon women than the idea of being a woman free from guilt—from uncompleted tasks, from a nagging fear of imperfection, from warring desires to build a career and to build a home.

As a wife, mother, student, and graduate instructor, I am constantly besieged. On the one hand, I feel that my place is at home playing with my daughter. On the other, my place is in the classroom teaching so that we can stay out of debt. Or perhaps it’s studying at my desk so that I can pass my defense examinations so I can achieve as much education as possible. No matter what I choose, I am ridden with guilt. If I study, then I am removing my daughter from my lap and placing her on the floor. If I play with her, I am using my theory textbooks to build bridges rather than taking careful notes. And no matter what I do, I still feel the responsibility to have a clean home, well-balanced meals, and meaningful dates with my husband.

As a Mormon woman, I focus constantly on my own inadequacies, afraid that anything else is a sign of pride and lack of humility. Consequently, I am unable to accept that I have completed something, that I have achieved success or perfection in some area of my life. This is a problem that I have seen in myself, in my colleagues, and in my students. We are chronically unable to take pride in ourselves and in our accomplishments. If we settle down to relax, an insidious voice tells us that there is something better–something more useful–that we could be doing.

The new Graduate Student Association T-shirts announce that graduate students have “come to accept guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.” I laughed at this at first—then I was angry. Why is this something which we have accepted as truth? Why is it acceptable for us to berate ourselves over failing to complete the 101^st activity, rather than focusing on the perfection of the 100?

Rather than asking how we can be Mormon women who are guilt-free, we need to simply accept that it is possible. The paradox is that between the need for humility and acceptance of the fact that while we can’t reach it in mortality, we should certainly strive for perfection, we try so hard that we lose the journey in pursuit of the (inachievable) goal. At some point, we simply have to acknowledge that we are doing the most (and the best) that we can, toss the books to the floor, put the baby down for a nap, and enjoy the ride.

***

your thoughts? Is this a paradox you've encountered? What do you think about this issue?

call me biased...

...but have you ever seen a cuter little man?

honestly, I am so in love that sometimes I just can't stand it. the chubby cheeks! the fluffy hair! the big huge enormous grin and joyous wiggles when I come into his room in the morning! the gleeful chortling! the soft little hands patting my face! the twisting in my lap so that he is looking straight up into my face and giggling! the kick-kick-kick of his fat little feet whenever he is particularly happy! the sheer Isaac-ness of it all!

some thoughts

with one smack from the bathtub, Juliet draws nearer to her dream of becoming a unicorn

Monday nights are sometimes hard for me. Our church has asked that Monday evenings be reserved for Family Home Evening; every semester Neil has had mandatory-you-cannot-miss-and-still-have-a-job meetings that fall right smack between dinnertime and bedtime. Every single Monday. Result: Daddy gets home when everyone is in bed. Sometimes before midnight.

Some nights I am totally worn out and we have pancakes for dinner and everyone goes to bed early.

Some nights (like tonight) we have rosemary rolls, split-pea soup (which the kids love), and we go to the library. Or do something fun all together.

I try for the second option. It doesn't always happen, but I try. It makes me feel a little less guilty about postponing family home evening to another night.

Tonight was interesting. Maybe in an effort to make up for the spiritual lesson that all her little friends all over the world were getting, Abigail kept bringing up new topics of conversation and we ended up talking all the way to the library about the following:

• how everyone is a child of God
• how Heavenly Father is the father of our spirit
• the war in heaven
• the plan of salvation
• the Creation
• promptings of the Holy Ghost
  

I was thinking during this conversation about a lesson we'd had in Relief Society a few weeks back about taking the opportunity to bear our testimonies to our children. And thinking about Ann Crittenden's The Price of Motherhood, which I was reading this afternoon, and how grateful I am that--even though motherhood is praised with the lips but not with economic rewards--I can have the time with my children to have conversations like this that just happen casually without any effort on my part (btw, you really should read that book).

So while I was thinking about these things, we were in the library, and while I was catching up with the children's librarian, who we hadn't chatted with in awhile, she asked me if we had our new library card yet. I said no, and she said that all I needed was my old library card and my driver's license.

Confession: I leave my driver's license at home all the time (Mom, don't yell at me!)

I take it when I'm planning to spend money, but I often leave my wallet at home when, for instance, I'm going to the library and I don't want to have to keep track of my wallet AND the kids AND the books. Just one less thing to worry about.

But this evening as I was loading the kids into the car, I thought Get your wallet.

And I thought back, No way. I'll lose it.

And again that little voice said, Go get your wallet.

And I thought, Why? Am I going to get pulled over? I will drive very slowly.

And again, Rachael, go get your wallet.

So I went back into the house and I got my wallet. And I had it with me so that I could get my new library card, and so that we could check out the enormous stack of books the kids picked out, instead of having to go home bookless.

I told the kids about this on the way home. We talked about recognizing promptings and listening to your thoughts and how the Holy Ghost can help us to make good choices even in small things.

It turned out to be a pretty good family home evening after all. And I'm just really thankful for things like this.

That's all.