Bird and Little Bird

Thursday Afternoon in February.

Purple potatoes with roasted quinoa, garlic and cranberry bean gratin. In the oven as I type. 

 

Baby toes in baby socks.  With fuzzy pants.  Sigh.

 

 

We stayed after school for a few minutes to help collect and empty sap buckets at the sugar house.  At home, there was homework.  And, the Ostheimer/Playmobil mashup is still in full effect on the living room floor. 

 

 

A soft and furry companion, sitting in the late afternoon sunshine.

 

 

Bare branches and visiting chickadees near the bird feeder out back.  We are expecting our first real and proper snow in a very long time tonight into tomorrow.  I'm trying not to get too excited, but Mariam and I are both very hopeful just the same. 

 

Library Monday: Letters to Anyone and Everyone.

As you may have guessed from all of the mini-mailbox action, one of the themes of Volume Five of Alphabet Glue is letter writing.  Along with the mailboxes, I included some printable letter writing supplies and, of course, a list of great reads related to the sending and receiving of mail.  Among these titles is a new favorite of ours, Letters to Anyone and Everyone by Toon Tellegen.

I almost don't know where to begin with this book.  A collection of very short, fable-like stories detailing various animal correspondences, Letters to Anyone and Everyone is the kind of book that feels all at once comfortable and wholly unique.  The individual stories are whimsical, slightly odd and display a subtle sense of humor that gives a sense of literary magic.  There is an aura of the unexpected in each of the tales, something which I find sorely lacking in so much children's literature and that is always a delight to finally find in a book. 

Perhaps the real star of this book, however, is the way that the illustrations, by Jessica Ahlberg, are cleverly woven into the book.  The format here is more like a chapter book, with a thicker book block comprised of smaller pages and more densely packed text.  However, the illustrations are incorporated into the pages in the way that you might expect to find them in a picture book.  They provide a visual backdrop for the narratives themselves that is unique, colorful and simply put, perfect.  The way that the illustrations work so very well together with the stories themselves really makes the reading experience enjoyable, and it also makes me wish that more illustrators did this sort of thing. 

Above all, this book provides incredible inspiration for young letter writers.  The letters in the book are sent to strange places, by unusual means, to recipients you might never expect.  What better way to share the idea that letter writing can be creative and full of surprises and is absolutely worth giving a few minutes of time to?  

The Week That Was.

Last week...

- I decided that from now on, when people ask me what I do, I will just say "I am a semi-professional snow pants and mittens launderer." Seriously, this winter of mud is getting a bit tiresome.  Especially since when you send your kid to school on a farm, and they come home covered in mud, it is truly special stuff.  And not in a way that smells good. 

- Dan finished his last rotation of his third year of medical school.  Medical school used to (and sometimes still does) feel like a permanent state of being, yet somehow the final year has arrived.  I can't say that any part of me will be sorry when it's over for good.

- Mariam and I started reading a really unusual and very sweet little book.  It's wonderful enough that I think it deserves the proper Library Monday treatment, so pop back in tomorrow for that. 

- The baby had his two month check-up at the pedatrician.  And, he is continuing to rock the 98th percentile for height. That's my boy.

- I was out running errands with the kiddos when I suddenly realized that I really and truly could not remember how old I was.  I called Dan, who promptly reminded me that I recently turned 34, and hung up. He might have been more interested in the whole affair if it hadn't happened so many times before.  

- Mariam brought home an owl pellet that she found outside at school on Friday.  She thinks that it is the ultimate treasure and can't believe how lucky she is to have it. 

And, as always, I am totally charmed by her persepective on the world. 

 

The Corn Tortilla Project.

As we have ventured farther down the road of gluten-free living, various little challenges have arisen.  No surprise there, I suppose.  However, it was a little unexpected when corn tortillas, generally a big time staple at our house, temporarily became a no-go.  Corn, being corn, is naturally gluten-free.  But, after being advised by various gastreonterologists about the importance of maintaining a strictly gluten-free environment for Mariam, we found ourselves needing to read labels on everything, even products that were seemingly safe.  And it turns out that a corn tortilla that is both semi-decent and guaranteed to be free from any and all traces of gluten is not to be found in the greater Burlington area.  Thus the humble brilliance of the tortilla press arrived at our house.

 

Making corn tortillas turns out to be surprisingly simple, which is a good thing, since we have been eating them like it is our job.  The biggest challenge in the whole operation was probably just assembling what we needed.  We couldn't get guaranteed gluten-free masa locally, so we had to order it online.  And the press came from Amazon as well, since none of our local kitchen shops had them in stock when we were looking.  We'd love to find a cast iron one, but apparently they are few and far between and so far, we haven't had much luck.

 

We've been using a combination of 2 cups masa, 1 1/2 cups of hot water and a teaspoon of salt for each batch of tortillas.  This seems to yield a dough that is stiff but still workable and that forms and presses well.  Letting it sit for an hour or more after mixing up the batter is important to getting good results, so I would definitely recommend doing that. 

 

The basic process goes something like this: mix up the dough in the proportions mentioned above.  Let it sit for an hour at room temperature. Then, make a golf ball sized ball of dough and place it between two sheets of wax paper in the center of the press.  Close the press and press down hard enough on the handle to really flatten out the dough.  Open it back up, peel off the top sheet of wax paper and then gently peel the tortilla off of the bottom sheet.  Toss the tortilla into a dry skillet and cook it over medium-low heat, turning once about half way through and taking it off when it begins to brown just slightly.  You can reuse the same wax paper to make the rest of the tortillas from your batch of dough.

 

And as always, easy and good continue to be a stellar combination.

Quilt Talk.

Some of you may remember my mad attempts to finish making a quilt for our bedroom during my overly ambitious days of late pregnancy.  Perhaps some of you even wondered if I managed to get it done on time, although probably not.  I'm guessing you have plenty of other things to think about. 

Anyhow, the quilt did, indeed, get finished.  But here's the thing: I'm not really a quilter, although I do occasionally play one on the internet.  I pieced the entire thing myself, and was pretty pleased with how it came together, but I was also smart enough to know that my feelings of goodwill towards this project could be easily done away with by frustrating attempts to quilt and bind the whole thing while eight months pregnant and absolutely enormous.  Plus, when it came right down to it, I just didn't really feel like doing it.  So, I bundled up the quilt top, stuffed it into a box and sent it off to Alewives.  They did the quilting and binding for me, and I had them add the batting and backing from materials in their shop.  By the time I got the quilt top off to them, I was really, truly, ridiculously pregnant and I found the Alewives folks to be extraordinarily tolerant of my particular brand of third trimester crazy.  Like when they called and asked how I wanted the quilting pattern to look and I said "Oh, I have no idea.  Why don't you just think of something and do it?  I'm sure it will be fine." Like I hadn't just spent months working on this quilt only to turn it over to strangers and tell them to do whatever they wanted with it.  Ha!  But they did a lovely job, so my faith turns out to have been very well placed.

The batting is washable wool, and so far I think it is amazing.  I don't know that I will ever go back to cotton after experiencing how well wool works in a quilt. From the beginning, this quilt was designed to be used.  I wanted to make a quilt that would be woven into daily life and that could be washed when it got kid dirt on it and that would feel warm and cozy during the long Vermont winter.  And that is exactly what I made.  So as far as feeling some latent guilt over the fact that I had a little help with the nuts and bolts of the operation? None.  I'm sleeping very well at night under my new quilt, thank you very much.

 

Valentine's Day Mail.

When you are in second grade, Valentine's Day is exactly the sort of holiday that is important.  It trumps many a holiday that boasts less in the way of pink decor and the possibility of candy.  Plus, as far as I can tell, people under the age of ten or so are all about love and telling other people that they are nice.  And holidays that celebrate telling folks that you think they are nice?  It's pretty hard to argue with that. 

So, we've been making valentines.  And cutting out tons of tiny paper hearts and leaving secret little love notes for each other when someone is in a bad mood.  Dan has two exams to take in the next two weeks and has been at the hospital for about fifteen days straight, so Mariam has sent most of the anonymously placed paper hearts in his direction.  For my part, I've been using the mailbox templates from Alphabet Glue Volume Five to make Valentine's Day mailboxes.  I just cut out the templates, traced them onto colorful paper and then filled the boxes up with little paper hearts.   This is the kind of overly cute crafting that one can only get away with this time of year, and I'm just going to roll with it.  I was thinking we may tuck a little box of chocolates and a tiny card into one of these mailboxes for Mariam to give to her teacher on Tuesday.  I'm pretty sure she deserves something way better than chocolate, but it's a good place to start.

The Week That Was.

 

This week:

 

- Mariam spent much of the week "in disguise."  What sort of disguise, you wonder? Well, she spent Saturday through Tuesday disguised as a "person who is dressed."  In other words, she wore her pajamas under her clothes. Every day.  I was most impressed with this trick on the day when she wore tights and a skirt. 

- She also learned the rest of the song that has been her personal violin goal almost since the day she started playing.  This is awesome, but it also means that new found motivation is in order!  Thanks all, by the way, for your encouraging words about her 200 days.  She loved hearing them.

- In a somewhat unexpected turn of events, the little man pictured above appeared to enjoy sleeping in his crib much more than he enjoyed sleeping with his mother.  Now if only the cat would sleep as well at night as the baby does, I might actually get a little rest. 

- I spent quite a bit of time (in the middle of the night) thinking about whether or not cats are supposed to be able to open closed doors independently. 

- The hundredth day of the school year arrived.  Mariam celebrated by showing up at school with a piece of posterboard decorated with 100 paper cut-out bunnies (who also happened to have wings and were delightfully depicted not listening to their grown-ups). 

- It continued to be a proven fact that babies are awesome.  True story.

- I would like to tell you that I did not eat many, many M&Ms out of the bag that I uncharacteristically tossed into my cart while grocery shopping last week.  I would be lying. 

And you?  How was your week?

Taking Up Residence?

 

 

I believe that my boundless affection for woodpeckers has been well established in this space.  I like birds, but I love woodpeckers, especially the big, fancy looking ones.  I've mentioned it here many, many times, and would like to officially thank you all for continuing to read anyway.  Some things just can't be helped.  So, if you are a longtime reader, you will understand my excitement at the recent, and frequent, sightings of a pileated woodpecker in a tree outside the living room window. 

 

 

I've been sick this week, and when I first saw the woodpecker, I was too out of it to properly geek out and make the trek outside to get photos.  Which is why I didn't notice that this particular woodpecker has been very busy.  As you can see, she has made two good sized holes in our tree.  As I type this, she is working away on a third.

 

 

I don't think that she is making these holes large enough for them to be nest holes, and it would be awfully early in the year for that kind of behavior anyway.  I think these birdies are spring nesters and would normally get busy with family obligations around April. But then again, she is making multiple holes, which is consistent with pileated nesting behavior, and we are having The Winter of Weird.  February in Vermont with no snow?  The birds are as confused as the rest of us, and the robins have been active in the yard the last few days, so it isn't out of the question that this woodpecker could be trying out an early nesting strategy.

 

 

Plus, this morning I saw this fellow.  The lighting was making things a bit tricky, but if you look closely, you can see the red stripe running from the bird's bill towards the back of the head.  This identifies him as male.  The black stripe in the same place on the other bird tells us that she's a female.  So these two are travelling as a pair, making holes in my tree.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  I'm seriously holding out hope that we've got ourselves a nesting pair and that they might be getting ready to take up residence in the yard.  Although honestly, tremendous nerd that I am, the excitement might be more than I can handle. 

Self-Evaluation.

When I was still teaching, the school district was always asking us to do these self-evaluations where we would determine our efficacy as educators based on some random criteria that we had dreamed up earlier in the school year during a goal setting conference with the principal.  The whole thing was a bit tricky, because your September vision of what kind of school year you plan to have is often quite, quite different from your June reflection on the kind of school year you actually had.  Something to do with the students actually showing up and being real human beings who are complicated and unique.  Go figure.

Anyway, I was thinking the other day about parenting self-evaluations, and I've decided that making sure the dishdrainer has silverware and drying paintbrushes in at least equal proportion most of the time is a good standard by which to judge my mothering.  And I promise you that this decision has very little to do with my inability to harness the laundry pile.  Ahem.

Alphabet Glue: Volume Five Has Arrived!

 

Volume Five of Alphabet Glue has arrived!  I'm so excited to share this issue with you all, in part because of all of the encouragement I received from readers regarding the more frequent publishing schedule, but also because I just think that you will really like the projects in this volume.  Volume Five contains some of my very favorite Glue projects to date, including some very fun miniature mailboxes that have great potential for adventures in letter writing and that we've used at our house to start a little in-family postal service.  I kind of can't get enough of them and will have some additional mailbox related projects to share later in the week.

I think another reason that I'm so happy with the results of my work on Volume Five is because of how enthusiastic Mariam has been about this issue.  She really enjoyed working on the projects with me and I love the feeling that we made this issue together.  The collaboration between grown-ups and kids around reading, writing and crafting is the entire idea behind this publication and it is so gratifying when that vision can be realized!

I hope that you and yours will enjoy this issue of Alphabet Glue as much as I do.  As always, you can get all of the details about Volume Five and download a copy by visiting the Alphabet Glue page here.