Bird and Little Bird

In the Glue Department.

I've been approaching the reading of news with some degree of caution during my pregnancy.  I tend to be pretty sensitive under normal circumstances, so I find it especially difficult to read some of what is happening in the world now.  I have been following the crisis in Somalia, however.  Well, at least as much as I'm able to before feeling totally overwhelmed by the gravity and size of it all.  The city that we live in actually has a sizeable Somali refugee population, and a number of my students over the last couple of years were members of a small ethnic minority from Somalia, the Bantu.  Some of them were born in the same Kenyan refugee camps making the news these last few weeks.  

Anyway, I'd like to try to do something to help, however small my something may be.  So, I'll donate all proceeds from Alphabet Glue sales to charity for the rest of this week.  It may not be much, but at least it is something, and the nice thing is that we can do it together!  I know that many of you who read this blog have already downloaded one or both copies of the magazine, but maybe you have a friend who would like one!  I'd also love it if you could spread the world via the platform of your choosing.  I'm still researching charities because I know that access has been complicated, but I'm leaning towards Doctors without Borders as the organization that I'll donate to. 

Click here to visit the Alphabet Glue page and download a copy. 

Book Exchange Reminder and a Few Notes...

edit: It looks like I've got the additional family that we need for the exchange.  Thanks, all!

I thought that is was probably about time for me to pop in and remind everyone that books for the current round of the Children's Handmade Book Exchange should be mailed by August 15th.  If you suspect you might be late in mailing your book out for any reason, please just drop me an email so that I can let your swap partner know about the delay. As always, you can find me at birdmail@gmail.com.

Also, I have a family with a four year old girl who would really love to participate in this round of the exchange, but I don't have anyone left to match them up with.  If you have a child around that age and think that you might like to swap books for a little summer fun, please get in touch.  

Oh! And I wanted to mention that I've been cleaning house here on the blog just a bit and that you can now find buttons in the sidebar that link to my tutorials, recipes and printable downloads.  There are a lot of new readers here since the launch of Alphabet Glue, and I was thinking it might be nice to make the archives a little more easily navigable for them.  

Library Monday: Late Summer Reading.

Yes, I said it.  "Late summer."  Because I think that indeed, that is what it is.  I was going to show you some of the very yellow leaves on one of the trees outside my bedroom window as proof, but I decided that might not be so good for morale.  Instead, I've decided to share a bit of what we are reading around here during these last weeks of summer, before reading choices become a little more school dependent for both Mariam and I (Dan's reading choices are pretty much always school dependent). 

 

 

Mariam and I just started reading TumTum and Nutmeg by Emily Bearn as our nightly read aloud over the weekend. Since we just began it, I can't say with confidence that we'll love it, but so far the odds are looking good.  It's the story of two mice who live in relative comfort in a house where the human inhabitants are less well off.  The mice set about helping their neighbors, and various adventures ensue.  The book has a slightly old-fashioned feel that reminds me of more classic children's literature (The Borrowers, in particular, comes to mind) and I think it will turn out to be a perfect book to close out our summer reading together.

 

For her more independent reading, Mariam has been reading another Saxby Smart title, The Curse of the Ancient Mask and Other Case Files: Saxby Smart, Private Detective: Book 1, by Simon Cheshire. I'm feeling very grateful that it seems to be taking her some actual time to read through this one.  She's turning out to be a voracious reader, which is awesome, but it is also sometimes hard to keep up with.  The early reader chapter books section of the library isn't nearly well-stocked enough to keep her busy during the summer months when library traffic is heavy, so any book that lasts more than an hour or two feels like a little bit of treasure.   

 

For my part, I got this baby knitting book a few weeks back, around the time that we had our 19 week ultrasound and I had decided that it was okay to start thinking in the direction of actually having an additional human being around here.  I'm finishing up another project in progress (which I hope to show you next week), but the baby booties from this book are next up.  They are tiny and they have twill tape loops to help get them on.  Enough said.  

I'm also reading Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin.  I would agree that from an outside perspective, this doesn't necessarily look like a big page turner.  But it kind of is and I don't know quite why. It's very well-written and according to my Kindle, I am 76% done with it, and so far it's been interesting enough that I'm a little sleep deprived from staying up late reading it.  I think that's a pretty solid recommendation for any title, no?

As far as what Dan is currently reading, I'm not quite sure.  But I'd be willing to guess that it is about either the zombie apocalypse or pediatrics.  

What about you?  What are you and your family reading these last few weeks of summer?

Front Yard Frogging.

Yesterday evening, just as Dan was getting home, the phone rang.  It was actually Dan, calling from the driveway to let Mariam know that he had spotted a frog out front and inquiring if she might like to come see it.  She mentioned that she was actually very busy playing a game where she was both Queen of the World and a professional basketball player, but that yes, she was very interested in this frog of his.  Of course, she managed to catch our amphibious visitor in about thirty seconds flat, a skill which I am still impressed by over a year after she first perfected it.  She also let me take a few photos before letting the frog go and returning inside to listen to bird calls for awhile before dinner.

By the way, have you ever heard the call of the Atlantic Puffin?  Super weird.  I had to ask her to turn it off.

Possibly My Favorite Thing.

The other day someone asked me if I've been having any of those infamous pregnancy-induced food cravings.  I said that no, other than the fact that I no longer hate food with a white hot burning passion, there wasn't anything in particular that I found myself absolutely needing to eat.  Of course, I realized later that my answer was entirely dependent on my having forgotten about chickpeas.  Which, by the way, are the best thing that modern agriculture has to offer. Perhaps you were previously unaware of this fact? Not to worry.  I kind of was too.  But then I got pregnant and threw up for four months and when I stopped I realized that chickpeas were the key to making everything right once more.  

Mostly I've been making chickpea salads to eat with lettuce or wrapped up in a tortilla.  I'm a big fan of tomato/vinaigrette/chickpea combinations, but I'm kind of waiting for the garden to start producing tomatoes before I go after those recipes in earnest.  Today I did make a chickpea salad with a bit of tomato, but with more of a yogurt dressing and a few other things thrown in.  It's another modified Heidi Swanson recipe, this time from this book. Have I mentioned that I love her cookbooks?  Yeah, I thought that I had too.

I loved the look of her Chickpea Wraps recipe, but just like with the granola, I didn't have the ingredients for the actual recipe on hand, so I just kind of took the general concept and made changes to acommodate what I did have.  It goes like this:

 

Chickpea Salad with Yogurt Lemon Dressing

(based on Heidi Swanson's Chickpea Wraps from Supernatural Everyday)

3 cups cooked chickpeas

2 to 3 chopped celery stalks, diced

2 tablespoons stoneground mustard

2/3 cup plain yogurt

1/2 to 1 teaspoon sea salt (adjust to taste)

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 small tomatoes, chopped

2 teaspoon capers

mixed salad greens 

 

Whisk together the yogurt, mustard, lemon juice and salt in a small bowl.  Mix in the capers and then toss the dressing with the chickpeas, chopped tomatoes and diced celery.  Scoop a generous portion of chickpea mixture onto a bed of fresh leafy greens and enjoy!

 

Library Monday: Crab Moon.

There are a handful of books out there that I feel have truly captured the magic of summer better than any others.  Books like Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha.  Or Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe by Vera B. Williams.  Reliable favorites with beautiful illustrations and a story that rings true year after year.  New to us this summer, but certainly joining the group of summer standbys, is Crab Moon by Ruth Horowitz and Kate Kiesler.  

Crab Moon is the story of a young boy and his summer vacation to a cabin on the Atlantic Coast.  When he and his mother realize that their stay at the cabin coincides with the "crab moon," or the time when horseshoe crabs come ashore to lay their eggs, they plan a midnight excusion to the beach to watch the crabs come out of the water and onto the sand in droves.  The next morning, Daniel revisits the beach to find that the crabs have disappeared back into the ocean, with the exception of one lone crab who seems to be in need of a bit of help.  By providing this help, Daniel finds himself a small part of an ancient cycle that has origins in the time of dinosaurs.  

Crab Moon is an enchanting book with softly colored illustrations and I love that it ends with a page of factual information about horseshoe crabs and their important role in the global ecosystem.  I found that Mariam was especially interested in this information after reading the story and was incredibly pleased to find it included in the book.  Crab Moon does a wonderful job, not only of telling a lovely story about the cycles of life and the magic of summer and shared family experiences, but also of demonstrating the importance of each creature and each individual action, however small, in the preservation of the life that makes our world beautiful.