Bird and Little Bird

Rhythm of the Home for Spring.

The spring edition of the Rhythm of the Home online magazine has officially launched. You can find the new issue here.

There is a brief piece on Alphabet Glue included this time around; a reflection on why I think that bookmaking projects can be valuable tools for helping kids to see themselves as writers and artists from an early age. The piece is accompanied by a couple of projects from issues of Alphabet Glue that I thought went nicely with the ideas that I was trying to express.

You can find my piece by visiting here. But make sure to stay and take a look at some of the other great stuff in the spring edition of ROTH while you're over there! 

 

Yarn Along (The Other Needle).

The Tea Leaves is ongoing. As in, on and on it goes. The knitting is pleasant, and although the progress is perhaps slow, it is for various good reasons.

For one, the baby has been sick with a wicked head cold all week long. Under normal circumstances little man is super cute and hilarious and a general snuggly delight. But let us take a moment to note the absence of the word "easygoing" in the aforementioned list of adjectives. And when he isn't feeling well? Sweet Christmas gravy (as my friend Ed would say). Things go from mundane to mayhem with astonishing speed. So there's that.

But the other reason that I haven't been doing quite as much knitting, is because actually, I have been sewing. The perfect storm of pets and resident small people has resulted in the near total destruction of a couple of the slip covers for the cushions on the living room couch. I decided that rather than moping about the sad state of one of the few real pieces of furniture we own, I would remember that things are just things and make some new pillow covers. And that I would do so with cheerful resolve. Or something approximating it.

 

With our big move on the horizon, I decided that said pillows would need to be made entirely out of fabric already in my stash. Of course, I almost immediately decided that I wanted some other stuff too, so I dug through my friend Sarah's stash as well, and between the scraps that we both had, came out with a pretty good pile to work from. This first pillow is actually kind a huge mess. I am the world's laziest quilter, so the pieces are pretty wonky and a lot of the seams don't quite line up. And it turns out that this doesn't bother me all that much. One of my roomates will probably just eat it anyway.

 

I decided early on in the whole process to ditch the idea of piping and zippers. Something about those features is making the official couch pillows of particular culinary interest to the puppy, and I think it is best to just eliminate temptation. Also, the lazy thing again. This second pillow cover is a little less haphazard than the first, being an actual semblance of a log cabin quilt square. I'm hoping to finish it this evening and bring our sum total of couch pillows back to regular numbers.

In all, I think I'm reasonably happy with how the whole project is going, even if it is taking me a lot more time than I expected. And I seem to have won Mariam's approval, despite her initial declarations that something was kind of off about the whole thing. She appears to have come up with some kind of idea that real grown-ups don't generally rebuild their home decor from scraps of stuff they find in a basket under the desk.

But she is in the other room using fluorescent colored duct tape to resecure her solar system mobile to the ceiling above her bed, so she has no interior design credibility as far as I'm concerned.

Yarning along with Ginny today (well, in spirit at least).

Library Monday: Cul de Sac.

Most weeks, the girl child is fairly uninterested in the title choices that I make for my Library Monday posts. I may, for example, ask her if there is something that we've read lately that she thinks I should write about, and she will answer something along the lines of "Oh, I don't know. Go look at my bookshelf." So, when she tells me that I should share a particular book or series with you, I figure that I should listen up and comply. I think of it as a nice way to respect her choices as a reader and to validate the fact that I think she has good taste. She likes that. And thus, I introduce to you the Cul de Sac comic strips, written and illustrated by Richard Thompson.

I think that I first happened upon Cul de Sac when Lori mentioned that her kids had really loved them. We don't currently read the newspaper at our house, so I hadn't seen the actual strip in a comics section and wasn't familiar with it. I trust Lori's taste pretty implicitly though (she's wicked funny but also very kind), and when the books went on sale on Amazon (I think they are still only $5.00!), I bought a couple for Mariam.

She has had her nose buried in them ever since.

Cul de Sac follows the comic adventures of preschooler Alice Otterloop, and the neurotic, hilarious family and friends that surround her. And as far as Mariam is concerned, the strips have it all. Gentle but intelligent humor, super quirky characters who have interactions that are really and truly funny and unexpected. Alice gives speeches atop manhole covers about a four year old's perspective on life, while her brother recreates the history of mankind in shoebox dioramas. There is even a guinea pig, something which I believe to be a strong indicator of good literature in my daughter's world view.

One of the things that I'm enjoying the most about our burgeoning collection of Cul de Sac anthologies is the fact that the comics have such broad appeal. Mariam loves the expressive illustrations and the face value humor of the storylines. I find myself chuckling at the references to the bland sameness of surburban life which is punctuated in such hilarious ways by our general ridiculousness as human beings. There have been occasions where a particular strip just seemed so true and so funny that I had to read it through three or four times and just appreciate the brilliance of it.

There is a whole lot to be said for books that use gentle humor to remind us to have a little chuckle at our own expense, as well as for comic strips that let us spend a few minutes eavesdropping on a bunch of kids chatting as they dig a hole to Disney World. There is a good reason why my kid is keeping a stack of Cul de Sac books in her bunkbed with a flashlight nearby.

Yarn Along (The Mending Pile).

I feel, although perhaps I am being overly sensitive to concerns about being boring, that perhaps my Tea Leaves sweater is officially in that spot where we can't really talk too much more about it until it has sleeves. Which I think will be soon, but only if I can stop falling asleep at the same time as my children in the evening. Talk about a satisfying but wholly unproductive habit. Goodness.

While working away on the new sweater, I have also been making small repairs to old, favorite sweaters. All of them cardigans, because apparently, that is my thing. The long-sleeved t-shirt plus jeans and a cardigan situation is what I'm all about. And if kids, pets and self manage to avoid getting food or dirt on said t-shirt, I will totally sleep in it too. So there. Way more than you wanted to know, yes?

I realized recently that waiting to find buttons that actually matched those that are missing on my sweaters was going to mean that I would never get around to replacing them. And knowing me, I would just wear the buttonless sweater anyway and look unkempt. So, I just started replacing missing buttons with random ones I had available, and it works fine. And gives one some small sense of productivity for having actually gotten something out of the mending pile and back into the closet.

My other favorite thing to do these days is to patch up the tiny holes that seem to be forever appearing in the sleeves of my lightweight sweaters by using a bit of patterned fabric and some double-sided fusible interfacing. It is the laziest possible version of mending something, and although it is by no means super sturdy or anything, it does make a garment servicable once more. Which is totally important if it happens to be your favorite color of blue and you don't want to give it up even though it has something like six holes in the sleeves.

Yarning along with Ginny today.

On Snacking.

I mentioned a bit yesterday about our recent need to get our family's metaphorical food ducks in a nice, serviceable row. There have been various challenges lately, the biggest one probably being the fact that Mariam seems to really require regularly scheduled programming in the snacks and meals department and in the event that she doesn't get the food that her body needs exactly when it is needed, bad mood related things are sure to follow. Even after being gluten-free for over a year (her celiac diagnosis was in November of 2011), she still doesn't do a great job of recognizing when she is getting hungry, and unless I'm nearby to make sure that she eats, she simply doesn't.

 

So, it has become increasingly important that I have well thought out and foolproof to execute meal plans in place for breakfast and dinner, seven days a week. And that I pack school lunches that she approves of ahead of time and swears that she will eat. And, quite honestly, that I pick her up from school in the afternoon already under the assumption that she will not have eaten the lunch that I packed and that I will need a snack at the ready.

 

This week, popcorn is proving a popular snack choice for the car ride home. I decided to forgo the air popper and do my popping via stovetop pot, just for fun. I don't really recommend it, but if you take the lid off the pot at all while said popping is taking place, kernels will fly out all over the kitchen and babies think that this is amazing.

I tossed the popcorn with butter, sea salt and grated parmesan, and then packed it into half-gallon canning jars. When Mariam gets into the car in the afternoon, it is easy to turn on an audiobook and hand her a jar and a cloth napkin. She can unwind for a few minutes while she snacks and listens, and then by the time that we get home, she is much better able to think about an additional healthy snack choice to get us through until dinner time.

Whatever the reason might be, it sometimes feels like our food learning curve has been a bit steep. Maybe because we've been wading through the waters of going gluten free while also being nut free, and having the baby be allergic to eggs. There's a lot to think about, really. So, I am. I'm thinking, and planning, and spending a lot of time with my Cuisinart.

And eating a lot of popcorn, too.

Library Monday: A Reading Round-Up.

I originally had a couple of titles that I thought I might talk about in depth this morning, but then I realized that I'm kind of just in the mood to share a little about what everyone is reading around here, and maybe find out a bit about what you all are reading while I'm at it. That is always good, clean fun.

Mariam and I just began reading A Wind in the Door, by Madeline L'Engle as our new read-aloud selection. We are only about thirty pages in, but I can already tell that it is going to have the same depth and addictive pull of its predecessor in the series, A Wrinkle in Time. More and more I'm finding that the tendency Mariam had when she was smaller to listen to anyone read absolutely anything, anytime, is fading a bit. Now that she reads so well on her own, she doesn't really need an adult to help her access reading material anymore. Read-aloud is no longer about having help getting through a trickier text, it is about a shared experience, and she wants it to be a really good one. This, of course, means that I will need to be giving a different level of attention to choosing books for us to read together as we go forward if I'm going to keep her on board.

On her own, she is reading My Life with the Chimpanzees by Jane Goodall, which I gave her as a literary valentine this year.

Zak is still proving to have more enthusiasm for using books to hit things or sit on than to read, but we've managed incremental progress with Hug by Jez Alborough. I hate to be the one to say so, but it is probably because it has almost no words, and the one it does have over and over is one of baby Z.'s favorites. The kid is a hugger, for sure.

For my part, I'm continuing on with the reading of Anne Lamott books downloaded to my Kindle and read during small fry nap times. In the last week or so, I read through Help, Thanks, Wow and really enjoyed it. I think that even if you don't consider yourself a "churchy" person per se, but just like to spend a little bit of time here and there contemplating your small place in the big universe, there are some nice reflections to be found inside.

And, although they are admittedly not a book, I've also been spending a lot of my time reading through the recipes from the Whole Family Kitchen meal plans. I had debated signing up for months, but just recently decided to go for it when I saw that they were having a special on annual memberships (and when we were in the midst of a particularly challenging food week at our house). We've come a long way on our food journey since Mariam's celiac diagnosis, but there have been some rough patches lately in terms of what she is eating, when she is eating it, and making sure that it is well-balanced enough for her body as she simultaneously heals and grows. I was in serious need of a plan. More about all of this later, I think.

Oh, and Dan is reading about a hundred different things right now. At least as far as I can tell.

What about you? Who is reading what at your house?

p.s. Visit Small Things today to download a sample activity (pinhole viewboxes!) from Volume Eleven and to see the project in action through Ginny's lovely photos.

Sunshine in Winter.

February in Vermont is a strange animal. I wrote about this fact a bit in the introduction of the latest issue of Alphabet Glue, which is where I generally warehouse my thoughts on seasonal living and parenting. The thing about February, you see, is that February is a month-long moment of realization: Oh, wow. Winter isn't even close to over yet. This news can be hard to take, especially on the days early in the month when night still begins around 4 p.m. and the temperatures are often below zero.

But I am finding that mid-February often brings that salve for the soul that can be so absent in the earlier days of winter: sun.

 

It is actually pretty amazing what a bit of good sunlight coming through the windows on a cold and snowy morning can do. For all of us.

And, somehow the weekend is here again. Which helps, too. There will have to be some obligatory household oriented behavior, to be sure. Things like floor mopping and laundry tackling. Washing and drying kid mittens for the fifteen billionth time this winter.

But I'm also hoping to find some time to do a bit of writing on a top-secret project I'm working on with Dawn. And to knit a few rows on the Tea Leaves. The baby will eat dried figs and chase the cat, very likely all at once. The big kid will read about Jane Goodall and help a friend give her pets a bath. We might bake cookies.

Happy weekend, all.

 

Backyard Beaver Lodges.

This past weekend, we went for a snowy walk with some friends from Dan's medical school class. It was remarkable for a number of reasons, not least of which was the fact that the dog belonging to said friends appears to be some kind of canine frisby savant. Also, despite temperatures in the low twenties and a late-in-the-day sinking sun, the baby enjoyed himself enough to be almost non-verbal. No crying whatsoever. But the most exciting thing about the walk was neither of these things. It was, instead, Mariam's first up close and personal, entirely hands-on viewing of a beaver lodge.

It is probably important to pause at this juncture and mention that the girl child has an incredible fondness for all mammals, with the possible exception of what she terms "dangerous wild dogs." But beavers fall into a special category of animals so beloved that they have become the inspiration for Halloween costumes, the thing that her fairy tale princesses wish that they could become, the characters in the plays that she writes for her classmates. She really, really loves them.

So, the discovery of this beaver lodge, nestled right alongside the trail on the edge of a creek, was The Best Possible Thing. Our friends mentioned that it would be coming up, but as soon as we rounded the corner and saw how close and accessible it actually was, Mariam ran down the hill breathlessly and started gently examining it, peering into holes to see if she could catch a glimpse of the animals inside.

After spending a few quiet moments peeking through a hole in the side of the lodge, she jumped up and excitedly reported that the lodge was, indeed, occupied, and that she had seen her first live beaver in its very own den. My first instinct was to think that perhaps her enthusiasm had conjured a beaver mirage of some kind, but then the dogs became very, very interested in the lodge as well, and it was clear that Mariam was right. We quickly moved on so as not to disturb our lodge dwelling friends.

In the car on the way home Mariam was quiet for a little while and then said, "When we get to school tomorrow, don't tell anyone about the beaver lodge, okay?"

I thought for a minute and then said,"You mean because it is so good that you need it to be just yours for a little while before you share about it?"

"Yes."

Yarn Along (An Unexpected Accessory).

I finally got to the point of separating the sleeves of my Tea Leaves cardigan from the rest of the body. I always love this part because it means that now I can just knit with total mindless abandon until I get to the bottom. It makes the whole operation so much more likely to succeed when it becomes suddenly unnecessary to do things like counting things or following a stitch pattern of some kind.

I always think a little bit too hard about what color waste yarn to put the sleeve stitches on to. This is ridiculous, of course, but somehow having the right tiny flash of contrast color poking out from those stitches is nice. So I give it more attention than it deserves.

I mentioned a few weeks back that I was in the market for a yarn bowl. I have been for some number of months, but I have been feeling very persnickety about the whole affair and as a result, haven't been able to settle on one that I like well enough to have it be The One. But, this week a surprise solution appeared on the scene. A few months ago, Mariam was at a birthday party at a local pottery studio for my friend Sarah's little boy. The kids all used the wheels to make a couple of bowls each, and when I met up Sarah last week for breakfast, she had Mariam's bowls to give me, fired and glazed.

The bigger of the two bowls, as it turns out, makes a perfect yarn bowl! Mariam is on the fence about officially gifting it to me for this purpose, however, so I may have to work some kind of amazing trade. She had other plans, it seems, and was going to use the bowl as a place to house miscellaneous collectible items such as teeth reclaimed from the toothfairy, bits of beach glass, and particularly nice little sea shells. Her version of treasure.

Yarning along with Ginny today. Speaking of which, the competition for the top spot in The Homies is heating up! Voting ends today, and if you haven't yet, would you please stop in and vote for Ginny's blog, Small Things?

On Sitting in the Snow.

I feel like we could do a week long photo extravaganza entirely organized around the theme of my children and things that they like to do in the snow. It has been like that around here these last many days. You may have heard that we had a bit of a snowstorm in the Northeast? Right.

This latest snowfall actually marks Z.'s first true experience with playing in the snow. Last winter he was much too small to appreciate it, and earlier snows this winter have either been too fleeting or on days that were too cold for him to enjoy being out in it. It may be slightly difficult to tell from the above photo, but he was having a uniformly stellar time. That face is the face of ridiculous joy.

Of course, he didn't really know what to do will all of that snow. He just knew that it was interesting and somehow, instinctually fun. But mostly he just sat in it and looked around and slapped at it with his little mittens, which under normal circumstances he truly can't stand wearing.

It was a good afternoon.

In other news, Ginny not only made it to the final round of voting in The Homies, but she could very possibly win the whole competition. She does so much to support Alphabet Glue, and is such a really very nice person. Take a few moments to pop over and vote for Small Things if you can. Thanks!