Friendly Neighbourhood Elves
Delivering cookies. Eating cookies. So tired. So cranky. How much further? Why won’t he wear his mittens? Now he’s lost a boot. Oh no, everyone’s escaped. This could be slow. Sloooooooooow. Hey, someone’s home! Oops, pajama-time. How early in the morning is it, Mama? Hey, someone else is home! Would we like to come in and warm up? Would we like to come in! Cup of coffee for mama? Cup of coffee! Oh, yes, we brought you these treats … that my children are now eating. For you, a second bag.
Pass the Unity Cup, Please
Today has been a kitchen day. I like kitchen days. I feel, mostly, competent in the kitchen. I feel free to experiment, to explore, to attempt. And I’ve got some devoted helpers, suddenly, too. Fooey’s been all over the kitchen ever since last weekend’s supper extravaganza. And I’ve been letting her help more, too. There’s more mess, but so be it. She helped last night making Christmas cookies, unwrapping candy canes and smashing them with a rolling pin, then sprinkling them into our stained-glass cookies. And she helped again this morning, following along with a children’s recipe, and reminding me at various points: “I can do this, because the little boy in the picture is doing it!” And she can.
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It was Albus’s turn to plan and make supper. He chose lasagna, and was agreeable about what went inside. “Meat and cheese,” he wanted, and agreed to chicken and roasted red peppers (both of which we had frozen in the freezer), and even though he’d never heard of ricotta, he went along with the suggestion. He set up “stations” at the counter. One station for resting and drinking water. Another for grating cheese. A third without a stool. He also spent a long time chopping veggies for a raw veggie platter, which I’ve served with great success on a couple of recent occasions. But only because I’ve been cheating and buying non-local sweet peppers and cucumbers which might be grown in greenhouses in Ontario, but are probably harvested by exploited migrant labour.
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Supper was dominated by Fooey and her kikombe cup, which she made at school and brought home with chocolates inside to share. This is what the label said, for those not familiar with the Kwanzaa celebration (like me): “This cup represents a kikombe – a unity cup used in the celebration of Kwanzaa. There is a wrapped goody for each family member in the cup. Pass the cup during the holiday celebration to symbolize your family’s unity.” We passed the cup as soon as Kevin got home from work on Wednesday (Fooey’s last day of school before the holiday). She’d barely managed to wait for him to get home, she was so excited about it. So, the cup obviously means something special to her, and it’s not just about the chocolate. Tonight, she asked me whether we could pass the cup and put chocolates in it. I said we could pass the cup and put cucumbers in it, as we were in the middle of supper. She thought that would make the cup messy (she was right), so she agreed to pass it with imaginary chocolates for everyone. But we didn’t follow her rules properly, and so every attempt to pass the cup was prematurely halted by a Fooey screech: “Nooooooo!!! Now we have to start again!” “Mmmm, my favourite chocolate candy,” was a verboten phrase, for example. This went on and on to the point of intense comedy, until we were all in stitches, even Fooey, who apparently could at least dimly grasp the absurdity of her demands. I’m not sure we ever successfully passed the cup. (Kevin and I both told the kids that neither of us had learned anything about the celebrations of other cultures and religions, when we’d gone to school. The kids were genuinely puzzled. “Hannukhah can be spelled at least seven different ways,” AppleApple informed us.)
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And there she is, moments ago, fallen asleep in our bed, where we let her read till Fooey falls asleep (they disagree about whether the door should be open or closed when falling off to sleep; plus AA likes to read at length before bed–where did she get that from?).
And if you haven’t guessed, yes, you are looking at a genuine Fooey-made replica of a kikombe, above.
I’ll Write It Up
Today’s “Cabin Fever” column is on best picture books for the holidays. This was a fun one to research and write. Like giving me candy. Hand this mama a book, and she’s practically drooling.
Content Provider
Newsflash: Cabin Fever (aka me) live on Parentdish. The first installment: The Art of Writing Santa Letters.
Wish Fulfillment
Wish I had time to blog. That’s on today’s wish list.
If I had more time, I’d write all about Sunday, which was just the best day ever. It shouldn’t have been–Kevin and I were out Saturday night, till late, and should have been punished with hang-overs and early-rising rowdy children, but instead, everyone slept in. Everyone! We lazed around and dozed till late, then rose and decided to get on with our day’s plans. I’d planned a baking day. So I baked: a batch of bread and granola. Also worked on some Christmas presents. Kevin took the kids–all of them!–snowboarding in what became a drizzling rain, after which they went through the McDonald’s drive-through and ordered up some Happy Meals. This happens less than annually in our family, so Kevin and I thought it would be a treat, but the funny thing was, the kids didn’t love the food. It felt like a treat because it was unusual, and because everyone got a toy, but Albus was famished AFTER eating his burger and fries and choc milk, and was forced to scavenge a second meal from our fridge. I felt the same way, and so did Kevin; almost as if we’d eaten nothing, or worse, that we were hungrier than when we began. Our innards are spoiled by all the legumes and fibre and veggies and whole grains we consume every day. But, still, I got a kind of lazy pleasure from the meal.
After lunch, we did … what? I can’t recall in detail, just remember that we spent the whole day together, and happily. The two eldest played Bananagrams. Fooey and CJ played together, too. Happy together.
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Yesterday, CJ and I spent the morning together, just the two of us, spewing our fair share of carbon as we zoomed around town running errands, snacking on gummies, swimming at kidsplash, visiting the library, efficient as all get-out. These are the days when I despair for humanity’s ability to do anything productive on climate change. It is so much easier to enjoy life when I’m selfishly transporting myself and my offspring in our personal oil-burning pod. What occurs to me often, and kind of hangs over my head like a cloud, is my belief that the only way to truly effect carbon change is to live a life greatly scaled back: no waste, ever–no wasted drop of water or food (the people who live like this generally do not choose to, but do so because they have to); walking not driving, no matter the blowing sleet and howling babe; skipping kidsplash and library time because it’s too hard to get there, because there’s not quite enough time; all chores that must be done by hand still expend energy, it’s just human energy (mine), not a machine’s. And that takes time. Lots of it. Don’t get me wrong, I truly and sincerely want to live a less wasteful lifestyle, and strive to do so, but on days like yesterday, I sigh inside myself, and secretly feel greedy and grateful for the advantages and undeserved privileges of this crazy, unsustainable North American lifestyle I’m living.
Um, that was a tangent. What I meant to say was: hurray for a day with CJ! Together.
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Now I’m all caught up. Now I’ve reached today, and today has been another story. Today I have labelled a “fail” day, though perhaps unfairly. Today it felt like every good intention was thwarted by circumstance. Let me give you an example. I grabbed ten minutes to whip together fresh pumpkin muffins for the kids’ after-school-pre-music-lesson snack. It was after one o’clock and I’d just put CJ into his crib for a nap. Did he fall asleep, like he does every other afternoon at this hour? He did not. Instead, he screamed incessantly, while I madly poured and sifted ingredients. I knew the project would never get done if I brought him downstairs, so I just mixed as quickly as was humanly possible. And then I went to get the pumpkin, roasted last week and stored in the fridge. It was covered in mold. No kidding. That was the kind of day this it was. (Though the reason it’s unfair to label this chain of events a complete fail is that in a blink I substituted applesauce, and the muffins turned out beautifully, quite possibly superior to the pumpkin variety). And no, CJ never went back to sleep. Instead, he got up and hung out all afternoon without sleep. He’s still going strong, leaping up and down in his crib as I type. Though the lack of sleep may have contributed to the rather bad decision (example number two) he made to set up the art-table chairs in front of the couch, and then count, “One, two, three, JUMP!” before leaping off the couch, landing on a chair, crashing it down, and smushing his finger. Seriously. You might ask, why, Perfect Mother, did you not prevent this catastrophe from occurring? (What is that sign on the pool wall? “If you’re out of arm’s reach, you’ve gone too far!”). And I might reply that we needed to leave in two minutes to pick up the big kids for piano, and I was industriously gathering entertainment and snack items in preparation for an anticipated hellish hour of waiting in an empty hallway while entertaining three out of four children. That’s why. Totally not in a defensive tone of voice.
Yes, we were late.
But hey, I did just get my wish. And I feel much much better. Today is looking a whole lot brighter on this side of things. Can I add that I laughed quite a lot (if sometimes in despair), and that the kids enjoyed my comical descriptions of all the day’s tiny calamities as we burned across town, packed into our personal transportation pod, and the snow fell gently, and the roads turned to skating rinks, and we did not get into even the tiniest of fenders bender. So, it wasn’t really that kind of day, after all.
From fail to fine in one little blog post.