Because There Just Aren’t Enough Messy-Baby-Face Photos in Blogland
One strawberry: that’s all it took to cover our lad from head to toe. I like how Kevin’s hand is the only element in this composition that is actually in focus: the calm, still element. Yesterday was our first CSA pickup (Community Shared Agriculture; our fourth year participating), and CJ chose the box (er, the one with the strawberry already half-eaten), and then he proceeded to decorate himself with said strawberry all the way home. Is it possible to have too much local food? We’ll explore that question in-depth this summer with a series of practicums. Right now, I’d say it might just be possible to have too much local lettuce, though now that it’s all washed and de-slugged and spun and tucked into bags in the fridge it looks quite appetizing.
Tonight’s supper plot: DIY taco salad (ie. unmixed for those whose individual foods Must Never Touch; not to mention to accomodate our variety of intense food preferences and abhorrences. Tomatoes! Gak!).
Right now, I’m sitting here obsessively checking the weather radar, trying to determine, with my imaginary PhD in forecasting, which part of this massive summer storm is going to hit us, and when, and whether or not it will arrive with the promised golf-ball-sized hail (please, no!). I was so looking forward to picking the big kids up from their Last Day of School, strolling as always; but have Kevin on alert (he’s got the vehicle today). If I press the panic button, he will meet them in my stead. I’m still hopeful despite rumble, rumble, eerie black sky.
Easy Freezie
Recipe for a happy after-school transition: pour any flavour of juice into molded plastic and freeze; meanwhile, raise the temperature outside and throw in plenty of sun with judicious sprinklings of shade; collapse on porch or yard or sidewalk with magical ingredient in hand; dig for ants, read a magazine, lounge, wander, bliss out. This too can be yours, if for ever so fleetingly (how long does it take a popsicle to melt?).Good Old Crumbs
To summarize our weekend: rain, putter, party, mojito, party, mojito, party, slumber, wake, drive, bridal shower, munch, drive, coffee coffee coffee! mud! laundry! piles!Yesterday evening, Kevin and I engaged in how-much-tidying-can-you-squeeze-into-fifteen-minutes-honey? And managed to dislodge a few crumbs, if not the bulk of the disorder accrued over days upon days of general household living. A place for everything and everything in its place: fundamentally, I’ve got that down. In practice, however, I am accomodating more and more the notion that layers, spills and dirty dishes add character.
In stroller news: friends have gifted us a replacement, and I’ve stopped creeping ebay and kijiji in a vain effort to find our old one. I want such losses to make me better; or at the very least not to make me bitter. Bitterness is such a self-disfiguring emotion. Life is loaded with hardships to overcome, and this weighs very lightly on such scales. So, better not bitter, better not bitter, better not bitter. Onward.
Supper plot: green pasta (arugula, sunflower seeds, olive oil, garlic, and fresh basil ground together into a pesto-ish paste over whole wheat pasta; add-your-own parmesan), and a side dish of tofu stir-fried with green garlic and asparagus and tamari sauce. To be continued …
Eat, Cry, Try
Fooey and I, lying side by side in a play tent in our living-room, talking (subjects: camping trips we’ve taken, going to the beach, marshmallows on graham crackers, etc.). “Do you know what we’re doing, Mommy? We’re having a chat!” The wonder and pleasure in her voice.Does that plate at the top of the page make you hungry? Bacon, fried potatoes, open-faced egg sandwich on local greens, local tomato (must be hothouse). That entire meal is made from ingredients sourced at Nina’s buying club. Local, local, local, and good. I am using her club as my grocery store, though since we still like to eat apples and bananas and drink coffee, we have to visit the actual grocery store (or our neighbourhood health food store, Eating Well) for odds and ends. Buying club was last night and my fridge is stuffed.
If you have Simply in Season (cookbook), I highly recommend its spring quiche trio recipe. We made one with a crumb crust and one with a grated potato crust (pictured above); both very very good indeed, and filled with what seemed very little but became plenty: we filled the potato crust with uncooked chopped green onions and grated garlic cheese, and the crumb crust with leftover hamburger and sliced apples (don’t tell the kids; the apples were scavenged from their lunch boxes). Over top of each was poured three beaten eggs and one cup of milk. It was supposed to be evaporated milk, but we used regular. And, yes, the “we” is deliberate: these were made by group effort. It was that brutal witching hour after school, and CJ was short on his nap, everyone exhausted from too many late nights in a row (we’re heading toward the longest day of the year), the noise a pure cacophony of misery (here’s what it sounded like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi6ksjFSg-k) … yet food needed to be prepared. Why can’t I be like Soule Mama? I asked myself somewhat despairingly. There must be some way to involve these kids.
So I did. Albus cut the butter into the flour for the crumb crust and stuck it into the pie plate, and Fooey whisked the egg/milk mixture. CJ was not going to be cheered under any circumstance, however, though he stood in his high chair at the counter and with irritation and occasional screaming (whoo, this boy can scream) he pawed at and rejected the edibles I kept tossing at him. What he wanted was his Mama, and his favourite spot on the couch. Soule Mama, how do you do it? I would file this experience under Mixed Success … the older children were pleased to help, their moods greatly improved; but their participation only reminded the babe that he wasn’t being treated with equal respect. He thinks he’s their size, of course.
Yesterday, after buying club, he attempted to follow Apple-Apple’s lead at the little park. She easily steps off the play structure onto a ladder about a foot away; he was sure his legs were just as long. They weren’t. He would have walked confidently into thin air had I not been right behind him.
Moving On
I’m figuring out that the stroller isn’t coming home, won’t miraculously turn up on our porch one of these mornings; and we’re thinking about how to replace it. But I’m amazed how many vivid memories are linked to that stroller. Before moving on completely, here a few …
We bought it deep in wintertime when Apple-Apple was an infant; and almost immediately questioned the purchase. The stroller wasn’t designed for infants, and Chariot hadn’t yet invented its “infant sling” attachment; Apple-Apple screamed and Albus tried to climb out as I plunged through snowbanks on our first walk around the block. So it spent winter buried under a plastic tarp behind our house in Guelph and I used a heavy Graco double-stroller instead; I used to drive to the mall and wander around, feed them french fries at the food court, just to get out of the house. That June we moved to Waterloo; even after Apple-Apple was big enough to sit up, I rarely used the Chariot. The side-by-side seating of a two toddlers resulted in … violence. Albus was a biter, and Apple-Apple fought back.
One of the first times I hooked that stroller to my bicycle, Kevin was far away, travelling for work (as he was required to do regularly, during our early years as parents), and I set out alone after supper, hoping to pass the time and get some exercise and entertain my two little ones … who were jolly right up until they weren’t. I turned around on the trail, the stroller crowded with howling babies. We were about two kilometres from home and there were no easy solutions. So I carried the littlest, who’d been bitten and didn’t want to be carried, whilst pulling bicycle and howling two-year-old-in-stroller combination All The Way Home. It was summer, hot, and felt epic in terms of sheer physical and emotional will. If that doesn’t teach you forbearance, nothing will. Didn’t use the stroller again till the following spring, when Albus was nearly three. This was when life got easier, and the two children did not require utter and constant vigilance. The stroller really came into its own, became a huge part of our daily lives and journies.
When I was just a few weeks pregnant with Fooey, just before Christmas, we set out for the library in the midst of a blizzard. Why? No longer remember, but suspect I enjoy setting such challenges for myself; and this one turned out to be greater than anticipated. Heaving, pushing, sweating, tossing the stroller over giant snow banks, snow falling thickly, cars getting stuck in the middle of the road. It truly seemed we might never arrive, yet there was no way we could turn back, my two little ones safely tucked inside with the cover down. The warmth of that library, when we stumbled into it, at last. But we thrived on such adventures. Often, we’d make them up for ourselves: Arctic explorers crossing frozen seas, on the look-out for polar bears; or desert explorers; or pioneers crossing mountainous terrain. The ordinary was made extraordinary.
That spring I was big and pregnant with Fooey, Apple-Apple was two and Albus was almost-four, and I transported them everywhere in the bike stroller, peddling my impressive bulk around the city till about a month before giving birth, when I could no longer reach the handlebars. Albus started school in the fall, and from that moment onward we gave the stroller a twice-daily workout, in fair weather and foul, with baby in sling. Kids grew. The stroller’s front wheel could be used to nudge a tricycle forward, or a bike with training wheels. With the two older ones on their own bicycles, the stroller could be pulled behind loaded with a picnic lunch and swim clothes. Last summer I added a top-rack for carrying extras, and ran after the older ones, baby CJ in a borrowed infant sling attachment, big sister Fooey lovingly beside him. I’d been anticipating new bicycling adventures this summer, with CJ now old enough to be pulled behind my bicycle.
And we’ll still get to do that; just not in our well-worn, much-loved, raggedy old Chariot. Life goes on. Maybe this is a lesson in material attachment. Whatever. I’ve got the memories.