Easter

I had a proud moment this weekend as we enjoyed dinner at my mother-in-law's. After staring awkwardly at the table for several minutes, my almost-four-year old walked towards me.

"I need to speak in your ear, Mama," she said, blue eyes sparkling. "Can you please recommend a healthy, growing food. I don't see anything I like, Mama."

Internally gushing, "Healthy, growing food -- wow! She really is getting what I'm trying to teach. Wow...Good. For. Me!"

I scanned the table and realized there were no foods that were familiar to Lily (like say Annie's macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, "yolky eggs," edamame, sliced apples, blueberry pancakes, Cheerios-and-milk out of the blue bowl with the built in straw, and her beloved "Chicken-Broccoli," which she has renamed "Rice-Chicken-Cheese-Broccoli" because she thinks her title makes more sense given the ingredients.)

I found her something yummy to eat that wasn't too sugary or too chocolate and sat back to marvel at what a great mom I am -- "My kid is asking for healthy-growing foods. Good. For. Me."

After exchanging some small gifts (and attempting to off-load hard-boiled, colored eggs on each other -- the Spring equivalent of August zucchinis), it was time to go.

Driving home I thought about the treasures the kids would find in their baskets the next day -- fun thrift store finds, a couple of pieces of chocolate, matchbox cars, books, colored thread for sewing, and a little duck and bunny for our Spring nature table.

I once again felt a nice comfortable swell of pride. "I really am doing okay at this whole mom thing."

Then, as we were getting ready for bed that night, at some point Lily dropped a book.

Without missing a beat. With perfect diction, she let out a slow, half-whispered "Fuuuuuuck!"

Trying not to look too shocked and stifling my giggles, I smiled and handed her the book.

Yup. She is definitely listenlearning from me.

Chicken-Broccoli Recipe

This was a recipe from my dad's cousin/my mom's friend (i.e. the person who introduced my parents to each other) and it used Campbell's cream of chicken soup. I remember loving it as a child. We now make it without the canned soup and serve it over brown rice to make it a little more healthy but it really just is the ultimate super-creamy comfort food.

1 breast of skinnless/boneless chicken boiled for 15-20 minutes (or breast meat left over from a roast made earlier in the week)

The florets of two good-sized heads of broccoli - boiled until easy to puncture with a fork

Sauce:
Make a roux by melting 5 tablespoons of butter in a heavy-bottom pan over medium heat. Add 5 tablespoons of flour. Mix the two ingredients together and then add 2 cups of chicken broth (or one small package of Pacific free-range chicken broth) and one cup of milk (preferably raw, whole milk). Bring ingredients to a rolling boil and stir fairly consistently. (I tend to start the next part of the sauce and stir every minute or two.)

Sauce, Part Two:
Measure one cup of mayonnaise into a mixing bowl. (My sister insists that it has to be Kraft mayonnaise - I don't have a strong opinion here. And one of my aunt's uses plain yogurt to replace some/all of the mayonnaise.)

To the mayonnaise add: a capful of lemon juice (a.k.a. 1 teaspoon -- I think), a capful of curry powder (again, I think this is 1 teaspoon).

Are you starting to get a sense of cooking this recipe? I don't measure carefully. This recipe is adaptable, easy to put together, and is a cross-generation crowd-pleaser in our family.

While I'm making the mayonnaise-curry-lemon mixture, I'm stirring the roux every minute (or every couple of minutes) or so. My four-year-old also loves to mix the mayo-mixture together. (We usually do this while my almost-two year old, who also loves to help but tends to be a little less...umm...helpful, is taking his nap.)

To the mayonnaise mixture, I add the roux and my daughter mixes.

Meanwhile, I lay out the chicken and the cooked broccoli in a glass lasagna-size pan. We like a higher broccoli to chicken ratio in our house. And then we pour the sauce over the chicken and broccoli and top with grated cheddar cheese (or sometimes a "mozzarella and cheddar and something else" blend). Recently I started purchasing shredded mozzarella and cheddar cheese from Organic Valley. (I like what I've read about the company.) Use whatever amount you like. I think the original recipe called for 2 cups, which is usually one package. That was a little too cheesy for us so I cut it back a bit.

Bake in a (preheated) oven at 350* for about 30-40 minutes.

Once that's in, scoop out one cup of brown rice* and rinse it in a colander under warm water (removes bitter coating) and mix with two cups of water, a little salt and a little olive oil or butter. Bring to a boil and then simmer very low (I use my back "simmer" burner with a diffuser plate) for about 40 minutes.

Just before taking the casserole out of the oven, I put the broiler on for a minute or two (I use my oven's timer so I don't get distracted and burn the whole thing) and lightly brown the top so the cheese gets a little crispy.

Serve over the rice and with bread for dipping (which is more like slurping up every last drop of the sauce)!

* For a special treat sometimes I use Jasmine or Basmati flavored brown rice (which I honestly can not tell apart unless maybe I tried them side-by-side). I think the flavored rice adds a nice ummm...flavor. Same ratio of rice to water as the regular brown rice, same approximate cooking time.

felted eggs drying in the sun...

What is the contrast?

Today is the contrast.

Today was not enough sleep last night. Sick kid in arms for the past three days. Other kid in time-out or in a full tantrum (or both) far too much. And way too much tv.

Today was ugly and painful and seemingly unstoppable.

It was complicated by the fact that I felt like my husband was judging me all day.

I felt like he thinks I am solely responsible for my daughter's totally out-of-control behavior because I am too easy on her and I screwed up and told her about death (our sheep was eaten by a coyote and I told her and at the same time explained what "meat" really is) when she was two and a half.

(It seems a little insane as I write it but at the time it just really felt like the right thing to do. Lying about it felt wrong. Evading her questions felt wrong. Remembering how devastated I was when some of these types of issues entered my reality when I was much older, I thought if I just made it a "no big deal...it's nature...it's just how it is" kind of thing, that that is just what it would be.

It wasn't. But that's a story for another day.)

Today all the (unnamed until now) guilt that I've been feeling about putting my one-year-old in daycare three mornings a week so I can write and go to yoga and take a shower by myself, and go grocery shopping without anyone "helping" me, really came crashing in on me.

And my anxieties about what is happening with my daughter's increasing anxieties and my fears and guilt that maybe my husband is right and I did totally screw her up by giving her too much information too soon.

And a house that has not been cleaned, organized, loved, or even noticed in well over a week. And a husband who fortunately, has been cleaned, but not loved in the way that a husband loves to be loved, in far too long.

And stress about not knowing what the heck I want to cook and/or eat yet again.

And ongoing feelings of discouragement about my weight.

This is the contrast and when/if I am ready, it will be my great teacher!

Just hop on the bus, Gus...

(I don't know why this is formatted like this?? And my attempts to fix it seem to be making
it worse.)

It is 9:30 on Tuesday morning and I’ve already played short-order cook, refereed a half-dozen disagreements, picked up 27 toys (only to find them right back in the middle of the floor five minutes later), changed a very uncooperative toddler’s diaper and carried a screaming child to her room for “a little time to relax.”


With 10 hours until bedtime – and more significantly, nine hours until my husband comes home from work – still ahead of me and what’s left of my patience (not much) quickly evaporating, I realized we needed a plan. And fast.



I thought back to last fall when I took the kids on their first train ride. We caught the train at the nearby train station and took it into Boston to meet my husband who was there for a meeting.



I didn’t have the money (or the energy) for a trip to Boston but thought exploring another form of public transportation, city buses, might be just the sanity-saving ticket I needed.
I hopped online to check the bus times and saw that we could take a 10:10 bus from the train station to the local mall.



With no more than a ten minute ride from our house to the train station, and all of us (thankfully) already dressed, I decided the 10:10 was doable.



I announced the plans to the kids and my daughter, who has been begging me to take her on a bus for months, jumped and screamed with glee.


By 10 minutes of 10 we were in the car and on our way.

When we arrived, the train station lot was packed so we looped around to the overflow parking where we found a space.


It was 10 o’clock and I knew we had 10 minutes until our bus was due but that didn’t stop me from launching into a full panic when I saw a bus coming around the corner.

With kids still strapped into their seats, I ran around to the back of the car to signal as best I could (jumping around and flailing my arms) for the driver to please wait for us.


He acknowledged me with a wave and I felt a surge of excitement.

With one kid in my arms and one running as fast as her little legs could carry her, we ran towards the bus stop.


As we approached, I saw the bus driver smoking a cigarette and decided it was safe to stop running.

When I got close enough to talk to the driver, and had paused long enough to catch my breath, I learned that the bus we had just chased was actually not the bus we were there to catch.


Our bus would be arriving in a few minutes.

I counted out my quarters and positioned them in my jacket pocket. According to the posted schedule the day’s bus-riding adventure was going to cost $3 for the round trip (kids under five ride for free).



When our bus finally rounded the corner and we climbed on board, I felt the huge surge of relief I remembered from my days of commuting into the city via the bus.


Although I wasn’t quite able to mentally check-out as I did back in those pre-kid days, it was still a great feeling to not be the driver for once.

As we turned out onto the road, some of the other passengers (who I learned at the mass exodus of the next stop, were college students) began to smile at my daughter.


The bus ride, which was just a way to get from Point A to Point B for them, was a magical adventure, every second of which was savored, by my three-and-half-year-old.

“We’re as high as the trees, Mama!


“Look Mama, there is the farm we’ve been to. It looks so neat from way up here.

“Look Mama, there’s the library.


“Mama, look! I see our church!

“This is SO amazing, Mama!”

And on it went. The Co-op, the ice-cream shop, the bike path, the turn to our friends’ house – all were announced with overflowing joy.

As we wove our way towards the mall and the warm broccoli soup that awaited us at Panera Bread, I thought back to the insanity of the morning and sighed.

Nine hours left to go until bedtime – though I can honestly say, I was no longer counting.

Beach-Combing

It started innocently enough. My friend, an artist who creates jewelry with rocks and sea glass, invited me and my family to go beach-combing with her and her family.

Hiking down to the shore and avoiding mud puddles (or if you are under three, seeking out mud puddles) was quite an expedition. But the real adventure lay ahead as we slipped (literally – it really was very muddy) off the path and onto the rocky beach.

While our husbands kept an eye on our kids, we closed in on a perfect spot and began treasure hunting.

It started kind of slow. As little flecks of blue or green glass caught my eye I happily uncovered them and squirreled them away in my pocket.

For a while I tried to get my three-year-old interested showing her the beautiful treasures I was unearthing and encouraging her to do the same.

But she was much more interested in climbing the small bluffs nearby and playing with her friend, which turned out to be a good thing because I soon discovered that beach-combing is an all-consuming activity for me.

I had a blast for the next 10 (or was it 20? or 30?) minutes until the kids started getting bored and venturing too far away and we realized that it was getting close to nap time.

We decided it was time to head out, but much like blueberry picking in July, saying we were leaving and actually making forward motion towards the exit were two very distinct things.

As I slowly meandered back towards the path, I kept my eyes peeled, knowing there had to be at least one more treasure waiting for me to discover.

Later, as we drove home, I ran my fingers over the smooth edges of the glass in my pocket and eagerly anticipated the fun I would have inventorying and inspecting my collection.

Prior to this visit to the beach, I had collected a few pieces of sea glass and a couple of interesting rocks here or there, but it was during this Sunday afternoon expedition that I was bitten by the beachcombing bug!

The windowsill above my kitchen sink has turned into an alter of sorts with my rapidly growing collection of rocks, shells, driftwood and glass carefully laid out to greet me each morning.

Every small pocket of free time that I can find (admittedly not much with two young children) is an opportunity to escape to the beach for more treasure-hunting.

A solo trip to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon or to pick up my children from my parents’ house is made via the shore (yes, dear family members that is why I am always late).

As I explore, I play mental games trying to see if my mood and attitude can affect the number and the quality of the pieces that I find and dream about other beaches that I may someday explore.

My friend joked with me that she’s a little jealous by how lucky I am with my finds, perhaps slightly regretting that she introduced me to her favorite sea glass gathering spot.

But, luckily for her, my new found passion has not extended into jewelry-making and I am happy to let her peruse my collection and help herself to anything that she would like for her work.

For me the joy is simply in the possibilities, the excitement of discovery, and the short mental retreat from daily life.

One day last week I brought my daughter, Lily, along with me to the shore.

She was slightly more interested in my activities this time, as it was just the two of us and I managed to be a little less obsessive than I was during our first visit, but after a short time she made it known that she was officially bored and wanted to leave.

Reversing our roles briefly, I pleaded for just a few more minutes to play and hurried to gather as many treasures as I could.

As we followed the trail back up to our car, it was my turn to wait while she explored one of her passions – mud puddles!

I was so tempted to hurry her along; after all I had what I needed – a pocket filled with glass, shells and rocks that I couldn’t wait to examine.

But as I watched her savor every inch of the sticky mud, drawing in it with a stick and making footprints, I realized it was her turn to retreat into the beauty and endless possibilities of the natural world.

I used the time to savor the view of the ocean, realizing how little I actually look up when I’m beachcombing, and jingled the contents of my pocket, feeling quite satisfied with our visit.

snow day...