Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

We’re not planning on exchanging gifts for Christmas this year (though Sydney and I may treat each other to a lemon juicer and a potato masher), but I do like this idea, from Dear Amy, for a small treat for kids: put a wrapped book at the foot of a child’s bed so that it’s the first thing he or she sees on Christmas morning.  Hey, it would be good for adults, too 🙂

Sydney leaves tomorrow for a series of conferences in the UK and Germany, so he’s in a bit of a planning flurry, but he took the time to whip up a few more batches of hummus before he goes (beet, red pepper, and broccoli).  I am very glad that I have a pile of quick lunches waiting for me in the fridge!  When I started planning for this week awhile ago, I’d thought that I might be able to just devote myself to playing with the kids and starting a fat novel, but I think I may have to do a bit of dissertation revising.  So, instead of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (1000+ pages), I’ll just keep handy Hint Fiction (which is made up of 25-word stories).  That should tell you something about my attention span and my expectations about spare time.

Erin

Yesterday there was half of a casserole heating in the oven when I left the house.  I was astonished to find the casserole completely gone when I returned.  Sydney said that he’d had some of it, but that both kids had wanted three servings of the stuff!  Thinking about just how much food the little creatures had consumed, I suddenly had visions of our future grocery bills . . .

Today Katherine and I made fussy cookies.  I wasn’t interested in putting a pound of butter into the things (the goal was to make shapes and possibly toppings), so, in the spirit of English “biscuits,” I made dressed-up teething biscuits for our base.  Katherine and I liked making the shapes (for about two minutes, at any rate), and she liked dipping the cookies into a very thin lemon icing and then into crushed pistachios.  I was serious about a nut theme this Christmas.  But she has been clamoring for food at all times recently, and today she was not interested in cooking, just in eating, so it wasn’t exactly a mother-daughter bonding hour: “Katherine, put the cookie on the plate after dipping it.  No!  Katherine!”  “Eat, num-num!”  “Katherine, the cookies have to dry.”  “Eat, num-num!  Cookie!  Nut!”

Erin

Last night Sydney and I were playing with Nathaniel, waiting until he’d settle down to sleep, when he took his first steps.  He let go of us several times, trying out his balance, and then he started adding in a step.  He did it several times before he seemed to get overwhelmed with happiness (okay, and probably his mother’s ecstatic encouragements) and lose the knack.  Today he picked up right where he left off, taking a few steps from Sydney to me and back again.  He’s pretty tentative, but he’s certainly making an effort to get this thing mastered, at 9 1/2 months.

Erin

Day 4 of Advent is going just fine.  Katherine is getting the hang of this whole calendar thing: now she knows to ask for the color to the right of the cone we took down the previous day.  I’ve been assured “Red ‘morrow” and reminded, “Green, green!” when it looked like she might go down for a nap without our little celebration.  She was a bit stumped today, though, when we got to one of the wildly patterned origami papers, which included red, white, and green.  It’s good to keep her on her toes 🙂

As an older sibling, I could never fathom why my parents had gone on to have more children.  I mean, didn’t I show them how the baby thing was done?  I hit every stage first and thought I made a good job of it, too.  So what fun is it to come afterward?  But as I watch Nathaniel, I can see that there are some benefits to coming second in line.  As a parent, I am really enjoying the first signs of interaction between my kids, as Katherine makes him smile, or as his cries send her running to comfort him, and I can’t wait to see more of that as they grow (yes, even the fighting).  This past week Katherine wanted to help the baby read a book, so she and I sat on either side of him, and as we turned the pages he had “Mooooo!” and “Meoooooow” in enthusiastic stereo.  He was delighted, and it occurred to me that that is not something Katherine got when she was a baby.  I hope he continues to reap benefits from this arrangement!

One big difference we’ve noticed with Nathaniel: although we still wonder whether Katherine understands “No!” we’ve already found that Nathaniel responds to it.  He instantly stops what he’s doing and looks up to us for guidance.  I’m not saying it will last, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed orders more than his older sister.

Erin

The festival of lights last night was a bit carnivalesque (cotton candy, rides, etc.), but we did wander around with the kids for awhile and listen to a couple of music groups.  Apparently Nathaniel won a lot of admirers from his spot on Sydney’s back; I was happy that Katherine got to hear some of my fellow choir members sing the music I’ve been playing around the house so much recently.

The cooking project for today was making herbed almonds.  I wanted some nuts that weren’t just sweet, I don’t like things really salty, and Katherine is a bit leery of hot pepper, so this sounded like a good avenue to pursue.  I love the flavor of the olive oil with the fresh thyme.  I might try it again with a bit of butter in the future, though, since we couldn’t get the thyme to stay on the almonds.

We also started making snowflakes out of paper.  We’ll hang them in Katherine’s room when we’re all done, but today had me embarrassedly hunting online instructions after my first snowflakes came out a bit, ahem, piecemeal.  They made good crowns, though, and the later snowflakes were recognizable as such.  So more on those later.  I think we may hang them from fishing line around her room, and then swap the snowflakes for flowers, leaves, birds, and other things as the months change.  It might help her learn about the seasons.

Erin

Advent Cooking, December 1st: I was baking pumpkin and, given that Nathaniel was down for an evening nap and Katherine was in a good mood, I thought I’d try roasting pumpkin seeds.  Recipes looked easy enough.  Everything went smoothly, Katherine dug right in, and then I tried one.  They tasted like plastic!  Sydney came in eventually, peeled off the outer part of one for me, and then I could see why people would eat the things.  But it seems that people either (crazily) like the silly things with their hulls on or buy their hulled seeds from the store/grow pumpkin varieties that come with hull-free seeds.  So much for making the most of the seeds that happen to come in my pumpkin.  Okay, scrap that idea.  On to other cooking adventures.  Today, December 2nd, I’m making pumpkin scones again, this time with more pecans, cranberries instead of raisins, more applesauce than butter, and mostly whole-wheat flour.  I think it’s going to be an improvement on yesterday’s experiment!

Katherine seems delighted with her growing nativity crowd, now up to shepherds and one sheep.  I have a gorgeous pop-up book that tells the Christmas story, but I needed some help slimming things down to things that would be good for her age.  Enter The Christmas Book, by Dick Bruna. It’s very simply written, helps her focus on the baby being born, and works nicely with the nativity set, which is drawn from the illustrations in the book.  We’re having fun with it, and she’s asked for repeat readings already, a good sign.

Erin

After a few years of letting the job market overwhelm the Christmas season, I’ve decided to make sure our family celebrates Christmas this year, even if only in little ways.  First step is an advent calendar, to help us remember our blessings and the sense of anticipation that fills December.  I decided to make a calendar, based on one that Lisa S. found.  I love paper, so I used this as an excuse to take home some beautiful origami papers from a local art shop, and then I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to keep them out of Nathaniel’s mouth.  Katherine helped (primarily by squishing papers and dropping the papers within Nathaniel’s reach, though both occurred by accident).  Given that our house is small, I don’t want to put holes in 400-year-old walls, electricity here is 220 volts (yes, I can plug my washing machine into every outlet in the house, but yes, it is extremely scary for cord-loving children), and we have a newly mobile and very accident-prone baby, our decorations will be pretty minimal.  So I’m making the most of my little calendar, which is high up and uses existing nails.  We also have a child-proof nativity scene that will go on the shelf below, though currently all of the little figures are tucked into the advent cones, awaiting discovery by Katherine later in the month.  For the moment, she’s just enamoured with the barn 🙂

And now it’s time to start cooking: I’ve been refraining from buying nuts most of the rest of the year, given how expensive they are over here, but now it’s time to dig in.  Katherine’s only recently shown us that she can chew, rather than just inhale, and she loves nuts, so she will get to join in.  Spiced nuts, nutty cookies, and nut-filled scones will be filling the house in short order, plus lots of great clementines and other fruits.  I’ve started Katherine on Christmas carols, and she’s very happy with all of the new songs in our house.  I read the Christmas story for the first time this morning, and, though she has no idea what a birthday is, she’s quite taken with the idea of a baby sleeping in a barn.  Tomorrow night is Oxford’s big winter celebration, with the lighting of the town (lots of lights are already strung downtown) and singing groups tucked into the major museums, libraries, and prominent town buildings.  The church with which we’ve loosely associated ourselves also has a number of wonderful kid-friendly programs and celebrations over the course of the month.  So we have lots of opportunities to get Christmas-ready!  Sydney will be gone for a good chunk of the month, but I think I can sing carols, read stories, and eat goodies without him.  Katherine has volunteered to help.

Erin

A better night of sleep (thank you, Nathaniel!) and the start of a new week have already helped matters.  There are three kinds of hummus in our fridge (chipotle, kale-chipotle, and beet, thanks to Sydney), several kinds of cheese, and I have cute squash ready for roasting (since Nathaniel is currently eating something like 1/2C-1C of pureed squash each day).

Plus, the kids are just really cute.

(photo courtesy of Christi, who remembered to bring her camera along when we went outside)

Now, off to start dissertation revisions.  I have about two weeks before Sydney leaves for a week-long spate of conferences, and I’ll need to get my dissertation submitted by then if I want to graduate in January.  Which I do.  Besides, the sooner I get these revisions in, the sooner I can start some of the reading I want to do for “the book.”  Like most academics, I’m much keener on the prospect of reading than I am of writing, so I’m using the pile of books as a carrot to propel me through this earlier mess.

Erin

I admit that I felt the lack of holiday spirit around here this past week.  I know that Thanksgiving is a North American holiday, and that I should not expect the rest of the world to fall in step, but, wow, I missed the sense that this weekend was different from the others.  Not to mention the start of the holiday season; I guess this is my chance to dig out an Advent calendar and really pay attention to when the holiday starts!  The shops have put in pretty window displays, but only friends from home were swapping recipes this past week.

We’re also a bit weighted down with less-than-fun stuff.  Sydney was waylaid by his second cold in a month, and, after Nathaniel kept us up with much teething trouble in the past few weeks, he’s now starting a cold of his own.  Last night we might as well have read a book as try to sleep.  So our general mood is a bit less happy-go-lucky than we’d like.  I’ve also gotten into quite a losing streak recently: I’ve gotten rejections from just about everything to which I’ve applied recently, be that choirs, jobs, or conferences.  Since I’m on the job market, I’m going to hope that there’s nothing significant about this trend, but it’s a bit unsettling.

In what may have been a miguided attempt to perk everyone up, I proposed a trip to a nice grocery store, one two miles up the road (and a steep hill), and that I knew would have lots of fun things to stimulate our appetites (my motto, if you haven’t already guessed, is: if you can’t sleep, eat!).  On the way up to the store, Katherine walked part of the way with us, but then she tripped and bloodied her lip.  Much crying and requests that she be carried ensued.  On the way back, Nathaniel decided that he was hungry, so he screamed the rest of the way home (which coincided with the busiest sidewalks and the most clueless pedestrians).

We’ll see if we can’t improve things in the upcoming week.

Erin

The new activity around here — Nathaniel heads for the stairs every time he sees a chance: