Fever Dreams

Greta is sick this week. I have swapped guilty admissions with moms on the upside of fever and lethargy.  You can get a lot done.  They huddle in your lap so sweetly.

I was not particularly effective this time 'round because the lethargic days were preceded by restless nights with a hot little body pressed against my back, with that little bird heart hammering away, and restless scaly bird legs clambering up and down my side.  There was coughing and moaning and vomiting and hot compresses for an aching ear and doses of motrin.

On sick days our screentime scruples go out the window.  Greta's filled her days with back to back episodes of How Earth Was Made.  After her ear stopped hurting and bloody pus (she calls it puss) poured out we headed to the doctor.  She regaled the doctor with stories of the formation of the Marianas Trench (Doctor (not our usual doctor): "I've never even heard of that!") and Mount Everest.

When we got home it was time for the complete classic Winnie the Pooh.  When that was over I said, "Let's do something else.  You must be so sick of watching TV."

To which she said, "Oh no!  It has always been my dream to watch this much television." 

We put in Cinderella. 

I guess sometimes dreams really do come true.

All Four Love

We've been away camping for most of a week. We spent part of it at an earthly paradise called Berkeley Tuolumne Family Camp. More about that later when the van is unpacked.

Clem brought along her Wreck This Journal journal.

She enjoyed burning it...

tearing it...

...making tongue paintings after eating jolly ranchers and otherwise indulging herself in the mildly transgressive invitation to deface a book every way imaginable.

Actually, I am not sure she got the transgressive nature of the book. It was just a fun activity book.

She was startled to find a "spit your coffee on this page" page. I had to explain that this was actually a book for grownups. That it was supposed to help free their creativity to treat a book this way. After she threw the book from a high place she said she had a hard time imagining a grownup doing that.

I was flipping through her journal and I came across this transgressive invitation and her response.

She caught me snapping a photo.
Clem: Why are you taking a picture of that page?
Me: I liked your four-letter word.
Clem: Oh. It was the only one I could think of.

Imagine a world--a world of traffic jams, computer glitches, lost keys, telephone solicitors--where the only four letter word people could think of was love.

Go on. Imagine. I'll wait.

I asked Mike to imagine such a world and he said it would be @#*&-ing boring.

Greta (who is 4) also doesn't have trouble thinking of four letter words. After cooler water spilled in her car seat she stamped her foot and said, "The darn and the heck!"

Where could this angel hear things like that?

Heck and darn, it must be from me. I gave up all my other four letter words for love.

Clementine is Nine

I skipped a year or two in here, but here is Clem from a few days after she was born to a few days ago.

Running like the wind on her 9th birthday.

Too Much Folk Music?

So we've been listening to a folk music CD in the car cut by a friend's band that disbanded years ago. The song Country Life that the kids sang at the Talent Show came from this album. There are plenty of songs of love and loss.

Don't sing love songs, you'll wake my mother
She's sleeping here right by my side
In her right had a silver dagger
She says that I can't be your bride

This morning Greta grabbed a harmonica and began to play for me. When she was done she'd tell me what her songs were about.

"That was the Love Sad Song. There was a girl who loved a man. And then they married and then he left her. Just like in that dagger song."

Another "tune" soulful, eyes shut, swaying.

"That was the Scarlet Song. It is about a girl who died. She got shot. It was in a war. She was in the middle of the war saying stop. But they did not."

That song is a playful mixture of the folk music theme of the forlorn girl and the ravages of war we encounter listening to His Excellency George Washington.

Clementine says she can't stop thinking about the guy who "got his face shot off".

Maybe we should switch to Raffi and Rabbit Ears for a while?

Why Don't I Get To...

Greta has been jealous of her big sisters lately. Why don't I get to go to the big kid Tracker class? She's not old enough, and she does go to Trackers Tots. Why don't I get to have a sleepover? She creeps into my bed every night so she's just not ready for a sleepover.

When Ev and Clem and friends were practicing a play in Latin for a history fair she said, "Why don't I get to do a play?" It is so hard to be the littlest by five years. She's just not ready for all the things they do.

At the event the big kids did their play. They had a grand time. All the kids came from all their booths to watch. Then it was over.
The audience drifted away and the actors left the stage. Greta found a piece of silky fabric and began to dance. Her dancing caught the eye of the preschool kids outside. They crowded at the doors.

She realized the kids were watching her...


...and really started to ham it up.

Then her audience of little girls drifted away. She ran towards them saying, "Where are you going?"
Just then a group of little boys ran up and she resumed her happy dance.

Soon after we were talking about what Ev and Clem would do for the talent show today. Greta started right in, Why don't I get to... I thought of her dance for the kids and the joy she took in her performance and thought, she is ready for the talent show.

Today she'll be standing on a stage all by herself reciting a rhyme. If the rehearsal is any indication--she said her poem and then stared out at the kids waiting to rehearse their acts with a huge grin on her face--she's ready.

Losing Your Head

The Bee Hero post brought up a topic I think about a lot: how not to transmit my hangups to my kids.

I consider myself to be less squeamish than average about squirmy and yucky things. I enjoyed dissecting animals in college, we kept a black widow spider as a pet for a couple years. But unlike my kids I don't run and pick up snakes, lizards and tarantulas.

Not that I find them yucky, I just don't want to be bitten.

And when we were in Maryland during the 17 year cicada hatching I started out with curiosity and interest and ended up being nauseated by them (or maybe that was just because I was in my first trimester with Greta).

But I tried not to betray this to Evelyn who was never without a beloved cicada in her hand.

I try to model calm interest in all things no matter how creepy, smelly, or yucky I privately think they are, such as the raccoon the kids skinned, the disemboweled squirrel they found a few weeks ago, or the squashed cane toad the size of a dinner plate that Clem, age two, was stroking, saying, "I pet him stinky frog!"

But sometimes a primordial revulsion takes over. When we came upon the head of a cedar waxwing while out on a walk, when Greta ran toward it hand outstretched, fingers eager to claim a treasure, I began to scream.

Yes, like the storied housewife who jumps on a chair at the sight of a mouse. "Aaaah! Aaah! Noooooo! Don't pick it up!" And when the hand closed on it I actually clutched my head in my hands and wailed.

So much for modeling calm interest.

Afterwards I had to laugh at myself. I always worry that my involuntary reactions will outweigh all my years of feigned or real calm interest, but the kids just looked at me like I was crazy.

Daddy's Little Girls

Ev and Clem were hard at work this week embellishing a corporate logo. Since their Dad works at at the company, I didn't mind too much.

They were participating in Doodle4Google: designing a doodle for the Google homepage on the theme What I Want for the World. It was neat to hear what they wanted for the world and see how they creatively altered and embellished the Google logo to express those ideas. I'll post their designs when the contest is over (I wouldn't want to accidentally disqualify them as I didn't read the fine print).

Greta had to get in on the act. "How do you spell Google?" she asked. I gave her a black and white printout of the logo and the above is what she did. She knew the colors of all the letters in the logo! I had to go to the homepage to check. I asked her how she knew which colors to use.

With cheerful exasperation: "I just remembered!"

The winner of the public Doodle4Google competition gets her doodle displayed on the Google homepage for 24 hours and a $15,000 college scholarship. Alas, daddy's little girls are not eligible for the public competition. But they sure have had fun.

Driving Miss Greta

Lately Greta has been trying to sort out her options for the future. Can she grow up to be a fairy? A queen?

It reminded me of a favorite family story.

My brother, when he was about Greta's age, announced to my sister and me (we were Ev and Clem's ages), that when he grew up he was going to be a fire truck.

In the photo at right you can see us. My brother on our grandma's lap. I'm peeking out from behind my sister's leg.

Of course, as big sisters our job (as we saw it) was to know more than he did, and let him know it often.

"You can't be a fire truck," we started to explain. We had outgrown fantasy and were rock sure that people could not grow up to be vehicles.

He cut us off, playing his trump card, "I can, too! Mom says I can be anything I want to be."

So Greta and I were driving and talking about her options. She and I spend a lot of time in the car. Driving her to classes. Driving to pick up Ev and Clem.

This time she is asking about princesses and fairies and angels. Are they real? What are her chances of being one? She was really disappointed to hear that the U.S. doesn't have a queen.

I said, "But you could be president!"

"But I want to be a mother!"

"You could be a mother and president," I say. "Just like I'm a mother and a writer."

"And a taxi!" she says.

I cracked up. How did she figure that out? Or did she overhear me complaining about all the driving?

My brother did not grow up to be a fire truck. But my sister and I were wrong. Because hey, I grew up to be a taxi.

Child of the Forest

A lot of rain has yielded a lot of mushrooms in the woods.

We found this Amanita on a recent hike.

This morning Greta warned us that she was a poisonous mushroom and not to touch her.

She reminded me of a couple favorite books.

Birthday Gifts

Greta turned four yesterday. Her gift for timing was evident from her birth. We tucked Ev and Clem in bed on January 17th 2005 at 8pm and she arrived at 9:10pm.

She spent most of her birthday as her alter ego Princess Begonia. Among her accomplishments is a very regal bow.
And a gift for distributing largess. She gave one of her wands away to a friend and said, with quiet dignity, "When you are sad, you can pick it up and remember how I gave it to you."

However, she has a sense of fun.
And she proved during a walk at sunset on the Berkeley pier that she doesn't always stand on ceremony.
She takes disappointments pretty well. Mike swung her one time and her shoe flew up up up into the air and down down down into the water.


My macro lens makes it look like you could reach out and touch it, but it was not recoverable. But she is not above a little pout.The sunset was its own gift.

The Great Apple Challenge

Clementine loves apple pie and apple sauce, but she won't take a bite of a raw apple.

In winter when the available fruits dwindle to apples and oranges, it's hard to get fresh fruit into a kid who won't eat either.

I used to just hope that all the blackberries she ate over the summer would carry her over to the spring.

But this January, instead, I am taking on a challenge: to make those apples so attractive Clem just has to take a bite.

I was amazed that while making gratin Clementine at raw potatoes. So we are going to chop and cook a lot of apples. Eventually she'll have to take a bite of a raw one, right? If not, I plan on cooking the apples less and less.

We're going to construct a food bridge from apple pie to apples.

Susan B. Roberts, a Tufts University nutritionist...suggested a “rule of 15” — putting a food on the table at least 15 times to see if a child will accept it. Once a food is accepted, parents should use “food bridges,” finding similarly colored or flavored foods to expand the variety of foods a child will eat. If a child likes pumpkin pie, for instance, try mashed sweet potatoes and then mashed carrots. If a child loves corn, try mixing in a few peas or carrots. Even if a child picks them out, the exposure to the new food is what counts.

We did a little food bridging last night. Ev and Clem love chicken and dumplings, but Greta will only eat the chicken and maybe a couple carrot slices. Our "dumplings" are usually strips of flour tortilla. You can't beat 'em for easy.

But yesterday I thought we'd make real dumplings. Clementine and Greta helped. Clementine measured and mixed all the dry ingredients. And stirred in the cream.
Greta helped out with forming the dumplings.
And plopping them into the soup.
I am sure the thick, almost oatmeal-like consistency of the soup after the dumplings went in would have provoked horror had they not made the dumplings themselves. As it was, Clem ate it and Greta...well...Greta fished out some chicken and carrots as usual.

I guess bridges aren't built in a day.

Anyone have any apple recipes or apple book recommendations to share?

Let Us Break Bread

We were enjoying a snowy evening with our companions.

Until the emergency: delicious cheese and no bread. And you can't be with your companions and not have bread, by definition.

As Evelyn and I discovered a month or so ago the etymology of companion is:

Com(with) + pan(bread)

Companions are people you break bread with. But snow was coming down and no one felt like running to the store.


So we decided to make some bread.

My internet search turned up a no knead bread that takes 18 hours to rise.

No good. And an easy french bread. We made the french bread to have with our d'Affinois, Gruyere and des Clarines.

But the article on no knead bread was too intriguing:

“I’ll be teaching a truly minimalist breadmaking technique that allows people to make excellent bread at home with very little effort. The method is surprisingly simple — I think a 4-year-old could master it — and the results are fantastic.”

I set up a time to visit Mr. Lahey, and we baked together, and the only bad news is that you cannot put your 4-year-old to work producing bread for you. The method is complicated enough that you would need a very ambitious 8-year-old. But the results are indeed fantastic.

Part of the reason I was so intrigued is that I happen to have a very ambitious (when it comes to cooking) 8-year-old. As it turned out she was having too much fun with her companions to make bread.

The four year olds were also busy:

So my mom mixed the dough and set it aside to rise undisturbed for 18 hours. What with 5 kids and 6 adults here I think it was the only thing undisturbed.

Here is the dough with the bubbles on the surface that show it is ready to be formed.

Here it is coated with oat bran, a bit prematurely. I was supposed to fold it 3 times. Now it has to rise for 2 hours.

You cook it at 450 in a dutch oven. At least, you do if you read the instructions carefully. If you are me you cook it at 400.

The wet dough and cover are supposed to make for a good crunchy crust.

You uncover it for the last 15 minutes.

And here it is out of the oven! I made holes in the crust with my thumb taking it around to everyone and squeezing it to demonstrate the excellent crunch.

Our already pajamaed and toothbrushed little companions were so excited by its smell that they decided to try some and face teethbrushing a second time. It really was good and I am going to try it again and follow the directions better.

Just as I was finishing this post my brother's friend Christine was finishing up the dinner dishes. Christine turns on the disposal and it makes loud there is a spoon in here noises. Christine looks as though she is going to put her hand in without turning off the disposal. I start shouting Turn it off, turn it off!

Christine laughs. She was not about to grind her hand into mincemeat.

Greta, who is sitting next to me, says, "You were all aaah! aaah! fire drill! fire drill!"

I don't even know where she gets this stuff.

I say, "Greta you are so funny."

She says, "I'm not funny, I'm cool."

She is one cool almost 4 year old. And a great companion.

With or without bread.