Summer nights...

This afternoon we planted our remaining seedlings, and after dinner Dutch and I went to fetch O. Blond for an ice cream date. The excuses for the occasion were celebration of Dutch's marathon achievement, the end of school (in two weeks) and the beginning of summer evenings. On the way there, Dutch said excitedly "I love this! It's so fun to celebrate with my friend!" We walked five blocks to his house, then four blocks to the new ice cream cart.  We all ate salted caramel ice cream in sugar cones while we slowly strolled back. It was idyllic (except for the traffic). I think all my life really needed was an ice cream cart nine blocks away...

Your unsolicited food update, because I don't tweet.

Oh, this is really good. Harissa! I had no idea!

Why yes, we do enjoy sport.

Cook and Dutch set off this afternoon with the plan of jogging to  a playing field, playing frisbee for a little while, then jogging back. Wind sprints were promised.

Who Needs a Car?

I went to the nursery to get seedlings and tomato cages, and the bored employees at the loading dock helped me secure the cages.

I talk a lot about this, so you've probably heard it before. I've probably even written about it before. But I've been thinking a lot lately about how the difference between my two kids has really destroyed my confidence in my parenting. When I only had one kid, while I would never admit it in public, I secretly prided myself on what I considered to be any evidence in Dutch that I had made good parenting decisions. For example, Dutch was a very independent, confident kid by age 2 or so, and remains so. When she started daycare, she was perfectly cheerful about separating from us - I don't remember her ever crying or clinging. I was sure this was because of our "attachment parenting" practices (or the lazy-person's variations thereof), which fostered her confidence in her attachment to us so she could become so independent. And she's always been (relatively) game about trying new foods, and liked a wide variety of foods. She was good in restaurants and other public places. She listened to instructions. She never ran away from us on a sidewalk.  She was robustly healthy. All of these positive, readily-apparent traits were definitely due to me and Cook and our brilliant parenting.

Then we got Skipper, who very quickly poked holes in all my parenting puffery. She hit every single one. Skipper despises new things. Skipper clings and cries at any possibility of separation.* Skipper hates new food and doesn't really care for any food except things that are bad for her. Skipper wouldn't really even eat food until she was nearly a year old. Skipper sucks at restaurants. Skipper runs away. Skipper has never left a medical appointment on a positive note. (This reads like a litany of complaints about Skipper, which isn't fair - she has many lovely, positive characteristics and behaviors that Dutch has never had. But that's not my point.) She destroyed every delusion I had about my ability to parent my kids into desirable behaviors.

Both my kids have spent their whole lives convincing me that very little of what I do makes much difference in shaping their temperaments. I have one kid who is eagerly looking forward to sleepaway camp this summer, and one kid whom I suspect won't want to be away from home overnight until she hits adolescence. I have one kid who adores extracurriculars of any kind, and one kid who won't participate in anything new. I have one kid who eats kale and likes rules, and one kid who doesn't. It's probably for the best that my delusions have been so completely trampled. While I know that my parenting affects the kids, I also know that their personalities** do not at all reflect me, and that makes it easier*** for me to step back and let them meet the world on their own terms. Which is good, right? Even if Skipper never eats kale.

*Of course, it's possible that Dutch herself may be partly responsible for some of Skipper's challenging traits, particularly her anxiety. Skipper has been worried lately about the prospect of being "stolen" - she expressed concern this week that I might be stolen if I was alone in the kitchen. Then she told me that Dutch told her she used to have another sister, before Skipper was born, and that sister was alone in the bathroom and a bad person came in and stole her. Which puts Skipper's fear of being stolen in a different light entirely... 
**Unlike, say, their use of profanities or their tendency to yell.
*** EasiER, not easy.

Dutch sports report

Dutch hit her marathon milestone at Running Club today.* She was pleased. One of her classmates asked her for her autograph. Dutch was VERY pleased by that, and now she's planning to bring a pen to school next week for the express purpose of signing all the autographs she expects to have begged from her.

She is now frequently playing Soccer With The Boys* at recess. I'm not sure what that's all about, but she was excited to report that she scored a goal today.

She just completed an after-school "circus" class. She learned to balance a peacock feather.

She's signed up for swim lessons all summer long. Breaks are for the weak!

That's the news.

*This means she has run over 26 miles in a school-year's worth of Friday running clubs. It doesn't sound very impressive, but not many kids have logged that many miles, and it does mean that she has been running for 20 minutes every Friday (when it wasn't raining) all year long. Which I applaud.
**All year long, some or all of the boys have been playing soccer at recess most days, and the girls never played. Until NOW. 

Interlude for cookbooks.

I like recipes. I am not a creative person in general, and I am really not creative with cooking. I know a few people who are good cooks, and some who can Iron-Chef a pile of random ingredients and come up with something fabulous off the top of their head, but I can turn a pile of random ingredients only into a more compact, cooked pile of random ingredients.* I do, however, like to eat good food. So I depend heavily on cookbooks.

For years, Cook and I boringly depended on cookbooks mostly from the Moosewood juggernaut and Jeanne Lemlin. However, using only cookbooks by a handful of people means that you're stuck cooking meals from a limited arsenal. Jeanne Lemlin, for example, is terrific, but she loves zucchini and red bell peppers to an extent that I cannot match. Also, we try to cook meals that are at least loosely based on what's in season, and those sources are not great for that - zucchini and bell peppers are in EVERYTHING. So we've been diversifying over the last five years or so, and just in the last year I've run into a few recipe sources that have made me really happy - Smitten Kitchen (for baking especially), Melissa Clark, and now Heidi Swanson.**

But I want more. Got any recommendations for me?

*The only exception is simple meals made with really good ingredients, which are almost impossible to really screw up. I can make something good out of pasta, good tomatoes, olive oil, and fresh mozzarella, but so could a baby baboon.
** Cook went to work yesterday with a big container full of coconut, kale, and farro for his lunch, and he was all excited about it. That man is going to live to be 120.

Peddlers of Pin Lints

Tonight Dutch, Cook, and I were talking about sports, and I asked Skipper if she was planning on playing tennis.* She said "No. I don't want to play tennis. I'm going to be grill splouts." After some delicate questioning, we determined that she was talking about the Girl Scouts. "Because I AM a grill!" But we thought the way she said it was so hilarious that we asked her lots of things just to prompt her to say it again. Grill splouts!

Dutch said "That's funny. You should put that in your blog."

*She used to say that when she grew up, she would play tennis. It was a dream of hers...

More miscellany

Dutch had her recital today. The 20-odd performers were piano and voice students of three teachers in a music co-op, and they ranged in age from maybe 5 to maybe 35, and in skill from just beginning to what seemed to my non-musical ears to be somewhat competent. The last performer played the piano AND sang.* This just about blew my mind. I can't imagine being able to play the piano with two hands doing different things, and the idea of then adding singing to that is staggering to me. Watching this unbelievable thing taking place RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME was like watching another human being sprout wings and fly. This wasn't a person who is launching a musical career, either, just a normal human being with a day job who is taking piano and voice lessons. It was great. I loved every minute of the recital. Dutch carried off her performance with aplomb. I have no idea if she played it right, but she was very composed and calm. She enjoyed the other performances, too, and sat raptly through everything. Watching her play, and watching the other more and less advanced students play, made me feel even more sure that I want to keep her in piano lessons for as long as she sustains interest. Particularly given that she won't be getting any music at school...

In other news, we're in the middle of a solar eclipse! And we got to look at it with our new solar-viewing glasses I got for the upcoming transit of venus! Thanks, Astronomers Without Borders!

We briefly had a house guest, which was lovely. Dutch, as usual, followed him everywhere, talking and showing off. Skipper took longer to warm up, but was very sad to see him go.

Oh, and Dutch finished her 4H poster. It's titled "Rabbits are Amazing!" Cook and I managed to convince her to leave off the most egregious invented "facts," so the final draft is mostly non-fiction.

Skipper woke up from an exceptionally long nap too late to attend Dutch's recital and the subsequent library/grocery trip, so she and Cook made pizza and weeded the garden. He reported that he put on some music and she told him she didn't like it, she prefers "violent music." After some discussion about what she meant by that, he put on the Dead Kennedys, of which she approved.

*She sang an Adele song, so it wasn't the sort of singing-along that I can actually do, where you just sing along with the melody that the instrument is playing.

Miscellaneous photos

Coming home from piano last week.

Dutch gloating over her autographed program from the play she attended last week.

Hanging out with the garlic.

There was some kind of narrative associated with these outfits, probably involving two sisters on the run from a mean mother, fording rivers and fending off wolves.

Happy

Dutch is happy. Both Cook and I have remarked on it lately. She throws many tantrums and sulks, and she's got plenty of mean in her, but she also has this surprisingly cheerful and open approach to her life that's delightful to see. She dives into her academic and social activities with tremendous gusto and pleasure. Things have gone smoothly for her this year, for the most part, so she's building confidence in her own competence, and she's excited about every new challenge. Also, she's loud. Really, really loud. She's developed this loud, ridiculously over the top laugh - "HAr HAr HAr!" and everything she says is at top volume. This is consistent with the sheer enormity of everything about the kid, from her tangled mass of hair down to her tremendous feet. There's just a lot of Dutch, and it's right THERE, in your face, talking really loudly, asking you questions, listening  to every single thing you say except if it means her having to do anything, telling you terrible jokes, repeating the terrible jokes, singing, LAUGHING REALLY LOUDLY, shrieking with exaggerated delight or dismay, wailing in despair, galumphing around like a baby elephant or possibly a wolfhound, etc.

I find it all a little overwhelming and of course it frequently drives me crazy. But I am also so happy to see her so happy. I hope that she holds on to this at least a little bit for all her life, her goofy, galumphing, haw-hawing spirit.*

*I used to worry that Dutch would be a popular girl, and mean to other kids, in her middle school years. Now I feel some comfort in the thought that she increasingly looks likely to be a band dork, or something else along those lines. She has recently rededicated her future career plans to acting, so maybe a theater dork. 

Busy

It's a busy month around here. Dutch has a piano recital and a  4H presentation coming up (requiring her first poster - it's very exciting). Cook is busy with work shenanigans and some extracurricular cartographic dorkery.  I'm busy with work* and with volunteering at Dutch's school** but not with cleaning. Nope. You should see the dustbunnies.*** And I'm way behind on the vegetable garden. And blogging. Skipper is busy being insane about her eczema.****



*It's Bike Month, you guys! Plus I'm moving my whole program to another organization, involving lots of packing and budget maneuvering. 
** I wildly over-committed myself, taking on lots of tasks associated with Walk+Bike Challenge Month (May), Staff Appreciation Week (May 7-11), an effort to reform education funding at the state level, and the establishment of a school foundation aiming to raise over $150K in 6 weeks. (And yes, that's impossible, but we figure it's worth trying.) All these commitments seemed worthwhile, but May is pretty hectic.
*** However, I am married to a person who seizes on a blissful window of family-free time, not to lie on the couch and read a book (which is what I would do), but to clean the bathroom and exercise. So the house is much cleaner than I deserve. 
**** Cook and I, between us, have spent maybe 5 hours this week cajoling/outwaiting/bullying Skipper into taking showers, getting lotion put on, and having antibiotic cream applied to her oozing sores. That kid is unbelievably stubborn.

Back from Vacation

I think maybe we should just pay more taxes.

Lately I've been volunteering at Dutch's school quite a bit, on some seasonal activities. And what with the budget-slashing, I've been thinking about the way Dutch's school operates. This is how it, and many other public schools works:
1) The district provides the basics, which are getting increasingly basic.
2) Everything else - Friday Running Club, the Outdoor Learning Garden, the field trips, theorganization and subsidization of after-school Spanish and Chinese classes, the organization and subsidization of after-school sports and other activities, the book fair, the visual-arts teacher who visits for one week in the spring, classroom assistance for teachers, and a billion other things - is organized, funded, and managed by parents, mostly the moms.

After the upcoming cuts, every single enrichment element at this school will be provided by middle-class moms.   Our school community doesn't have a lot of very rich families, as far as I can tell, but it does have a decent reservoir of families who make enough money that one parent, almost always the mother, can stay home with the kids at least part time, and many of these caregiver are very capable, so they end up taking up a lot of slack at the school. It's getting to the point where The Moms are doing stuff beyond enrichment, into basic services, like organizing a crew of volunteers to paint and fix up the school bathrooms this weekend.

This is a lovely way to build community, but it's a terrible way to provide an education. You can't prop up a failing educational system on the backs of middle-class mothers. It's not fair to them and it's not fair to communities that don't have a large pool of families who can provide time and energy (or money) to the school.

There's some other weird stuff about it, too. It might be a good idea to have at least SOME of the stuff at school being planned and run by people who aren't middle-class (mostly white) women. (The only man on the entire school staff of 43 people this year is the lead custodian.) It also gives the parents who are providing vital services to the school a feeling like they kind of own the place. There's nothing wrong with parents feeling pride and ownership in the school, but it runs the risk of making other parents who aren't involved with activities at the school (for whatever reason) feel marginalized.

Anyway. I have to stop ranting; it's time to print out a whole bunch of stuff for my volunteer activities...

Self-medicating

I'm not much of a medication user for minor complaints like colds, fevers, indigestion, etc. I generally feel that  suppressing symptoms just takes away your cues about what you need to do to take care of yourself, and it's not worth the money, the waste of environmental resources, or the addition of foreign chemicals to your body. I'm not hard-line on this, but even when I do buy and use medication, I usually try to stick to things with only one active ingredient at a time. It's a general approach that Cook shares, so our medicine/first-aid kit before kids usually consisted of some elderly ibuprofen, bandaids, and maybe a few cough drops. We've beefed up the first aid side of things over the last few years,* but we still don't really have much in the way of over the counter medication.

Today, though, I bought the kind of cold medicine that has THREE active ingredients and claims it'll make you feel totally healthy. I felt a little frisson of danger, like maybe I was going to go home and cook up some meth.** I live a crazy life! Actually, at the moment I'm just kind of beyond caring about cues to take care of myself. I'm tired and under-exercised, yeah. That's not news to anybody, and I have stuff to do, and it's raining. Now dope me up!

*Especially recently, after Cook sliced off the very tip of his finger and we discovered the value of non-stick dressings.
** Though apparently that's not possible any more.