Mummy and his Mommy

Just as there is a trend toward high tech today, there is another trend toward high touch – homemade and wholesome.

–Meryl Gardner

I recognize that my desire to make WJ’s Halloween costumes is a little silly.  But my mom made ours. 

I remember watching the other kids come to school in store-bought costumes, the plastic suits reminiscent of doctor’s office dressing gowns and the shiny plastic masks with scratchy elastic, eyeholes the size of peas, and pinholes for air at the nostrils and mouth.  I remember watching them walk through the piles of leaves in little bunches of superheroes and watching them climb onto the bus like a living listing of the Saturday morning cartoons.  I remember watching them and being so jealous. 

From my grown-up mommy vantage point, however, I am finding that a homemade Halloween costume is so much more fun and possibly holds a measure of nourishment I did not fully comprehend as a child.  I like this idea of “high touch.”  It must be genetic.

Last Friday night, our family set about the task of creating WJ’s requested mummy suit.  We needed the costume for a party on Saturday morning so it was not the relaxed, taking things slow kind of moment I would have preferred.  But we did have fun. 

Everyone helped.  WJ helped me rip a white sheet into long strips.  Dave was on duty with the pulling off of loose strings.

And I was armed with my hot glue gun.  I can knit but am not exactly a whiz with a needle and thread.  In hindsight, I am not sure exactly why I felt it was prudent to wrap and hot-glue the white cloth to WJ’s costume while he was actually wearing it, but at the time it seemed very important and I only burned him a few times. 

Was WJ pleased with his costume?  Yes, he did not seem to mind that it was “high touch” instead of high tech.  For now anyway.  Ask me again this time next year.

Do you have any "high touch" traditions in your family?

Stove-popped thyme popcorn*

You may have read about how standing at the dairy display, struggling over my weekly yogurt purchase, was giving me sweaty palms but the news today is that the time I am spending in the snack aisle lately is making me just plain old mad.  A few months ago I made a decision.  No more high fructose corn syrup in this house.  No more.  And then I decided that it would be nice to have a few child-friendly snacks around for a play date we had coming up.

What I discovered is that if you would like to buy a cracker with no high fructose corn syrup, you are going to have to settle for one with enough sodium to make your child float in the bathtub or one containing enough saturated fat to warrant your starting a bypass surgery trust fund in his name. 

Twenty minutes and a headache later, I realized that the convenience of these boxes of snacks is not all that convenient.  I could have whipped up something corn-syrup-free at home and slipped it into the oven by the time I resigned myself to the futility of finding a whole-grain, low-fat, low-sodium package of snacks free from artificial colors and high fructose corn syrup that cost less that four dollars a box.

I think there is a whole series here.  In this year of taking things a little more slowly, the next item on my list of problems that need creative solutions is this: Snack Food.

Partly because our microwave was broken for over a year and partly because of my attempts at eliminating the instant from our diet, lately I have been popping popcorn. Old school. On the stove.  In a pot.  I know that popcorn is not a Superfood and I hope to offer you some nutrient-packed, homemade and convenient snack options soon, but since the idea for this post grew out of my struggle to purchase the perfect cracker, this crunchy, savory, classic snack food seems as good a place as any to begin.

Have you ever cooked popcorn on the stove?  It is incredibly easy.  And a bag of popping corn is much less expensive than a box of the microwave variety.  I follow the directions on the bag almost exactly.  It calls for three tablespoons of oil but I have found that if you use a small pot, you can get away with much less.  I use about a tablespoon of canola oil along with a third of a cup of popping corn.  Since one batch easily feeds four people, each one of us is getting less than a teaspoon of the oil.  Most dietary recommendations of late suggest at least two teaspoons of heart healthy oils like canola a day so this is one fantastic way of getting in these healthy fats.

When the popcorn is popped, I sprinkle it very lightly with olive oil and even more lightly with kosher salt.  Finally, I add about a pinch, or several hearty shakes, of dried thyme.  Delicious.  And I am in control of all of the ingredients.  Have I mentioned yet how wonderful the house smells after preparing a batch?  What a way to greet your guests.

Quick brainstorming about ways to vary the approach to this easy snack solution brought me to a few combinations I am hoping to try.  How about using a very light drizzle of sesame oil and some black pepper?  Or flaxseed oil and some Pecorino Romano cheese?  Or you could make it spicy with some fresh cilantro and chili powder or cumin. 

Any other ideas?

*This blog post is part of SteadyMom’s 30-Minute Blog Post Challenge.  This challenge stems out of her recent blogging resolutions and her attempts at reminding the rest of us who blog about all things family to put down the laptops and be preset to our children.  SteadyMom challenged us to complete an entire post, start to publish, in 30 minutes today.  I must confess that I downloaded and formatted my photos in a separate session while I was doing photos for work but I am considering that the trade off for the fact that while I was writing, my lovely niece called to quiz us on our ability to name all 50 states for a school project.  It was a little hard to focus on writing while listening to my husband chanting, “North Dakota, South Dakota, North Carolina, South Carolina…” If you haven’t checked out SteadyMom.com yet, do so now.  You will love her. 

Transition: part two

When I started writing this piece about the transition in the first month of school for WJ as he stays in preschool despite his chronological age, I thought this was a story in two parts.  I think I am deciding that the story has three parts (at least).  I want to get to the good news.  There is good news.  But the bumps in the road are difficult to ignore.

Part Two of this story involves the Kindergartener’s enthusiasm about all things Kindergarten. 

We thought it, and still think it, important for WJ to have time with his friends from before.  We want for him to make new connections in his new class, but a handful of his old school friends are the ones he held hands with while lying on a blanket as four-month-olds who could not yet even turn to look at one another.  They are children with whom he has spent the vast majority of the days of these last years and we knew that his sense of normalcy depended partly on continued time to play with the friends with whom he is so comfortable.

One on one, these interactions are positive, just like old times.  But when two or more of his kindergarten friends gather together, the conversation tends to hover around one topic: Kindergarten.

The picture above is WJ trying to keep a stiff upper lip at our favorite sushi restaurant earlier this month.  What you don’t see in the picture is three of his former classmates, just to the right, all singing new songs they had learned together at school.  At first WJ watched and listened with great interest; he is a true lover of all things music.  But as they moved from verse to verse and from song to song (I may be exaggerating here), it became clear that WJ felt out of place.  His five-year-old social skills left him unprepared for successful maneuvering of a situation like this—inside jokes, you-had-to-be-there moments, secret handshakes and the like.

Here is where my protective mothering instinct rears her ugly head.

I emailed a little with a friend whose son is also spending another year in preschool.  She confirmed this pattern.  When her son had a play date with an old classmate, the classmate talked a lot about kindergarten.  I began to jump up to cry out with indignation, “Why can’t they just get over it already?  It’s only kindergarten!  What’s the big deal?”  But before I uttered such nonsense, my wiser friend offered some insight.  “I wonder if it might wear off a little as the school year wears on.  It's such a big transition that those kids are quite caught up in it.” 

Of course.  Kindergarten is a milestone.  It brings backpacks and lunchboxes, music class and gym, new games, new songs, new teachers, new learning.  And when I listened carefully to WJ’s friends, I heard that their kindergarten talk was not even just that.  When I listened hard, I heard a whisper of their knowledge of WJ and their affection for him. 

What are the two topics that surfaced most in the guess-what-else-happened-in-kindergarten conversations? Music class, first. (And how many times has WJ begged these children to be in his band when they would have rather been dancing princesses?) And secondly, the new and amazing fire facts showered upon them by Fire Fighter Ron who visited their class one afternoon of late.  (What is that under WJ’s bed?  Is that two huge baskets of fire fighter dress-up gear? And on his shelves?  The entire line of Playmobil rescue equipment?)  These friends really are just that.  WJ is not with them in class anymore, but there are times when they think of him and how much he would love the things they are doing.

They all, WJ as the preschooler who stayed and his friends as the newly crowned Kindergarteners, need some support in knowing how to come together peacefully.  WJ needs words and strategies for getting involved in the conversation or changing the topic when he feels left out.  His friends need to know that there are kind ways to tell him about the wonderful new experiences they are having and ways that are not so kind.  And when the waters grow difficult to navigate, they all need adults who will step in and gently guide them on the way.

Just this week, I worked nearby as WJ played with his Two Best Friends.  The two girls began to sing a song from school.  He said to them, “Remember? I don’t know that song.” And they graciously stopped. 

Then Friend One suggested that they play out the story of the magic fish.  WJ said, “Remember?  I don’t know that story.”  “Ok,” she said and she thought around for another idea.  Then she laughed. 

“WJ,” she teased, “You do know that story.  It is not from kindergarten!  It is from summer camp!  You were there!”  He chuckled.  “Oh, yeah!  I remember now!” 

There is still a Part Three (at least) to this story of the transition. But for now, I am thankful for old friends and the ways that they know you and the times they can grow with you.

New look

Many thanks to Ted Mauseth at MausethDesign, LLC for his help with a new banner image and color palette here at Ready to Wait.  The image is so quiet and peaceful that you would have no idea, unless I decided to tell you, that three not-so-small-anymore boys were having their own version of a wild rumpus behind and around us as we fiddled with the banner this weekend.  

Thanks, Ted, for your time and your expertise.  I owe you some serious babysitting... send 'em on over!

Apple crispish

When you have made a commitment to taking it slow and you have a school holiday right smack in the middle of October, you go to the pick-your-own farm.  You watch your child delight in nature and in his cousins and you drive home with a trunk full of the goodness of the earth.  And you hope your child’s superstitiously declared desire to “eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away” will hold out for at least another month so as to insure a sizable dent in the bounty of fruit you are lugging out of the car.

And when your child surveys the wonders of his harvest and announces with joy and anticipation, as you attempt to find places to store this collection of fruit in your tiny city apartment kitchen, “I am ready to bake,” you have only one choice.  You put the catching up on emails, the finishing of paperwork, the making of dinner on hold and you bake with your child. 

With great excitement, WJ washed and chopped apples as I made an attempt at overhauling the Joy of Cooking’s apple crisp recipe.  I used whole-wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose and substituted half honey and half agave syrup for the sugar.  I knew the topping would be wet instead of crumbly with these substitutions so I planned to add some oatmeal, but found that I only had steel cut, which I have never baked with and this did not seem a good time to try.  I added a handful of almonds to the dough and food-processed it.  Still wet.  A handful of wheat germ; still wet.  Staring into the open cabinets, I saw the Honey Nut Cheerios and thought to myself, couldn’t hurt!  So I added a big handful of those too and chopped them in the food processor.  The dough was doughier but still not the chunky crumbs you usually sprinkle atop a crisp.

Our apple crisp was not all that crispy; maybe it was crispish, a little more like a cobbler.  But it was crunchy thanks to the nuts and the Cheerios.  And it was warm and sweet on a cool fall evening, keeping us together at the table for a few minutes more.

Have you picked your fall fruits yet?