Month: October 2010

Habitat

4 Comments

Eric’s been asking for a hat for a while to match the scarf I made him last year.  I had plenty of the same yarn left over, so when I saw this pattern, I knew it would be perfect.

Cables are pretty and functional–they make the fabric thicker and a lot warmer.  Here’s a close up of the cabling at the top, which decreases to form a star pattern.

Pattern: Habitat by Jared Flood

Yarn: Cascade 220

I love this hat!  I was initially daunted by all the cables, but I used Grumperina’s tutorial on cabling without a needle and it made it speed by and a lot simpler. The length is also just right to pull over your ears but not get in your eyes.

I may have to make one of these for myself, with some matching wristwarmers.

Decay

2 Comments

For a few weeks, it was this:

after this:

after this:

after this:

Then it got cooler and the aphids moved in, and things looked a little less happy.

The dahlias finally bloomed, though, adding a nice fall surprise.

I’ve tried to plant for a fall crop as well, radishes, spinach, mache, chard, broccoli, and brussels sprouts, with some sprouts coming up.  Other than the radishes, though, it’s all a bit small and I’m not sure if I’ll get much.

There’s still a few cucumbers holding on, so I haven’t pulled that out yet, but I with the freezing temperatures coming next week that’ll have to go, too.

I was hoping to leave the beans to dry on the vine, but I’m not sure how that’ll do with the freeze.  I may have to dry them in the oven instead.

All in all, I was pretty happy with how everything turned out considering that I have no real idea what I’m doing.

Things I learned this year:

1) I am the major consumer of tomatoes in this household.  The girl only eats the small ones fresh off the plant.  The boy only eats the “big juuuuuicy red” ones.  Eric hates tomatoes.  There were days I ate a LOT of tomatoes. I never had enough to can, and, let’s be real here–I’ll never can anything.  (I did find them useful to barter.  I got a few delicious acorn squash for a bag of tomatoes–I clearly got the better end of that deal.) So next year, maybe not 3 tomato plants and definitely not the grape yellows.  Those were blah. Oh! There was what I’m calling a Darwin tomato in the backyard that sprouted from seed dropped from last year’s plant.  No water, fertilizer, anything, and it still grew.  I’m planting those seeds next year.

2)  I need new topsoil.  Next year, we are borrowing a truck and getting better dirt. This is one of the reasons I’m not planting a cover crop since I’m hoping to get largely new dirt next year anyway.

3)Peas.  I’m planting a LOT more peas.  They were very tasty.

4)I might give squash another year, but if I plant squash one more year to yield 2 tiny little fruits, it’s sayonara.

5)Who knew that the boy would love swiss chard so much?

6)Sad, but true: the pesto from Costco tastes better than the fresh pesto made from homegrown basil.

Anyway.  We’ll see if we get any fall/winter veggies, but I doubt it.

And now, for a few cute pictures of the girl because it’s been a while.

CSI: Denver

7 Comments

Time: Last week

Scene: The boy’s bedroom

Crime: Deep scratch marks on the dresser.

Suspect #1: The boy.

After what had been an EXTREMELY trying afternoon with the boy, he’d been sent to his room to calm down. (Apologies to any parents who witnessed the spectacular meltdown at the local school playground, involving hitting, screaming, kicking, and running away.)

Eric and I went up to get him dressed as he was going out to dinner with his grandparents.  In his room, I glanced at his dresser and saw that there were deep grooves carved into the bottom drawer.

“Did you do this?” I asked the boy.

“No….” he replied, with his lips doing funny twisting things.  He’s such a terrible liar.

“Well then, who did it?”

“My sister.”

I called for the girl, who was in her room, and asked, “Did you do this?” while pointing to the dresser.

“No.” She said definitively.  “Brudda do it.”

I look back at the boy. “This would be a good time for you to choose to tell the truth.  Who scratched your dresser?”

“I…I…she did it! I know she did!”

“How did she do it?”

“Ummm…I don’t know…a sharp pen…or something…” By now he’s shifting uncomfortably from side to side and still doing the funny lip twisting thing.

“Where’s the pen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, then how did she do it?”

“Well, maybe like this.” He proceed to pick up a ruler nearby with a sharp corner, sit next to the dresser and start to carve another deep line into the bottom drawer, at the exact same height as the others.

I then hand the ruler to the girl and tell her to use it on the dresser like she did before.  She lays the ruler flat on top of a half-open drawer and slides it around for a second before losing interest.

I look at the boy again.  I’m really trying  hard to get that badass Mom look down, you know, the one where kids eventually talk about  “The Look” that sent shivers down their spine.  I don’t think I’m there yet, but this was a good try.

Eventually, the boy sort of fesses up.  He loses a variety of perks, including desserts and TV watching, and gets a good talking to.

I think the worst thing about it is how angry it makes ME.  Like, I feel I’ve somehow failed as a parent because my kid is lying.

Some consults to the parenting expert, Mr. Google, have yielded a few thoughts about how to handle stuff like this in the future.  First of all, I shouldn’t have asked IF he had scratched the dresser since it gives him an opportunity to lie–I should have just said all the stuff I did at the end of the whole affair–about how even if we’re angry we don’t destroy things, etc.  The other tidbit I gleaned was that all 4-6 year olds lie as part of their normal development.

How do you deal with it when your kid lies? (Or have you done a better job than me and they simply never do?)

Coda: While making his bed today, I turn over a pillow to find his name written on it.  In black Sharpie.  Here we go again.

Parenting ideals

1 Comment

While not an original idea by any means, I was definitely a better parent before I had children.

I’d see a child misbehaving in public and watch how his awful parent handled it, knowing that my child would NEVER act that way and if they did I’d handle it SO much better than his terrible mother.   There was a whole list of things of things I definitely would or wouldn’t do as a parent.  Among them, my child would never wear anything with a character on it, would never order off the children’s menu, and would never misbehave in public.  Cut to a few years later when I’m ordering mac and cheese for my screaming toddler who’s wearing a “Toy Story” shirt.

I think everyone has certain ideas of what is most important to them as a parent.  I’m not talking about big things like religion–more the little weird things that we think will make us exceptional parents, not just average ones.  Things we get to be all sanctimommious about.  Some people refuse to feed their child anything jarred.  Some insist on their kid listening only to Mozart. I’ve heard of one woman who is so anti-processed food that she even makes her own ketchup.  Her own KETCHUP, people.  In the end, I don’t think most of these make the huge difference that we like to think they do.

I’m not without my own set of parenting  idiosyncrasies, though I’d never go so far as to make ketchup. (Now I’m curious. Wow, this sounds delicious.  I might have to backtrack on that ketchup comment.)

One of my big things before I had kids was TV.  Surely, when I had kids, my precious puppykins would never watch any TV until they were at least 3 years old.  For the boy, we held out until he was a bit closer to 2 years old before he was watching anything on a regular basis, and even then never saw a full length movie until he was closer to 3.  The only way that we made it this long is because I’m not a stay-at-home mom.  If I was, the kids would have had their daily TV hour starting in infancy to provide me with some sanity. The girl was corrupted much younger and already runs around asking, “Watch teebee? Nemo? Shaaks? Scaow me!” (Translation: “Can I watch ‘Finding Nemo’ in its entirety? Those sharks are somewhat frightening but brilliant representations of how we all face our own demons.” God, she’s bright.)

Still, I never quite understood the need for having a television in the car.  I HATE televisions in cars.  I don’t understand why children need constant entertainment, and electronic at that.  What’s wrong with talking to other people in the car, looking out the window, reading books or even (gasp!) being bored for a few moments and letting your mind wander?  Usually my kids grab a book to read in the car or we have some nice chats.

Recently, though, my ideal was tested.  I drove from Denver to Moab by myself with both children.  I’d rented a minivan so that my parents, who were vacationing there, could ride back with us.

It’s one thing to be able to go for short car ride with small kids without resorting to television, but would I make it for 7 hours?

My first plan was to not even let on that there was any TV capability in the car.  This lasted all of two minutes before the boy checked out the car and started pushing on panels and yelped, “There’s a TV!! Can we watch TV?!”

Sigh.  I said that we don’t watch TV in the car–we look around, we talk to each other, we read books, we listen to music. Disappointed, the boy strapped himself into his carseat and we took off.  Truthfully, I fully expected to play a movie, but wanted to see how long they’d make it first.  Or how long I’d make it.

The first hour and a half was fine–they read books, played with a few toys, and looked for bighorn sheep on the side of the highway.  We stopped in Vail for food, which ended unceremoniously with us racing through Vail village to get back to our car while holding the girl away from me as far as I could. In a moment of great parenting brilliance I’d decided not to bring a spare diaper. She pooped once and I figured she could go commando because surely, she wouldn’t poop a second time.  I was wrong.  Considering how different we look, I half expect some people thought I was kidnapping a little blond girl and was waiting for someone to call the cops.

The rest of the trip was dotted with a few stops for bathroom breaks and gas.  Glenwood springs is beautiful to drive through.  Then we crossed into Utah and hit 2 hours of the most boring drive I’ve seen.  It almost rivals Kansas in lack of interest.

I kept waiting for the inevitable, “Can we watch TV now?” from the back seat.

But it never came–we made the entire way there (and later the entire way back) without once popping in a video.

Unbelieveable.  And you know what? The ride was actually fun. We listened to a few science podcasts, sang along to Dan Zanes and the Dino5, and had some good conversations.  (As my Facebook friends know, my favorite one began with the boy asking me, “Hey, Mom, could we get a dead body sometime to make a mummy out of it?”)

More importantly, I now have one pre-parenting ideal that I’ve been able to carry through with, which clearly makes me an exceptional parent.

And now I have to go watch TV.  30 Rock is on!