Bear Hunt

At Elizabeth's dance class they sometime act out the motions to a song called "Going on a Bear Hunt." She is scared, delighted and intrigued by this song, all at the same time. And she's had bears on the brain lately.

So when I got home from work yesterday and she showed me this:

I was not surprised.

Yeeeouch....

I have decided that anyone with a headache as bad as this one, even a re-committed blogger, is allowed to take a pass on posting anything of substance.

Especially when they are also supposed to be creating a birthday DVD for their almost 96 year old grandfather, planning for some fund-raising they're doing, and have a house that looks like a hurricane went through it, and won't be taking care of any of that either.

The only thing I really have to report is that I bought a new hot glue gun this afternoon, and I am delighted with it. Even though I won't be using it tonight after all.

Maybe tomorrow I'll show you the bear picture that Elizabeth drew today, in hopes that will make up for my neglect.

It depends on if I still have this headache.

Or my head. I'm tempted to start banging my head on the wall to see if that has more of an effect than the ibuprofen I have been unsuccessfully popping. I bet I could do it some damage.

Blech.

Well, we tried...

My girls and I have done many a project in our few short years together. So when we tried to make petit fours tonight, after reading about them in a My Little Pony book, I wasn't nervous about taking them on. The directions we had were simply to frost pieces of pound cake that you cut into whatever shapes you want. What could be difficult about that?

I did the cutting, although I had hovering helpers. We stuck with squares and rectangles and triangles. I was tempted to break out the cookie cutters so the girls could help me, but decided against it, since we did this right after I got home from work, and I still needed to make dinner.

Right away I realized that if we tried to frost the these little babies the way we frost cupcakes that it was going to be a huge mess. Since these were supposed to be child sized tea cakes, I had cut them pretty small. My girls are pretty good with these things, but I couldn't see them holding tiny cakes and frosting them at the same time, and if you tried to frost them on the cookie rack they were small enough to stick to the knife and not stay put.

So I went with the alternate plan I had considered, which was to melt the icing enough that we could spoon it over the cakes. Of course we tried to do it before I tested the icing consistency. The girls kept at it, but you can see that the icing was not cooperating.


Back into the microwave the icing went, and results were much more successful so we repeated it with the vanilla and chocolate icing. Then we got to into it, and I forgot to document the process, but we ended up with some cute little cakes:

See?

Of course, these wouldn't win any beauty contests, but they are delicious, and many were eaten at all stages of the process.

If you want to make them yourself, here are some tips:

If you use a frozen pound cake like I did, it worked just fine to slice it up while still frozen. In fact, I think I got sharper edges because I did that, so the cookie cutters would have worked well.

If you heat up your icing, do it slowly so it doesn't separate.

Put any sprinkles on right away so they stick, and

Refrigerate these little guys so the icing sets up quicker.

My girls are into icing on their treats these days, and almost always leave the cake or cupcake behind, but they ate their weight in these things (well, more or less, we only used one small pound cake), and I sent them to bed high on sugar.

So, yes. They didn't turn out so beautiful to look at, but they were pretty beautiful to eat, and doing projects with my girls is the most beautiful thing of all.

Apparently it doesn't take much for me to feel a sense of accomplishment...

Although I feel a little disproportionally proud of myself tonight.

Ever heard of Friendship bread? Some people call it Amish Friendship Bread. I'll leave it to you to Google, since there are a lot of varieties.

Basically, someone (purporting to be your friend) hands you a gallon-sized Ziploc bag of goo (the starter), with a sheet of directions, which you then must feed and nurture for the next week and a half or so, with the hopes of eventually turning it into something delicious.

It is a surprising amount of work.

Not the days when your only directive is "mush the bag", I'm not complaining about those days, I think I'm really just complaining about tonight. First I had to take my bag of goo and empty it into a large bowl. That was challenge enough, because after a long period of growing and digesting in it's plastic home, the starter wanted to cling to the bag. Then you add this and that to the bowl, mix it up well, and then have to measure out 4 one cup portions of goo to place into gallon sized Ziploc bags to sneakily hand over to your friends. Well, three of them anyway, you're supposed to keep one for yourself. I have not yet decided if I'm going to keep on this path. I've heard it can take over your life.

Anyway, all that was before I could even add any of the 15 or so ingredients that were going into my loaves. I have to say, I was a little suspicious. This whole recipe seemed like the one for Stone Soup. Like the starter was the stone, and all my added ingredients actually made the soup (bread). The batter smelled so good when it was mixed up that I was tempted to try it raw. Of course then I remembered that a good portion of it had been fermenting on my counter for almost two weeks, and I suddenly lost my appetite.

But not for long. It seems the bread varies depending on what kind of pudding you add to it, and as I used Pumpkin pudding I ended up with a delicious bread-shaped pumpkin cake thing with a Cinnamon sugar crust. It's darn tasty.

But did I mention the work? And that this work perpetuates itself? And that if I keep my bag of starter I will have to go through this again in 10 days and find 3 more friends to give bags of goo too? I swear, it is just like a chain letter. Only if I don't pass it on I will end up with exploding plastic bags and a home that smells like a brewery.

I should also mention that this is not the first time I have been given a bag of starter. It is just the first time that I haven't killed it. Or starved it, rather. Or whatever.

I also think that people should give you a copy of the starter's genealogy. Amy's starter begat Susan's starter, who begat Julie's starter, who begat Rachel's starter... I'd like to know just how old the bacteria I'm eating are.

So, I don't know what to do yet for sure, but I am very intrigued about trying coconut pudding in this stuff. Maybe adding in dried pineapple? I think this could be a lot of fun, although possibly also a second job.

Anyone local want some starter?

Fastest year ever...

Every so often I notice that the girls look a little bit older, or they act older, or something happens that makes me realize how much they've grown.

Tonight at the dinner table the girls had a lengthy conversation with me about digestion of all things (in simple terms of course, we just talk about tubes and bags inside you, and what they're called, and what happens to the food in the different parts of the system). This was brought on due to Elizabeth's first experience with....hmmm, to keep things delicate...a need for Mylicon. She's never had this problem before, even as a tiny baby she never had a moment's trouble getting any sort of air out of her. So she was hurting and upset, but was willing to be distracted by talk of digestion while Daddy ran to CVS to get Mylicon and consult the pharmacist. since we have never used this miracle drug before. She and Lilli both watch Sid the Science Kid on PBS, and already knew a surprising amount of information about digestion, but we had a good discussion anyway. Which made me realize that not too long ago Lilli wouldn't have been able to follow along with the topic, much less participate and ask questions that showed she understood. And feeling all sentimental about the passage of time, I went into my photo folders to check out last February.

What a difference a year makes indeed.

Then:

Now:

It amazes me. Where does the time go?

Back when I only had one child, and didn't know many other babies, I naturally thought everything Elizabeth did was amazing, extremely advanced, and super smart.

Of course I did!

And of course it was! We just won't mention to the old me that there were a lot of other amazing babies in the world at the time.

One of the things I liked to do back then (besides photograph practically her every breath) was to take pictures of Elizabeth "reading". I loved to watch her intently study her books.

She has always loved to pore over picture books, loves to be read to, and has a very good memory for any story that she hears or sees. She didn't stop any of these things, but after Lilli was born I had less time to take pictures of moments of contemplation, and was always trying to catch the interactions between the girls or with other people. I hadn't realized that that the above picture was the most recent photo I have taken of Elizabeth holding a book until I went looking for one tonight for this post. I have tons of pictures of people reading to her, but I took them to capture the moment of togetherness with the other person, not with the book.

So, why did I need a picture?

David and I both learned to read at 4. I'm pretty sure his mother taught him how, and possibly considered him a "late reader" at 4, since his older sister had learned to read at a young 3, and quickly went up in reading levels (Her son also learned to read at 3, although it was a late 3). I had a favorite book called "Whose Mouse are You?" that I loved dearly and had memorized. From listening to my mother read it (following the bouncing finger), I knew that the scribbly things stood for each word that she was saying. One day I noticed that the words that sounded the same looked the same. And then I started seeing those words other places. Presumably I knew my alphabet at this time, so I'm sure that helped, although I don't remember anything about that, only about making the connection. I went on from there pretty quickly, and was a voracious reader from early on.

I've always hoped that my children would love books. I don't care if they like fiction or biographies or Manga, but I want them to know the joy of getting lost in a good book. I never cared whether they read early or late, fast or slow, with great comprehension or haltingly, I just wanted them to learn.

When Elizabeth knew the alphabet out of context (meaning she could tell you what letters were in any word she saw, as long as they were capitals, and had the spelling of several words memorized) before she turned 2, I (besides briefly thinking I had a baby genius on my hand, not true, Lilli did the same thing at the same age) thought we were off to a good start with reading. But she didn't suddenly pick up a book and start reading it like I kind of sort of had started to hope that she would. Instead, over the last two years she gotten closer and closer. First she learned to recognize the lower case letters, then she started to haltingly practice writing letters, and then she and David started working on her memorizing what sounds the letters make (we also have one of those magnet things. "A says A and A says 'Ah'"). Slowly she has started to make the connections, to learn the sight words, to recognize words that she sees all the time without sounding them out. She has memorized how to spell even more words, writes letters with much more confidence, even typed me an e-mail with Grandpa's help on the words she didn't know how to spell, and is Getting There.

She's still not a Reader, or rather, is such a new reader, that she won't be getting lost in the Little House books any time soon, but she will be there before we know it. We really value literacy in our home, we read as much as we can, and we treat our books well, and I'm happy to see her excited about reading, and to have not lost her interest in books even though we're making practically all her current experiences with books learning ones, and sometimes you can see that her brain is tired out.

Tonight she read two separate sentences by herself:

"Dear Elizabeth, I love you! Love, Mama"

and

"We have a cat, her name is Abby."

It may not look like much, but she did not need any help, and that is a milestone.

We went out for ice cream.

Spin Cycle: I'll give you some love...

It just isn't the kind you probably had in mind...

My girls Heart Disney.

For other kinds of love, head over to the Spin Cycle hosted by Sprite's Keeper!

P.S. Don't worry, I love husband and my sweet girls more than I am able to express, and I'm firmly in the "Every Day should be Valentine's Day camp". Happy early Valentine's Day to them!