Benefits to moving boys into one room...

Open Letter to My Super-Secret Raw Milk Source

Dear SSRMS,

You rock my world, and your cow makes some damn fine milk. If (as a collective) we weren't so silly about food rules in this country, I would be way more blabby about this fresh milk thing, because good gracious, it's divine. As it is, I suppose I'm OK. I kind of like feeling a little scandalous when I'm eating yogurt.

A thousand times, thank you!!

Love, Virginia

No Knead Bread

Now that it's out of the oven and taste-tested, I can give my thumbs up to The Steamy Kitchen blog for this fantastic tutorial on No Knead Bread. While it really is quite easy, my four year old wasn't that into making it. He did, however, proclaim, joyfully, "It tastes like bread!" a few minutes ago, which is high praise from Henry.

So, you can get all the nitty gritty steps from the tutorial (it's very good), but I will just tell you that I used her whole wheat flour secret, but not her salt secret (kosher was not on hand, table was; this was weird but there it is). I let it sleep overnight for about 15-16 hours, and it's nap was a little long (2 and a half hours) because I forgot to pop the pot in to preheat, and then couldn't hear the timer going off for like five minutes because Henry and I were deep into a YouTube exploration in the bathroom (another story for another time). I swear all of that will make more sense if you read the tutorial.

Delicious, and easy enough that I just might become the bread baker around here... Check out the lovely steps I remembered to photograph!

Here is the dough after it slept overnight:

These are of the dough getting tucked in and taking its nap before growing again:

Ooooh, pretty new pot ready to get dough plopped into it for the baking!

And, the final product:

Now, go make this because you totally can. Seriously, it is crazy easy and so delicious. Yum!

Make Something Friday: Well, it got started!

I'm making no-knead bread this weekend. It got started last night (counts for Friday!) and I will post photos and a link to the tutorial I used as soon as it's done later today. Mmmmm, bread. Oh, and I'm using my new Le Creuset. Woot!

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Sent from my iPhone.

http://hamstocks.blogspot.com/
http://radicalmamalaw.blogspot.com/

Wordless Wednesday: From-scratch (less magic pasta) soup, Co-op and homemade goodness, Poor Henry of the bum eye

I know, three things. It's not been an interesting enough day to warrant one moment, in photos anyway. Henry has been a hoot.

Raincheck

Well, unless something miraculous happens before I pass out early tonight, Take Three of Bookish Tuesday is postponed at least a few days. Here, we have pouring rain and Henry with pink eye. Poor, contagious wee one stuck in the house! And poor mama trying to follow him around with anti-bacterial wipes to keep Toby and his contacts from getting infected!!

So, as soon as I can. Or next week. Alan Bradley. I'm on it.

Mama Monday: I love these kids. So. Much.

Open Letter to Toby, on this stormy night

Dear Toby,

I know that the sudden thunderstorm that had lasted through the late afternoon into the evening has been different. We don't usually get them for so long, so I can tell you are a little shaken. You are sleeping in a new bed, and you are learning all these new words, and your imagination is running wild. But here's the thing:

Tonight is not the night to spontaneously decide that the sound of thunder is really the sound of a monster coming, and therefore terrifying. It's also not the night to start screaming this at your brother, and freaking him out a little bit (even though he really doesn't think it's a monster coming. He just doesn't like unpredictable, loud sounds, and once he's a little on edge, the sound itself freaks him out. You aren't helping).

Last night you woke us up at midnight, and got papa and Henry up for the day around 4:00am, so while YOU got a nap, no one else did and everyone else could really use a peaceful night. Of sleep. Seriously, sleep. This monster business just will not do.

So, sweet darling, enjoy the slushy sound of the rain, and the cars driving on wet roads, let the thunder rumble through you, relax and go to sleep. Please. Please. Please.

Love and kisses,
Mama

Make Something Friday: Celebration Ring

In these dog days of summer, our little family unit doesn't have any birthdays to celebrate for a good long while, so why I am planning this Celebration Ring project above others is not something that makes a tiny bit of logical sense.

I am just completely in love with it, have all the necessary materials, and can do it in my lap on the couch - WINNER!

I found it on a lovely and inspiring blog - Rhythm & Rhyme - which has given me yet another reason to want to move to Australia.

If you are not familiar with Waldorf education, and Waldorf-style birthday celebrations for small children, you won't say "be still my heart!" just looking at this piece. But, if you have ever had the distinct joy of celebrating your child's birthday with his or her Waldorf class, you might be crying already.

I knew there was a magical birthday tradition at Henry's preschool, and I knew everyone loved it, but I was fully unprepared for how amazing, beautiful, moving - good lord, who even has the words? I sat in a room of silent two, three and four year olds, next to Henry, wearing his crown and rainbow cape, while his teacher told the most amazing story about a little boy choosing his family and coming through the clouds and across the rainbow bridge to join them. He knew exactly what to do, and crossed the little bridge, and did the candles, and it was magic. I sat there and cried, and smiled, and cried. And not a kid in the room looked at me funny, because I am guessing that I am not the first parent to sit there sobbing filled with love and joy and pride, but also humbling, pure, raw emotion. (Full disclosure, thinking back on it now and typing the overview is making me sit here and cry. It was so moving.) After the tradition was finished, we shared lovely special snack, and felt so lucky to have him in this world with me.

So with the rainbow bridge, there is this deep and beautiful meaning for me, and I hope for the boys since they are (or will be) getting Waldorf education. Gnomes are a central part of Henry's school and the Waldorf tradition and folklore embodied in so many of the stories, and the natural light of candles can be so calming. It's a simple little project, but one that I am really looking forward to making.

Oh, and I'm hoping to get shelves installed, the boys' bedroom together for sharing, the baby furniture sold on craigslist, and the nursery turned into an office. Before Monday. Happy weekend!

Wordless Wednesday: Summertime Swim Lessons

Bookish Tuesday: The Passage

The Passage
by Justin Cronin

I haven't seen an actual copy of this book, but have read elsewhere that it's huge. It took a good long time to read, given my general free-time constraints, but managed to get through the lots of dots on my Kindle. Finishing it made me feel accomplished, in part because it's a big book, and in part because I wasn't really that into it toward the end. The second half really. It picked up, but not a lot, right at the end. Just to preemptively tell you my rating, it's kind of an "eh" three stars.

Let me explain a bit about what drew me to the book, because I genuinely don't read this sort of thing with any regularity. I heard the author interviewed on NPR by Neal Conan, a couple of times, and the book sounded interesting if only because it was inspired by the author's conversations with his daughter, who told him his other work (award-winning modern fiction with which I am not familiar) was boring. She wanted him to write a book about a girl who saves the world. So, together they mapped an outline for this story, and he began writing the first of what he envisioned as three books. He submitted the first 400 pages under a pseudonym to his publisher (details about that I don't know, so don't ask me) and they picked it up and paid him big bucks to finish it. Oh, and he also sold movie rights before the book was finished.

What the heck is this book anyway? It's a story about militarily-engineered viral vampires/zombies, who are super-fast, glow in the dark, don't die unless shot down the throat or decapitated, and very specifically keep some of their prey alive, to facilitate the continuation of their new "species." There is also a girl, infected similarly but not bloodthirsty, who we know will save the world that has fallen into a strange, post-apocalyptic chaos with small colonies in the hundred years after the vamps have escaped, multiplied, and destroyed at least the United States (who knows about the rest of the world that tried to quarantine the outbreak). Oh, and these vampire-zombies are ugly, really disgusting, do not hang out looking cute, and are adept at ESP, mind control, and communication through telepathy.

Elements of zombies, elements, of vampires, elements of the modern take on both (think 28 Days Later), elements of epic clan-based books that envision a different human existence... All totally out of the box for my general pile of books. I'm not even into Twilight and that crap.

I did really like the first half of the book. Oddly, the whole storyline leading up to the creation of the contagion, the creation of the creatures, their escape, and the existence of the world in which everything was frightening and falling apart was compelling reading. Sure, we are talking pulp. This is not fantastic literature or anything, but there were some interesting characters, interesting stories, and compelling plot lines to pull things along. And the world of the novel's opening sequences is also in the future, so while it felt a bit clumsy at times, there was a certain element of fantasy even in what was recognizable and mundane, so it was not just a story about the military (with the help of private contractors) making vampire-zombies.

The huge jump that happens at a certain point draws you about a hundred years into the future, into a world where a small colony of people has cobbled out an existence that relies on light for life - daylight and huge lights on barricades surrounding the compound at night to keep the vamps away. The new society has created strange rules, and has created some strange idioms that I never really bought, as they were reminiscent of what seemed like an attempt to create slang in Star Wars: Episode 1 when Anniken wouldn't shut up about "wizard!" and it fell flat.

It was hard to immediately connect with all of these new characters, because everyone you had come to know in the first half of the book was dead or disappeared. what I find interesting looking back is that by the time I did get through the last 400 pages or so, I had come to at least moderately care about the new characters, or at least be interested in their journey. And while there were plot points that were, well, cheesy or contrived, it did regain my interest in the final pages. I was curious at the very least, about where things were going and how they would get there. And I do want to know how this girl will save the world.

If I didn't know the basis for the book, I'd be done with it. But there is something really interesting to me about a story that was functionally co-imagined by a father and daughter, and which has a powerful girl as savior at the center. I also heard in the NPR interview that the subsequent books won't just pick up where this book left off, but rather take us back to the moment the world falls apart and pick up a thread, adding to the world we have come to know through the second part of this first book. Which sounds more interesting than just finding out how the girl saves the world in another 1600 pages. So in a couple of years when the next book arrives, I'll probably read it. OK, I will definitely read it, I am curious. While it's genuinely crap, it's engaging enough for bedtime or beach blanket reading.

I should note that I have a crazy love/hate relationship with both vampires and zombies. I get completely freaked out by them, to the point of panic attacks in the middle of the night, and terrible nightmares, but I also kind of love them. Not the sexy ones, the really scary ones. I don't really get that. I am terrified of spiders, but if you asked me to get near one or to watch a movie about them, I'd freak out, run away, and flip you the bird from across the room. For some reason, I'm finding these creepy guys compelling, and I'm even slightly interested in what happens with this movie they a making, because the book kind of reads like it was planned as the bones for a screenplay. It could be terrifying or awful; it all depends on how they handle it, but I guess I will have to wait and see about that too.

In terms of the meanings behind this book, you could read a lot of things into the subtext, but none of it is hidden, subtle, or interesting. I would say that maybe it could end up in a more interesting place, but I'm not holding my breath. This is the type of book that is aware of it's genre placement, the political implications of it's placement, and tries to have subtext, but it's all floating right on top. It's no The Road, which is actually a deeply felt meditation on the human condition, the environment, the world and how we live. It's just all right there. It won't move you, or even really make you think, but that's OK right?

Next week, more pulp, but fun pulp. I'm thinking I will reveal my love for British mystery in all it's glory, and revel in my love for the new-ish Flavia deLuce series by Alan Bradley, starting with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

Mama Monday, Take One

Sometimes getting it together to do the things that would make me super-mama is a way bigger challenge than finding the initial inspiration. Take, for example, me desire to simplify our lives, our house, our schedule, and be more present with my kids. Has it happened in the magical way I envisioned it? Oh, hell no. Has it happened, really, at all? Maybe a tiny bit. A teeny tiny bit.

I have a list of craft projects that I *really* want to do hanging out bookmarked on my new computer, but I also have a list of books to read, things to clean, projects around the house, and other crafty projects that are not bookmarked to attend to - and that is if I have the motivation to anything other than eat ice cream and pie and watch TV. (OK, so that's just what I will probably do tonight, because I did bake a kickin' blueberry pie past night, so you know...)

I have been getting some knitting done. I have also been getting a little bit of research and organizing done to help me navigate Henry and his Aspergers. Of course, Toby has been in full time daycare the past week, and will be for the next month, and Henry has not been in school at all, so honestly scheduling has been so much easier for me. Whether it's all less stressful for the kids, eh?

I need tips from mamas or others on a few fronts, because I have these aspirations and I would really like to accomplish, and would love a little advice on making it come together:

1. Whole foods. While I would love to say that we never eat anything packaged, or take out, or crappy, we do. I am probably worse than the kids or Bret, but the reality is that our goals of not purchasing things we can make has not really worked out so well. We were doing better when we had the share from the CSA, but even then, I would hit the end of the day and not feel like cooking, and either cobble together something fast and dirty (and not generally something that Jamie Oliver would look kindly upon) or grab take out. Blech. We want to be baking bread, making cheese and yogurt, making crackers (maybe, that seems like it could be crazy-talk with my little nutters), making bagels... BUT, cooking with our crazy children around is next to impossible. By the time we hit the weekend, if Bret's inspired to make things, I've just gotten desperate for a break from being touched and whined at all the time, and hate letting him take off into the kitchen for hours. I don't really want to be in the kitchen for hours on end, in part because I am lacking in inspiration and confidence, and in part because I long for pre-kid weekends of sloth. Help me people. I need tips to inspire, and tips on freezer-ready foods! We do have a huge chest freezer, and having one cooking day a week and a few frozen-dinner-we-made-ourselves meals a week would be completely acceptable. Now if I could just get Henry to eat these things...

2. Crafting. I love knitting, handwork, needlework, blah blah - I need more time and more space for all of this craziness. I am getting better about keeping the stash manageable, and also getting better about not stockpiling too many projects because I am always finding new ones, but how do you crafty mamas do it? I see these amazing blogs, and I think to myself, "Self, these mamas cook from scratch, nourish their children's souls, look cute, make everything, and also take fashionably adorable photos of their cooking, houses, crafts, and clean children all the time. What gives?" Oh, and they have like five kids under seven to boot. Beyond the question of Who the hell are these people?, I want to know how they have the time to even create the image that they are making all this happen, and blogging about it?!?! It means that on some level the level of craftiness I want in my life must be possible, because I don't feel the need to be many of those other kinds of together, but I would like to be able to make a damn quilt once in a while.

3. Playdates. Where are you people and how can I find you? And how does anyone with children hang out with other people ever, because even with our more mellow schedule, I don't know that I could coordinate a playdate if I was getting paid to do it right now. Henry could use some more playdates, so holla!

4. General house maintenance. I feel like as we prep to do these renovations, everything is kind of falling apart. But I still need to call a plumber, possibly the alarm company, just had the phone company here, just got the AC fixed... Looking around, there are things that need painting, everything needs dusting, the exterior needs a good pressure-washing at minimum, every room could be cleaned out and reorganized. I don't have the time for any of this, let alone all of it so that we can have a nice house that's all put together. Or even a yard sale that would clear things out and also make us some money. It's like even these seemingly smaller-scale projects get swallowed in this overarching whole that is just, well, overwhelming. Not overwhelming in an end-of-the-world, or Hoarders kind of way, but just a little overwhelming. Enough to make me say a swear word under my breath and then opt to eat a piece of pie (I still need to go do that...)

So, send me your tips on whole foods (from scratch) cooking, baking, and canning, creating space for crafting, paying well with others, and generally getting my house in order. I know these are some of the ever-present mama issues, but whatever. I have to ask.

On another note, Toby and Henry are sharing "their" room for the first time tonight, so think happy thoughts for good bunk bed sleepers, with pleasant pixie dreams!

Open letter to sleep

Dear sleep,

Good friend, let's hang out more. I'm talking quality time, k?

Hugs and kisses,
V

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Sent from my iPhone.

http://hamstocks.blogspot.com/
http://radicalmamalaw.blogspot.com/

Make Something Friday, Take One: Easy peasy cotton knit baby blanket pattern

This weekend I have the daunting task of finishing two baby blankets for newborns that I need to visit (read, cuddle) next week. One is just a few short rows of seed stitch away, the other has a bit more to go,, but all in garter, so easy going.

Here is the simple pattern for an easy baby blanket, perfect for summer babes:

Four fat skeins cotton yarn
Size 9 circular needles
Scissors and tapestry needle

Using long-tail cast-on, cast on about 150 stitches. (You are going for about 30-36")
Knit one, purl one, to the end of the row. If you end on a knit stitch, on the second row start on a knit stitch (start on a purl if you end on a purl). do this seed stitch for about twelve rows.

For the next row, you can decide if you want the edges down he sides to be in garter stitch (flexible) or seed stitch. If you are doing the garter option, knit across one row. On the next row, knit nine stitches, then purl across, knitting the last nine stitches. Repeat those two rows until you have your blanket, then repeat the seed stitch patterfor twelve rows and cast off. if you opt for seed stitch edging, knit one, purl one alternating for nine stitches on the ends. Stockinette the middle. Seed the bottom edge.

Easy peasy.

I'll post some pictures when I get them together, and baby Cooperr has gotten his little present!

Guilty Summer Pleasure

Bookish Tuesdays: The Anti-Romantic Child

This is the first of what I hope will be a regular addition to the weekly lineup on this blog. I'm not actually reading a book a week, yet anyway, but I have been reading and can do some catching up while my "pile" of books also starts to get smaller...

The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy

by Priscilla Gilman

Just because I am way out of practice, here is the blurb to give you a sense of what I was walking into reading this book:

"The daughter of literary agent Lynn Nesbit and the late theater drama critic Richard Gilman crafts a beautifully sinuous and intensely literary celebration of the exceptional, unconventional child. Her son, Benjamin, was born when she and her academic husband, Richard, were in graduate school at Yale, where she was still working on her dissertation on the Romantic English poet William Wordsworth. As "Benj" grew older and failed to hit the usual milestones of children his age, exhibiting brilliant but "odd" behavior such as an obsession with numbers, aversion to physical affection, fastidiousness, inability to feed himself, and echolalia, Gilman realized these were "uncontrollable manifestations of a disorder," namely hyperlexia. Falsely reassured by their well-intentioned pediatrician, the couple finally sought professional therapists, and after they relocated to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where both got teaching jobs at Vassar, Benj made marvelous progress in school. Throughout her narrative, Gilman extracts from many of Wordsworth's poems, which comment on innocence and loss and gave Gilman tremendous succor during Benjamin's early development, making for both charming and studious reading. Her thoughtful memoir involves the breakup of her marriage, rejection of an academic career, and move to New York City to work in her mother's literary agency as much as it delves lyrically into the rare, complex mind of the unusual child."

When I read the description of this book, I immediately downloaded it on my Kindle and started reading with abandon. I "liked" the author on Facebook, I read her blog. Her son sounded more like Henry than any other child I have read about in the countless books I have read and half-read about Asperger's and hyperlexia. To be honest, as I raced through the text, her son reminded me eerily of Henry in many ways. Her reaction to noticing his differences was so familiar, and I could relate in many ways to being caught off-guard by this completely alternate parenting universe that had opened up and swallowed our family.

I can't say that I really liked the book, or that I could recommend the book, however. To be fair, my aversion came over time, and it was near the end of the fast and furious reading I was doing that I realized a few things:

1. I was, quite literally, skipping over all her chatter about Wordsworth, romantic poetry, allusions to literature, meaningful metaphor, etc., because they seemed, frankly, contrived. It had begun to remind me of something that seemed like a great idea, one you hatch in those moments of academic passion and work over and over in your head to the point that the brilliance of that tiny spark has been lost. Not because that spark wasn't brilliant, but because you have just taken it too far, and have stretched it too thin. It reminded me, in many ways, of my Master's thesis, or many of the "brilliant-at-the-time" papers and projects from college.

2. I like to think of myself as a potential writer. This book was precisely the kind of thing I'd write. Starkly, it demonstrated to me all the reasons it's not the best idea for a mama, who is very smart and well-read, but who doesn't have anything genuinely insightful and fresh to say, to write a book. It got kind of boring. I'll explain why below.

3. It was absolutely a memoir. Full stop. I think on some level I was expecting a memoir that also had genuinely valuable and insightful information for me as a parent of a similarly situated child, or something universal and profound. Maybe that was in there and I missed it since I didn't connect with the Wordsworth, but it was most certainly a memoir. Maybe I'm too close to the feelings to see how they are universal, or to feel touched in more than a "dear lord, that's us" sort of way. I wanted it to be more than a memoir, and it wasn't. The author seems like an incredibly lovely person, but it's really just a cut above what I write in my head as I fall asleep at night (with more literary allusions, which do make it far more intelligent than what happens in my head, but not necessarily more interesting).

4. My complex relationship with social media has really complicated my relationship with this book. I think I liked the book better right when I finished it, in part because I had not gotten daily updates, quotes, gushing reviews, and media clips posted by the author to her Facebook page. Again, she seems like a genuinely lovely person (she personally responded to me when I sent her a note saying that I related to her experience because our sons were so similar), but there is something about having daily updates, quotes, book tour updates, and even personal contact that makes me feel even more like this was just like the book that I had rolling around in my head, but she had the mom who is a literary agent so she got to write it. I've said on many occasions that even though I feel like all the stuff in my head is brilliant, the reality of it is that no one needs to hear all that, and I kind of feel like the filter would be a benefit here, but her mom got her a book deal.

5. (For the record, I get the hypocrisy of blogging about my feelings about this book, and I really get the hypocrisy that is what follows.) My own wish to have the book have some kind of resolution for her son, or for her, made me feel stressed out when it never came. She found peace in not having a solid diagnosis, and accepting his differences, and modifying her life in ways she never expected; but I couldn't get there with her. I was looking for some peace for myself, through her experience, but I wanted it to be reassurance that her son is OK, that he is doing great, and that Henry will do great too. It was like the book wasn't romantic enough for me in the end, and like I wanted reassurances or tips that would somehow get my family to a place of peace. I felt her when she wrote about the fear and the bitterness, and the frustration and confusion early on in her journey with her son, but it's as though she lost me somewhere around my own real-time experience. And now, with the updates and whatnot, I have no interest in her real-time experience, because I don't want that to be my destination.

In may ways, refusing to give solid definitions and diagnoses to her son, or to the challenges he has, Gilman does contribute a genuinely helpful (if maddening) portrait of the "spectrum" of autism, and all it's related disorders, syndromes, "-isms," "-ias."  Definitions are crude tools, and it is a continuum that defies easy labels, even when your child seems to be displaying textbook symptoms. Give it a couple of days, and something will fall out of place. It is a puzzle, a spectrum, it's complex and annoying all at once.

Like I said, I didn't really like the book, and I can't really recommend it because I didn't really like it, but at the same time... it's stuck in my head, and I can relate more than I want to. Maybe that means it's good, and i am just cranky. Certainly possible with this one.

Next week: Lighter fare reviewed! I'm deciding between the apocolyptic vampire-zombie book and delightfully cheesy British murder mystery... Or possibly Cormac McCarthy. We'll see what inspires.

Back from ASA...

...updates, book reviews, musings, ranting, knitting, and more to come soon. It was a long, long four days, but awesome. Toby starts "school" tomorrow, and Henry and I will be hanging out a lot, trying to be mellow and productive, all at once. It should be interesting. But now, sleeeeeep!! Hooray!

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Sent from my iPhone.

http://hamstocks.blogspot.com/
http://radicalmamalaw.blogspot.com/

Wordless Wednesday: ASA Conference, Day One.

Pre-Conference workshop (awesome) and bizarr-o Gaylord Palms Hotel. Home for next three days is weird, but filled with interesting information. And monkeys.

Something to come... BOOK REVIEWS!

I've been reading more lately, thanks to my Kindle, iPad, and rediscovered nighttime ritual of climbing into bed every night with some words to read. I like to keep the pre-bed reading on the lighter side (not educational materials or conference planning guides for upcoming trips - thrillers are fine, just nothing I might genuinely have to remember).

I have been trying not to read complete crap, but sometimes I do read complete crap. You are getting reviews of all of it. I'm ditching the "secret" part of my guilty reading pleasures, and you will get to read about what I am reading, even if I'm kind of embarrassed to admit I'm reading it because it's pulp.

You can, in the near-future, look forward to reviews of: The Anti-Romantic Child, No Country for Old Men, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, The Passage, and more! Woo, books!