Sukkah pics, anyone?

I made sure the troops were dressed in time for pictures this week.  Little did I know, however, that there was to be a mutinous attempt from the smallest rugrats to derail my photo-taking venture.

We took things out to the porch in hopes of coaxing a less-than-stoned expression from mes petites, 

but, alas!  No such luck.

The boys were strangely cooperative, for once...

...but that didn't stop them from mugging for the camera.

The sukkah itself is holding up pretty well in spite of the rain and high winds it withstood.

Festive, no?  (I spray painted the Chinese lantern roughly 16 minutes before candlelighting. 

It was looking a little drab...)

Check out our little outdoor hand-washing station! 

Finally got a decent smile out of the little creeps.

Also, tired people shouldn't be given too many M&Ms.

Just sayin'.  But at least she draws pretty pictures to compensate for her cruelty to confectionery.

My Creative Space: Whoa.

Something bizarre happened today.  I made myself a present, something expressly intended NOT to be put in the shop.  Then I blogged about it.  And lots and lots of people asked me to make them one.  Which is surprising.  And flattering.  And,really, kind of wonderful.  Isn't it?

Just checking in.

Sometimes I let my perfectionism get the better of me.  (Stop laughing, all of you.  I can so be perfectionistic! Mostly in my head, though.)  I put off posting because I haven't had a chance to upload my pictures, or because I have some misguided feeling that I should feed/bathe/entertain the spawn, or because I just don't have anything very exciting to write about.  James Joyce said it better than I ever could:

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination. 

 

 Sometimes I find myself lacking in one (or all) of those departments, and often I just can't get it together.  Like today.  The morning passed in the typical flurry of carpools, laundry and dishes.  The afternoon, heaven help me, was all about house hunting.  (And a leak in the furnace, and a birthday party that somehow escaped the calendar...)

But I wanted to tell you about the earrings I made in the wee smalls, after I finally lulled the littlest to sleep.  And about the fascinating new game that Chevi's worked out:  "Mommy, would you rather I was a hunchback, or a dog?"  "Would it be better to drown or get hit by a car?"  (I'm reserving a spot with a good therapist tomorrow.  For both of us.)  And about the thrift shop I've been frequenting, and the little treasures I've unearthed there.

Not just a bookend...

Remember the beautiful blue sewing machine that I got for ten bucks at the thrift shop?  The one that I couldn't get to work, and I was afraid would become a(nother) funky, retro-looking bookend? Well, somewhere in the midst of all of our packing I schlepped it in to the wonderful folks at the Des Moines Sewing Machine Company (Who in the world dreamed up that clever name?) and they were able to wiggle some metal thingies around and pop them into place, and bam!  She ran like a top.  Except that at the time,  we didn't actually check which direction she was running in.  Since it was a freebie (Golly, I love freebies!) the nice man made the stuck part unstuck and plugged the machine in.  She whirred, I purred, I offered to pay, he deferred, and we left.  When I got around to actually carving out an hour to sit down and put the machine through her paces late one night this week, I was gobsmacked.  She sews backward.  Exclusively.  The reverse button is well and truly jammed in, so I sewed an entire tote bag in reverse.  (Because I was far too lazy to go downstairs and bring up The Green Machine, or to figure out the tension issue I've been having with Old Faithful.  Much simpler to crank out a Backward Bag!)  I just thought you ought to know...

On Toys.

We had a playdate last night, and it made me think.  A friend of Chevi's came over after school, which had her thrilled beyond measure and bouncing off the walls.  As I puttered in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on supper, I kept hearing the little girl's plaintive refrain:  "But where are your toys?"  I popped my head out after the third request to see how my kiddos would respond.  "Do you want to draw?"  Chevi asked.  Negative.  "We have lots of books,"  Rachmy offered, leading her to the wall o' kiddie-lit.  "Your toys.  Dress ups?" the baffled child persisted.  "The dress ups are in the Purim box in the attic," Chevi said, stymied..  "How about Memory or Guess Who," I called out, hoping to appease them before my daughter was made aware of her apparent toylessness.  "But don't you have any toys?"  worried her little friend.  Rachmy plunged into the basement and returned, triumphant, with a Playskool garage and a handful of matchbox cars.  "Are there any people?" our visitor queried politely.

As I served supper (chicken-chickpea curry with brown rice, go me!) I reflected on her questions.  Surely we have toys in the house---I have six children!  I made a quick mental inventory.  Games?  Yup.  Dolls?  Yup.  (Even down to a Mommy-made quilt, blanket, and pillow, thank you very much...)  Little plastic animals and Matchbox cars?  Thanks, Nana!  Books, books and more books.  Lego?  Got it, but it stays in the boys' room...  Ditto the Playmobil.  Hula hoops, beanbags, and tin-can stilts?  Check.  Loads of letter magnets, puppets and jigsaw puzzles, an Etch-a-Sketch and a Magna-Doodle... but beyond that, nada.  

I squinched my eyes shut and thought hard.  What in the Sam Hill do they do all day?  Am I depriving my kids?  And if I am, why aren't they complaining?  I resolved to pay more attention on the morrow, and trundled off to bed.

This morning, the vast majority of my subjects headed off to school, leaving me with only Shani to observe.  She spent a half an hour sliding crayons down the ramp of the aforementioned Playskool garage.  She scribbled relentlessly with said crayons in her "journal."  She fed her doll and "packed a lunch" for the two of them in the kitchen.  She pushed the doll around the dining room in her stroller and then hid the crayons in the basket underneath.  She washed her hands, the bathroom sink, and much of the floor before I caught her. She folded washcloths and napkins and helped sort the laundry.  We tossed a beanbag back and forth. She's napping now, exhausted from her morning's exertions, and I'm not feeling particularly compelled to run to Goodwill to stock up on toys.

Over the years we've had cubbies overflowing with pegs and pegboards, linking toys, and every possible educational manipulative on the market.  We've had talking, buzzing, tweeting electronic devices from revenge-seeking well-meaning relatives, and even the odd Barbie or two.  But what my kids play with for the most part is each other.  We've phased out the useless bits and pieces over the years and stuck to what works for us.  What do you think?  What keeps your kids busy and happy?

This is my lunch break.

Honest.  The baby, bless her, is sleeping.  The muffins are baking, there's a load in the wash and one in the dryer and the dishes---for the moment---are done.  The house looks like it exploded while I was running carpool, and I decidedly do not have time to be blogging around.

But here I am, because, frankly, if I wait till the boxes are unpacked, the forms are filled out, and the kids are in bed, I'll never post another blog entry.  And that would be a bad thing for me, on so very  many levels.  (Speaking of bad things, I took my trusty laptop in to be repaired this morning and the guy laughed.  Out loud.  Bad thing.) 

I'll be cruising along, mid-life, and say to myself, "Gotta blog about this."  And then, as I begin to drift off to sleep, "Oh, dang.  Didn't blog.  Perhaps I should wriggle out from under my three blankets in the Coldest Bedroom Known to Man (and wake a sleeping kidlet or two in the process, no doubt) so I can dash downstairs, stumble over husband's yet-as-unpacked "office" boxes, and post something now?"  Not so much.

But I feel like I should tell you about what happened this morning while I was washing dishes.  I looked down, saw a funny grayish squiggle on a supper plate, and thought:  "A crack?  Nah, it's washing off.  Oh, I guess it's ballpoint pen."  I finished scrubbing the rest of the similarly-anointed plates, set them in the rack to dry, and did a belated double-take.  Did I actually form that thought and continue about my business without so much as batting an eyelash?  Because that, my friends, cannot be a good sign.  It reminds me of the time I turned to my middle son---who was old enough to know better, but not much---and said sternly, "We don't put pencils in people's ears."  I was completely unfazed by this remark, but the receptionist with whom I was making an appointment at the time couldn't decide whether to crack up or call Child Protective Services.

200.

Two hundred.  Posts.  Not "more boxes," which is only what it feels like...or "days since I last posted," or "things that I should be doing instead of playing blog."  I'm a little amazed that I've sat down in front of my computer two hundred times in the past year-and-a-bit and found something to say.  Even more amazing, though, is the fact that you're out there reading this, and commenting, and coming back for more.

Seven Snaps

Somewhere in the relatively recent scheme of Bernstein Family culture emerged a little gem of a game that we call Seven Snaps.  The snaps are an allusion, of course, to Mary Poppins' famous nursery-tidying-trick.  (...and snap!  The job's a game!)

Here's the lowdown:  You have seven snaps.  You can use them to set anything to rights---from the state of your bedroom to the national debt.  What are they? 

Snap!  50 pounds gone!
Snap!  Laundry.
Snap! Kitchen.
Snap! Divine the whereabouts of the long-lost Magic School Bus               DVD---and  get the library off my back.
                                                                                                        Snap! Win the lotto! (Hey, who said we had to play fair?)
Snap!  Find a house.
Snap! Make Shani forget what Gummi Bear, Charlie, and Babies Laughing are.  (Because some of us are trying to write a
 blog, here, you know?)

Matchy-matchy!

I am such a cheap date.

It's one of the things I like best about me.

Merit Badges?

Eagle Scout Awards
Originally uploaded by Alton Richardson

I was never a Girl Scout, but a number of times in the past month or so I've found myself longing for a wide sash to adorn with merit badges. There ought to be some way to mark our defining accomplishments, it seems, and to share them with the world. Conquering the circular saw, for example, is a little victory I'd be proud to wear emblazoned on my chest. And how about one for driving husband-less for 17 hours with 6 kids? I'll take 4 homebirth badges, thank you very much, and one for each of the unplanned hospital births. I'm pretty sure I've earned my Plunger badge, and one each for Dishes, Laundry, and Sarkiness. I'd like one for Croup Management, one for Tick Removal, and a nice shiny one proclaiming my Coop-Building proficiency. (I'd like one for Thirty Followers, but I guess I'll have to hang in there until the spirit moves someone, huh?)

I'm curious...

Doesn't it warm the cockles of your heart when the loinfruit leave you love notes on the meat that's thawing on the kitchen counter?

A boon for my lazy readers...PIF!

I finally took the time to ditch the Evil Word Verification step from the comment process.  Having spent far too many hours blog-hopping on my kootoyoo-palooza nights, I figured I'd start a grassroots movement to contribute to the general sanity of the blogging community.  Take the leap, people:  Click on customize in the upper right corner of your Blogger Dashboard.  Then click the settings tab, and scroll down to the word verification step.  Turn those suckers OFF and make your commenters sigh with relief!  Think of it as a random act of kindness, and pay it forward.

Happy weekend!

Framed!

I took woodshop in middle school.  I spent an entire nine weeks cutting, shaping, and sanding a...pair of salad tongs.  Not sure what the logic was behind the tongs, exactly, but that was the assignment, and by golly, that's what I made.  They were lovely.  In making my tongs, I used lots of large, noisy tools.  I wore eye protection.  With that kind of carpentry experience tucked snugly under my belt, my chicken-housing project should have been little more than a walk in the park, no?  No.  No park-walking here, boys and girls.  Let me share with you an excerpt (verbatim) from today's episode of Power Tools in the Playroom.

Me: (on cell phone, having reached the frayed end of my proverbial rope) Honey, I'm having a tough time with the back wall.  I can't get the kind of leverage I need to sink the screws all the way.
Jess:  How come?
Me:   Well, it's 6 feet tall, and I just can't get behind the drill like I did on the others.  How would you do it?
Jess:  I'd frame it up on the floor, I guess...butt it up against the wall.  That way you've got all the leverage you need.


Me:   Uh-huh.  (meaningful pause.)
Jess:  What's wrong?

Me: Just to clarify...
Jess: Yeah?

 Me:   This process should not involve me standing on chairs?
Jess: (coughing suspiciously) Um, no.  Not so much.

Me: Because that's how I did the first three.  On a chair.  With a lot of swearing. In Pig Latin.
Jess: You're breaking up.  I'll talk to you when I get home.

Yeah.  So the final wall went together like butter...in roughly a third of the time it took to assemble each of the others.  Which brings me to another handy little trick-of-the-trade I thought I'd pass along for those of you less-than-savvy carpenters out there:  The Pre-Drilled Hole.  When your husband tells you to pre-drill the holes for your screws, he does not mean that you should drill each hole just before you put in the screw, while standing on a chair and cursing in fluent igPay atinLay.  He means, Clever Clogs, that you should put the amnday board on the sawhorses (NOT  on the arms of the playroom couch) and drill all 7 sets of holes before you do anything else.  And then, while you've still got the drill bit in the drill, go ahead and do the other board the same way.  Then, my little Ty Pennington wannabe, you can switch to the Phillips bit and attach the whole kit and kaboodle at once.  Just sayin'.

So the framing is done, and tomorrow I'll be digging a trench to put the pavers on before we raise the walls.  Meanwhile, those chickies were growing like a time-elapsed National Geographic special from 1978, so the kids and I rigged up a halfway house for them. It's a bit more spacious, and allows the girls to get reacquainted after their long separation in two separate brooders. 

The Hat Makes the Outfit...

Some seasonal confusion has erupted Chez Littlegreenbums.

We're basking in this spring weather, but are aren't quite sure it's time to stow the winter gear away just yet.

Which results in some unusual wardrobe selections.

Enjoy your thaw!

Here Lies Frosty...

This week's temperatures (in the mid-40's!) have made short work of our faithful snow friend.  Darn.  And I was hoping for a few more months of graying slush, treacherous roads, and not being able to pull into my driveway without the aid of a winch...

Dear Loinfruit,

You're a cutie.  

Really, you are.  

 

Your sweet hugs and sticky kisses are the fuel that keeps me going on the days when I find myself channeling Roseanne instead of Martha.

Seriously.  You've got redeeming qualities.  In spades.

And that's a good thing. Really.  But there's something I need to tell you, Little One, with all of the mother-love that swells my heart.

Stop. Touching. My flippin'. Camera.

Love,

Mommy

If you've been paying attention...

Photo credit: mactabbie from morguefile.com

You've probably noticed that I'm getting crunchier.  Eating locally.  (Well, trying to.  Not easy in February.  In Iowa.  But I did forgo those bananas on Thursday when I did my weekly shop, so that's gotta count for something...)  Composting.  Gardening.  (Thinking about gardening, anyway.  Still February.  Still Iowa.)  Raising chickens.  Taking the pledge.  Making my own yogurt, even. (Had to get that last one in there...we're almost ready to make Batch #2.)   We're making progress, crunch-wise.


Last night, our little family sat down for an educational movie night.  (Those of you who know me well should catch the significance of this event:  I've probably  managed to sit through 3 feature-length films in the past 10 years.  They don't call  me ADD-Girl for nothing...) The feature?  Food, Inc, the eye-opening documentary from Robert Kenner.  There's a conspiracy theorist in our house, and people, it ain't me.  I'm usually the one grasping at straws, Pollyanna-ing on about how probably the Twin Towers were structurally unsound to begin with, and maybe Lee Harvey Oswald was just cleaning his gun....but this flick had me ready to swear off processed foods altogether.   I was gratified to have ordered the seeds for our garden-to-be, and fired up to build that chicken ark once and for all. 

I'm pretty squeamish, but the carnage and filth didn't get to me.   I believe animals should be treated humanely, but I'm not naive enough to expect that they will.  It was the footage of 2-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk, who died after eating E. coli tainted beef, that did me in.  Kevin's mother, Barbara, shares her struggle to reinstate Kevin's Law, which would give the USDA power to shut down plants that repeatedly produce meat contaminated with E. coli or other deadly pathogens.  I'm not getting why this is a struggle.  It's distressing to think how "bought and paid for" the food industry is. 

Right.  Hopping off my (borrowed) soapbox now...the point of this post would be simply that the Hubs and I are in agreement that we'll be cutting (further) back on processed foods.  We'll be making more of an effort to feed ourselves locally.  We're placing an order for kosher grass-fed beef today.  And of course, we hope to rely on the bounty of our impending urban homestead to fortify our family.  Stay tuned...

Bloggable?

You non-blogging folks out there just don't know what it's like:  You're walking through the grocery store.  Your 5 year old spies a blue-haired Granny at the checkout counter buying, say, for example, a package of Depends.  "Mommy, why is that lady buying diapers?  She's too old to have a baby!" she blurts out.  Now, any normal person would be assiduously dying of mortification at this point, but what's meandering through my mind?  "Hmmm...Should I blog about this?"

Just about everything is potential blog-fodder these days.  Shall I tell you about the homemade pita we devoured for lunch yesterday?  The beer bread I served with supper tonight?  The rice bags I finally checked off my list after I got the baby to sleep?  The fact that the baby's decided to flat-out ditch her naps and thereby deprive me of any semblance of time to blog?  The hysterical, thought-provoking book I'm in the middle of?  The equally funny, similarly-challenging book I just polished off?  The garden plans I've been mulling over when I should certainly have been asleep?  The blizzard that jumped out of nowhere and catapulted us back into Winter, just when we were starting to moon over Spring?

Socrates said that "The unexamined life is not worth living."  I wonder if this is what he had in mind?