What the teacher wrote:
Mommy and Daddy, I want fruit leather in my lunch. Love, Ben.
What Ben told us the note said:
Dear Mommy and Daddy, I hate my lunch! Give me fruit leather in my lunch! Love, Ben.
Thanks for trying, Tiphany!
4 comments March 30th, 2006
It’s been so busy for me since the Berkeley Mother Talk that I almost forgot to write about it. But what a great night! Another rich discussion among a diverse group of women; I could get used to evenings like this. We met this time at Literary Mama columnist and reviews co-editor Rebecca Kaminsky’s home, with Leslie Morgan Steiner, editor of Mommy Wars, as our guest of honor.
I’d met Leslie just that afternoon at a reading for her book. Leslie, Jane Juska and Anne Marie Feld (holding her toddler on her hip) all read from their wonderful essays, and gave a good sense of the book’s range: one writer still relatively new to mothering and not currently working outside the home (Anne Marie, whose newborn was in attendance as well, in a sling around her husband’s shoulders); one writer right in the thick of paid work and mothering (Leslie); and one, Jane, whose son is grown now, her busiest days of working and mothering behind her. The bookstore crowd was mainly Jane Juska fans, older women who have gotten past the most intense mothering years and are, I hope, enjoying easier times now, perhaps as grandmothers. The reading provoked an excellent discussion of the many different options we find today compared to previous generations of mothers; society’s assumptions about mothers and work have shifted, and while the “mommy war” is a media construct, the struggle each of us faces to find the right ratio of mothering and working, for ourselves and our families, continues.
At Rebecca’s that evening, a different, younger group gathered: some women from the San Francisco Mother Talk earlier this winter, many Literary Mama editors and contributors (including Heidi Raykeil, in town promoting her new book), a couple new faces. Leslie kick-started the discussion by reading from her very personal introduction to the book, and we discussed this notion of the mommy war. Most of us are too busy just trying to get through the day to judge others, let alone worry about how our choice are judged. Leslie herself thinks of the mommy war as an interior struggle, and the essays in her book reflect that; they are long, thoughtful essays about each woman’s motherhood journey. As at the bookstore earlier that day, the book inspired an intense discussion about the choices we’ve made, the pressures on us, and the frustrations we all feel with the lack of societal and governmental support for our decisions.
I’m not the first to point out the exasperatingly hypocritical gap between the family values rhetoric of our government and the row of zero’s on my annual social security statement, but obviously there’s one place to start: recognize that every mother is a working mother. Let’s make the mommy war something real: a committed effort by all mothers to lobby for the support we need from our government, our employers, and our families, to recognize the work we do and try to make this job just a little bit easier.
2 comments March 27th, 2006
One of Ben’s favorite books lately is Eric Carle’s Pancakes, Pancakes. I like it, too, and I love the busy mother’s response to her son’s demand for pancakes: go harvest some wheat, take it to the miller to grind it into flour, milk the cow for some milk, etc, etc. Eventually he’s assembled most of the ingredients they need for pancakes, but the final recipe is a bit plain: 1 cup flour, 1 egg, 1 cup milk. Hmm. That’d be one leaden pancake, I think.
The other day, Ben wanted to cook breakfast and I wanted to use up some apples, so we made these very tasty pancakes, from Moosewood Cooks at Home:
1 large apple (about 3/4 c grated)
1/2 c small curd cottage cheese
2 eggs
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp maple syrup
dash of salt
1/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
Peel, core, and grate the apple in to a mixing bowl. Add the cottage cheese, eggs, cinnamon, syrup and salt and mix thoroughly. Sift in the flour and baking powder and stir well.
That’s your batter; I trust you can take it from there.
This morning, another pancake project. I had offered a “breakfast feast”– homemade granola, homemade pancake mix, and homemade maple syrup (thanks, Dad!)–for auction at Ben’s preschool last weekend, and it was time to deliver. I’d found a recipe for pancake mix on the web somewhere and mixed it up, then realized maybe I shouldn’t deliver it until I knew it worked. Someone had paid for this, after all. So we scooped out some mix and made a small test batch, and it’s great! The best plain pancakes I’ve ever made! So now I’ll make a batch of mix for ourselves because honestly, despite how lame it may seem to use pancake mix, havingonly one dry ingredient to measure out is going to make pancakes happen more often. And a day that starts with pancakes is a good day.
Pancake Mix
4 c flour
1 c buttermilk powder
1/4 c sugar
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Mix well and store in the fridge until pancake time.
To make pancakes, combine:
1 1/2 c pancake mix
1 c water
1 egg
2 tbsp oil
Let the batter sit for 5 minutes or so before cooking.
2 comments March 25th, 2006
Libby’s post on cookbooks, particularly Nigella and Donna, is just how I feel, so head on over there.
March 25th, 2006
In the midst of an otherwise forgettable week of rain and flu, Eli has started to crawl. Our precocious ten-month old (yes, we grow ‘em big and slow around here) has been doing all kinds of preparatory moves: push-ups and plank pose, downward dog and backwards scooting. He got himself stuck under the couch more times than I can count. But now, the world is his, and he couldn’t be more delighted, slamming his hands down heavily on the floor and laughing as he goes.
Time to get busy with the babyproofing.
2 comments March 24th, 2006
Eli’s got a great beauty queen wave going these days: arm straight, fingers extended, he rotates his palm slowly to acknowledge his many admirers. “Waving, not drowning,” a friend quotes.
But not me. Lately the to-do list is overwhelming me and I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water. Maybe it’s that there’s this 25-pound person always clamoring for milk, and a 45-pound person always clamoring for attention. Neither of them lets us get much sleep. And I know I’m lucky that the boys are the only ones clamoring; the house quietly grows more dust bunnies and the unanswered email stacks up in my inbox, but they are silent, and for that I am truly grateful.
Until I can really tackle the to-do list, I’ll try to take a page out of Eli’s book. Just smile and wave, baby; smile and wave.
March 22nd, 2006
When Tony and I were house-hunting a few years ago, we quickly learned to tell which houses were professionally staged. They weren’t just impossibly neat; they were the houses without shades or blinds (to let the maximum light into the house); without family photos (to let potential buyers picture themselves in the house); and without much furniture (to make the place look bigger). Which is not to say these staged homes are completely spare. My favorite touch was in one master bedroom, where the nightstand held a pale blue Tiffany box, its ribbon untied, the lid half off. “If you buy this house,” the box seemed to whisper, “You, too, will receive jewelry in bed.”
It was a nice fantasy, but not our house. The one we ultimately bought was staged with paint colors so good we redid them after our renovation this year, but the owner also prevailed on the stager to keep the funky 50s ceiling fixture in just one room (all the others were replaced with Ikea ), a sign of how past inhabitants had lived.
This month we sold Tony’s mom’s house, so we’ve seen the other side of staging. The stagers like Tony’s dad’s paintings and decorated around them with a modern look. They furnished the bedrooms with narrow beds to make the rooms look bigger, and set the tables for an imaginary meal: stacked at each setting were a charger, two plates, and a wineglass with a napkin inside. “But where does the food go, Mama?” Ben quite reasonably asked.
Meanwhile back in San Francisco, we’d invited the woman who sold us our new cabinets to come take pictures of the remodelled kitchen for her portfolio. Since she did as much, if not more, work on the kitchen design than the architect did, it was an easy offer. We cleaned the kitchen, even wiped down the cabinet faces, then got out of the way as she and her colleague made our kitchen their own. Toaster oven, bread box, cookie jar (sadly empty): gone! Knife block and espresso machine could stay, but the espresso macine was unplugged (?) and the bean grinder was banished. Our basket of fruit was replaced by a more artful arrangement of pretty much the same fruit, though theirs was dominated by a large pineapple. A colander of fresh tomatoes made sense to me, but the pair of water glasses, each holding a whole lime? Not sure what that’s about.
Still, if you want to make your kitchen look good for an hour, take all the cooking stuff away!
1 comment March 19th, 2006
At the risk of losing one of our few readers, one more tour of the neighborhood before returning to our regularly scheduled motheringbakingreading broadcast…
Sometimes the wind off the ocean is just too much for me, so I head east. This is risky, from a length-of-run perspective, as it takes me past Arizmendi and the smell of fresh cheese rolls — so rich and chewy, a vegetarian’s pork bun, a friend once said — might just derail me.
If I get past Arizmendi, there’s not too much to tempt me. Gordo’s, Sliders, and Park Chow are all still closed; Hotei is getting its fish delivery and though I love the restaurant, the smell of the fish speeds me up.
Then I just have to hope the light’s green, or I’m stuck at the stinkiest corner in the city. Seriously, I don’t know what’s wrong with the sewer right there, but in the ten years or so I have been travelling this route the smell here never fails to take my breath away.
But then I’m in the park and can breathe deeply again. The only problem with running here is that I don’t get the gratification of measurable progress. Running toward the ocean, I click off the avenues as I go. In the park, I run great slow loops along the paths, around the duck pond and the fountain, zoning out until finally my knees tell me it’s time to head home. Along the way, I check the progress of the cherry, magnolia, and crabapple trees, all starting to bud out. The rhodies and azaelas are still bare right now but the bulbs (hyacinth and tulips and daffodils) are blooming in careful beds outside the conservatory.
I see wigeons and coots and buffleheads — I love their names–at the duck pond, plus a stack of turtles basking on a rock in the sun. Sometimes there’s a great blue heron lurking in the shadows. I want to stop and watch him, see if he’ll fly; his wings stretch out as wide as I am tall, and he beats them so slowly it’s a wonder they lift him. But he outlasts me every time, a gray statue overseeing the smaller birds.
Finally, if I’m early enough, a group of Chinese ladies near the arboretum entrance, in baggy pants and loose tops, practicing tai chi. Their slow moves resemble the heron’s, and I hope that when I’m too creaky to run anymore, they’ll let me join them.
2 comments March 17th, 2006
Once he stopped nursing at night, Ben pretty much kept to his own bed; he wasn’t the kind of kid to climb out and cuddle up with us. Even in the morning, when I would try to coax him back in with Tony and me for a few extra minutes of horizontal time, he just wanted to go downstairs and get the day started.
But now that we’ve moved back home after the renovation, he’s climbing in with us all the time! At first it was only a couple nights a week, and he’d come thundering down the hall so loudly I’d wake up and scoot over for him. He’d cuddle up and fall back asleep (was he ever really awake?), and then when Tony had Eli settled back in his crib (because invariably Tony was up with Eli), he’d carry Ben back to bed. Once Ben went to the wrong side of the bed. Tony felt him patting his face like a cat, woke up, and took Ben right back to his own room. He hasn’t made that mistake again.
Then Ben started sneaking in so quietly I didn’t even wake up. One tragic night I stretched, realized too late that I had company, and pushed him out on to the floor. Ow! The look of betrayal on that boy’s face–I’m still feeling a little guilty.
He’s coming into our bed earlier and earlier now. A few nights ago, he made it in before Tony. The next night, I headed upstairs around ten and was surprised not to find him in his room. Tony was in with Eli. Where was Ben? Of course. I found him in our bed all by himself, cozy on my pillow, snoozing away.
March 14th, 2006
Last night, since I was out, Eli had a bottle of formula at bedtime instead of nursing. It was not his first bottle by any means, but the first Bedtime Bottle. Further, he had an entirely wheat- and dairy-free day. And for the first time in a week, he did not scream from 9pm to midnight.
I am surprisingly less troubled by the nursing thing than the prospect of his having trouble digesting dairy and wheat. What would I do? (Don’t answer that.) Somehow it seems like it would be easier for me to give up wheat and dairy than to give up feeding them to my child.
Well, we’ll give this a couple weeks and try again. Because the look on his face when he’s gnawing on a hunk of baguette is just too funny to lose.
1 comment March 14th, 2006