Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Yesterday my friend Britt and I were looking at asparagus recipes, because who doesn’t love to get together and eat asparagus? (We sure do!)  We ended up with some delightful baked asparagus fries–complete with homemade dip–partly because we were too full from piecing to go with this Creamy Pasta with Asparagus and Bacon.  Tonight for dinner, however, was a completely different story, and let me tell you what–it was fabulous.  It’s true that you really can’t go wrong with these ingredients, but still, I was more than happy with how it turned out.  I did substitute for the heavy cream, because GENETICALLY HIGH CHOLESTEROL and oh, hey, I didn’t have any; one can of evaporated milk topped off to two cups with whole milk from the baby’s jug worked nicely.  I forgot to go out and cut the parsley when I meant to (that about broke my heart!), but the only other change I made was more of a fix.  The description of the recipe mentions “steamed asparagus,” but nowhere in the directions did it actually say to steam it; I just threw it in the pasta water for the last 2 minutes and it was perfect.  (Oh, and I used penne, because it’s so easy for finger feeders to pick up and eat.)

If you like alfredo–the Parmesan-y kind–you should try this.  If you like bacon and asparagus–try it this week!

As we were reading the “due and not renewable” library books one last time, I decided it would be a crime not to showcase a few of my favorite.  (Would that I had the time to blog about them individually, but I’m just really not in that stage of life at the moment!)

Swan:  The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova won my six-year-old’s heart (that would be the one who adores the emotionally complex).  I can’t describe the illustrations nearly as well as my mother could–she has an art education degree–but they were lovely.  What overwhelmed me, however, was the beauty of the text; it has a lyrical, haunting quality, especially at the beginning and the end.  It manages to be poetic and yet convey a great deal of information about Pavlova’s life without seeming to, and it inspired my girls and me to search Youtube for footage of her dancing.  (It was there, by the way, which is impressive–she died in 1931.)

ABC Dream (by Kim Krans) is the kind of text-less picture book that one most definitely still reads.  Each letter of the alphabet is given 1-2 pages; the A page has an apple core being eaten by ants, another apple with arrows through it, and an argyle pattern within the A itself.  My kiddos all enjoyed examining each page, and they certainly learned some new flower names (zinnia comes to mind!).  Even adults will have to search, which makes it fun for everyone.

Pamela Zagarenski’s The Whisper has incredible illustrations, full of whimsical detail and fancy.  A little girl who loves stories borrows a book from her teacher, but finds when she brings it home that it is only pictures, no words.  A whisper on the wind tells her not to be disappointed, and sets her to using her imagination in delightful ways.  The next day the words are returned to her–they had “spilled away”–by a visitor from a well-known story collection; it ends with a twist that delighted me.

All of these are well worth your time–I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

It’s been a while since I’ve managed to read non-fluff on the treadmill; whatever I read there has to distract me sufficiently from the fact that I don’t enjoy exercising to make the time pass quickly.  Teddy Mars:  Almost a World Record Breaker, however, did the trick.  Teddy’s narration pulled me in and entertained me from the get-go, and his family, friends, and neighbor were all people I enjoyed inviting into my head.  His passion for The Guinness Book of World Records makes for all sorts of fun, and the results of his attempts to set one himself are varied (and not always predictable).

I will say that I have a well-developed sense of fair play and would have handled Teddy’s younger brother differently than their mother did; on the other hand, I know parents who wouldn’t agree with me.  Ultimately, it didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the story–I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the sequel.

Bottom line?  This should appeal to boys and girls in middle elementary and up.  (And you’ll enjoy it, too!)

Technically, the day started at 3 something, when my one-year-old cried; I couldn’t give her ibuprofen, OR milk, and she wouldn’t settle, so she thrashed around in bed with me until almost 5, when I woke up enough to see that she was asleep and put her back in her bed.  (By the way, I did NOT bring my other three into bed with me, but this one is my worst sleeper, AND she shares a room, AND I just need sleep more than I did when I was younger.)  I got up again at 5:40-ish, brushed my teeth and got dressed, and then changed that same girlie’s diaper and clothes.  We got to the hospital for her tubes at 6:15-ish, and she won over everyone else in the waiting area AND the prep area before getting taken back herself.  Thankfully, everything seemed to go smoothly, and so we were home in time to drop something off at Daddy’s work and pick my 3-year-old up from preschool.  (Smoothly doesn’t mean that she was not highly offended at the thought of juice instead of milk in her bottle.)

My uncle came by to discuss our bathtub project after lunch, and then my second got home from school, and then I picked up my oldest from her piano lesson and took her to a doctor’s appointment.  My amazing friend Britt–who was in charge of her five kids as well as my three younger ones for an hour and a half–was holding my sleeping one-year-old when we got home, and yet she STILL supervised the crew for enough longer that I fit in my 20-odd minutes on the treadmill.  (Did I mention that she also has a one-year-old?  True, she was asleep most of the time, but still.)  By the time we got the kids in bed, accepted my nephew’s girlfriend’s keys (she’s parking her car here for a couple of weeks), and sat down to do our post-children stuff–whew. Quite the day.

Here’s the thing–it was worth it.  Both doctors’ appointments went well, and I have amazing friends and family who helped pick up the slack.  We are blessed.

All the same, I’m not at all sorry that the day is over!

Today at the library the woman behind the desk told me that their circulation has increased in the past month, and she thinks it’s because of me.  (Apparently, it’s quite the self-esteem booster when they pass another branch, so fear not–this is a good thing.)  It’s possible this is because she sees me lug one stack of books at a time up to checkout, usually making four trips altogether (one per card).  It’s also possible that she offered to put a book back on hold for me when I didn’t have space on my husband’s card for it.  (Zoom! zoom!:  sounds of things that go in the city will be waiting for me next week.)

Just doing my part to support my community.

I didn’t even think of posting last night, which tells you how distracted I’ve been.  What can I say?  I’ve got family in town, my one-year-old had an appointment with an ENT this morning (she gets tubes on Friday), it was General Conference weekend, and today is my hubby’s birthday.  I thought about posting 41 things I love about him, but that felt like a longer undertaking than my tired brain could handle.  His lucky number is 4, however, and so here are four reasons why I love him more now than I did when I married him:

1.  He is the most gentle splinter-remover on the planet.  Seriously.
2.  He is an incredibly patient Dad.
3.  He just finished building me a new computer–Hallelujah!
4.  Even though he’s a far better pianist than I am, he notices that I’m improving and makes me feel good about the progress I make.

Happy Birthday to him!

Today I went to the podiatrist and had a bump cut out of my foot, more or less.  We’ve been working on this for a while; he’s scraped it down, and scraped it down, and used the stuff they use on warts, and it keeps coming back.  (When I say “it”, by the way, I mean “it”.  He can tell me all kinds of things it isn’t–not a wart, not this sort of cyst, not that sort of cyst, not a tumor, not a corn, etc.–but he can’t tell me exactly what it IS.  According to him, this happens more than you’d think.)  Today he actually numbed it and used something scalpel-ish to dig out the core, leaving a neat little cone-shaped hole in my foot surrounded by the lovely shade of iodine.  He told me the numbness would last 4-6 hours, gave me some ibuprofen (the 800 mg kind) and some directions for bandaging it, and sent me home.

You know how the dentist always warns you not to chew on your lip when it’s numb?  I’ve never done that.  Walking around while my foot was numb as if nothing had happened, however, seems to have been a poor choice in a similar sort of way–a poor choice compounded by me choosing an “easy dinner” that involved no prep beforehand BUT trip after trip after trip to the griddle to flip the pancakes.  When it started to hurt and I finally sat down to look at the bandage, it had bled through my sock quite noticeably.

Ooops.

Thankfully, tomorrow is my church’s General Conference, which means we get to listen to messages from our leaders on TV (if you live close enough to Utah) or online (if you don’t).  It’s an inspiring weekend full of counsel that always blesses my life when I follow it; it also doesn’t require me to wear church shoes or walk around, which is apparently going to be a good thing this time.

If you have an interest in what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is really about, go to lds.org and have a listen–tomorrow’s morning session starts at 10 am Mountain Daylight Time.  (And if you should ever happen to have your foot numbed, be careful how much you walk on it until the numbness wears off.)

It took me longer to read Red Butterfly than it should have, because Easter.  (And a sick and teething one-year-old.)  I finally finished it last night, however, and I can’t help feeling that the time it took to read it made the book more meaningful to me.

Red Butterfly is the story of Kara, an American Chinese girl who ultimately becomes a Chinese-American.  It is also a story of different kinds of love, of different levels of sacrifice, and of different ways of being brave.  Reading it more slowly gave me time to ponder how those differences worked together in different people, and what that meant for Kara’s future.  The book didn’t end the way I initially wanted it to, but by the time I finished it, I was glad of it.  Adoption can be complicated, and Kara’s situation didn’t end perfectly, but it ended well.

I actually checked this out on my 9-year-old’s library card, thinking I’d read it and pass it along to her; after finishing it, I opted just to return it instead.  Kara’s situation would have frustrated her, I think, and a fair portion of the book would have been emotionally beyond her.  My second girlie, on the other hand, LOVES the emotionally complex.  She loves listening to Patricia Polacco’s books (many of which are impossible for me to read aloud without crying), wonders aloud about what would happen if her future husband died (she “doesn’t want to raise children by herself”), and is currently adoring a picture book about the life (and death) of Anna Pavlova.  If she were 9-plus, she’d probably love this one.

Bottom line?  There’s a lot going on emotionally in this book, but it’s ultimately an impressive read.

Give it a try.

Yes, my daughter’s genre report on a comic book is ancient history by now, but I finally got around to reading the last contender of the 5 she chose from.  Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales:  One Dead Spy was actually kind of a riot; there was amusing banter all the way through, and it served up a slice of American history with impressive accuracy and a great deal of humor.  Graphic novels may not be my thing, but I’m hard pressed to imagine a better way to have done what Nathan Hale (the author, not the spy) did. My daughter enjoyed it as well, so if you want an adventurous graphic novel that entertains and teaches simultaneously–and who wouldn’t?–this book is for you.

Today was a rough day, I have to say–I stayed up too late, which made the sick, teething, fussy baby who won’t sleep much that much harder.  On the other hand, we had a truly successful family night last night about the meaning of Easter, and we did our baskets this morning so we can focus more on the Savior tomorrow.  (Also, I confess, because we have 8:30 church.)  And, since I’m really trying to go to bed earlier tonight, I’m leaving you with an Easter message:

Hallelujah

Enjoy, and I hope you feel blessed this Easter!