This moment

This moment. 

(My dad and Kadin playing chess via Skype. Do note that they're making the same expression while concentrating. Fun fact. My son and my father are not biologically related.)

'This moment' idea adopted from SouleMama.

Dear, sweet Ansel

I see a lot of bloggers doing focused posts on their children's birthdays. I think this is super charming and dear and a generally great idea. But.... I missed Ansel's birthday. He turned 6 in December. But yesterday he had his 6 year check-up, so we'll consider that good enough and go with it. He clocked in at 47 inches and 58 pounds! He's already starting to outgrow his size seven clothing.

Ansel is a ball of joy and passionate emotion. When he's happy, he's not just happy, he's over the moon. When he's sad or angry, it is no small thing. The whole world is ending and there will never be another day of sunshine.

He loves art, music(he always asks me to change to music if I put on NPR), running outside and playing with sticks, Star Wars, the color green, chocolate, bananas, and anything his older brother wants or likes.

Ansel is very affectionate. Just last night he fell asleep laying on top of me. I don't know if it's just his inherent personality or if it's from the many years of breastfeeding, cosleeping, and babywearing, but he loves to hug, kiss, hold hands, and generally lay or sit smashed up against his adult of choice. He tests my patience on a daily basis, but makes up for it in sweet gestures. Just last night he grabbed my face, kissed me and said, "You're the most beautiful woman in the world and I'm sorry for every mean thing I've said to you." You can't make this stuff up! I don't know where he gets it! 

(The photos were not taken by me. I wish I had that much talent! They were taken by Melody Yazdani Photography.)

Pear and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette Salad

There are a few things I love. I love bacon. I love blue cheese(not dressing, just the cheese). And I love vinaigrette dressing. Oh my, I love it.

So when I found myself with a whole lot of ripe pears to use, and in looking for ways to use pears I found a delightful recipe that used pears and vinaigrette and blue cheese, I am there!

Original recipe here at All Recipes

 I made a few changes, to suit our tastes and to match what ingredients we have on hand.

Pear and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette Salad

• 10 ounce bag mixed field greens (I used arugula)
• 1 pear, cored and sliced
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
• 4 slices bacon

For dressing:

• 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Whisk the dressing ingredients together. I tossed most of the dressing with the greens next. Then I added toppings and drizzled the remaining dressing over the top.

It is sooo good! This is definitely a keeper. I'd probably add a second pear if I made it again because their taste is really muted. I was a little bit leery about the maple syrup, but it wasn't a strong flavor at all.

Nature Walk

Our first official day of homeschool went fairly well, all things considered. It's going to take some time to work out those darn kinks.

We had a mini field trip of sorts in the afternoon. The husband didn't have work so we all wanted out of the house for a little while. We visited a local nature trail to get some fresh air. There was a lot of walking involved and even some running by the boys, so.... PE maybe? We'll figure it out.

Kadin being Kadin wanted to read the information. No prompting necessary! This one was about snakes we might encounter. We didn't, fortunately.

Kadin, husband, and dog ran on ahead, leaving Ansel and I behind. Oh well, photo opportunity!

I also managed to convince Kadin to let me take a picture. This is just about the time we realized there was very likely a skunk nearby. So we high-tailed it right out of there!

And here's that ugly little dog running straight at me. He's nothing, if not enthusiastic! His name is McFly, by the way. He's also currently curled up right next to me on the couch. This, after he managed to dig an oatmeal cookie I had in my purse. Hrmph. Not cool, McFly, not cool.

Also check out Friday's Nature Table over at The Magic Onions. 

A cup a day keeps the monsters away

Today is our first day of homeschooling "officially." I submitted our letter of intent to the state and now I need to withdraw the kids from the school they've been attending and we're ready to go. I also ordered the books we'll be using to start our curriculum. The first big shipment is due tomorrow, and we'll have more trickling in for the next few weeks. Fortunately, only one came back as backordered, and it's the B book to an A/B set, so we'll be good for a while without it anyway. Phew!

Additionally, I assure you I am not shirking my children. Ansel is sitting here working on an alphabet worksheet and Kadin is working on maps. We are rolling slowly along. I'm expecting some bumps and some chaos for a while, but we'll get the hang of it. I am a little intimidated by all the books I have coming my way, though. I'm going to need some quiet time to sit down and go through them and plot out how to get that whatever point I think we need to make it to by May and then divide through the weeks until then, and, and, and....

So what I will give you, quickly, is a small personal victory of mine. And it's about coffee.

I used to drink a lot of coffee. Really. a whole lot of coffee. So much coffee, it's hard to even say how much I drank on a given day. I wasn't exactly counting it, I was just consuming the heck out of it.

I guess, on an average day, there were probably about three cups in the morning. And then another cup in the afternoon. Sometimes some black tea. On especially challenging days, there'd be an energy drink. Maybe two. And if I left the house, I'd likely end up at Starbuck's, where my usual order was a doppio expresso with a pump of caramel and a venti iced coffee with milk, lightly sweetened. Oh my.

I cut back gradually. It was less painful than I had expected. I got it down to about two cups in the morning when I decided to cut the sugar, too. In years past, I had consumed my coffee with International Delight French Vanilla. It was lovely and it was convenient. When we switched to more whole foods, I moved to half and half with cane sugar. Then I tried using the MyFitnessPal calorie counter for a while, and I hated seeing my allotted calories getting sucked away in coffee. So I took the sugar out. I've actually grown to like it!

My daily coffee intake is a lot more reasonable now. I have a cup of coffee in the morning. That's it! But I promise, you will pry that final cup out of my cold, dead hands. I love it too much to let it go. I value it. It matters to me. The routine, the smell, all of it. It is here to stay.

Homeschool, ahoy!

School starts back on Tuesday, after a long winter's break. My kids won't be there.

This hasn't been an easy choice. And it hasn't been a quick decision either. It's something my husband and I have discussed for years off and on. There were points where it seemed like the only good decision, like when we were considering a move to Savannah, Georgia, which isn't exactly known for it's awesome school system. It was a consideration when we pondered how our super active younger child, Ansel, would deal with a structured school setting where his every want and desire and urge couldn't be catered to, and there's been considerations for our older son, Kadin, who is gifted, but has a hard time staying focused for various reasons. (I should point out that it has been suggested to us that Ansel is gifted as well, and a lot of his challenges are indicative of those of a young boy who is gifted. He doesn't have problems, just challenges.)

And then Sandy Hook happened, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that brought the discussion up again. It's definitely not the reason, but it's a factor, not gonna lie.

We're also looking to move whenever a job opportunity comes up, and it took Ansel the whole first semester to get even kind of settled in his current school situation. I shudder to think how he would handle a mid-year transfer to a new school and a new class. He knows the current expectations, and he still gets in trouble frequently. He just can't quite contain himself. There's all this energy and spirit balled up in his tiny little person and it just wants out!

First day of school 2012

Over this break, I cobbled together a little makeshift trial curriculum, just to see how things would go. We tried a couple of days of short 'school' sessions, and it went.... well. It'll take some work and some getting used to, and better curriculum options will help a lot. But the boys did really well, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching them figure things out. I enjoyed watching them enjoy what they were learning. Ansel's reading is exploding and he is loving the accomplishments. He wants so badly to read. Kadin and I are diehard readers, and I think the modeling is working on Ansel. He sees that there is this wealth of knowledge and fun in books, and he wants in. Of course I read to him, but he wants access to it even when I can't sit there and work with him. We tried reading these little books with the goal being one a day, and the other evening he just wanted to keep going. He got through five of them before deciding he wanted to move on to something else, and I was so proud of him. But it wasn't a system that would have worked in a formal school setting. A formal setting would have dictated how much time could go into it. And he wouldn't have been allowed to, inch by inch, crawl up onto the table and squirm around and kick and wiggle and flop every which way. But if that gets the words into his brain, all the better! I can put up with the wriggling. A school can't, I get it.

I also realized that Kadin has some major holes in his education. I'm flummoxed, and a little bit disappointed in myself. I hadn't realized how much he didn't know. I was under the ignorant impression that getting As in classes meant that he was learning. I guess not. He did not do anywhere near as well on some evaluations that I gave him as I would have expected. We're going to need to work backwards to try and fill in some blanks. He wants to be a scientist of sorts someday, so he needs a firm foundation in math, and right now I don't think he has that. He also has a lot of scattered interests that I would like to help him delve into.

One problem that I foresee is that we live in a very conservative area. There are homeschooling groups, but they are mostly religion based. I've heard rumor that there are other resources, so I'm going to keep looking and find what I can. I don't worry about socialization. My kids are social to a fault, and it wouldn't hurt them at all to be learning in an environment that doesn't have constant peer distractions. They will not be cut off from the world, we can be quite sure of that.

So, I'm overwhelmed. And I'm confused. And I'm at least a little bit scared. But I'm good with it. It feels right. It'll work ok. And it's not forever. For right now, we're going to finish this school year. Ansel is in kindergarten and Kadin is in fifth grade. We'll re-evaluate at the end of the school year and decide what to do about next year. I'm going to miss my free time. I'm going to miss Ansel's teacher, who has been amazing on every possible level and has really blown every teacher cliche out of the water. I'm going to miss the neighborhood parents I've gotten to know at after-school pick-ups. And I'd be lying if I didn't admit I was going to miss some of the hands off advantages of having someone else direct my children's day to day education. But really that's a cop out, and I am the parent and I can't let someone else steer the boat down the wrong path.

You may think that I'm a food hoarder, but I'm not

So I had Big Plans for today. And then I woke up this morning around 9, and my stomach hurt so badly I didn't want to move. So I didn't. So then when I woke up at 10:15, I re-evaluated. And my stomach hurt so badly I didn't want to move. Then at about 11:30, I woke up, but this time I could hear my children shrieking(happily) from the TV room while playing Wii, so I decided I needed to get up and shush them before they woke up the husband(who works an odd schedule and often sleeps very late). So I did. And since then, I've been functioning from a reclined position on the couch in our family room. I have a great view of our Christmas tree from here. You know the one, the one I was going to get put away this weekend. Well, about that.....

So I had to re-calibrate. How to blog about healthy lifestyle choices with a minimum amount of effort. Hmm.... I considered a few meals I could make, but I lacked the oomph. There were a couple of other brief considerations, yet no oomph could be found. A friend suggested a blog about reading. Even that sounded too labor intensive. Ah-ha, but this week I did organize my pantries. My sad, less than exciting, yet obnoxiously organized pantries. So that's what you get. This is also your first glimpse of our "new" house, aside from my kitchen counters. By the way, it's not new. It was built in the 1980s and we moved here in March, be that as it may....

This is our 'main' pantry, if you will. It's right outside the entry to our kitchen. Upon moving into the house, it seemed a very poor layout, but we've grown accustomed to it. This is where we keep items that need to be readily accessible. The door also holds most of our herbal teas. Easy to see, easy to access, works great! 

The top shelves.... I keep items that I want to be slightly harder to access at the top. The kids can get to it, and they do, but they need to pull a chair over which usually draws some attention. Cereal, chips, crackers, and so on. 

The next shelf.... Canned soup(almost all bought at store clear-outs), hot sauces, peanut butter, cooking oil, syrup, honey, soy sauce, and so on. 

The next aisle has baking mixes, fresh fruit, nuts, and baking goods. 

One more row down is all of my dry goods. Beans, wheat, grains, sugars, chocolate chips, raisins, coconut, rices, and so on. There's the latest batch of avocados waiting in my mom's old Corningware, too. 

At the bottom is vinegar, more rices, those 12 pounds of oranges, seltzer, onions, lunch boxes, Ziploc bags, and caffeine free Coca-Cola leftover from my parents' Christmas visit. One of these days I'll let the kids have a little with a movie and popcorn, but I haven't felt that generous yet. Or they haven't been cute enough yet. It could go either way. 

This is our other pantry. It's in our formal dining room, which is a short hallway away from our other pantry and from the kitchen. This also seemed awkward when we moved into the house, but it helps keep the room formal and clean since it doesn't just extend from the more casual living spaces. 

This is where I keep a lot of base ingredients, and all the extras. I also keep some large kitchen items that don't fit in our kitchen cabinets and don't see daily use. 

At the tippy top, to the left, are Ansel's art and craft supplies he got for his birthday. I have to restrict access or I'd end up with paint on all the doors. The first day he got the stuff I busted him with a giant glass of water and his paints trying to watercolor on the family room rug. No good.
Then oatmeal, hot cereals, and breakfast cereal. I bought Cocoa Puffs for my dad while he was here, but then he decided not to eat breakfast. Hmph.
Next row... salad dressing, condiments, potatoes, rices, pastas.

Below that, beans! Lots of and lots of beans. All the ones I had before, plus the ones I bought the other day. Then crackers and snack foods, then canned vegetables. To the right of that is canned tuna, a little canned chicken, and then pasta.
The next row down is canned fruit, spaghetti sauce, and canned tomatoes of many varieties.
Below that, coffee, chicken broth.
And then the bottom.... Ho boy. Bottled water, wine, champagne, food processor, juicer, all my giant storage containers, gift wrap, bows, you name it it's likely to be down there.

Tomorrow I will try, TRY to be better. I promise I will. But for now, be happy gawking at my not excessive food stores.