Eight

My baby boy is eight. He was seven just yesterday. I blinked, I turned around, and here he is, eight.

When the girls were younger, we decided that eight is the year you move from being a big little kid to a little big kid. "Do you have to turn eight? Why don't we skip it this year? I've been enjoying seven," I told him. "Moo-oom. I can't help it. I have to be eight," he replied.

The picture above....not the greatest picture from a photographic standpoint. Unless you really know him. I see him like this a lot, you know, partly quizzical, a little rumpled, almost sleepy like he's surfacing from underwater or from deep thoughts. He has the ability to become completely absorbed in things, and this is the way he looks when I say his name, when I finally get his attention.

I can see the shadows of his baby face in that picture, too. Just a little. The raised eyebrows, the dark eyes, slightly wrinkled forehead, pink cheeks still a little jowly.

And I can see him running toward manhood. This picture.....
....stopped my heart. Maybe because his face is shadowed, indistinct. I can see in the shadows what he'll look like when he's twelve, when he's eighteen, when he's twenty-five and he's really not my baby at all any more. Just a little, just like I can still see in his face the baby he was.

Aw, man. Now I'm all teary. I wish I had a pause button. I'd stop right here for a little while, at eight.

I'm a little afraid that by tomorrow, he'll be nine.

Life is good.

Rainy Day

Today was a grey stormy windy dreary day. The rain was bucketing down.

There was fussing and fighting, grumping and groaning. There was "Do I have to?" and "I don't want to." There was blah.

So.......




There were puddles....


...and a muddy ditch and a leaf-clogged gutter...


...and umbrellas and smiles.


And after buckets of rain, the sun came out.

There were hot baths and hot chocolate and warm pumpkin pancakes with cinnamon and stories on the couch.

Life is good.

Conversation

Out of the blue: "Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Someday I want to be a teacher."

"Okay." (Thinking, Hey, sounds good. He must enjoy learning.)

"I'm going to be a music teacher."

Me, with a smile: "Oh, good. Then you can teach something you enjoy."

"Yeah. I'm going to teach my students, then they can be in my orchestra. I'm going to be a orchestra leader, too."

I think to myself that sounds pretty ambitious and kind of cool.

"I'm going to be a composer too. I'll write the music, then I'll teach my orchestra and they can play the music I wrote. Won't that be cool, Mom?"

Yes. Yes, son, that will be cool. Very cool. I love to hear this, living out their dreams out loud. I can't wait to see it.
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Adding later: Loving Husband's reaction, "Think this kid has control issues?"

Me, after I stopped laughing: "No. Not at all. And he does NOT get them from his mother." At all.

Loving Husband is such a sentimental guy, isn't he?

Wordless Wednesday

Think: Pinwheels

This week's Think! challenge, Wild Windmills: Build a windmill using two straws, two sheets of paper, paper clips, one button, one six-inch length of thread. We would use scissors, a ruler, and a needle during construction, but those items could not be a part of the final solution.

We've made pinwheels that turn in the wind before, using pins in pencil erasers, so the challenge for the fine young gents (and the lovely friends who joined us) turned into making a simple pinwheel windmill.

The eldest of the gents was frustrated in his attempts to make a paper square to fold. It's funny to see human nature at work in our children, in this case the way we so often get an idea stuck in our heads and become unable to think past that first idea even when it's clear it's not working. At least that's what happens to me, and I saw it happening to my fine, and frustrated, young gent. He was certain he could cut a perfect square freehand. It took some time before he was able to remember, with my prompting, the paper-folding geometry we've been doing together, not to mention how we make squares when we're cutting snowflakes.

He finally got the paper folded and cut, and immediately ran into another snag: His pinwheel paper had a very small center and ripped. I introduced the words "design flaw" and reminded him that making mistakes is a part of the process. "It's okay if it doesn't work," I said. "And if you're willing to keep going, you can figure out what's not working and try to fix it." So he did. I think it's starting to sink in. We're after the process right now, not necessarily a perfect end product.

Here is Cal with his windmill pinwheel:

It didn't quite work. But he was happy with the end result because he had fun making it, it almost worked, and he wanted to go play Legos with his friend, B. He asked if he could try again later, so we did (sort of).

Middle gent opted out. He went to play Legos. He's been tired this week and wanted some time to himself.

The youngest gent was raring to try. Levi's windmill pinwheel:

This little guy was a lot of fun to work with. His ideas outstripped his fine motor ability, so he told me what he wanted to do, and I did the work he couldn't do. What the heck, he's three and he wanted to try, and I didn't want him to melt into a frustration puddle or give up because he's "too little". It took a little experimenting and "Not there, Mom" but he actually came up with a wobbly working pinwheel. It didn't hold together well, but he's three. It was a great start.

Our friends made pinwheels too, but I didn't get pictures of the final products. Think! challenges make a great group playtime activity because we get to try the challenges with people who problem-solve a little differently.

We didn't get to actually make more windmills in the afternoon because of other plans, but we did have an interesting discussion about the challenges. Do we have to use all of the materials? (We decided it was up to the person doing the challenge to decide for himself.) Why can't Mom help?--I helped Levi. (I only help implement ideas and offer suggestions. The solution is up to the person working on the challenge.) Can we trade ideas with other people at the table? (Of course! Teamwork and learning from what the people around you are doing is an important creative skill.) Which led to an interesting discussion of the difference between copying someone else and sharing ideas. By the time we got through all of that, we'd run out of time to actually try another windmill. We're hoping to squeeze in some more time later this week.

Last week's challenge, Catalogs, looked like lots of fun (pictures of the creations here--fantastic!): Using only one catalog, build the tallest, deepest, widest structure you can build. The week got away from us, so we didn't get to try it, but we're hoping to get to this challenge someday just for fun.

History Pockets: Native Americans

The fine young gents chose the theme for our fall history and culture study. They chose Native Americans, in part because second-grade gent spent part of his week of summer nature camp studying the Kalapuya Indians of the Willamette Valley.

I bought History Pockets: Native Americans, Grades 1-3because I'd spoken to and read of other families who loved History Pockets unit studies. So we tried it. The unit study is divided into ten sections: An introductory section, eight different tribe studies from different regions of North America, and a wrap-up and review section.

The good: It was fun and well-thought-out. The fine young gents thoroughly enjoyed studying each of the tribes. The materials were simple, the lessons and activities were easy to follow, and the units were easily adaptable to individual skill levels. The crafts were cute. Lots of cutting and coloring and pasting to hone those fine motor skills. The information about each tribe was accurate, at least as near as I, a non-expert on Native Americans, could tell without doing some major research. And the end product, the two folders pictured above, is fun to look through and students finish the study with a portfolio of their work. (The tipis and books are not a part of the History Pockets study.) We made a fishing game, ate hominy, looked at different seeds, made necklaces, and more. Both boys colored a map of North America showing the regions in which different tribes lived, and second-grade gent also ended up with a comparison chart of how the tribes lived and a Native American picture dictionary with pictures and definitions of words like totem pole, parfleche, hominy and The Three Sisters .

The...not bad or ugly...maybe "eh": Cut, color, paste. The bulk of the activities in the unit relied on construction paper, photocopies, scissors and glue, probably for a variety of reasons: It's intended for classroom use so activities need to be simple enough for large groups of early elementary students, the materials and activities are quite inexpensive, and the children end up with a product which can be easily stored. But the fine young gents and I were a little overwhelmed by the amount of coloring. We ended up choosing not to color all of the pages. I don't think this would be a problem for children who enjoy coloring and who color quickly, and the gents color more often and more willingly than they did before we started the project. And the time spent coloring gave us the opportunity to listen to tapes of traditional Native American stories, which were absolutely delightful.

The final review from the gents: Was it fun? Yes. Did it work? Yes. Would we do it again? Yes, but not until next year. "Or maybe the year after that," added kindergarten gent. I would add that it was a very nice overview of Native North American history and culture for the intended grades, 1-3, and that the fine young gents have been playing Indian brothers. We've got one Inuit, one Nez Perce and one Kalapuya boy. The bunk beds are their longhouse, but they live in a tipi in the summer and sometimes they build an igluvigak for fun. They hunt deer in the basement and dig for camas bulbs under the carpet. I'd say that's pretty high praise.
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More to come:
Because I can never leave well enough alone, I supplemented this study pretty heavily. Certainly not because of any shortcomings of the History Pockets. As I wrote above, the unit study offers a very nice overview. But I'll admit that I enjoy delving into a subject a little more deeply than a nice overview, and I like subjects that overlap, so our fall art study has been Native American art. I'll also post a list of picture books we read, as we found many wonderful resources.

Pumpkin: From seed to pie

Over the river and through the woods. It's that time of year, so I'm bumping up this pumpkin post from last year.

As long as we're talking pumpkin pie, if you're planning on coming to my house for Thanksgiving this year (2008), just show up sometime around noon and bring what you brought last year. That will save us all a bunch of phone calls. It's not like I want to talk to you people ahead of time. If you didn't come last year and you want to, call me. The more the merrier. Or just show up, unless you're some creepy internet stalker stranger. If you're a creepy internet stalker and you do show up, you'll have to do the dishes and serve the pie.

Pumpkin: From Seed to Pie


"Fresh pumpkin is so difficult to use that few modern cooks go down this road." (The New Best Recipe, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine, p. 903)

I'm crunching the last of our crispy salty pumpkins seeds as I type. Tuesday we scooped the seeds out of our little pie pumpkins, Wednesday we roasted seeds and baked and pureed pumpkin, and by yesterday's Thanksgiving feast, the tiny pie pumpkins were creamy pumpkin pies.

Wednesday evening I was making pumpkin pies, stirring the pumpkin in a pan on the stove, and I wondered idly aloud, "Why do I have to stir the filling until it's glossy? What purpose does this step serve?" One of my favorite things about The New Best Recipe is the blurb before the actual recipe explaining why the recipe works, and Mom was there to read to me while I stirred. Well, first she read the above sentence to me, the one about modern cooks not using that difficult fresh pumpkin. Then she found the part about the stovetop stirring. Here's why you're supposed to cook the pumpkin and spices ahead of time (from the same page of the cookbook): "You can freshen the taste of canned pumpkin by cooking it with the sugar and spices before combining it with the custard ingredients. As the pumpkin simmers, you can actually smell the unwelcome canned odor give way to the sweet scent of fresh squash."

Umm...yum?

I still wouldn't skip this step when using fresh pumpkin. Combining the pumpkin, brown sugar and pie spices then cooking them for a few minutes on the stove while your pie crust is prebaking deepens the flavor of the fresh pumpkin, giving you rich dark orangey deliciousness. Then stir in the cream and the eggs and pour into a hot partially-baked pie crust for a creamy-custardy filling in a crust that stays crispy instead of getting mushy.

And the second thing I'd say is...really? Honestly, I was a little taken aback by the idea of fresh pumpkin being difficult. Preparing fresh pumpkin is almost as easy as baking and mashing a potato, and it's delicious.

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From Seed to Pie: Fresh Pumpkin

Growing the Pumpkin: For best results, you really can't just cook any old pumpkin. Even pumpkins labeled "pie pumpkins" at the grocery store aren't necessarily sweet sugar pumpkins, though they are still much tastier than the larger jack-o-lantern pumpkins you'll find at the pumpkin patch that are perfect for carving. You can also substitute a sweet winter squash, like acorn squash, for a perfectly lovely "pumpkin" pie. If you're growing your own pumpkins, look for pumpkin seeds labeled "sugar pumpkin." They will typically be much smaller than jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but because they're intended for eating, they're selected for flavor and sweetness rather than size and decorativeness.

I'm not even close to being a Master Gardener, but I'll tell you how I grow pumpkins. I'd suggest doing a little more thorough reading elsewhere if you've never grown anything before in your life. I buy my seeds, plant them in one end of one of my garden boxes, and check them every few days to see if they've sprouted. If they haven't sprouted or something has munched them, I plant a few more seeds. I pull weeds once in a while. When I get around to it in the fall, around the time it starts getting cold but before it frosts, I pick the pumpkins and put them in the cool but dry garage until I'm ready to use them. Pumpkins are perfect for the lackadaisical gardener because that's pretty much it, and I always have enough pumpkin for Thanksgiving pies and more. (Yearning for better directions? More than you ever wanted to know about growing pumpkins at Pumpkin Nook.)

(Cooking directions cut and pasted and slightly modified from an August '06 Poohsticks post, What's That Squash?)

How to get from pie pumpkin to pumpkin puree: Heat your oven to 400 degrees. Halve your pumpkin(s) and take out the seeds and slimy bits. Set the seeds aside for roasting later. Brush the cut edges of the pumpkin with a bit of oil and place on a rimmed baking sheet with the cut side down. Bake for about 40 minutes (for small pumpkins) to 1 hour (for larger). When done the flesh of the pumpkin should be soft when pierced with a fork, and the outer shell should be pulling away from the flesh. Let cool until you can handle it without burning yourself, then peel the shell off of the pumpkin. Puree the pumpkin flesh in the food processor.

Using your puree: You can serve the puree as is with a little butter and brown sugar, as though it's mashed/pureed squash (because it is). If you would like to use your puree in your favorite recipes for pie, scones (my favorite!) or pumpkin bread, let it cool then put it in the fridge for a few hours, or even overnight, if you can. Some of the liquid will separate from the puree, allowing you to skim it away so that your puree is just a bit thicker.

I disagree with The New Best Recipe contention that fresh pumpkin is difficult to work with; however, the moisture content is difficult to predict. Particularly when making baked goods, you may need to adjust recipe ingredients slightly to compensate for the fact that fresh pumpkin is a little more liquid than the thicker canned pumpkin, but that's a fairly simple adjustment. I usually cut back on the liquid and/or add a little more flour, depending on the recipe. You can call it by...well, by eye rather than by ear, I guess, if you're familiar with the basic consistency of muffin or pancake batter or whatever you're making. Taking the time to experiment and get comfortable cooking with fresh pumpkin is worth the payoff, because it is delicious!

Paperwhites

Supply shopping at the garden store: Math, reading, planning, budgeting, manners, making purchases.


Painting: Art
Planning a gift: Manners and showing appreciation for others


Planting: Logic and planning, gardening, nature, biology.


The chickens didn't learn anything. They just want food.


Nature journals and bulb study: Spelling and grammar, handwriting, drawing, botany, nature study.



Shhhh....they don't know they're learning.

Forcing Paperwhite Narcissus Bulbs

Wordless Wednesday