This post is going out to Kristen and is in direct reply to her comment on the post below… hi Kristen!… O.k., so the bow and arrow (that Kyle is asking for from Santa)….. Here’s the deal…
So, yes, Kyle has officially asked Santa for a “bow and arrow and target.” Oh my goodness gracious. Never in my life did I think I’d be buying a bow and arrow. Let alone, for my six year old son. Forget that I’m supposed to be “Santa.” We’re talking about a bow and arrow for my six year old son. (?!!!!!!!!!!) At the Waldorf School (that we just stopped attending) there was a lot of talk about bow and arrows. This was a big part of the Boy Culture there. A part of the culture that we were never fully comfortable with. But a part of the culture that Kyle, in particular, was always fascinated with. At the school’s MayFaire festival each spring they would have an archery station (amongst many other stations), and it was – by far – Kyle’s favorite. He’d have done it for hours if he could have. Anyway… K & O were both –together– going to ask for “one big huge REAL drum set,” and they had been telling us this for weeks, maybe even months. This drum set thing was, basically, Owen’s idea… Owen, who has, for about two years now, wanted a drum set… Owen, who has, for all of the past Christmases of his entire life always succumbed to whatever Kyle wanted to ask Santa for, and then asked for that too, so that they’d both be asking for the same exact thing, because they just couldn’t imagine doing it any other way… and because Kyle has always ruled the roost where these sorts of decisions have been concerned. This year was going to be different: they were going to go with what Owen wanted for once. But then, just this past week, Kyle suddenly announced that he wasn’t going in on the drum set thing with Owen, and instead, wanted a “bow and arrow and target” (he is very clear about the “target”…. he “doesn’t want to kill anything, just use it to shoot at a target” etc., etc., etc.). This announcement (Kyle asking for bow and arrow) definitely threw Owen for a loop, but we encouraged him to “stay strong!” and repeatedly urged him to not be swayed by Kyle. Kyle’s announcement came as a huge surprise to us, too, since, of course, Santa had already purchased the “one big huge REAL drum set” off of Craig’s Week last week (!). A pretty big purchase, and one that had involved a lot of time and energy on Braydon’s part. Anyway, when the letters were written last night we knew that the wishes were set in stone. So, now we’re trying to figure out the bow and arrow and target thing. Braydon is all over it. We’re doing our research. We are in serious marital conflict negotiations over this. I want to get arrows with suction-cups on them (like this one [click]). Braydon, however, wants to do the real deal and get him a full-blown for-real bow-and-arrow “Young Archer’s” set. Seriously. Today Braydon dragged me into the shop pictured above (I took that photo with my cell phone camera as we were pulling out of the place). It was scary, surreal, and totally-over-the-top to be there. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say: I grew up in rural New Hampshire, am accustomed to hunting culture, etc… but still… the place was INTENSE. Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Braydon was looking at what I can only describe as WEAPONS (serious bows! serious arrows!), and discussing all of it, in depth, with the guy working in the shop. I had all I could do to contain myself. I am all about getting him a TOY. I cannot even IMAGINE buying a real bow and arrow for Kyle. Braydon feels strongly that we should not buy a “toy” because Kyle will be totally bummed out by it. We shall see what Santa brings. In the meantime, feel free to chime in here. Mr. and Mrs. Claus need all the help they can get on this one! Ha! (I mean Ho! ho ho)
“Dear Santa, Can I please have a drum set? [heart = ‘love,’] Owen”
“Dear Santa, Please bring me bow and arrow and target. [again… heart = ‘love,’] Kyle.” (and then he made me write, “Somebody who did this is,” and he wrote in “6”)
Meera dictated this Santa letter to me. Translation: Meera wants a Princess Tiana (i.e., Princess and the Frog) dress (as in dress-up/costume dress for her, Meera, to wear), and a Princess Tiana “doll.” This is all so very interesting because K & O tried to convince her to ask Santa for chapstick (she loves chapstick and is always begging all of us to use ours), and for awhile she was going along with that, but then, suddenly, this weekend, out of nowhere, completely on her own, she started saying that she was going to ask Santa for “Tiana doll and Tiana dress.” All of us were shocked. We didn’t even know that she truly understood the whole concept of Santa, let alone that she could ask for something like that from him. Well, it turns out that she gets it. Like, fully, fully gets it. And the girl knows what she wants! Re: “Old McFarmer is to ride on a hay. Hey!”… this is what Meera sings whenever we sing Jingle Bells and get to the part “Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey!” (and she’s always sang, “Old McFarmer,” instead of “Old McDonald” in Old McDonald Had A Farm, so she’s fusing it all together). She then insisted that I trace her hands at the bottom. Sweetie!
SANTA IS HARD AT WORK TO MAKE THESE THREE WISHES COME TRUE!
“Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.” ~Peg Bracken
This weekend was Christmas Kick-Off Weekend for the J-Ms. Saturday we put up our Christmas tree. It was, by far, the most successful and “truly merry” Christmas-Tree-Decorating-Event on record in the J-M household. K & O are suddenly so capable of doing these things without causing a major ruckus or catastrophe parental-breakdown. How did that happen? I don’t know. I just know that somewhere between age 5 and 6 they began to mellow just enough to make these sorts of things suddenly feasible. They are not mellow, by any stretch of the imagination… just a bit more mellow… and a little mellowing is a good thing, believe me. Meera (Miss Mellow) was absolutely thrilled with the whole entire experience. She loved putting the ornaments on the tree and she kept saying “oooooh! prettttttttttty!” over and over again. Each ornament has a memory attached. Many have a good story. Some are profoundly meaningful. The boys are starting to remember the ornaments and delight in the re-telling of the stories. The traditions –and all the work it takes to create and re-create them each and every year— are all starting to take firm hold, and it is a gorgeous thing to see. It makes it feel like maybe all of this is worth it. We still have huge clumps of ornaments in certain places, and we still have big blank parts on the tree, but it is, to us, The Most Beautiful Christmas Tree in the whole entire world.
Saturday evening we had our first fire of the season. And we drank our first eggnog of the season by the fire (even though some of us don’t even like eggnog).
“What is eggnog?,” Kyle and Owen always ask. “It is the nog of the egg,” we always say, authoritatively. “What is the nog of the egg?,” they ask. “It is eggnog,” we say. They might be six, they might be slightly more mellow, but they still have no clue how to get out of circular reasoning. So, they say back, completely earnestly, “Oh. So, what is eggnog?,” and we say, “The nog of the egg.” And by that time their attention span is maxed out and they run off to play. And this goes on and on and on throughout the holiday season, with Braydon and I running into the next room to laugh hysterically in secret.
The advent calendar is up and running on the fridge. Every day is a big deal.
Sunday morning we had a Holiday-Season-Kick-Off-Brunch in the playroom. There were cheese omelets, smoked ham, waffles, salad, cherry tomatoes, and sliced oranges. We ate on the floor next to Fire #2 Of The Season. It was special.
That afternoon we headed off to Holiday Party #1 Of The Season. Not much delights me more than dressing up my children. Seriously. I love it. And I savor these days because I know it won’t be long until they don’t wear whatever I lay out for them anymore. In the meantime, I’ll dress them however I choose. And relish in the absolute adorableness of them all. Of course I’m biased, but I honestly believe that I have the three cutest children on the planet. I also happen to believe that I have the three most-fun-to-spend-the-holidays-with children on the planet.
And so, we start The Christmas That They Were Six and Two. And we pour out the “gifts of time and love” all season long, because surely they are “the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.” A truly merry Christmas not just for our adorable three, but for their two adoring parents as well.
So, Meera Grace is probably about as sweet as can be. She turns heads everywhere she goes with her ridiculously-cute-ness. But she is not without her sass. And she can hold her own with her big brothers. Seriously. This girl is a crazy mixture of sticky-sweet with a seriously-strong-soul-of-her-own. Upon first glance, her brothers dominate every scene. But anyone who’s looking beneath the surface at all sees the strength of Meera in every picture. She is a force, in her own right. Just a totally different type of force than the dynamic duo of K & O. Not better or worse, just different. And equally noteworthy. For example…
Tonight at dinner, while the rest of us were carrying on a loud and lively conversation (typical dinner at our house), Meera sat quietly doing her own thing at the head of the table. (Sidenote: since she was about 18 months old, she’s been demanding to sit at the head of the table, with K & O on either side of her. That has been her place at the table for the past year or so, maybe longer.) Anyway… as is the norm, we all sort of carried on with our very animated chit-chat, while Meera basically flew under the radar. We all sort of noticed what she was doing, but didn’t really do anything about it. At one point Owen did say, “I’m just ignoring her. We’re all just ignoring bad behavior, right?” I looked over at her and then said, “Yes, let’s just ignore it.” What she was doing was taking small bits of food off her plate, one by one, and carefully placing them in her glass of water. And then, using her fork, she was very purposefully stirring it all up. We were having blackened tilapia, rice pilaf, and a veggie sauté (zucchini and yellow squash, snow peas, cherry tomatoes, Vidalia onions). Meera’s little mixture was absolutely gross. Finally, none of us could take it any longer. She was just blatantly getting away with something totally naughty (as defined by our family). So, we stopped our conversation and we all turned our attention to her. There were lots of “that’s disgusting!”’s and “Meeeeeera!”’s and “ewwwwwww! nasty!”’s coming from the four of us. I said, “Well, really, it is just the same thing that we’re all eating, only stirred together with water.” And then, with very little prompting from us, Meera happily lifted the glass of grossness to her lips and took a sip. She then handed it to Owen, who gladly drank some too. She then handed it to Kyle, who tentatively tasted it and proceeded to run to the kitchen sink to spit it out. Braydon and I both graciously declined the offer to taste it, much to Meera’s disappointment. She then went on to eat a big bowl of blueberry yogurt with sliced bananas, a dinner she seemed to much prefer over the first.
Meera Grace. Not all sweetness.
(Shalinee and I are not posting for The Swap this week; the week was just too overwhelming — we were both sick, K & O started their first week of their new school, we’re at the end of the semester at Lehigh [a crazy time of year for professors], there were minor crises of all varieties happening in our lives, etc. — we just never got it together to do Swap. So…instead I’m posting this!)
Spinach Salad with Warm Squash, Goat Cheese, and Glazed Pecans
This is our Current Favorite Salad for Fall/Winter! Seriously, it is so good! Braydon even says that it is the best salad he’s ever had in his entire life. No kidding! And I make a lot of fancy salads… so that is really saying a lot! A couple of years ago I was out to lunch at a pretty nice restaurant for a work meeting one day. I ordered a salad off the menu that was described as “Warm Spinach Salad with Winter Squash.” It turned out to be an absolutely fabulous salad. I can remember thinking, “Wow! This is probably one of the best salads I’ve ever had, and it would be even better with goat cheese!” I’ve remembered that salad ever since. Recently I was back at that restaurant for another lunch meeting. I had been so excited to order that salad again, but it turned out they had taken it off the menu. I became determined to re-create the salad at home, but with some of my own twists to make it substantial enough as a stand-alone dinner salad. For K, O, and M – at least at this point – a salad, no matter how substantial, is really not enough for dinner. So, for them I’ll make some sort of simple pasta to serve with this salad. But for Braydon and I, this salad can 100% hold its own as a salad worthy of dinner. With a glass of wine and a crusty baguette… seriously… it is so good! Try it!
First, flash-roast some butternut squash. You can buy a squash and dice it up… or, to make things super simple (like I do!), you can buy a container of pre-skinned, pre-diced fresh butternut squash in the produce section. I dump that container out onto a foil-lined baking sheet, drizzle with just a tiny bit of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast for about 10 minutes (or until soft and caramelizing) at 450.
While the squash is cooking, whip up some balsamic vinaigrette. Wisk 1/3 portion balsamic vinegar with 2/3 portion olive oil (i.e., if you’re going to make about a cup of dressing, use 1/3 cups of vinegar and 2/3 cup oil — more or less depending on how much dressing you want to have). Add salt and pepper to taste.
The only other things you need are: red onion (thinly sliced), goat cheese (crumbled), and some glazed pecans. You can make your own glazed pecans really easily by placing pecans, sugar, and cinnamon in a dry pan and cooking on the stove over med-high heat. I have done this many, many times. Stored in an air-tight container they will keep for a long time. However, you can also buy glazed pecans (of all sorts of varieties) in the grocery store. Recently we tried “Pecan Pie” flavored, and they were awesome (and went incredibly well in this salad)!
When the squash is cooked, place it immediately on a bed of fresh spinach. It will start to wilt some of the spinach, which is a good thing! Add the other ingredients, toss with the vinaigrette, and dig in. You’ll think you’ve gone to Fall-Winter-Salad-Heaven. DE-LISH!
- Everyone always loves the quotes! Quotes! & Quotes! Can’t get enough of the quotes!
- Travel posts, especially Disney [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3], but also other big trips this year~~Thanksgiving in DC; Christmas in NH; New Year’s Eve in CT; Easter in MA; Dominican Republic; Maine for Auntie Stina’s Wedding; Haiti Reunion 2010; NH Summer 2010; Atlanta; Camping in Our Own Backyard; Boston; and many other fabulous day-trips such as Adoption Day 2010; A Day at the Beach; Meera’s First Trip to NYC; A Very Fun Summer Day Trip
- Heather’s posts on work-home “imbalance,” especially On Princeton and Panties; Continuing Onward In My Existential Crisis; The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
- Braydon’s profound and poetic posts, especially Mommy Do; A Calm Sea, Currents Run Deep; “Or Whoever He Is”
- Holding You
- Big Brothers and Little Sister
- Posts in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, especially In the Wake of the Earthquake & Haitian Through and Through
- Meera’s 2nd Birthday & the video from the night before, “On the Eve of Meera’s Second Birthday”
- Food posts! Especially The Start of The Swap & Food Fridays
- Honorable Mention~~ Meera’s Necklaces; Horses At the Car; Completely Crazy Stunts; Perfect; The Week Ends, The Weekend Begins; K & O Grocery Shop!
Meera loves to color. She colors for long stretches of time, multiple times, every day. Recently Braydon bought her what is now one of her absolute most prized possessions: a “Princess Coloring Book!” It is thick and full of pages and pages of princess scenes to be colored. Meera loves it and spends hours and hours carefully coloring on the pages. She also loves to have someone sit with her and color with her. This usually involves her directing every detail: which page to color, precisely which parts should be colored and which left uncolored, and exactly which color each thing to be colored should be colored. A few days ago I sat with her to color in the Princess Book. She chose the pages in the photo above. She handed me crayons, one by one, chosen carefully by her, and told me exactly which parts of each image to color. First she had me color the right side page—with a brown crayon she had me color the princess’s skin; black for her hair; pink (Meera’s favorite color by far!) for the dress. Then she had me color the left side page—peach for the princess’s skin; yellow for her hair; purple (Meera’s second favorite color) for her dress. She was very pleased with how it came out and marveled in it for quite some time. Finally, after studying the finished product, smiling ear to ear, she announced to me, pointing to the first princess, “She’s brown! Just like my brothers!” I said, “Yes! You’re right! She sure is!” And that was that.
Two days ago Meera Grace turned two-and-a-half. She is the most wonderful (literally, wonder-filled) two-and-a-half year old we know. She continues to delight us daily.
We got a little layer of white on Thanksgiving Day.
It quickly disappeared, but it was fun while it lasted!
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