Heavy

Yesterday I did a little bit of spot carpet cleaning. To expedite the drying process, I stood a box fan near the damp spot and turned it on. A few minutes later I was nursing Jonathan and the fan fell over. Clara was nearby, so I said, "Oh, Clara! Could you please pick up the fan?" Always happy to oblige, she walked over, gave it a tug, and proclaimed it too heavy. I didn't really want to interrupt Jonathan's eating, so I said, "Quick--go ask Daddy if he can come out and pick it up."

Clara loves any excuse to bother Jeremy while he's working, so she opened his door and said:

"Hey, Dad. I need a simple machine! I need a pulley. The fan fell down, and it is too heavy for me!"

Good grief. I have to give credit to this fellow for teaching her everything she knows about science:

How did a frog find my pond?

I had an interesting experience this afternoon. Clara and Jonathan were napping, and I was out pulling weeds (oh, weeds!) and straightening the garage. I don't know if we're alone in this, but somehow we have seven wheeled vehicles (child bikes and strollers) to wheel around our two very small children. Yes, that's right: we have two strollers to every child, and each of our kids can lay claim to one-point-five bicycles (although two of them are loaners and one of them we bought for a quarter at a garage sale, but still. And Jonathan doesn't do much bike riding. Neither does Clara for that matter: "You have to push the pedals, Clara! PUUUSH!").

At any rate, I decided to collapse our double tandem stroller and one of our single strollers to clear up some space in the garage. As I folded up the single stroller, a little frog toy fell out of it. I thought to myself, "Huh. I didn't know Clara had a little frog toy." I reached out to pick it up... And then it hopped into the air.

Now, to give you the most accurate account of what happened next, I have chosen to include the following Q & A:

Question: When the frog hopped into the air, did you scream like a little girl?

Answer: Absolutely. Well, I should qualify that: I don't know if the utterly inhuman noise that came out of my mouth can count as the scream of a little girl, but I certainly expelled some noise.

Question: Did any of that noise take the form of an expletive?

Answer: No. I didn't even think an expletive in my addled mind, although later I kind of wished I had, since I thought it would make for a more interesting post.

Question: Did you bravely scoop the little frog from its hiding place behind the lawn mower and take it to a safe location 100 yards from your home?

Answer: I did not. Instead, I bravely went into the house and said to Jeremy, "I know you're working, but..." He loves it when I begin sentences that way. Nevertheless, he gently scooped the frog into the lid of a garbage can and carried it to the yard of a vacant house in the 'hood. He said he thought the junipers there would give our amphibious visitor the best chance for survival. Then he ruminated for several minutes about how frogs always pee when you pick them up. He showed me the little damp spot on the lid to prove it. It must be true.

Question: Did you have the presence of mind to photograph your intrepid green visitor?

Answer: Unfortunately, I had almost no presence of mind whatsoever. But just so you know, it was about the size of my head. Either that, or it was about the size of a fifty-cent piece and as green as a verdant forest. You pick.

Happy Father's Day!

Just wanted to give a quick shout-out of love and appreciation to this guy...


...who is an excellent and devoted father to these two:



And here's a brief portrait of Jeremy, according to Clara:

How old is Daddy? Two. Babies are two. How old are you? Twenty.

What does Daddy do for work? He writes words.

Does Dad like to make you breakfast? No!! Not in a pot! Just cold, cold, cold, cold cereal.

What do you like to do with Daddy? Run and play!

What's Daddy's favorite color? Brown. I like his brown shirt!

What does Dad like to eat? Foxes. It makes his throat very bad. There's a fox in his mouth. These are my molars. These are called my canines. Shark has two canines like me.


Happy Father's Day, Jeremy!

Flour Power

In times like these, I think it's best to stick it to The Man as much as possible. One of the ways we do this in our family is to make our own bread. Once every week or week and a half I bake three loaves of my mom's bread, which is seriously the most delicious whole wheat bread I have ever had. And periodically I even do something really brave, like make my own bagels. (That particular whim blossomed after I felt like eating bagels then noticed that a package of five bagels costs like $2.00. As if. I could totally make like 12 bagels for literally just pennies! Note: it's time consuming but yummy. And if you have a two-year-old she will be pretty torqued that you have to broil them then boil them then bake them before eating. Just give her a dang bagel already!)

At any rate, the whole bread making process starts out by running several pounds of wheat through my wheat grinder while Clara and Jonathan hide in Clara's room ("It's too loud for ME, Mommy!"). Then I (with the able help of my petite sous-chef) put everything in my Bosch mixer and let the machine do all the work. When the dough is kneaded, Clara nips little tastes while I push the dough into three pans to rise. (More than once our finished bread has had two little finger marks in it from a secret pinch during the rising time. Why does she like to eat dough??) When all is said and done, we are sitting down to thick slices of delicious bread in an hour and a half, start to finish.

Sometimes, though, I have more to contend with than a loaf pincher. If you have ever seen a Bosch during its kneading cycle, you'll know that it tends to rock and roll a bit while it does the good work of saving my biceps from 20 minutes of forced labor. And I learned that while said rocking and rolling is going on you should not leave an open container of freshly ground flour on the edge of the counter while your baby is playing on the floor. If you do, you might end up with a little bit of this:


And a little bit of that:


Oh well. My only consolation--aside from that happy (if goopy) face--was that at least I'd already made the dough! I guess this is what I get for looking at my bread making as sticking it to The Man rather than just feeding my family. Can't it be both?