Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real

{Pretty}

This time last year, Maria was still in what we will call her "comestible phase."  It was all cupcakes all the time.  That's not quite right---there was the occasional glass of smoothie or chocolate milk, and once and a while, she would pencil "i heart porridge".  I wondered if she had a sugar addiction.  These days, Maria's artworks are lush with stars, planets, angels, and crazy machines. Her compositions have a satisfying, folkloric symmetry.  It has been fun to see creche scenes spouting up on papers around the house.  Here is one of our favorites.

 And here is a  drawing that we scanned and used for wrapping paper.

If you look carefully, you will find Jupiter, Saturn, astrological symbols for Mercury, and a few Christmas trees thrown in for good measure.

{Happy}

There is a book called "Mr. Wilowby's Christmas Tree." We don't know the book well because we have the French version and can only just make out the gist of the verse--but it is charming for the premise and illustrations.  The top of a large Christmas tree is lopped off to allow the tree to fit in Mr. Willowy's grand hall.  The rejected piece becomes a Christmas tree for the maid, who in her turn, lops off the top so that it will fit in her apartment.  This chain continues, with various people and then animals, using the rejected pieces of the tree and trimming and discarding the top.  At last, the very tip becomes a Christmas tree for the mice in Mr. Willowby's mansion.   

When we put up our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, Maria asked if we could cut off the top for her.  Happily, the tree had a forked top that needed trimming.  Paschi magicked a stand, and, voila, Maria  and Loulou had their own personal Christmas tree.

Christmas Eve, after wrapping arranging presents around the family tree, I snuck into the girls' room and placed some of the smaller presents around the tree, and staged some of the girls' stuffed animals having a tea party around the base of the tree.

It was very sweet to hear the girls waking up an finding the scene.  Maria kept saying, "It's nursery magic!"

{Funny}

Donnie insisted that I share this video, which is from some weeks back.  All I can say is that I have a vitamin D deficiency and have not been cheery, cheery, cheery this winter.  In case you can't tell, that last line is "Now I have to delete this."

And here's a picture of the banditti.

{Real}

Meme and Grandpa took the older girls for three days.  It was a lovely rest, and allowed Donnie and I to tackle a few household projects.   I sorted and organized the kids' clothing.  Here's a picture from midway through the process.

 If any one knows a good treatise on how to manage children's wardrobes, I am eager to read it.  Truly, I'm not  sure whether or not this a reasonable volume of clothing for three girls (taking into account there might be more to come).  It seems entirely unreasonable when it's all heaped up.  When it's neatly folded in Sterilite, which it now is (thank you Meme and Grandpa!) it seems not so crazy--especially since we have a high attrition rate.   I got rid of a good bagful.  I had to come to terms with knowing that I will probably never be the kind of laundress who can get rid of three year old drool stains.

And I had this delicious being as a helper:

When God Closes a Door....

Three months ago, we asked Maria what she wanted to be for Halloween.  She answered immediately, "I will be a door, and Louisa will be a window."

I'm not sure what inspired these choices.  We had just acquired Carl's Masquerade---a book featuring many splendid inanimate object costumes---a volcano, a pile of burning coals, and a watermelon being a few of the more memorable.  But it might also just be written in Maria's genetics--- her daddy was known to costume himself as things like bendy straws and spatulas.  Whatever the inspiration, Maria stuck with her choice.  (Clearly, she hasn't inherited her mother's tendency to indecision.)

Though happy to postpone the inevitable princess years, I became less enthusiastic about the door and window costumes as the holiday approached.   Time was short.  The sewing machine was still packed.    The costumes on the racks at TJ Max were both beautiful and surprisingly cheap--cheaper than a supply run to JoAnn Fabrics.  Finally, I decided to forgo my plans involving felt, foam rubber, and a window box full full of silk flowers, and make something simple out of a material we had on hand---cardboard.  Best to not even set foot in a craft store.

What resulted were perhaps my most successful costumes yet:

We judged that our neighborhood would be too dark for trick-or-treating with small children, so we took our little door and window to the St. Mary's Halleluja party.  It was a Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Soul's Day party in one, and it was just our speed.  There were many sweet people dressed as saints giving out candy and prayer cards.  There were crafts: making St. Bridget's crosses from pipe cleaners (which turns out to be a bit of a challenge even for adults), coloring bookmarks, and decorating votive bags to decorate the alter for the vigil Mass.  There were bean bag and ring toss stations, as well as a doughnut gauntlet.   Maria did crafts and took a hay ride in the parking lot.  She let other kids borrow the door costume--so the fact that her costume wasn't attached turned out to be one of its best features.  Loulou ran around with a stolen bean bag and cavorted with a little girl dressed as a My Little Pony.

Maria, after a bout with a powdered donut.

 We all enjoyed soul cakes (aka. donuts) that were fried on the spot.   After recognizing the glazed, sugar-adled look in the girls' eyes, we retreated home, lit our two Jack-o-lanterns, and made a late dinner of scrambled eggs and grapes.

Donnie and I agreed that it was our best Halloween ever.

Sketch Book: Carnival and Conjunctivitus, The Hungry Caterpillar's Fat Tuesday Feast, and Gorty

Two weeks ago, I found myself once again at the website of illustrator Sophie Blackall.  I love the poetry of her "Missed Connections" series.  Seeing her illustrations, with their pithy juxtaposition of text from Craigslist personal ads and watercolor illustrations, reminded me of my intention to make some captioned sketches for the blog.

We don't have a scanner here in France, so please forgive the photos.

{Carnival and Conjunctivitis}

 

Me:  Oh!  There are the neighbor girls, all dressed up for Carnival.  Guess we missed that...Too bad we don't have white bunny costumes.

On Mardi Gras, Maria stayed home from school because of pink eye, missing the school festivities.  If we had some long ears and fluffy tales, the girls would have made convincing albino rabbits.  

{The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar's Fat Tuesday Feast}

Maria: "Fat Tuesday is the day the caterpillar got a stomach ache."

(To those who are not reading a lot of kid lit these days, The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar follows a caterpillar as he eats his way through a week.  In the book, the caterpillar eats two pears on Tuesday.  But that wasn't Fat Tuesday.  On Fat Tuesday its all crepes all the time.)

{GORTY}

This one is a little thank you note to my friend Kelly, who sent us a lovely package.

Caption: Dear Kelly, thank you for all the lovely gifts.  Maria loves the turtle puppet so much that she really only needs one mitten these days.  She has named him GORTY.

The Baby Jesus Doll and the Ghost of Crafting Past

Isn't it a joy to get back a memory?  Something from life--a smell, an action, a face--throws a switch in the back of the brain.  Dusty cogs begin to whirl, pistons hiss--there's a rumble,then a clatter, then pop! Out comes a memory--vivid, pristine, and all the more dear for being locked in the machine so long. 

This post is about a little craft project--the making of a doll. I'm fond of this project.  It gave me back a few memories.  I'm hoping that it will seed a few fond memories in the heads of Maria and Louisa .

The doll was part of an Advent and Christmas activity that I discovered on one of my favorite blogs, Ginny Sheller's Small Things. In this activity,there's a manger--a box or basket--and the children of the family add hay to the container for any good deed or sacrifice they perform.  On Christmas morning, a Baby Jesus doll appears  in the padded manger; loving acts make ready a place for the Holy Infant.  Thinking that Maria was old enough to benefit from such a ritual, (hoping it might also distract her from her fascination with all things Pere Noel) I set about to find the materials.

Our manger was a box that held some fancy potatoes from Lidl.  Maria and I collected grass in our wet yard, and dried it in a basket over the radiator. (This was a fruitful activity in itself--good for meditating on poverty.)

Then there was the doll to think about--that is, of course, what this post is all about.  I loved that Ginny made her doll, and wanted to follow her lead and make a Waldorf style swaddle baby.  Waldorf dolls have intentionally simple, neutral faces--the better to allow kids to flex their imaginations.  Wouldn't this kind of spare representation be especially appropriate for a doll of the Baby Jesus?  It steers clear of kitsch and sentimentality, but still produces a unique, cuddly doll.

I hunted for Waldorf doll materials online and quickly grew frustrated.  Waldorf dolls are generally made from pricey organic materials that are often sold in kits.  None of the kits served my purposes, and it seemed a shame to spend money on shipping, when I needed such a small amount of material.  At last, I came across a thread on a German crafting forum.  A parent asked where to buy Waldorf doll supplies.  A grandmother replied: "Supplies?  In my day, we dyed an old white tee shirt with tea and used wool from our sheep for the stuffing."

Well, I didn't have any sheep, but I had a 4 Euro Ikea pillow that I wouldn't mind butchering, and plenty of old white tees.  I prepared my dye, first cooking the tee shirt in a vinegar bath set the dye.  We had some old teas that had been languishing in the back of the cabinet.  Into the pot they went with a bit of turmeric and some instant coffee crystals.  The cloth came out a sallow color--very close to the color of snot--and far from the pinky beige that I wanted.  Donnie encouraged me to continue.  A survey of my stash of embroidery thread showed some gold and brown floss that might complement the tea-dyed fabric.  With luck, the color scheme would call to mind an antique wax doll.   At the very least, using the cloth would give me practice and then I'd feel better about ordering pricier cloth.  I sewed a tube, and  followed this tutorial for making the doll's head.

As I sat sewing the little head, coaxing the polyester batting into a baby face, I realized that there was something awfully familiar about the work.  As I stitched and prodded a little bump of stuffing into a nose, I realized why.  This was very similar to a project I did when I was seven years old, trying with my rudimentary sewing skills, to sew a doll. The project was ill-fated.  After I finished the head, our  beagle-terrier mutt, Brownie, sensing that the doll head was an Object of Great Interest, grabbed it and had me chasing her around the house for it.  The head didn't survive the chase.  But here I was, sharing with my eight year old self, the joy of seeing a face emerge from fabric.

And while sewing the hair, another memory!   My family didn't have a creche set, so when I was seven, I tried to make one out of salt dough.   It came out of the oven, a doughy-looking, lumpy thing--a lost cause in my mind. But my Mum took it up and painted it--ever so lovingly--in bright colors, with patterns, like a medieval wood carving. It was the first time I can remember knowing the joy of having something I'd made (and even come to detest) perfected and made beautiful by someone else.  One thing she did was paint the infant Jesus's hair gold---a choice that struck me as genius at the time! As I sat stitching gold thread over the gold skin of the doll, it struck me that I was being visited by the gold baby of the salt dough creche.

I am pleased with how this gold Baby Jesus turned out--sweet and little uncanny. (That's how I would describe the face of a newborn--sweet and uncanny.)  Tucked in the white swaddle, the yellow color of the skin isn't so strange---just a touch of jaundice.  And there's the smell of the doll--the unexpected benefit of the dye--black tea, orange, berries, cinnamon, turmeric, coffee.   Delicious.  I'm hoping that the smell is riveted into Maria and Louisa's olfactory memory.  I imagine them standing in a Starbucks one day--coffee and tea aromas mingling in the air. A man walks in with a bag of Indian takeout. It hits them: family, happiness, mystery, Christmas.

How did  our manger filling play out for Christmas, 2012?  Maria didn't quite get the whole grass-reward system; it was mostly me filling the manger for her deeds and the odd occasion when Loulou put a book back on the shelf after taking it off .   The girls liked the doll perfectly well, climbing onto the toddler table to free him from the glass cabinet. They cuddled and tossed him around, which resulted in him going lost for a week under a bed.  (I worried this might be a sign of our spiritual state. Never good to lose the Baby Jesus!  I hoped we would find him wedged between some books on spirituality--in the temple, so to speak.)  Now he's tucked away in our box of Christmas things, waiting for next year. I'm looking forward to seeing him again.  I'm looking forward to remembering how I made him.  I'm  looking forward to  remembering the memories I had while I made him. ;)

Advent Traditions: Calendar

In 2011, I sprung for an eight euro chocolate-filled Advent calender for Maria.  All the cheaper options that I found had pictures of  Hello Kitty or Disney Cars--their manufacturers having abandoned all pretense that Advent calendars have anything to do with Christmas.  This expensive one had a pretty Victorian-inspired scene of Father
Christmas trimming a tree. The chocolates were gourmet.  I figured the eight Euros were the price of tradition.  

This year, I opted to make a calendar.  I wanted something that could hold a few treats and a little piece of paper with a Bible passage.  Here's the result.

A piece of cardboard with 24 origami cups made from Ikea wrapping paper. We had some paper beads and origami mini stars on hand, so I strung them onto some yarn for the hanger.  A simple little project, but I was pleased with how it turned out.
Maria sat next to me as I folded the cups.  I showed here how to make them, but she was a little too young for the lesson to stick.

Each pocket held a wrapped chocolate or a tinfoil package with gummi bears or crystallized pineapple.

We printed this Advent chain-- it has a Bible passage and a picture for the first twenty-four days of December.  I cut out the links and rolled them so that each pocket had its own little scroll. We read the text out loud while Maria ate her treat, trying to explain the text to her as best we could.  Maria colored in some of the pictures. My plan was to cut them out and use them as ornaments on our Christmas tree, though I ended up forgetting about them (and there was no room left on our tiny Christmas tree).
 
A few days after completing our calendar, Mum told me that EuroNews was reporting massive recalls of commercial calenders---the chocolates were potentially contaminated with machine oil. So our choice to make a calendar was especially fortunate!

This is a little craft I hope to repeat next year.  Maybe I'll get some help folding the cups. 

Advent Traditions: Cookies

Our jam stars and chocolate roll out cookies. The beautiful madeleines were from Pauline's mum.  I've got to buy a mold learn how to make those!

I've already written about Maria's enthusiasm for cake.  She's no less enthusiastic about Christmas cookies. We did four baking sessions this Advent, building a stash of cookies that lasted through Epiphany.

Maria's little friend Pauline came over for one session.   Baking with two three-year-olds is neither neat nor easy!  But still lots of fun, as you can see.  There was plenty of tasting going on, and I spent a significant portion of my mental energy praying that I would not be responsible for giving our little neighbor salmonella poisoning.  By time the sprinkles and compacted bits of dough were vacuumed from the carpet, I felt like I deserved a medal!  But it was well worth the trouble!


During our baking, I found that not having the right equipment was liberating.  There was no regret when our cookies didn't turn out perfectly.  For our first session, we didn't have cutters so we made some out of a disposable foil container. We didn't have cookie sheets, so we made due with flipping the broiler pan upside down and baking  the cookies five at a time on pieces of aluminum foil.  I became quite adept at manipulating the cookie-laden foil, using a pot lid like a pizza peel to get them on and off of the upturned broiler pan.

Here are the recipes we used:
The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies
Best Ever Chocolate Cutout Cookies
Raspberry Star Cookies

It appears that I'm a sucker for recipes with the word "best" in the title.  The jam stars were certainly the highlight of our Christmas spread.   They disappeared so quickly and sent Donnie into such rhapsodies that we made three batches.  For variety, we swapped in a quince jelly that we picked up at the Church Christmas market, as well as berry, fig and apricot jams.  These cookies are so rich and pretty--I think they could be given away individually as party favors.

Dark Days of Advent

Now that I've finally put our sad, Charlie Brown Christmas tree in the compost, it's time to catch up on these Advent posts!



My grandad reminded me some weeks back that the historic birth of Christ is believed to have occurred in April.   The liturgical celebration of Christmas was set for late December because the Church, in her wisdom, knew that people (that is, dwellers of the Northern Hemisphere) needed to celebrate the winter solstice.  The return of the sun provided such an excellent metaphor for the coming of the Savior.  In this way, Christmas, in addition to being a season of abundant graces, is treatment for seasonal affect disorder!

I had fine hopes of having a prayerful and industrious Advent.  This was to be our first Christmas on our own,and I wanted to revel in the freedom of being neither traveler nor host.  Time to make our own traditions!  Time to start filling Maria's little head with shiny, happy holiday memories!  I had great expectations as I sat designing our card in the days following Thanksgiving. 

My ambitions were partly foiled by moodiness--December was a grumpy month.  We had  weeks of gray, rainy days.  I struggled to adjust to Maria's napless days. I missed my English-speaking friends at Mom's group ---Maria's 11:30 pickup from school prevented me from attending. (I find this to be the greatest difficulty of  being a stay at home mom--having a day short in both solitude and adult companionship.) Louisa had her first double-ear infection.  Maria continued in her refusal  paint at school.  Bad news of the events at Newtown and the fiscal cliff seeped in.   Donnie's energies were stretched between research commitments, administrative chores, and job applications. (Even when it's going well, the Job-seeking state of life is marred by uncertainty. ) These things, as slight as they were, conspired to make us irritable.

When Christmas came, it felt less like a carefully planned and highly anticipated event, and more like a reprieve.  We stumbled our way through Advent and fell gratefully on the lighted threshold of Christmas.

And that, perhaps, is how it must be!  Help comes from the outside--just as it did that night in Bethlehem.

Despite the December pall, we did a few Advent activities that I hope we'll continue in future years.  In the next couple of posts, I'll be sharing them with you.  If I were a savvy blogger, I'd probably reserve these for next year, when people are more in a mood to look at Advent calendars.  But you are all so terribly indulgent--even of my tardiness.  Thank you and Happy New Year!

Celebrating the Season of Harvest

It's late October. We've gotten used to adding extra layers when we go outside, and have come to expect frigid temperatures in our apartment at night. We love the golden days that come our way. Autumn has broken in nicely and is comfortable and friendly, like Donnie's sherling slippers.

I didn't feel this way a couple of weeks ago, when, having just emerged from my hospital room, I found that our Indian summer had ended. The gray skies and early sunsets gave me a sense of foreboding that I hadn't felt in years. Hormones surely contributed to my dismay--and the six days spent inside, cut off from the movement of nature. But part of it was cultural. Where were the gourds and cornstalks? Where were the tasteless (and premature) Halloween decorations? The season arrived without the trappings (at least trappings I could recognize), and so I was caught off guard. In the States, we battle the waning of the light with apple picking excursions and pumkin-flavored chai lattes. Without these seasonal rituals, I felt a bit defenseless.

"What do the French do in the Fall?" I asked a British mum at the Anglophone mom's group I attend. "I don't know." she answered, "I'm sure there's something to do with wine."

The funny thing, is that the French are known for being more closely tied to the seasons, at least in terms of cuisine. While the American symbols for the harvest are absent--no jack-o-lanterns, sacrificial turkeys, or gourd-filled cornucopia--the reality of the harvest season is more immediate. Maria and I collected baskets of walnuts and hazelnuts in our backyard. My mother brought us apples from her yard in Barron Marlotte, and last week brought chestnuts as well.

I still hope to join in an autumn ritual with actual Frenchmen. I know that must exist and they must be lovely. It's just one aspect of life in France that we have yet to discover. Meanwhile, I'll show you the nuts we've collected: