{p,h,f,r} Catch Up Post for Week of May 1st

As we climbed into the car to go to church on May 1st, Maria asked, "how can it be raining on May day?"  It was a cold and rainy week, and I forgot to take pictures during most of it. Our chief occupations were getting over our collective family head cold and getting used to Louisa being back on a half day schedule at school.

Finally, on Sunday, as a special gift to the mothers of New England, the sun appeared.  That was just when I was getting ready to sit down to do a weekly blog post.  The blog post had to be postponed in favor of a family walk.


pretty

 Here are the crab apple blossoms from outside St. Mary's, where we attend mass and adoration.  Shortly after I took this photo, Louisa slipped while trying to climb one of these pink trees.

happy

 The girls love to play dress up, and we've collected a lovely wardrobe over the years.  I've been daydreaming of some sort of organizational scheme that would get their costumes off the floor and save them from being tangled up in bins.  Most of the schemes involved advanced wood working skills and at least fifty dollars in materials.  Last week I spotted this adjustable clothing wrack at Aldi's for ten dollars.  The girls have been very good about hanging up their finery since its arrival.  This is one of those little pieces of happy that is very specific to this era and this time of life.

These pictures were taken on Sunday, after the sun came out.  The flowers glowed and princesses exited their dungeon and went out to survey the transformed world.

Children love a path!  These slates were salvaged from various roof renovations at West Point. They were hanging out in our garage until I brought out a few to serve as stepping stones over the mulch in  the front garden bed.  Louisa added more to make a little path.  Now the girls walk the path every time they exit the front door.  


happy

A highlight of the week was having our friends the Bogues over for a communal meal on Friday.  Imelda called me the day before to say that she had a brisket that needed cooking and a recipe she was eager to try, and would it be acceptable if she brought it over and made it at my house?  It was indeed acceptable, and turned out to be a lovely format for a dinner party.  One cook takes on the responsibility of preparing The Large Piece O' Meat while the other cook pulls together the sides; a pleasant and equitable devision of labor.

Imelda is in the throws of rehearsing an opera which will be opening this weekend.  I got to see her again Sunday night, after she discovered that her husband had, with the very best of intentions, polished their kitchen hardwood floor while she was away at rehearsal.  Fearing that the polish fumes would endanger her voice, Imelda came and used our guest room that night.  It was so fun to have my friend at my house in the late evening.  We had a good, long talk while Donnie caught up on basketball.  It's nice to have another night owl for a friend.


real

I'm not sure why, but Louisa and Pippa have been dramatizing every stumble, bump, and hang nail this week.    One or the other of them seems to be crying or announcing a hurt every five minutes or so.  Donnie and I have difficultly maintaining empathy, and often find ourselves saying "that's what happens when you do x."   They fetch each other ice packs and put band aids on each other, which is quite sweet, but leaves the house in a whirl of bandaid wrappers and melting bags of blue chemicals.   Perhaps we just a had a particularly uncoordinated week.

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real - May 1, 2016

{pretty}

Our yard is not a "lawn," but a forest meadow.  A million sprouting acorns will second me on this---this land wants very badly to be woods.  Forest meadows have numerous advantages over lawns.  The best is that you get to rejoice in the dog violets, bluets, and ajuga that appear in the spring.  Second best is that you cut the grass only about twice a year.

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Maria finally has the jack-o-lantern grin that you expect in a near-seven-year-old.  She has two adult teeth already, but they grew in behind her baby teeth, so this is the the first time we are seeing a gap.

{happy}

Popop turned ninety!  The girls made water-color and crayon resist artwork to send him. We are so blessed in Popop! Congratulations and many happy returns of the day! Here's sending you our love via the Inter-waves!

{happy}

This is a holdover from last week.  We met Jonathan, the UConn mascot, at an Earth Day event at Merrow Meadow park.  He's a beautiful and well-behaved creature.   His colors are so pure that it looks like he was cut from a black and white photograph.

{happy}

Our literary intake for the week: listening to audio books of My Father's Dragon and Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang. Maria brought home Olympig from the school library and the girls have requested it several times.  We have just begun the D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths.  I am so excited!  All the D'Aulaires books that I have come across are wonderful.  So far, the D'Aulaires have managed to present the mysterious and beautiful beautiful aspects of the myths while keeping the grostesque and horrifying from taking center stage.  We are fortunate that my friend Imelda makes a hobby of visiting library book sales and buying up all the children's classics, regardless of whether or not she has them in her collection.  She passes on redundant copies to friends.  We've received so many marvelous books this way! 

{funny}

There was a morning last week when the girls got themselves up and immediately dressed (for once) and put on an impromptu musical performance.  Maria was a statue of the Roman God Mercury and Louisa was a statue of the Roman God Apollo.  The statues came alive and sang a song with the chorus"we were statues, a long time ago."  Maria is wearing a head ornament with wings and has a paper staff with the Mercury symbol. Louisa had a wad of yellow tissue paper to represent the sun and a box for a chariot.  Maria talked about herself being "the morning star"  and Louisa being the day star.  Louisa sang about "getting the gray off [her] face" and wanting bones made of stone, like a dinosaurs.   Donnie and I thought the whole performance admirably rich---you might say "polyvalent."  Most of all, it was nice to be greeted by a morning musical rather than the sibling squabbles that are our more common faire!

{real}

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Real Bricks!  The girls unearthed some brick in the back yard.  They had such fun with them that we bought fifty more at a tag sale. The girls have constructed a fort for themselves under the treehouse.  These make games of 3 little pigs way more real.  

Pretty, Happy - April 23, 2016

The girls were off from school this past week.  We got a lot out of our free days.  On Monday, we had two playdates and adoration.  On Tuesday, Old Sturbridge Village.  Wednesday, Meme came to us. Thursday, we met Auntie C, Uncle Steve and Caitlyn at Kidcity, and later had homemade pizza in our tree house.  Friday was a recuperation morning and our last session of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd for the year.

{pretty and happy}

When Meme came, she brought three bags of mulch, two bags of potting soil, a Mantauck daisy, two flats of pansies, a small rhododendron and a potted hollyhock.  She brought tools, including a something wonderful called an edger.  We had a lovely morning of raking out the azaleas, putting plants in the ground, laying down mulch and generally tidying. Meme did a lot.  I did what little I could between making sure that Pip wasn't in the tree house, taking care of potty accidents, and trying (and failing) to get Pippa to take a nap. I'm very grateful to Meme and so pleased with the results.  How very helpful it is to have someone come and get you started.  I was worrying about soil testing and researching compatible plants--i.e making things so complex that I couldn't start...but really, it's better to throw a few things in the ground and have a go at it.  It's so good to feel that we're no longer playing chicken with the garden beds!   And now that we've set things out, I'm realizing that we have so much to hope for and anticipate garden-wise--irises and daisies, azaleas, rhododendrons, hollyhocks, peonies, and purple gladiolas.

After Meme headed for home, the girls and I headed to the University Dairy Bar. UConn has an excellent school of agriculture and the cows in the University's herd are happy and pasture-fed.  The Dairy Bar ice cream is made from their milk.   The quality is excellent.  The portions are ample.

We discovered a wonderful magnolia tree near the Dairy Bar; perfect for the littles to climb.

{pretty and happy}

On Tuesday, we went to Old Sturbridge Village.   Every time we visit, I mention to the girls that they may want to have their wedding receptions there some day--it's so lovely.  There's weathered wood, and blossoming trees, wood smoke and pine scent in the air. The village is large---we still haven't seen it in its entirety, despite having visited four or five times.  With each visit, we're happy  to take home just a few tidbits of information and a few impressions.  This time, we arrived just in time to ask questions of a Laura Ingalls Wilder impersonator.   I asked about Laura's relationship with  her mother-in-law.  In Farmer Boy, LIW describes her husband's youth, and goes into extensive detail on all the wonderful things that Mrs. Wilder cooked for her family.  The book leaves the impression that doughnuts, cookies, and apple pie were daily fare---just what they had on hand for snacks.  Then there were the multi-course meals.  I wondered if there  was something a little passive aggressive in this over-the-top account of the the Mrs. Wilder's plentiful kitchen.  Perhaps Laura's husband had praised his mother's cooking a few too many times, and Laura exacted a tender revenge by writing it down in the same hyperbolic terms that her husband described it.   The actress said "no," Mrs. Wilder was just that productive and formidable a cook. Laura admired Mrs. Wilder and aspired to be like her.  So much for my pet theory.

We saw the lambs.   It was the first time that the girls seemed to take an interest in the animals.  Maria was particularly delighted by  a mother chicken and her chicks scratching in their pen.  She thought it was hilarious how the hen bustled about, heedlessly showering her offspring with sawdust.

The replica dress shown aboce was highly adjustable.  It could fit both Pippa and Louisa thanks to it's many drawstrings.  Now, why don't we make clothing like this anymore---a dress that could easily be worn by a child for three years straight!

In the house interiors, there are so many rich colors and patterns.  How very dull is our modern decorating, with our gray and beige and carefully coordinated prints!

{also happy}

This week, we did a fair amount reading and  listening to audiobooks.  We finished listening to  The Mouse and the Motorcycle and Freddy the Detective.  I also finished reading The Trumpet of the Swan aloud to the girls.  That makes three intelligent animal stories!  All of them were great.


I will have to do my funny and real sections later, once I've had a chance to get pictures off Don's camera.  Stay tuned...

{pretty, happy, funny, real} April 15, 2016

{pretty}

I find myself wanting to talk about the weather lately---really wanting to talk about it, not simply as a way of starting conversation--because this weather begs discussion.  There were those few, exhilarating, balmy days in March, when groundhogs and seasoned New Englanders alike were saying that we'd have an early spring.  Then came the snows that ripped the better part of the forsythia blossoms off the bushes, and then the slow, grudging side-step towards spring.  Now we have sunshine, but things its still brisk, and there's only a little bit of green haze in the wood.  I'm surprised that spring isn't a little further on.

But here we have some pretty flowers in our flower beds.  I planted these bulbs last fall and fairly dote on them, visiting them each day.  They are few and far between.  Somehow, I didn't realize that one bulb produces one flower--so profound are the depths of my gardening ignorance.  I sort of thought one bulb might produce several flower stalks.  My bulbs are haphazardly scattered through the beds.  My mother-in-law is coming next week, to spiff things up, garden-wise

{pretty}

Tea parties.  

Three little girls, three tea preferences.

Let's enjoy the haircut once again, shall we?

Homemade whole-wheat cutter cookies, a tulip from the garden, Pomegranate Pizazz tea.

Miss Shell

I brought the Ikea kids dishes from the playroom to the kitchen.  This lead to several impromptu tea parties this week.  We gave ourselves special names.  At this occasion, Maria was Miss Shell, Pippa was Miss Pippa, and Louisa was Miss Challawalla.  These pictures look fairly civilized, but shortly after this, things got out of hand with the yogurt (don't they always!)  We read Reschenka's Egg as we had our tea.



{happy and funny}

My opera singer friend just started rehearsals for a production of Salome.  Her husband was out of town this week, so she needed somewhere to stash their brilliant, active boys during her Tuesday evening rehearsal.  We had them over for a sleepover.  It's wonderful when doing a little baby sitting for a friend makes you a patron of the arts!

A curtsey amidst the rubble. 

The girls were very excited.  As soon as the boys appeared, things got musical---well, if not musical, then certainly very loud.  Here are some pictures of the kids' band for their album cover.  I love how James looks every inch the melancholic artist, despite the hubbub that surrounds him.

The sleepover was great fun.  The boys introduced our girls to the charm of rice with catsup.  We introduced them to beet and blueberry popsicles.

We camped out in the living room and read the Silver Chair (book 4 of the Chronicles of Narnia).  Maria and James are entering the age when they can really get the Narnia books.  It was a wonderful thing to behold their rapt faces looking up at me from a tumult of pillows and blankets, and to go with them to the court of Cair Paravel.  Louisa and Dominic enjoyed the book, but didn't apprehend so much or listen so eagerly.  Understandably, they fell asleep first, while the oldsters, Maria and James, hung in there as Pole and Eustace embarked on their adventure.

My friend returned from rehearsal around eleven and James had just fallen asleep.  He had been keeping watch for her.  The boys have a chivalrous regard for their mother that pulls on my heartstrings.

So our sleepover went well!  The boys had a good time, but woke up raring to get home.  It goes to show---nighttime adventures are all well and good, but we all want a little familiarity when it comes to breakfast!

{real}

Birthday Bullying

My friends who have boys live in a state of heightened vigilance least their boys hurl themselves off high structure or manage to drop mattresses onto each others' heads.  For those of us with daughters, it's the social landscape that is fraught with the greatest perils.  Right now, birthdays are looming large in that landscape.

We've always  had a lot of talk of birthdays in our house, but lately, the talk has been getting out of hand.  Our girls, especially Lulu,  see their birthdays as zones where they wield absolute power.  This power may be wielded charitably, as when Louisa promises Pippa breakfast in bed and two treats from the Easter candy stash on her birthday.  But, more often than not, Birthday-girl power is used to mete out retribution.  This week, Lulu, in a fit of temper, told her her preschool teacher, KC,  that on her Birthday she may not have any jelly beans.  KC's replied that on her birthday, Louisa could have all the jellybeans she wanted.  Louisa, for once, was speechless.


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