Turkey Holiday highlights

So we've had the turkey holiday as my seven year old calls it. We brined it, we cooked it, we basted it and ate it.  For two days we had turkey sandwiches and warm turkey salad. Yesterday I pulled the rest of the flesh off the carcass and boiled it for 3 hours. Today we ate broccoli soup made with turkey stock.
Is there any more turkey left? Oli asked, wincing a little.
I've frozen it. I told him.
What have you done with its head? he asked, as if I might be saving it for some particular pastry-wrapped delicacy, just for him.
It didn't come with a head. I told him. Do we have to talk about this now? I asked. We were eating the broccoli soup. I can see vividly its wobbly neck and how I tucked the bumpy flap of skin under its body in the roasting pan, not sure if there was something else I should have done with it - trussed it perhaps?  It dripped small stalactites of fat as it cooked.
The three year old had gaged at the sweet potato gratin on his Thanksgiving plate.  Oli valiantly ate what he could in order to get access to the apple pie he knew would follow.
The sun shone, though it was just cold enough in the shade to feel like it could be November.  The boys go back to school tomorrow and tonight I sat on Oli's bed and asked him what had been the best day of the week.  I would like to write a book through the mind of a five year old boy. There is magic there.  Was it, I asked, the first day when you played animal races all over the house with your stuffed toys and when we finally got out at 3 o'clock to go to the park, we saw the police motorbike on the street corner and when we went to investigate found that Barack Obama was going to go past any minute and we waited and saw all the police cars and men in flak jackets and Obama looking out of his SUV with the window down? Or was it the day when Wendy, who was staying with us, walked you up to the bookshop to buy you a book each and then we came home and read and played? Or was it the next day when we went to Golden Gate Park and you climbed a tree and then we ran some errands and went to the post office? Or the Turkey day when we walked in the Presidio and the Robinsons came and ate the food in the afternoon? Or the next day when Keanu and Luca came over and we went out to play? Or today when we met Henrik on the beach and had lunch at the Pelican Inn? Which day was it?
I am thinking, yes! we had fun! We actually did it this time!
It was all good says Oli, except the day we saw Brack Obrama, because we wasted time when we could have been at the park.
That same day, my seven year old had said at supper, The bad thing about being the President is - you can't be a police motorbike rider.
That's true  I conceded.
Or a dump truck driver  Oli added.
We ate on in silence. There's no disputing that.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A package of sticky dots and some index cards to wish you a happy Valentine's Day!

A reminder

Happy New Year! I seem to remember grabbing on to 2011 as if it were a life raft in rough sea. 2010 had seen me so laden with anxieties - in so many forms - that by the end of the year I was ready to jump ship.  This New Year, Dom and I sat for a while in the dark, on our doorstep, to say goodbye to 2011. We listened to the whisper of Abba coming from a party in a fifth floor apartment down the street, and tried to work out what stars we were looking at. It wasn't a raucous welcome to 2012, but it was perfect.

***

Jack hadn't settled well. He didn't have a fever, didn't have cold. I sat in his room, in the dark, holding him, on the oversized rocking chair that we bought for just this kind of thing a few years ago. His head was on my shoulder, his hair still rabbit soft and fine as silk threads, his face turned slightly towards me. In the grainy grey of a late December night his face looked almost hyper-real, like a Pixar character - a grey blush on his full cheeks, long eyelashes like dark feathers, he closed his eyes ever so slowly only to reopen them abruptly to the sound of his own breath.  Wrapped in his fleecy sleeping bag, I took time to notice the weight of his body on me, his legs tucked up to his tummy. I stroked his cheek and he smiled with effort.  Knowing my hand was near, he reached out for it and we rocked together in a cozy cocoon of exchanged warmth and breath.  In his waking hours Jack does not have this snuggling ease. Getting him dressed is like putting clothes on a cat; he crawls off, scampering away, with one wry glance back, to find his brothers or simply be out of my reach. Although it's never ideal to have a child refusing sleep it gave me a moment to think about the changes in him this year.  I wonder now if this little boy was just reminding me that he won't be this small for long.

Christmas Collage

To all of you who I do not get to see nearly enough and who I miss, Happy Christmas! And Happy 2012 one and all. Here's a taster of what Christmas is looking like in our neck of the woods....














Shhh, don't tell Dad...(a joke jar so he can store all the good ones).

Christmas blooms from the Bud Stop, a self indulgent treat.

Lots of pyjama-clad drawing, stamping and tape (oh the fun you can have with tape - and wooly hats.)

More of those snowmen in construction.

Cutting corners; the wallpaper's up but the decorator is a little behind schedule for Jack's present...

Very nearly finished...the much-wanted 'you-made-Oli-one-what-about-me?' dressing gown for Max.

Home made mince pies in my favourite Texan cake tin.

Dom's mulled wine (not shown, it was drunk too quickly, that's the drink, not me...)

A whole lot of making...

There are so many inspiring blogs from people making things.  I get my fixes mostly from here and here but of course those sites can lead you to all sorts of other great places. I'm annoyed I never really took this therapeutic activity very seriously.  My problem is that I like the challenge of making something once, and then I get bored if I have to make it again, so I can never produce very much of the same thing.  This Christmas has been pretty crafty though. The boys got totally overexcited about decorating the tree this weekend. I had to remind myself, 'this is Christmas' as I watched them teeter on the arm of a chair (even while I berated them) to try and put a decoration on the topmost branch.  'This is Christmas', making a wreath with Oli and Jack in the afternoon sunshine, compiling our annual most-listened-to music to share, the excitement about making pastry for the mince pies and listening to carols and Christmassy compositions. Christmas cannot be condensed into one day. It is the snowman decorations that Max and Oli are loving making, it is the unorthodox present for Jack that they are helping with (check back after the 25th to find out), it is the debate about religion that emerges when Max asks, 'is Jesus dead?', it is the den the boys built this morning by the nativity scene or in Max's words, 'near merry Jesus', it is the cake we have yet to decorate, it is the many nights when the sitting room is lit just by fire and fairy lights, it is all the making and decorating, the chat and love and fug.

Cornbread anyone?

Thanksgiving! This has been a hit and miss celebration during our time in the US.  Twice Dom has been away, and last year I got a half turkey delivered so I didn't have to cook one. It ended up being dry and tasteless but since I was in my deranged post-partum state I can barely remember it. This year we are going to a pot-luck where I was encouraged to bring precisely nothing. Nothing? I thought this holiday was all about cooking and sharing?  There's a poster ad here for Newcastle Brown Ale which has a picture of a pint with the words, 'Making British food palatable since 1927'. The pot-luckers are obviously taking no chances with me.  I protested, and was given the task of producing some cornbread muffins. Knowing Dom likes bread sauce, I also suggested I bring some of that, in the name of cross-cultural diversity. We haven't made the bread sauce yet but yesterday I cooked up three batches of cornbread muffins, the first without wheat so as to be gluten free. These first ones turned out a little flat and fairly tasteless so I bought a mix, thinking if I baked them from a that, then I'd know how they should look and could work from there. Were they were meant to be all puffy with overhang like the blueberry muffins in Starbucks? Unfortunately I forgot the egg so the next dozen were just as flat and heavy.  Finally I made the last batch of cornbread just as the recipe suggested.  Certainly not light and fluffy.  Dom thinks they'd be better hot, with Marmite. Lucky we are not in charge of the turkey!

The stars!

What better way for the winter to announce it's arrival than with the bright starry nights we have been having here since the clocks went back last weekend.  I'm not really a fan of the clocks going back - sure, it's an opportunity to snuggle inside a little earlier and it brings with it the happy creep towards the festivities at the end of the year - but it also cuts the day off before I'm ready to come inside.  However, there has been a silver lining this year.  It's not that Oli has never been out in the dark before but it feels as though he is experiencing all the wonder and awe of a star-lit sky for the very first time.  Last night, as the dark crept up on us that whole hour earlier, I realised a bunch of toys were still outside at the end of the garden. We'd pulled a bag of bricks and cars out to a spot where the low slung sun had been able to reach us in the early afternoon.  Max led the intrepid party to retrieve them.

Let me backtrack a little...recently, Oli has been having some issues with a decorative owl perched on a neighbour's roof. He woke up terrified yesterday morning. 'It's out there' he said, wide eyed and pale at five thirty in the morning, 'Max saw it.' It was dark and it took me a while to work out what was out where. When I figured it out, I lifted the blind to see how menacing the owl actually appeared. I couldn't even see the ledge, let alone the bird and Max was fast asleep.  I was not going to argue with this new found anxiety at such an hour.  I persuaded him the bird was busy looking for mice and too hungry to bother us. But twelve hours later he managed to reawaken the horror of the owl as we went to gather up the toys in the dark. Sliding open the doors to the deck he was worried the owl might be waiting, hovering, ready to dart inside.  I reminded him that the owl would still be looking for mice somewhere else and, tentatively, he came outside. Within a few steps he took a big intake of breath.  Was it possible he'd seen that savage mean owl?  His mouth was wide as he pointed upwards and he was running on the spot. 'I see a star!' he squealed. This particular speck of light which we pass under every night was given the awesome appreciation it rightly deserves.  Sometimes it takes a three year old to make you stop and stare.
The moonlight through the trees left a dappled affect on the deck.  It was that point in the evening when you think you can only see a couple of stars and then suddenly, as your eyes become accustomed to the dark, or as the light continues to fade, you see that they freckle the sky. We could see dozens of them. The nighbours must have thought we'd uncovered a family of raccoons with all the shrieks of 'I see one! I see one!'

And then, driving home from a lengthy visit to the doctor this afternoon, and an extended wait for the antibiotics for Max's ear infection, yet again the dark was upon us and while Jack was voicing his hunger and I was thinking about what I could scrape together for supper, Oli squealed from the back seat, 'I see a star!' The full moon bright in the windscreen passed him by, but that shining solitary star - when I am feeling cheated that an hour of daylight has been stolen from me I must remember that the shorter days have given Oli the gift of a starlit sky.

Crafting quickly...

I think it was in The Creative Family that I read about 'crafting quickly'. If I had it my way, I'd do nothing very quickly. Although I'm a keen multi-tasker I like to take time to do anything. But parenting has made me quick to realise that if you spend too long in procrastination and then some more in preparation you will never get anything done. With that in mind, I introduce to you to our first Hallowe'en decoration, Mr Bones...

He is small fry by comparison to our decorative neighbours. Most houses near us have spiders the size of doors climbing up the exterior walls and have polyester cobwebs that appear to seal the entrance to their homes. There are Frankensteins and severed limbs, black cats with wild green eyes and pumpkins inflated on the rooves. As I write this I realise I should take some photographic evidence of this stuff - next year.  Oli, who I believed was scared of nothing has taken it upon himself to be terrified of Mr Bones, though he saw that he was made (in less than half an hour) with that All Blacks T shirt (sorry, Sally Anne, you knew Dom would never wear it!) and how we stuffed him with old socks and stuck a pole in him so he'd sit up straight. But perhaps that's simply scary in itself - to make a little body, larger than Oli's - out of relatively nothing and stick a pole up his bottom to make him behave.

Jack has turned one!

One dimple. Two brothers. Three bottles. Four teeth. Five nonsense nicknames. Six in the morning. Seven miles an hour. Eight feet up the stairs. Nine odd socks. Ten decibels. Can you tell we have a child in Kindergarten? Happy birthday Jack!

THREE!

For what feels like years, I've been having to remind myself that Oli is 'only two'. He follows his five year old brother around daring to believe he can do everything Max can do, and possibly better. 'And I are? And I are?' he'll say - as both question and declaration - hoping to put a dent in Max's claims to be the best at biking or running or digging in the dirt.  'And I are?'  And now he's 3 and about to get some mornings to himself at school.  Despite my earlier post about the three month eternity of the school holidays, this time of year feels packed with emotion.  The children are getting older, which means I'm getting older, and while I want one, I don't necessarily want the other.  And even as I want what is passing I need to say goodbye to it before it goes. A new daily landscape emerges as we settle in to new routes to new schools, and the inevitable need to get up even earlier in order to get places on time.  New interests seek to be accommodated while I suddenly mourn the loss of all those unstructured days of pajama breakfasts, mega constructions and impromptu walks in search of sticks and puddles. My parenting has to shift around a bit to feel comfortable with the new age groups in the family and the different interactions.  Taking on (even small) responsibilities at the children's schools feels like a weighty commitment.  Was there really a time, five years ago, in the days when I had just one infant to care for, when I would take a lunchtime nap? The very concept feels extraordinary.

So in celebration of things moving on a little, Oli turned three and he had some friends round to acknowledge the fact. We slung bunting up around the garden and he ate large quantities of a cake designed to look like an airport runway.  And once the party was over and three of the four beds upstairs contained slow-breathing boys, I snuck a look at some bad quality recordings of me, taken in the middle of last year, where I am trying to get Oli to say 'dotta bridge'. And I said goodbye to that little boy so that we can welcome what comes with the three year old version.

Love Note

Yesterday, my son's teacher handed me a postcard-sized piece of paper and said, 'This is for your love note.'  I must have missed the briefing about love notes and looked at her blankly.  She had to clarify that this was a love note to Max for his graduation. Now, the whole concept of graduating from preschool is new to me.  Does Max become a post-grad before he even gets to Kindergarten? And a public love note for the occasion? Of course I love him, his curiosity, persistence, his stubbornness, his zeal; but how to write something that says I love you which isn't too saccarine and isn't going to leave me blushing when the other parents read it?  I suppose, in part, this blog is a public love note, so I really should be over that aspect of it. I put pen to paper and tried to write a little poem for my five year old. It needed to fit on a postcard and for lack of other entries on this blog (for which I'm sorry and I promise to improve) I'll share it with you here, hastily written but from the heart:

Love Note to Max, June 2011
Max in motion, always moving;
Jumping, spinning, climbing high,
Shifting dirt around the garden,
Dancing with a hue and cry...
That's until we go out walking -
Suddenly your legs are stiff,
Exercise is very boring,
When you've just reached 3 ft 6.
Trucks and diggers keep you busy,
Collecting driftwood, fallen sticks,
Then a subject seems to grab you,
Most recently it's sunken ships.
That's when the questioning gets serious,
What's an orlop? What's a deck?
How do you make an airtight chamber?
How indeed! How the heck?
How you love your little brothers,
Kiss them, hug them, hold their hands.
And they look to you for all things -
How to jump and where to land.
At night your bed is full of 'am-nals'
Dogs and bears, a cow or two
Every night the line-up's different -
But one thing's constant - we love you.

Happy Birthday!

Five fun filled years - celebrated with a Titanic pinata, a hastily made Titanic cake, no singing but much silliness...

Just us

Grinning, Oli announces, 'We're having a birthday!'
It's as if we've just decided on it, a spontaneous idea.  There's a fizz of excitement in his voice.  I'm not sure how much he understands but he knows it's going to be special.  I, on the other hand, am well aware of the impending date, it's my birthday after all, and I'm the wrong side of 35. So I'm quite happy to let this birthday go, ignore it. But there's such excitement in plans for cards and cakes that I must be excited. It matters. I begin to feel more about this birthday than I have about any in the past decade.
'Who would you like for your birthday?' Max asks me.
I think for a moment and tell him I'm just fine with the 5 of us.
'No, Mummy.' It's as if I haven't understood. 'Who would you like to come for your birthday?'
This is a boy who is meticulously planning his fifth birthday party. He wants to invite everyone from school. 'Patrick, Kai, Braydon' he lists. Then he asks 'Grandpa?' I give him a look - Grandpa is five thousand miles away and unlikely to make it over for birthday tea in April. He misinterprets my look.
'You know Granny Mot?' he says, as if I need my memory shaken.
'Yes.' I take care not to be facetious.
'Well, that grandpa..they got married...they can be the people who bring the cake.'
I smile but he's back to his list. 'Alex, Tommy, Lola...'
'Just us.' I say.
Tomorrow it will be just us.

Two!

Oli turned two at the end of last month and I haven't even mentioned our celebrations. For my own sanity I needed to keep it low-key. His best friend was there, though. That was easy, being as it is, his brother.  A few friends came for tea and I surprised myself by getting the bunting up and even producing a chocolate cake (It's taken four years but it seems my kitchen is finally well-equipped enough for baking). Oli however looked either serious or seriously disappointed in all the photos we took.
A little background here - the boys' father loves to gee up a birthday. Days, even weeks before, there is a ton of preliminary chat about how the day is going to pan out, what's going to be eaten for breakfast, the flavour and consistency of the cake, the size of the slices at teatime, what it'll feel like being a year older.  I, on the other hand, down-play the whole event; my theory being that you can't then be deflated. But in truth, a lot of the fun is in the anticipation and I know this, so I should probably join my husband's ranks.  But since it falls heavily on my shoulders whether or not my child gets enough birthday attention, and there's always something I've planned that I haven't managed to get done in time, I just can't enlist.
So, this year, Dom had asked Oli about his forthcoming birthday and how he was feeling about being two. His answer was a flat denial, 'No'. No? How could he not want his birthday? He is obviously more like me than we thought. Turns out he most certainly did not want to be two, he wanted to be three.  Therein lay the disappointment (and the difference between he and his mother). Hence the two candles did not elicit a smile of any description, although the cake consumption was overseen with much concentration.

No Singing Please!

We celebrated Max's 4th birthday last weekend; pass the parcel, preschool friends and a chocolate cake in the shape of a boat. All seemed to go well; the sun shone, no-one scraped a knee, that is until our rendition of 'Happy Birthday'.  It reduced the recipient of the song to tears. I know he has a specific music taste (punk pop and hard rock it seems), but does that mean the family's tuneless efforts are going to be banished forever? These were not passing tears, the boy was gasping for breath at points, his face red and wet. Rage? Embarrassment? Offended sensibilities? The following day, his actual birthday, when we went to preschool, his teacher took him by the hand and I told him I'd be back later with cupcakes. I heard him tell the teacher...'but I don't want anyone to sing.'  So a few hours later, twenty friends sat around three separate tables on kindergarten chairs licking frosting saying 'Yummy, yummy in my_______' and ending the sentence with every noun possible except 'tummy' and giggling into their spongecake, and we didn't sing.  One rather zealous boy began a loud 'Haaaap...' but was reminded of Max's birthday rule and got back to the serious business of butter icing and giggles.

Easter in Canada

Max had so much chocolate he asked if it would still be Easter when we got back home...

Handmade(ish) Christmas

Last year we managed to make some wrapping paper and a reindeer pop-up card (too taxing to repeat), oh, and of course the CD of Max's favourites. This year...well that might give too much away. Happy Christmas!

Thanksgiving IV

Before the arrival of digital cameras I had this brilliant idea for a chick lit novel.  A 20-something girl (OK, me, back then) takes her film reel off to be developed.  The photo shop isn't very glam, down a back street near the train station. She pays to get it processed in 24 hours but she's a radio journalist and ends up going on a job that takes her away from home most of the week. Then she has to see her parents at the weekend, there's some issue that needs dealing with.  She's also just broken up with her boyfriend.  So anyway, it's the following week when she finally rushes back to the shop, she's working nights and running late, she's on the phone with a friend who's trying to set her up, it seems to take forever for the man to find her photos.  She sees her train coming, takes the film he's offering, gives him a tenner and runs for the platform.  Once on the train, she opens the envelope to find she doesn't recognise any of the pictures.  Annoyed, she bungs them in her bag and plans to take them back the following day.  Being fairly chaotic, it's another ten days before she gets back to the shop - and she finds that the place has closed down, or closed due to flood damage or something.  About now I realised I needed a middle bit to actually make it a novel.  Anyway, the photos get stuffed in a cupboard, forgotten.  But somehow it turns out they are pictures of her future.
Luckily I don't have to write the book because John Buchan did, back in 1932, when he penned A Gap In The Curtain. I haven't actually read it, but got a precis from my mum many years ago, probably as she was steering me away from a major literary gaffe. 
But I've often wondered what I'd have made of it all, back then, if I'd got a glimpse of my life ahead of time.  Just a few snapshots. Who hasn't wondered?  Would I have been able to piece my story together? Would I have seen my children as my own?  Would I have recognised my home? Would I have been scared of what I saw?  Would I have vowed to wear more moisturiser, or spend more time at the hairdresser?
I raise the issue because we are fast approaching our fourth Thanksgiving; a celebration we have, for better or worse, traded for Guy Fawkes Night.  No sparklers or fireworks this month, no bonfires warming cold hands. Instead, a vigil in the kitchen and a 12lb turkey.
Four years. Max is now a sensible, if dogmatic, three and a half year old. Oli seems to have a glint in his eye, a sneaky smile as he waves food from his plate to the floor.  He still smiles like he did in those early months (although now with some teeth) but he's also got a mean frown in his repertoire too, and an executive index finger that can point out his needs with alarming precision.  Tomorrow, in the absence of a dish of sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows (there's only so far we can go to make the feast authentic) that finger will no doubt be pointing at the 12lb turkey.

The Race

I'm kicking myself for not creating a podcast of Dom's swimming efforts over the past 5 months. It had all the potential for a great audio diary; the 6ft 4" non-swimmer challenging himself to race one of the most notorious stretches of open water, from Alcatraz Island to the San Francisco shore.
Aside from the physical challenge of learning an effective freestyle, his initial concern was great white sharks. Those brutal killers come to the oceanic 'red triangle', which incorporates the northern California coast, because it's a breeding ground for so much marine life, perfect for hunting a vulnerable snack. Hungry sharks that have traveled miles for food, no thank you. Digging around on the internet Dom unearthed news that a great white was spotted in the bay three years ago. Three years? That's yesterday when it's murky below and you're dressed up in a wetsuit the colour of seal flesh. Admittedly it was about eight miles from the race waters but I think sharks can swim at about 25mph which means it could have been nibbling Dom's toes in less than twenty minutes.
Early August and during a day trip further up the coast, we found out the beach we were sitting on had been closed for six days after two shark sightings. Then, last month aggressive sea lions began attacking swimmers in Aquatic park, the open water practice area. That was quickly followed by a suicide victim being washed up there. A sombre sight; to see blankets thrown over the beached body, police cordons set up, ambulances by the shore.
I've forgotten to mention that this was actually a triathlon, after the 1.5 mile swim, Dom had 14 miles by bike and a 6 mile run. A month before the race Dom said he was worried. I nodded, perhaps my face contorted a bit, thinking how I'd feel ahead of a challenge like this.
'Worried I won't hit my fund-raising target' he went on. The fact that he'd already raised 17 thousand dollars for a UK children's charity seemed to have passed him by. The man wasn't thinking straight.
Less than three weeks til the race, the hottest day in San Francisco this year, and Dom throws in some last minute cycle training. In the upper eighties he biked over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausilito and back, then topped it off with a six mile run along the coast. I think it dawned on him then, that it wasn't all about the swimming.
What luck, then, that just days before the race an email came through saying that permits for the cycle ride had been revoked. It would now be a duathlon (although spell check tells me there is no such thing). Dom had mixed feelings about this, on one hand annoyed that he wouldn't be able to do the challenge he intended, on the other, after his hot lycra-clad biking efforts, undeniably a little relieved.
24 hours to race day and the sunshine turned to storm clouds. Claps of thunder shook the house in the night. At the pre-race registration, the other athletes appeared either very chiseled or had necks as wide as their shoulders. Back at home, the children and I made flags out of an old sheet and a bamboo with Dom's number drawn on in black felt tip.
Then, finally, race day; a grey morning lifted by porridge and ginger tea, a ferry to the start point and hands on hearts for the 'Star Spangled Banner'. A team of firefighters were swimming the race to honour a colleague who died attempting it last year. A fire boat had it's hoses going, the jets shooting out like huge water-tentacles. The spectators found their spot. Then the first of the swimmers started arriving at the beach. An hour in and Dom emerged from the water, a big grin. Total elation. Both the physical and mental battles won. No mistake, it was all about the swimming.

A 1st Birthday

There's nothing like birthdays for marking out the passage of time. And so Oli, our little 'rubby' prop, turns 1. No teeth and not crawling, but clapping and pointing and sitting and stretching and smiling and sleeping and, when in doubt, a thumb in the mouth.