Ramalamadingdong

This week is not going as planned, so far. But not all in a bad way.

Yesterday began not going to plan on Sunday night, when I realised that I was scheduled to co-op at nursery school the next morning. I had vaguely planned on going back to Target and finalizing some of the gift shopping - the gift shopping that I'd done a week earlier and that had been helpfully sitting on my bedroom floor for the next six days, waiting for me to do something else useful with it.

This problem was compounded on Monday afternoon when I discovered that that very day, not some vague date in the misty future, was the last day for posting by regular mail to Europe. Oops. Because of course 90% of the stuff in the bag on my bedroom floor was to be mailed to Europe, but I'd been waiting for this and that, for the perfect final present to present itself to me at the weekend's craft fair or some other opportune place, before wrapping it. I also subconsciously felt that B. should partake in the wrapping so that he had some input in all this shopping I'd done for members of his family, but since I didn't tell him that, and last week was busy with various meetings and whatnot, it hadn't happened.

Finally, last night, we sat down and had our gift-wrapping extravaganza, and happily we did have enough wrapping paper and tape and I had even bought a box at the post office that was the right size, all of which are no trivial matters.

So that was ready to be mailed first thing this morning, which would only be one day late and therefore practically in time, and would probably make it to Ireland before the big day anyway. Which would have been simple if this was a normal Tuesday, but then we got a snow day.
                                           
Monday had already been a delayed-start for the schools thanks to Sunday night's snow and ice storm, but then it snowed all morning here and they cancelled school entirely. It's only about an inch, and melting already, but I suppose the schools didn't want to deal with the potential mess of getting all the buses in during a snowstorm. We're not in Colorado, you know. Maryland is technically the South, and thus Not Great With Winter.

However, it was the good sort of snow day. The sort when B. has one too. Yes, yes, he was "working from home," but that also meant I could send him to the post office once the snow eased off, which it did at midday or so, and the roads had all been nicely treated so they were fine. So, BOOM, the parcel has been mailed and with a bit of luck everyone in Ireland will get their presents in time after all, and even if they don't, it's out of my hands now.

While he was doing that, I got off my arse and went through the recipes I've been meaning to try out and we made pretzels! BAM! Where's my snow-day baking award?

And Dash made a snowman all by himself for the first time. It's a little leafy, perhaps, but he's proud of it.

In the afternoon, B went out with Dash and got a Christmas tree, which we hadn't got around to doing yet, so that's something else we don't have to wait till next weekend for. DING!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Concerted effort

My favourite Christmas carol is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, because as an alto I can't get up high enough for all the other ones.

I used to sing in choirs. I don't have a particularly good voice, or a particularly strong voice, and I can only stay in tune when surrounded by a group of people also singing the same thing, but I enjoyed it and I can read music decently enough not to go horribly noticeably wrong. I also showed up for practice, which is always a bonus from a director's point of view.

My husband has also sung in choirs for many years. He's much better at it than I am, being what you might call legitimately musical and with a nice voice to boot. He'll even sing alone in front of other people, if you ply him with a drink or three. And it will sound good.

At Christmas, the Messiah is what we should be singing. I sang in the Messiah several times, in school and college and afterwards too. I could probably still get a fairish proportion of the alto line right, if given a score and placed right in the middle of all the other altos. Some day, I'll go to a singalong Messiah and do that, I hope.

For years, the choir concert was part of the beginning of Christmas. Long black skirt, black long-sleeved top, putting on my makeup in the bathrooms in the Science building of UCD, or the ones Dramsoc used in the LGs of the Arts block. Waiting upstairs in the O'Reilly Hall, going through those last few bits where I still went wrong, marking them with a pencil so at least I'd know where to stop singing for two or three notes rather than mess it up. The sound of an orchestra tuning up; it's like the clinking of ropes on masts in the harbour on a breezy summer's day. Sometimes I was in the orchestra instead - third clarinet or something like that. Again, not very good, but a show-er-up.

I love the anticipation, the lights, being on stage, being important but camouflaged as one of many. Not being the one who faints, that's vital; there's always one. Watching the conductor, trying not to giggle, turning pages silently. Looking out for parents, friends, whoever you could strongarm to come along. Smiling keeps you in tune. File out row by row, one by one.

On the whole, I enjoy a concert a lot more when I'm part of it than when I'm just watching. But we should find a concert to go to, because it's not Christmas without one.

Debunking

Sometimes life just writes my blog posts for me. The post about Mabel's dentist visit segued into Dash's prosaic encounter with the tooth fairy; and then this happened...

After school yesterday, out of the blue, Mabel and I had this conversation:

"Mummy, is Santa real? A___ told me today that it's just the parents giving presents."
"Oh really?" said I, playing for time.
"I know from the way you said that, he's not real."
"What?"
"You used that voice you use."
[Oh crap. Really? I'm that transparent?]

Then we had a little conversation about whether it's more fun if Santa's real or not real, and she admitted it's more fun if he is real, but she still wanted to know the truth. So I told her the truth. And followed it up swiftly with the Very Serious Admonishment that now that she's in on this big secret, she must be very careful to keep the secret from the other kids.

I admit, I felt a twinge of sadness at the passing of the belief. But mostly I felt relief. I never did very well with the double standards required by Doing Santa. When you're reassuring your kids on the one hand that giants don't exist and dinosaurs are extinct and fairies are only in stories and there are no goblins, and then encouraging them on the other hand to write letters to the man who'll come down the chimney and leave them presents in some totally magical manner... well, I've nothing against anyone who does it, but I found it tricky.

Anyway, there are great things about having Santa finally debunked:

• I don't have to explain how come Santa only shops at Target.
• I can put useful things in their stockings that Santa couldn't possibly have known they needed (and certainly wasn't asked for).
• I don't have to be careful to remember which presents we gave them and which ones Santa did for years to come.
• Santa doesn't get all the credit for the great gift ideas that were really mine.

Don't worry, Santa will still be coming to our house. Probably until the children are grown-up, and maybe even then a while. But if he slips up now and then and brings the wrong thing ... well, I suppose the kids will know exactly who to blame.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Christmas in America is so different from Christmas in Ireland.

• In America, you go to a performance of The Nutcracker. In Ireland, you go to the pantomime.
• In America, the big shopping day is the day after Thanksgiving. In Ireland, it's traditionally the Feast of the Assumption, December 8th; because all the schools would be off and everyone from the country would come up to Dublin. After going to Mass, of course.
• In America, you have to be careful to say "Happy Holidays", in case someone is Jewish or of some other faith, because you wouldn't want to offend anyone. In Ireland, you say Happy Christmas, because offending people is a national pastime and insulting someone is a true mark of friendship.
• In America people drink egg nog and eat candy canes. In Ireland they drink whatever you're having yourself, and eat selection boxes and Quality Street.
• In America, Turkey Day is Thanksgiving; people eat all sorts of different traditional foods on Christmas Day, depending on their heritage. In Ireland, Turkey Day is Christmas Day and that's that.
• Americans bake gingerbread houses and peppermint bark; Irishers bake mince pies and Christmas cake.

And yet, my Facebook and Twitter feeds - full of people from both sides of the Atlantic - confirm that:

• Everyone is unable to believe that it's December already.
• Definitely nobody is ready for it to be 2014.
• People everywhere have either done all their shopping or are leaving it till the last possible minute.
• Christmas is becoming more commercial every year, but the Christmas spirit is still alive and well if you take a moment to look for it.
• Some people's Christmas trees are already up. Some are not.
• Letters to Santa are being written and some children, on both sides of the Atlantic, are having up close and personal encounters with the man himself. (Don't ask how. It's magic.) 

I think it's just possible we are all cut from the same cloth, after all.

Dispatches

I think we're finally on Irish time now, after five days in the country.

The night before last was terrible as both children apparently overcorrected and set themselves to some middle-eastern time zone (Afghanistan was my best guess) by getting up for the day at 4am. I spent half an hour or so trying to convince them both to go back to sleep and an uncomfortable hour as the ham in a Dash-and-Mabel-bread sandwich (so I suppose I should say peanut butter) trying to keep them both in bed, but at 5.30 I threw in the towel and sent them to wake their father. Then I went back to bed till nine.

[I decided lately, in some sleep-deprived haze or other, that exceptional people are always challenging as children. My children will clearly be very exceptional when they're done. If I don't do for them first.]

But anyway. This morning they waited till daylight to wake up (and that's some achievement when day doesn't break till after 8am), so I'm pronouncing us cured. I expect no more sleep problems for the rest of our trip. (I am also expecting a Rolls Royce and a fully staffed Greek island for Christmas. Yup.)

I have finished my shopping and wrapped all my presents, and they are reposing in the big suitcase they arrived in because I'm afraid to put anything too tempting-looking under the tree. We saw three sets of carol singers today, as well as the live crib (two donkeys, two sheep, and a goat - no actual humans), and have not yet been rained on, though we've narrowly avoided it a few times.

After three days, the British (and sometimes Irish) voices on the TV no longer jar to my ears, and now watching an American film (School of Rock at the moment) I can hear the American accents clearly. When we're in the US they just blend in to normal, because there's never any counterpoint. (No wonder you people think everyone else's accents are cute. You never hear them unless you're watching Love, Actually.)

Dash refuses to change his watch to Irish time. He informs us at regular intervals what time it is in America. Sometimes he then counts up the extra five hours to tell us what time it is here too. Possibly he's afraid America won't still be there to go back to if he insults it by ignoring its time.

I don't think we're having a turkey on Thursday

I spend a few days thinking about jeans and shoes and suddenly it's Thanksgiving week and there's no food in the house.

Ah well. Food comes and goes, you know, but boots are good for at least two years, I'd say. I have a pair of boots upstairs that I bought in 1999, actually. I wore them at least once last year. (I'd wear them more often if I had any call for 2.5-inch heels on a regular basis. But somehow I never feel that first-grade pickup is the right time. Or daylight, for that matter.)

The reason I'm suddenly getting all twitchy about how untrendy I am is, of course, that we'll be going home to Dublin for three weeks at Christmas, and while not exactly the fashion capital of the western world, the stakes are a tiny bit higher than they are here. The season that's in it gives rise to opportunities to dress up, for one thing, and people there do tend to dress up a bit more. I just want to look like I'm not totally submersed by my soccermom lifestyle, that's all.

[And then I thought: submersed isn't a word, you idiot. It's submerged, or immersed. But I looked it up and it is a word and it means just what I meant it to, so that's nice.]

And when you only see people once a year, or there's the chance you'll be meeting up with people you haven't seen for ten years, or meeting people you've only interacted with on the Internet, not to mention the fact that the tiny statistical probability of bumping into an ex-boyfriend is raised by at least 75% if I'm walking down Grafton Street rather than to first-grade pickup, you want to look at least reasonably not awful.

[Yes, I know I just changed from second person to first and back again in the same paragraph-long sentence. I did it on purpose. So I did.]

Anyway. Back to food. It is slowly dawning on me - these things take time to percolate through, as my friend Thrift Store Mama was just talking about today - that my fruit and vegetable intake is not really up to recommended standards. I always thought, if I thought anything about it, that I wasn't great on fruits but my vegetables made up for it. It's true that I do like vegetables, but it's also true that breakfast and lunch are often quite vegetable-free meals for me. Breakfast is basically a free pass: I see it as an opportunity for guilt-free carbing. Lunch would have a vegetable if a vegetable happened along, but all too often it's some riff on a ham and cheese sandwich, with maybe a crescent or two of apple that Mabel didn't eat. So that leaves dinner, when I probably get in two servings of vegetables easily enough, but that's still three away from even the most basic daily requirement.

This train of thought began when I read Jamie at Light and Momentary mention that she was aiming for nine servings of fruit and vegetables every day. Nine? How could anyone eat that much food, I wondered. Well, hey, apparently that's my recommended daily intake. And here I was thinking I was failing at just five, when in fact I'm failing miserably at nine instead.

Oh well, I thought, I'll just eat nine servings a day and I'll be slender and full of energy in no time. And yet, thinking did not make it so. I think I had one and a half extra servings yesterday, and one today, and they all involved baby carrots and hummus, which are quite nice but not nine servings nice. (Also, I don't think I'm meant to eat eight servings of carrots every day. I'd turn orange.)

The difficulty is that vegetables, and fruit for that matter, just don't have that fluffy or crunchy or dough-like baked consistency that goes as well with a nice cup of tea as, say, muffins do. Or cookies. Or a piece of cake or a scone or a brownie. Nobody sits down for a cuppa and some broccoli florets. Or coffee and a carrot. (Stick of celery? Brr.) Even a quarter cup of raisins just don't cut it with a hot beverage, unless they're liberally surrounded by oatmeal and sugar and baked into some sort of, let's say, cookie-type vehicle.

So far I'm batting about 50/50 on whether I think "Now I'll have a cup of tea and something chocolate" or "Now I'll eat a healthy snack," but even if I add one serving a day for this week, it's a start.

I think this is one for the "Best intentions" tag, don't you? I probably need to start a "Went awry" tag too.

Christmas in July

Last Saturday we went to the National Harbor to see the Gaylord Christmas in July preview event, because now that I'm a DCMom I get to do all sorts of cool stuff. (Really, I just wanted another place to write. I wasn't thinking about events or freebies at all. But apparently sometimes those happen too.)

I hope you don't think I'm selling out if I talk about this stuff here too. I'll keep the proper reviews to the DCMoms site where they belong, but sometimes the experiences might be just too interesting to keep to myself.

Because I have to say it was a weird sensation - being marketed to, being handed a media packet even as my daughter insisted on being carried and my son demanded something or other, and knowing that these people actually wanted me to bring the children, so they couldn't complain if they were a little loud. It was odd to be anywhere in a sort of quasi-professional capacity, especially when that capacity was mostly being my non-professional parent self.

Some thoughts that occurred to my non-professional parent self, then:

• If you're going to hand out sticky green candy canes to keep the kids occupied during the presentation part of the goings-on, please provide some wipes as well. Otherwise, there may be tacky handprints all over your nice upholstered chairs that even the most assiduous parent can't avoid.

• I never turn down free food, but why put the candy and ice-cream first and the hot-dogs two hours later? Where is the logic in that? But thank you for including the fresh fruit. It was a nice idea, even if my kids scorned it.

Green-flavour cotton candy (that's lime, not mint).

• But ooh, pretty, unseasonal, Christmas. 

Soap-bubble snow

• Santa? Seriously? Oh well. Apparently, children aren't at all bothered by the fact that he's not supposed to be around in July. Mabel told him she wants a princess, and he said he'd get right on that.

They got Shrek ears. (I was wearing Mabel's.)

• Also, those pictures of giant ice-sculptured Shrek characters you keep showing us look unpleasantly as if they were made from enormous gobs of glistening snot. I am not attracted to them. Ogres look better when matte, not slimy.

Hugging Puss 'n' Boots. I hope I didn't miss Antonio Banderas in there.

We actually went to the National Harbor for the lighting of the tree last year - hey, I blogged it, even - and happened to walk through the atrium of the Gaylord where all their very impressive Christmas stuff was out in full force - gigantic tree, acres of lights, gingerbread houses to decorate, Dreamworks Characters being posed with. It looked great, though we scuttled past it all pretty quickly, denying the children things left and right. It was a lot of fun on Saturday to experience some of the same things for free, even if it was in a much smaller room and at the wrong time of year.

-------

After the indoor part, there was an outdoor part to showcase all the fun times one can have at the national harbor this summer. Sadly, the weather decided to make it Christmas - or maybe a dismal November - outside too, just for this one day, so I think it was far from what the planners had envisaged. They had a canopy that I'm sure was supposed to shade us from the blazing sunshine, but instead it could do only a half-assed job of keeping us dry. Every now and then I'd look out and think it was really coming down, and then the rain would kick it up another notch. Luckily, we'd brought the raincoats.

Grey skies, grey water

The kids got balloon animals and a really excellent face painter, as well as a stilt walker and a lady-clown-plate-spinner, so they were happy. The boat rides would have been lovely on any other day, but as it was, we all just kept to wet land.

A happy clown and a mysterious cheetah

Lovely weather for ducks, it was.

Wish

I have no deep thoughts today. My children failed to provide me with material, parenting epiphanies were sorely lacking, and I didn't bake anything pretty. (Well, I made some muffins, but they were hardly original.) The fact that the clock ticked past midnight once again and a number turned over is not inspiring me to fill this page with insightful banalities.

So I'll just wish you a happy year, again, replete with simple - or exotic - pleasures, and thank you for reading.

If you're looking for a French lesbian tube, I gots nothin'.

Saving myself

And so it came to pass on Christmas morning that I opened my present and lo, there was a pair of running shoes and a marvel of sartorial engineering sometimes known as a sports bra, and thus I could avoid my self-appointed destiny no longer and on St Stephen's Day (also known as Boxing Day or December 26th) I donned my new apparel and went out for a run.

Why does nobody jog any more? In the 80s, when yuppies were invented, everyone who did that sort of thing went jogging, with their Sony walkmans and their Adidas, didn't they? People only ran from escaped lions, or the Feds. My mother's vocabulary is still stuck there: when I tell her that B goes running she expects him to be sprinting from start to finish. (And winning. My mother expects him to be sent to Mars and/or win a marathon at any moment.) "You mean jogging," she says, to clarify. "Yes, Mother. Jogging. Except it's called running these days."

Anyway. When I came downstairs all togged out in my running bottoms and my running top and my running fleecy hoodie and my new bouncy shoes, B grinned admiringly and said I looked great. Taller, even. I very nearly went back upstairs that point, because clearly the gear had done its job already. Magical. I probably looked smaller in volume because the bra was squishing me as I had never been squished before, that was all.

Anyway. Out I went. And I have to say that the constricting upholstery did its job and the only parts of me bouncing as I set off down the hill (always good to go downhill first, so long as you can work your run so you never have to come back up) were my cheeks. The cheeks on my face, I mean. And my bum.

Too many years of cycling to school and to work have left their mark on my psyche, and I always think running downhill should take no effort at all, but the truth is that you still have to put one foot in front of the other, even with gravity helping. I apply this principle to everything actually, assuming that once I'm past the halfway mark, the rest will do itself. Sadly, not always true. Not even mostly true. But still, the downhill gave me a nice boost and I got around the rest of my 1.6-mile route running a bit and walking a bit. I was still able to run to the front door when I rounded the corner to our road, so I felt pleased that I hadn't overdone it.

As if there's any chance of that. I vividly remember Mrs McGoldrick's enraged tones yelling at me from the other side of the (field) hockey pitch: "Stop saving yourself, Maud," as I pootled around in the idle backwaters of "defence" and tried to look as if I gave a hoot. When it comes to exercise, I have a history of saving myself. Women and children first, you know. 

But that's not the point. The point is that the shower afterwards felt like I'd earned it, and yesterday my legs were that good sort of sore, and even though it hadn't completely worn off this morning, I went out again and did the same thing, and I could swear I was able to save myself just a tiny bit less.

Mabel declared that she doesn't want me to go out for a run again until she's four. But then, she says she's not going to wear underpants till she's four either. I hope she'll be proved wrong on both counts.

Meringues and gingersnaps

Finally, some baking updates I owe you.

Gingersnaps going in

One afternoon when the kids were otherwise occupied, I rolled out the second half of the gingerbread dough as thin as my OCD little heart desired, to see if I could make crispy, crunchy gingersnaps. They turned out perfectly.

Gingersnaps all out

And these are the meringues I made to use up the egg whites left over from the other cookies. I whipped the three egg whites (should have been four, but one absent-mindedly went into the cookie dough) with my hand-held electric mixer until they were stiff. Then I mixed in three tablespoons of white sugar and folded in another three of light brown sugar. (Nigella's suggestion to make them chewier.)

Brown sugar meringues

I dolloped them artistically onto parchment paper on a cookie sheet and baked them in a very low oven (140 C or 275 F) for about an hour, then turned the heat off and left them there until they were cold. (Again, Nigella's instruction.) Easy as pie. In fact, much easier, I'll wager. The only thing is that they do occupy the oven for a long time so it's probably best to cook them last thing in the evening and just leave them overnight.

They stay fresh for up to a week in an airtight container, so they're the perfect lazy dessert for a special occassion - just add cream and fruit.

Mmmm

The hare, part II

The hare is the Christmas cake, and part I is here.

So. In November I made the cake, and put it away in an airtight container and conveniently forgot about it for a month. That was easy.

About a week ago, I bought some marzipan in Ikea. I painted the unwrapped cake with warmed apricot jam (to help it stick), rolled out the marzipan, and stuck it on. Because this is just the inner icing - the undercoat, if you like - you don't have to be very particular about how it looks, but it's good to aim for a fairly uniform thickness.

The cake looks shiny because this was after I'd done the thing with the jam

You can see here how the marzipan was pieced together, Frankenstein-like, to cover the whole thing. Don't worry, I did that last bit before I put it away again.

Then it went back into its tupperware for a few more days, until I was ready to make the royal icing. It turns out that royal icing is much like making meringues, and just as simple. I whipped two egg whites, gradually adding about a pound of icing sugar (confectioners' sugar) as I went along, and finally mixed in a teaspoon of lemon juice. (I don't know why. Because the recipe told me to.)

It starts out runny, but as you add the sugar the expanding egg can't quite keep up and eventually it becomes the right consistency to stick onto your cake.

I went for the rustic look, because making this smooth was way beyond me and my new red spatula (not pictured). In my parents' house, this is the point when I'd put my little Christmas scene on top, or at least sprinkle some sugar silver balls in festive fashion, but I have no cake decorations and had neglected to buy any silver balls for the task. I'm also missing the vital cake wrapper thingy, usually red and white and gold with fringey bits, to wrap around the outside. Maybe I'll pick one up next time we're home. (You have no idea what I'm talking about, but the cake in the photo on this page is wearing one. I think it keeps the cake fresh once it's cut into.)

 

And finally. After Christmas dinner, and our Christmas meringues, we cut the cake. This is how it looked. Personally, I think it's a tiny bit dry, but B sighed a sigh of nostalgia at his first bite, so I must have done something right.

Here's the kicker, though. He doesn't eat the icing.

Next year, I'll make it bald.

Merry whatsit

Eighteen people have visited my blog today, so clearly my audience demands that I post something.

They weren't even here as the result of some random Google search, unlike the poor misguided person who, according to my stats, recently looked for "French lesbian tube" and somehow - really, I have no idea how - ended up here. Maybe they saw the error of their ways and decided to stay and read about my thrilling life instead. Let's hope.

As predicted, it's been a much quieter, more relaxed Christmas Day than our usual whirlwind of courtesy calls and extended-family dinner and mince pies, but the basics of crazy-excited children and something containing fruit juice and alcohol with breakfast remained unmovable. (In Ireland, at my in-laws', it's always buck's fizz, or what Americans call mimosas - champagne and orange juice. We rang the changes just a little with bellinis - peach juice and prosecco. Because we're rebels.)  I made buttermilk pancakes and bacon; Dash ate one bite of pancake with a lot of maple syrup, and Mabel ate an orange segment.

However, this evening we all ate dinner together at the dining table, which was a feat in itself. We had to partake in a game of I-Spy to keep the kids in situ, but, probably, conversing about the situation in Korea and Mitt Romney's election prospects are beyond a three-year-old and a five-year-old. And I-Spy was more fun. (My words were "brussels sprouts" and "wine", because I didn't extend myself too far in finding things to spy. Mabel made us guess the blue shoes on her baby in the other room, which was a little tricky. B had us trying to pinpoint the red stripe on his sweater, which merited a slap, but my end of the table was too far away.)

I roasted a chicken, and potatoes, and did sprouts with bacon. It could probably have profited from gravy, but hey, whatareyougonnado? Dash has recently taken a vegetarian stance on behalf of the poor dead animals, which I laud from an ethical point of view, but really when you're a peanutbuttersandwichatarian, anything else is purely hypothethcal. I keep telling him I'll be delighted when he's a vegetarian, but he'll have to actually eat some vegetables. Mabel ate a lot of chicken and nothing else. Then we had the last of the meringues with cream, and cut into the long-awaited Christmas cake.

Photos tomorrow, when I've had less wine. I'm told I still have to help finish the bottle.

Happy whatever-you-want-to-celebrate to you and yours.

Elephants

When you invite people over for food, it's usually important to have something to eat in the house. Similarly, when you invite friends over for drinks, it's customary to have more than just our usual milk, water, or fruit-and-vegetable juice available. And so it was that I went to the shops again this morning.

B and I, as many people do, spent our twenties expanding our tastes for drinks both fruity and hoppy (though not at the same time), well-chilled or mulled, spicy, bold, well-rounded, Russian, slammed, shot, bubbly, flaming, muddled, colour-changing, or with a slice of clove-studded orange floating in them. Whether it had a nice creamy head or came in a fancy glass, we were probably happy to try it.

Then we had a baby. First there was the ritual giving-up-of-alcohol-during-pregnancy for me. And then the cautious re-introduction of just a little alcohol while nursing. And then we moved from Texas to Maryland and somehow I felt as if we were moving trans-Atlantically and couldn't take anything comestible with us, so I gave away our few bottles of spirits and we arrived here without so much as the makings of a gin-and-tonic to our name.

And thus, almost, we have stayed. We like a beer with dinner, we drink wine now and then, but hard liquor has not been a part of our lives recently. My aunt and uncle stayed with us before Dash turned two, and gifted us with a bottle of gin - for some reason - when they left. It has - I kid you not - sat unopened in the freezer ever since.

(B would like to point out that that's not strictly true. We've only lived in this house for 18 months. Before that, it sat unopened in the freezer in our old house. And there was probably some period when it was in transit from one freezer to the other and therefore was in no freezer at all.)

My point still stands. We're pathetic, that's what. I had great intentions of having gins-and-tonic this summer, because what could be more refreshing, right? But then I was stuck looking for tonic water that didn't have high-fructose corn syrup in it, because I couldn't believe that was necessary. And when I finally found it, in the organic supermarket, I couldn't believe it was that expensive, so I didn't buy it. B eventually circumvented all this by going out one day a few months ago and just picking up a bottle of Schweppes, HFCS and all, and that has sat unopened in the fridge ever since.

So today we said, "Right. Let us have on hand this Christmas the makings of cosmopolitans. And maybe bellinis."

I went to the supermarket that has alcohol. I needed more sugar for icing the Christmas cake anyway (more on that in a few days, I promise) and more bread for Dash's interminable peanut-butter sandwiches (guess what he's having for Christmas dinner?), and a bottle of wine for the day that will be in it, since we've already started into the one I got before. (Note to self: should stock up with more than one wine bottle at a time. Maybe need to throw a party so people will bring us wine.) I got a lime, for the cosmo's. I got peach juice for the bellinis. We already have a bottle of prosecco in the fridge that needs to be used.

Then I realised the supermarket-with-alcohol doesn't stock spirits. So I got back into the car and drove to the liquor shop. At least this isn't Pennsylvania, where no supermarkets have any alcohol at all, and you can't even buy beer and wine in the same establishment. And nothing on Sundays.

I picked up a bottle of Guinness to make beef-and-Guinness stew with for Christmas-Eve dinner. And a bottle of vodka for the cosmopolitans. I contemplated the Cointreau, but it was too expensive. (I have only just now looked at that link up there and discovered that's meant to go in the cosmo too. I think we used to make them without.) Where's duty-free when you need it? When will we ever be travelling light enough to think it's a good idea to add a heavy glass bottle to our luggage on the way home from the airport?

I came home. We still need at least cranberry juice for the cosmo's, and there are only two beers left in the fridge. Entertaining will have to wait for another trip to the supermarket. In the meantime, would anyone like a bellini? I think we'll be having some with our bacon and pancakes on Christmas morning.

Mabel raiding someone else's Christmas drinks stash two years ago

Seezun's greetings

At our little parent-teacher conference a month or so ago, while waxing lyrical about how wonderful Dash is (of course), his teacher did say that she wished he was a little less of a perfectionist sometimes (oh, so do I... huh?). He was very reluctant, she said, to try to write anything by sounding it out - he insisted on asking for every letter. Which is fine at home, but I can imagine that a class of twenty-three five- and six-year-olds all asking you for the next letter could get tiring.

On Tuesday, Dash sat down to make a card for his beloved teacher. I oversaw the drawing of the picture:

[Draws a big curve]
- What's that going to be?
- An earring. Because we're giving her earrings.
- Um. No, we're not. Remember I said that wasn't the best idea? We're giving her a gift card.
[Erases curve. Draws a big rectangle.]
- No, you really don't have to draw the gift card. Why don't you draw something Christmassy?
- Okay, I'll draw a present. On a reindeer.

Then I was distracted in the other room while he started with the writing. I could hear him sounding out "Happy Christmas," but he didn't ask me anything, so I didn't offer.

I think his teacher should be happy with the result. I loved it.

Slow down

And now we're for it, rushing helter-skelter head-over-heels into Christmas as if there were no tomorrow, or Friday or Saturday for that matter. Things were progressing in a fairly orderly fashion until suddenly the last weekend before was gone and there's no stopping it now. We haven't been to a carol concert or seen The Nutcracker or put up lights outside the house (not for want of trying, but for want of sockets in the right places) but now it's follow-through-or-bust time for everyone with all those little plans of things you thought would be nice to do or make or give, and we're rapidly coming to the day when we'll all throw up our hands and wish Christmas had never been invented because it does nothing but stress everyone out and cause massive rifts in families that were otherwise happily chugging along in mutual indifference but have now been thrown together and ordered to be not just civil but extra nice to each other because of the season that's in it, and sometimes that's just too much for anyone to handle.

Things would go so much more smoothly if we could just hunker down and get through the darkest time of the year without this annual requirement to decorate, to shop, to spend, to wrap, to give, to recieve, to entertain, to cook to bake to mull to spike to sprinkle to keep up.

You don't have to keep up. Nobody is making you do this. Nobody except your mother, your husband, your in-laws, your children, their friends, the economy, and the media. Stop. Breathe. Revise your plans. Do the least you can get away with. Do less than that, because your harshest judge is yourself and everyone else is too busy wondering how much they have to do and what they can get away without doing. Give yourself permission to take something off your to-do list. Simplify. Delegate. Outsource.

See the people you like. Give presents to your friends, if you want to. Dress up if it's fun to dress up. Bake if you like to bake. Make your children happy by sitting on the floor to play a game. Make one fewer side dish.

Give yourself a break. It's Christmas, after all.

Christmas cookies

Right now I am a miracle of over-achievement. I have meringues in the oven, french toast in the pan, gingerbread dough ready to roll, and now I'm trying to blog. I'm also letting Elmo and a bowl of apple slices do the child-minding, because though Mabel annouced she was ready for her nap as soon as we got in the door from school - and so was I; this morning was a co-op morning, so I spent two and a half hours rolling playdough, shaking glitter, breaking up three-year-old fights, reading stories while six children tried to sit on my lap, washing small hands and then trying to stuff them into mittens: I'm pooped - she then did not fall asleep but popped up again and asked what was for lunch.

The meringues are because I made two batches of cookie dough yesterday, to give to friends as ready-frozen, bake-me-when-you-need-me presents, and my recipe calls for two egg yolks. Last time this happened I conscienciously put the unused egg whites in the fridge, whence I just extracted them five minutes ago, threw them out and reclaimed the tupperware container I've been without for a few months now. So I made today's meringues with the more recent whites in an attempt to atone - and honestly, it took three minutes and I should have learned how to do this years ago. (On the other hand, I haven't tasted them yet. But they looked good going in.)

I made the gingerbread dough on Friday, and on Saturday morning, while B was out running a race, I presided over the most successful baking/decorating session we've ever had. I take no credit for this: the trick, as I told a friend who was lamenting her riotously chaotic attempt to decorate a gingerbread house in the company of three three-year-olds, is to have a five-year-old in the mix. While his sister piled up her dough and told me it was a castle, Dash industriously rolled and cut and pressed and shaped as carefully as my type-A little heart ever could have wished.

Perhaps we think that as soon as our kids are old enough to convey the results to their mouths independently, they'd really enjoy to bake and decorate some cookies, beginning a lovely family holiday tradition. But honestly, they won't remember that you didn't do it when they were two, and you'll be a lot saner if you wait till they're four or five before you start.

But then, maybe I'm just a curmudgeon.  When we got to the decorating I gave them one cookie each, a tiny tube of icing which was all I had in the house, and a few chocolate chips for buttons. Minimalism, always minimalism.

Maybe when they're sixteen I'll be ready to tackle a gingerbread house.

(And I didn't even burn the french toast.) 

Seasonal

The good thing about being thousands of miles from your loved ones at Christmas (sniff, sniff) is that at this point, when all around are wringing their hands and declaring to Facebook that they're not remotely organized, will never be organized, and vow to be super-duper organized next year, you can sit smugly with your tea and muffin and bask in the glow of having it all in hand.

No doubt a large whale will now fall from the sky to crush me in my insufferable cockiness.

But, fingers crossed and stuff, I'm not too disorganized. Cards were posted, with photos, to the lucky few recipients. The parcels to Ireland went off last Wednesday - two days before the Post Office's deadline for international mail, but up to the wire on my own personal last-chance-to-queue-up-child-free timeline. (And boy, I'm glad I did it child-free, especially when I discovered that the large box I'd so cleverly packed everything in was now too big for the regular customs form and needed a special iron-clad extra-information form to be filled in. I was also glad I'd covered up the graphics and lettering on the box I'd snaffled from outside the supermarket with plain paper, as I heard the woman behind me being told that she couldn't mail that ex-wine-bottle-box as it was with all that other stuff visible on it. Well, you would feel a little silly if your presents all ended up at a vineyard in California.)

I have procured marzipan - from IKEA, of all places - to commence icing the Christmas cake, the children's presents have arrived from far-flung Amazon (not the river), and I even have something for my husband that's a tiny bit more imaginative than a CD and a book. (It's not even a book and a sweater, so there.) I am counting the slippers I bought him yesterday in Target as part of his present too, even if he did ask me to buy them, they were not wrapped up, he's been wearing them since last night, and  - oh yes - I don't bring home a paycheck so I suppose, technically, he pays for everything. But I totally was going to get him slippers for Christmas because I knew he needed them, so it counts, right? I'm just so thoughtful and concerned for his cold feet that I didn't want him to have to wait another day for them. Or even have to go to the bother of unwrapping them.

So that's how organized I am. We also have a tree, though there will be no presents under it until Christmas Eve, because three-year-olds are not known for their self-restraint. What we don't have is any actual plans for the day, or any of the days surrounding the day. I don't know what we're going to eat or who we're going to see or even what I'm going to wear (which is really a moot point if we don't see anyone). Maybe we'll spend Christmas Day in our pyjamas, eating muffins and drinking Prosecco (just the adults, I promise), and watching cartoons.

That doesn't sound so bad, really.

Fiction, two ways

A friend of mine is writing a novel online, in serial form, just like Mr Dickens in the olden days, except  about a million times more interesting and readable. (Sorry, but I've never been a Dickens fan. Hard Times was just that, Bleak House even moreso.) I am in awe of how smoothly the story flows, how I read it and want more without even noticing, and the fact that - she claims! - she has the whole thing planned out in her head, even if now and then her characters turn around to her and announce that they're just not ready to do that yet. I suspect it's just that sort of easy readability that is in fact very difficult to pull off.

The tragedy is that she has very few readers, so I said I'd give her a plug over here. Go and have a look. Read the Introduction and then start at the Home page, where you'll find the table of contents. Then tell her you're reading and that you'd like some more, please. Because I want to know what happens.

------------------

Mabel has moved on from announcing "Not again!" with as much italicization and eye-rolling as she can possibly inject into a two-word exclamation, to saying, "Forget it!" I think the girl has bershon all sewn up, at the tender age of three.

She got a new baby from the thrift store yesterday after her dental ordeal, because that's where we go when a new baby is in order but I only want to spend two bucks on it. For 1.95, she has a new "baby sister" whom she loves nearly as much as the last one, the one that cost an appalling $40 in FAO Schwartz for her birthday. This morning she staged a baby festival, but I'm not sure if that was a place you could get babies, or a place to bring your babies.

Dash has Santa Claus all figured out this year, which is something of a relief. Worrying about what we would do about Santa took up a good deal of my time even before he was born. In the end, we took a sort of middle path where we didn't push the myth, but didn't exactly explode it either. We had stockings, but didn't make a big to-do about who put the presents in them. In September or October this year, he whispered to me that he thought the parents really brought the presents, and I agreed, but told him we were still playing the game for Mabel and not to let the cat out of the bag.

He doesn't seem scarred for life by the lies we told him, or allowed him to believe, or failed to debunk, so I'm a bit more relaxed with Mabel. She has a vague idea that Santa, who is that guy with the red-and-white suit, is going to bring her presents at Christmas.

- What would you like for Christmas, Mabel?
- I think probably a baby. Because I like babies and puppies.
- So maybe Santa will bring you a puppy*. You have a lot of babies already.
- Yes, but I want a baby, because I like puppies but I need a new baby.

This conversation took place before the advent of yesterday's baby, but I'll wager her position hasn't changed. Because you can never have enough babies.

*Not a real puppy. No way, Jose.

Disaster / preparedness

Mabel is sitting on a blue plastic chair in front of the dollhouse, using a large toy car as a footrest. Every so often her bottom emits a noise, and I look at her, and she looks at me. If I try to take her to the bathroom, she runs away. Then she sits back on the chair and gives me those looks and tells me, "This is your last chance."

--------------

Okay, now she's napping. I have moved from zero to somewhat prepared in my Christmas readiness - it's amazing how much you can accomplish in an hour at Target with focus and without children. As I think I rediscover every year, once I let go of the compulsion to buy everyone the Most Perfect Gift Ever, that they will treasure for many years and regale their grandchildren with tales of, it becomes much easier. A present that's good enough is still a present, and will probably be worn or played with or read or otherwise used at some point, and that's fine. Getting it to the recipient before Christmas day is also quite important, at least with kids.

(I have to pack a box and mail it to Ireland by December 9th, lest you think I'm crazy ahead of myself. I could use Amazon.co.uk or some other Internet source to buy myself more time, but I do really like just going shopping and picking things out myself. This, presumably, is why bricks-and-mortar stores still exist even in this click-button age. And I could shop for twelve-year-old girls all day. Which is unfortunate for those of my nephews and nieces who are no longer, or not yet, or have no hope of ever being a twelve-year-old girl, but quite happy news for the one who is.)

I have found some Christmas cards, but have yet to print out a few photos to accompany them - my nod to the American habit of sending cards featuring a lovely shot of you and your family, which to non-Americans seems simultaneously a bit pretentious but also very nice because it's good to see the kids growing up once a year. I have a lead on a present for my Dad, and some thoughts about the remaining people on the list. And when all that has gone to the post office, I might start contemplating gifts for my nearest and dearest and most demanding.

How are your Christmas preparations going? Or are you still hiding under the covers until it's really December?

A new phase

It's all but impossible to narrow your own child's personality down to a few simple traits - they have so many facets, and so many personas - you know, it's almost as if they're whole people who won't fit into little predefined boxes, just like you and me ...

So please indulge me as I now do exactly that, just a little bit. Because I seem to see Dash's personality emerging anew these days, and it's amazing. I don't know if this is how he'll be as he grows up, or if it's just another step along the way, but I love it. He was an active baby, always on the go, kicking hard from the very start. (And I mean the very start. Before he was even out, he'd take my breath away with the thumps.) He was the sort of toddler who's like a wind-up force of destruction: put him down and he was off, straight into the nearest thing he could pull down and take apart. He was a preschooler who couldn't be left alone with a non-board-book: he would just rip them up, because they were there and he could. His paintings at nursery school were huge swathes of black, his drawings were scribbles, his scissor skills lacked accuracy. In short, his fine motor skills had not yet caught up with his gross ones. Which is pretty much the norm for a boy of his age.

Then there was the valley of four-and-a-half, this time last year, when an ocean of self-consciousness swept over him and he was almost swallowed up by the embarassment and terror of just being, especially in public, and life was difficult for a while. This year he's emerging like that most cliched butterfly from a chrysalis, and contrary to everything I expected as I watched him grow, it seems that maybe here I have the bookish child I always not-so-secretly hoped for, after all.

He's still active - his favourite thing at the moment is to ride his bike round and round in ever decreasing circles, and he wants a Razor scooter for Christmas. But it seems his fingers have finally caught up with his imagination. He can happily spend ten minutes at a time (which is an age, for him - he runs on dog years, I think; except when in the bathroom, at which point endless aeons telescope into mere seconds as he stares into space and forgets why he's there) drawing a huge-armed person, or an intricate pattern, and colouring it in carefully, and even labelling it; or painstakingly writing a two-line story, asking at every word how it should be spelled.

[Sample story, intriguingly entitled "How the Hoverbike was Invented". "Once upon a time the scientist invented a new machine. It was a hoverbike." Brief, and to the point, if somewhat lacking in the detail I was so hoping for. Also, "How God Made the World: God made the world by the big bang." Fascinating stuff, from the child of two atheist agnostic ex-Catholics.

Related aside: Mabel came upstairs yesterday while I was getting dressed, turned on the bedside light, and announced, "God created the world!" I was a little startled. I came down to discover Dash had just written the above story, which explains it to some extent, but her let-there-be-light moment was entirely spontaneous. Spooky.]

Anyway. Today we went to the National Harbour, which was very nice, if a little more commercial than I was expecting, what with all the shops, and the frankly Vegas-esque feeling of the convention center, and we thought we might stay for the lighting of the tree. (We didn't, because they spent so long getting around to it that it was time to go home before they'd started. It was still very pretty, though.)

Tree, pre-lighting; harbour; sunset.

Dash pestered me for a small notebook in CVS, so I shelled out a dollar for his art, and while Mabel was jumping off benches and dancing to the warming up choir, her brother was diligently drawing designs for several options for the mechanism of his immortality machine (to be brought out on limited release, friends and family members only, when we're old so we don't die). It will be operated either wirelessly or by a stick. I think. Here, he can explain it to you.

All clear?
I love this kid. I can't wait to see what he does next.


(And while I'm at it, here are Mabel and her dad, for your further entertainment.

)