Chocolate thief

I'm a terrible jump-to-conclusions kind of girl. Can't find my keys? What did Bela do with them? Missing my chapstick?  MAE!

I am, however, trying to step back from the accusations a bit, because I see it in the girls too. Bela blames Mae, Mae blames Bela, they both blame their daddy.

Earlier this week we baked egg-free chocolate chip cookies * and really had a go at them. Two days after baking two dozen, there were only two left. Chris ate them. Bela and Mae were outraged. (I'd like to point out that of the 24, Chris only ate two. They just happened to be the LAST two). He promised to make more. He got really busy. They didn't want to wait.

Flash forward a day or two... The girls and I met up in the kitchen to make the promised batch of cookies with the 1/2 cup of chocolate chips left over from batch #1. We looked. We could not find. We jumped to conclusions. I suggested we pause, consider, not get all worked up. Maybe it wasn't him? Maybe I put them in the freezer to keep fresh? Maybe the moths ate them? We couldn't blame Chris until we had a chance to talk to him, and he was busy on a photo shoot.

Hence, the letter:

Dear Daddy - Did you eat the chocolate chips we were going to make cookies [with]?

Do you want to guess what the answer was?





*Recipe*

From Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Kitchen

2 C whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 C old fashioned oats
1/2 t sea salt
1/ 4 t baking soda
1 C chopped walnuts
1 C semi-sweet chocolate chips (she uses Carob chips to make this vegan. I hate carob.)

1/2 C canola oil
1/2 C pure maple syrup
1 t vanilla
2-4 T water

Mix dry ingredients together. Separately, mix wet ingredients. Combine. Mix til just blended. I use a butter scoop that measures out about 1 T of dough at a time, and drop them into balls onto an ungreased baking sheet. Plop them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10-12 minutes. The stronger your maple syrup the yummier the cookie. The smaller the walnuts the better. If 2 T of water makes a dry dough, add more liquid - these aren't great when they're dry.  They are a small cookie, and they will make about 2 dozen, more or less. Excellent frozen and eaten straight from the freezer. Yum. 

This Moment

A moment from our week I wanted to share. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Sexy, revisited

No, this time my children aren't talking and thinking about sexy. Actually, it's me.

I haven't said much about this pregnancy over the last several months. The truth is that I don't have a lot of time to think about it, but at times it's, eh, hard to ignore. Especially as I get bigger.

I definitely enjoyed being pregnant a lot more when it was my first time. Even my second time. Now? I'm tired of feeling tired. I don't like feeling slow. I want to put my Brooks on and go for a really long run, one I can lose myself in; exhausting but exhilarating. Oh, I know some women keep on running all the way through their pregnancies - just last week at the Chicago Marathon a woman, 9 months pregnant, raced, finished, and then gave birth.

But that's not me. I wish it were, but I gave up almost 2 months ago. I'm tired - very, very tired. And honestly? Aside from not feeling energetic, I'm not feeling at all, not the least bit, not even a teeny tiny........ sexy. There. I said it.

I know plenty of gals who talk about feeling womanly, glowing, curvy and feminine to the extreme while gestating their brood, but that's not me. I feel silly, preposterous even. Absurdly round.

The other day I found myself scrambling out of the house to fit in an errand to buy my newest, favorite bra. It happens to be a brand they sell at Whole Foods (not sexy) that was unfortunate enough to receive the brand name of MAJAMAS (definitely NOT SEXY). I challenge any female to feel sexy while purchasing lingerie named after MOM PAJAMAS just 50 feet from the Cauliflower display.

And yet there I was, excited in my own pregnant-lady way, with my nude-colored-mostly-seamless-wireless-nursing friendly-completely-practical brassiere, and I was hoping that only Chris, the young hip cashier, and I knew my super unsexy little secret.

But someone out there seems to have my number. Someone out there seems to think they know something about me that I have had a hard time admitting. I received a catalog in the mail today from a retailer I had never heard of. As I flipped through the pages in the front seat of my car while I waited for Mae to return from a(nother) last minute bathroom trip, I felt the weight of my un-sexiness fall on my shoulders. Really? Someone thought I might buy my clothes here? And if so, do they have an un-sexy maternity section not represented in today's mailing or am I supposed to hold on to this to outfit my post-partum unsexy self?

Disclaimer: I am in no way poking fun of the ladies in these shots. I am just trying to understand my connection to this particular retailer. 

Chores? 

Nude colored "performance" underwear are in my future.

13 pockets for all my crap. Oh, and room for my ass. 

Jeans for those days when I'm working on my Mazda's engine. 

PS - Judge away. I write this post with full knowledge that sexy is not an important quality in life, nor is it even one I claim to have owned pre-pregnancy. But when you're as round as a beach ball and people give you silly little knowing smiles as you waddle by, you start to think about things like this.

The School Story

Several weeks ago, as you may recall, we - in true third-trimester-over-the-top-hormone-fashion - pulled Bela from our neighborhood public school.

It wasn't the uniforms or the unpleasant breakfast served at 9am in the classroom. Nor was it the lack of decent outdoor time or frequent art classes. It wasn't the 1.5 hours we would spend at night going through the homework pack or lack of after school activities, and it wasn't even the movie they showed in the classroom, on day two.

It was all of this, combined with the overwhelming fear that I was single-handedly ruining her young life by stifling her in such a way. Combined with the fact that we could just eke by this year while paying the high tuition at the private school. Combined with the fact that after almost 30 weeks pregnant I was weepy and emotional and, maybe - just maybe - a little irrational.

That aside, we are happy with our switch. I don't know how long we can keep it up financially, but I'm not going to worry about it for now. Because for now...

Instead of spending the first two hours in seated, static reading time and the next 40 minutes writing, Bela spends the first two hours in form drawing, or arithmetic, or language arts - a class full of fairy tales and rich with vocabulary, one that walks them through the written language letter by letter and then inspires them to read the words they have been writing.

Instead of switching between library, art, and 1 (maybe 2) measly days of P.E., she spends the rest of each day involved in Spanish class, Chinese, Beeswax modeling, Painting, Movement, Eurythmy, Music, and knitting. She gets more than 1 hour of outdoor time every day. The subjects blend together - her teacher does such a good job of integrating art and music and story into every aspect of the curriculum. School life is rich with festivals. The teacher to student ratio is 1:17 and not 1:35.

And yes, maybe Steiner is a little far out there, even for me. Maybe I find some of the spiritual talk the tiniest bit hippy-dippy. But for now? For now, I couldn't be happier. Richer, maybe. But not happier.

The test

I originally underestimated the gravity of the hamster situation.

While prone to high levels of drama myself, I have a strange intolerance of it in my children. I wanted her to stop crying. Wasn't it, after all, sort of her fault he got away? Was she really that surprised? For my part, I found his escape to be a relief. It's a stressful thing, monitoring your young children's first experiences with a pet. No? The manner of his future death was always so unclear to me. Would he get eaten by a cat? Would he get squeezed to death by a 4 year old? Would he die of some awful hamster disease or escape and rot in the ventilation ducts like Chris' childhood pet hamster?

The uncertainty of how this first pet experience would come to a close kept me vaguely uneasy, so to have him simply disappear, well that solved a huge problem for me.

But this meant a lot to Bela. Earlier in the week she had experienced her first "death". Her pet grasshopper, who inhabits an aquarium with her new pet crickets and one dead moth, passed away (not so) suddenly a few days prior. I should have known by the amount of tears shed over hopper that the loss of Little John would be an important and serious one.

In light of her future pet shop, Bela views all interaction between her and any given animal to be a "test". The more tests she passes, the better she'll be at running a pet store. The more tests she views herself as failing, the darker and less certain her entrepreneurial future appears. And last week things were looking downright gloomy.

In hindsight, it was perhaps not the best idea to comfort her by promising she could take her allowance and buy one of those super friendly hamsters Daddy pointed out last week at the pet store, the ones that don't bite when you hold them. In hindsight, we should have lingered in the tragedy of the situation a bit longer and let her deal with her grief.

For early the next morning before the girls were awake, while I was hobbling around the apartment getting ready and Chris was making coffee in the kitchen, he heard a familiar Noise. A scratching. A non-feline clawing at organic material. He investigated.

There, on our back porch (which doubles as a playroom), stuck in a box of discarded paint jars and the rejected remnants of art projects, was our silly little Russian Dwarf. Chris scooped him up and presented him to sleeping Bela, who from the top bunk shouted with joy and then immediately looked concerned.

"Does this mean I can't get one of those new, nicer hamsters?"

Is it any surprise, then, that since the day of his valiant rescue I have found his cage door standing open not once, but twice? Clearly, this is a test Bela has decided she wants to fail. Lucky for us, Little John has been thoroughly traumatized and has no interest in escape. The shiny new hamster will have to wait.

This Moment

It's Friday. Here's our moment from the last week, and what a beautiful week it's been. Have an equally great weekend! Maybe it will be filled with pumpkins and square dancing...

The Great Escape

The chore chart made a smashing debut last week and Chris and I were absolutely thrilled with its success. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the girls were energetic and productive. They fed animals, they packed lunches, they picked up toys. By Thursday and Friday we could see their interest slowly waning. Bela decided to forego the stars for a few days and let me pack her lunch, even after I threatened to fill her bag with roasted brussels sprouts.

The entire system came to a crashing halt over the weekend. In fact, the weekend was shameful. Not one thing accomplished. Not one star. The dream had died.

It almost embarrasses me (on their behalf) to report here their total earnings for their first week of chores:

Bela - $2.70
Mae - $1.60

The funny thing is that it doesn't embarrass them. They were thrilled. I wrote their names on their jars, dropped the money in, and handed it over. I also decided that I would deduct the 10% for their savings at the end of the month, when I had more to work with than, say, Mae's 16 cents.

Now that we are back in the midst of another school week, they are slowly accumulating stars again. The favorite (read, easiest) chores? Putting dirty clothes in the hamper, picking up toys and clearing the craft table, setting and clearing the dinner table (but not the breakfast table). The least favorite? They never make their beds, they balk at making their lunches, and they seem to forget entirely about feeding the animals.

Now, while I'm not a hamster lover I somehow became the default caretaker of our tiny little rodent just over a year ago. When I put Mae in charge of feeding him, I did so because I knew he was hardy. He was a survivor. I made a mental note to check up on him once in awhile, which is exactly what I was about to do yesterday afternoon when Bela burst through the playroom door to announce between sobs that he was gone. He had escaped.

The story? 24 hours earlier Bela had decided to put Little John in his exercise ball (probably when she was supposed to be picking the 250 books up off her bedroom floor, or feeding the fish, or making her lunch). And then she simply forgot. So yesterday afternoon just moments before I dropped in on the little guy Bela discovered his little green plastic ball in a corner of the back porch, lid missing, hamster gone.

After comforting Bela while rolling my eyes excessively, we decided to get down their jars. Chris and I impressed the girls with our quick math skills. $2.70 + $1.60 = $4.30. Which also happens to be only about 70 cents shy of one, new, hamster.

Chore chart to the rescue.

The lesson? Do a mediocre job completing your assigned duties for the week, earn money anyway, carelessly toss away the life of a helpless little rodent, and immediately replace him with a shiny new one with every last penny you made in your first week of work.

Yes. I think we're on to something.