Turkeys

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Urk, I am so full. We had dinner at my parents’ house. They provided turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, french-cut beans, stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, drinks, cherry pie, ice cream, and cookies. We provided seven people and a Jell-O salad.

Does this seem FAIR? Does this seem RIGHT? We breeze in with our bowl of Jell-O, leap on the feast like poorly-trained puppies, and then breeze off to meet the bedtime deadline while my parents hobble into the kitchen to manage the mountains of dishes and molehills of leftovers, dry-swallowing Excedrin and wondering if four weeks is enough time to prepare for another holiday dinner with us.

Next year maybe we should try a lunchtime Thanksgiving rather than a suppertime Thanksgiving. After we eat, Paul could take the kids outside to run off some of that, um, youthful energy, while I help in the kitchen by nibbling up the leftovers so they don’t have to be put away. Or maybe we should have Thanksgiving dinner after the kids are in bed. Or after they’ve left home.

Thanksgiving Recipes; Holiday Shopping Budgets

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I made the Chocolate-Crusted Pumpkin Cheesecake today. I make it every year. I made it this year even though my parents said not to bring dessert because they were making a cherry pie. I won’t bring it, but I still made it. Now the whole PAN can be leftovers!

Tomorrow I’ll make the cranberry-raspberry Jell-O salad. Mmmmmmm.

Hey, listen. Linda and I are going to be doing gift-idea posts over at Milk and Cookies, and I also plan to pass along good deals here on this blog. But what I need to know is, what price range are we talking about? I don’t want to give you a bunch of $10 deals if you think of those as stocking stuffers, but I don’t want to discourage people by talking too much about $100 deals. What are you planning to spend this year for your sweetheart? for each kid? for your parents? for your in-laws? for your friends? $10? $20? $50? $100? As little as possible? If you feel shy talking about money (I always feel shy talking about money), you can go anonymous.

Reader Question: Houses for a Big Family

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Kristine writes:

My husband and I are looking to move to a new area of the country, and although we don’t have kids now, we’re planning on at least 3 kids, probably 4. We’re hoping to take advantage of the housing/economic crunch and buy the house we’re going to live in for the next 20-odd years, rather than getting a teeny starter home. Any advice on “must have” or “wish I had” features when it comes to a big family?

Ah! Yes! I HATE to move, and so when Paul and I bought our first home, we were looking for a home that we could live in until we, um. Died. Or whatevs.

And what we did was, we bought a house with POTENTIAL. It’s a 3-bedroom 1-bathroom raised ranch (also called a split-level), so it was listed and marketed as a starter home. But my dad, who is Very Handy (the kind of Handy that can, like, build a garage) took a look at it and what he saw was the unfinished basement. In a raised ranch (or split-level, have it your way), the basement is only partly under the ground. The basement can still have regular-sized windows, like a regular floor of the house. That meant that what we were buying was an 1100-square-foot house with the potential to be a 2200-square-foot house.

Furthermore, it has a good empty back yard, so theoretically we could build OUT if we wanted to, though I don’t think we will. I guess we could put on an upper level if we really wanted to—though again, I don’t think we will. We could add a garage out to the side, because there’s space there too, and that’s something we probably WILL do some day, so we can go from the car to the house without slipping on ice and breaking our elderly hips.

The house also had a porch built on a house foundation instead of an a porch foundation, which is something I never would have noticed but the inspector went nuts over (the happy kind of nuts, saying, essentially, “OMG SQUEE! You could totally convert this into house-space!”). This meant that when we thought, “You know what would be awesome? A dining room!” we could enclose the porch.

Of course, if your dad isn’t Very Handy, this plan might not work for you. It’s worked for us because my dad contributes his labor free of charge, and so when he makes a change to our house we only have to pay for the supplies. If we had to pay for the labor, we wouldn’t have a dining room OR a semi-finished (2 bedrooms, a linen closet, and a family room) basement.

In that case, we still would have ended up here, because this was the most house we could afford. But if we’d had more wiggle room, I think I would have looked for two bathrooms. It is a major pain to have to wait in line or to have someone dancing outside the door waiting for you, and that’s with three of us not potty-trained yet.

I’d also be looking for something that wasn’t Too Big. That seems like an odd thing to do, but it’s not going to be ALL that long before the kids are gone and Paul and I are here by ourselves again. It’ll be nice at that point to just close off the basement except for when we have guests, and go back to our “starter home”-sized house.

So! Those are the two things—no, three things—I think are good to look for in a house for a larger family:

1. Potential (room to expand)
2. Not Too Big (can still live here after the kids leave)
3. Two bathrooms

Oh, wait! I have one more thing! Look for a good driveway! Or room to make the driveway bigger! When the kids are older and there are more cars/drivers, it’s nice not to have to park on the lawn, or have to have everyone move his or her car every time someone wants to go somewhere.

4. Good driveway, or good driveway potential

Oh, wait! Another thing! The YARD! Oh, heavens, the yard. It’s so nice if it has a yard big enough to KICK EVERYONE INTO. The house can get so loud and so nuts, and it is wonderful to be able to just go *BOOT* and send everyone to a relatively safe, enclosed back yard.

5. Yard

I Ate an Entire Bowl of Oatmeal

33 Replies

I need to make a public apology. I said some things about steel-cut oats that were neither nice nor fair. I believe I said “YUCK.” Considering I’d tasted them plain, that was as unfair as cooking up a batch of plain spaghetti noodles and declaring them “bland.” I hadn’t yet seen the beauty of steel-cut oats, which lies in their ability to convey other, more delicious substances to the mouth in a Trojan Horse of health and goodness and fiber.

This morning I tried The New Girl‘s suggestion: salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, and milk. And for the first time in my life, I ate an entire serving of oatmeal. Serious!

First I followed the package instructions and brought 1-1/2 cups of water to a boil (I added salt because The New Girl said to—I just went shake-shake-shake, like when salting vegetable water), then added 1/4 cup steel-cut oats. I let them simmer uncovered for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then I added….well, I added a lot of brown sugar. I didn’t measure, because I find that measuring sugar makes me feel bad. But looking at the brown sugar baggie, which used to have 1/4 cup sugar in it, I’d estimate I used well over a tablespoon, and probably closer to 2 tablespoons. SHUT UP! I ate OATMEAL!

Then I added a hearty shaking from the cinnamon-sugar shaker, which I make heavy on the cinnamon but it also includes sugar, so, um, more sugar into the oatmeal. And then I put in a slosh of whole milk.

And it was YUM. I still encountered a few areas of Unpleasant Gooeyness, but not many. And now I feel all energized and cheery from all the sugar whole-grain oats!

Ah, Geez, Another Recipe?

31 Replies

This morning I tried steel-cut oats for breakfast. They sounded so yummy on WantNot. And I will say this: they are better than rolled oats. And they left my tummy feeling warm and happy and satisfied. Plus, I felt so righteous and healthy for eating them.

But YUCK. I started adding things, trying to make them taste better. A little sugar? A little peanut butter? A little cocoa? And before long I was thinking maybe I should just go ahead and make No-Bakes instead. No-Bakes are the kind of recipe where if you make them and bring them to an event, everyone will be like, “HEY!!! I’ve had these!! I didn’t know what they were called and couldn’t find the recipe!! YOU MUST GIVE ME THE RECIPE!!”

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

  • 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter or margarine (I like to use butter, but the original recipe I have calls for margarine)
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cup peanut butter (creamy or crunchy; I prefer creamy)
  • 3-1/2 cup rolled oats (regular or quick; I prefer regular)
  • 6-7 tablespoons baking cocoa (I go for, like, 6-1/2)
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla (I use the cheapie imitation stuff for this, not the real vanilla extract, because a TABLESPOON??)

In a medium saucespan (a 2-quart is big enough, but a 3-quart will give you more stirring room so you’re less likely to slop over the edges), bring the butter/margarine, milk, and sugar to a boil. Boil for a minute and a half, then remove from heat. Add everything else and stir it up. Spoon mixture onto waxed paper in cookie-sized lumps. Let cool/set.

See, look at all the OATMEAL! Your cookie size will vary, but when I make them I get about 24 cookies to the batch. There are 3.5 cups of oats in the recipe, and there are 16 tablespoons to the cup, so that’s 56 tablespoons of oats divided by 24 cookies, or well over 2 tablespoons of oats per cookie. The butter might look intimidating, but it’s only 8 tablespoons in the whole recipe; there are 3 teaspoons per tablespoon, so that’s 24 teaspoons of butter divided by 24 cookies, or 1 teaspoon per cookie. I have more butter than that on a slice of toast, so that amount of butter doesn’t scare me. And there’s half again as much peanut butter as butter, so that’s 1.5 teaspoons of peanut butter per cookie, and that doesn’t scare me either.

Of course, these are a food allergy NIGHTMARE. Peanut butter! Dairy! I haven’t tried it, but I suspect you could make them with a non-dairy milk, and you can go for margarine rather than butter. I made them without peanut butter once when I was out of peanut butter, and I made the notation “OK wo/PB” so it must not have been a disaster. I also see a VERY old notation next to the margarine/butter that says “can be halved.” That seems…unlikely. But there it is in my own handwriting. I wouldn’t halve the margarine/butter, though, if you’re leaving out the peanut butter.

Gift Season Pre-Panic

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I think giveaways are so fun. But I get all CAUGHT UP in the excitement of doing one, and then afterward I think, “Yes, but I could have kept that for MYSELF.” I’m doing a giveaway at Milk and Cookies for a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card. That would be a nice teacher gift. If someone named “Thistle” wins it, you’ll know I had a change of heart about giving it away.

Would you indulge me in a brief panicky rant? I’m getting stressed/excited about gift season. There are so many DEALS to wade through. There are so many DECISIONS to make. I think, “YES, I’ll do THAT!” and I get halfway through the order process—and oh, if I spend another $10 I’ll get a $20 gift card for free. Well, that’s worth it. Except I can’t find anything that’s about $10. Well, okay, so here’s something that’s $15: it’s still like saving $5 and getting the $15 item for free. Well, if I can find a use for the gift card. Then: oh, if I add another $5 I’ll get free shipping, and shipping is $11.95 so that’s definitely worth it. Except I can’t find anything that’s about $5. ACK.

I am trying to COOL DOWN and not stress so much. I’ve read a few articles lately that advise spending more time with family and friends instead of spending money, but time is in short supply as well. And when those articles say “time,” they often seem to be selling accessories: special popcorn bowls, special DVDs, special household decorations, special dishes, special recipes with brand ingredients. I mistrust their motivations, even if their message is a good one.

We tried to lower the stress by getting a Wii as a family gift (I can’t believe Amazon still has them in stock, but as Paul said, Nintendo would be pretty dim if they continued their fake shortage into the holiday season), so technically the kids’ gifts are all taken care of, but Paul and I keep seeing things that would be SO GREAT for one kid or another kid, so that adds stress after all: do we buy more, or do we stick to our plan? What if one of us is more worried about money than the other of us? What if one of us thought the arrangement was that the Wii would also be OUR gifts, and the other of us didn’t think that was part of the arrangement at all and is completely dismissive of that idea?

Plus, the stockings! Last year, three-fifths of the kids were still too young to care, so it was no big deal. This year only one-fifth is too young to care, so if I find a good stocking stuffer for $1, that’s suddenly $4 for only one teeny thing in the toe of each stocking. This could add up.

And the in-laws. GEEZ, the in-laws. Every year I decide I’m NOT buying my father-in-law ANYTHING, that’s IT, forGET it! He never sends us anything or even acknowledges receiving our gifts, so why keep doing it? But then I relent: I think that just because HE’S an ass doesn’t mean I need to change MY behavior, and I think it’s right to get my children’s grandfather a present at the holidays. This year, though, I might seriously be done. I look at our finances, and it seems to me that “present for absentee ingrate” might rank lower than “braces for eldest child” or “heating bill.” Or even lower than “games for the Wii.”

I think I’m just going to do gift cards for my sister-in-law and mother-in-law. I get the feeling I miss the mark every year with their gifts, and it’s getting less important to me for them to think I spent time and thought on them, so I’m thinking gift cards would make us all happier.

Thank you for allowing this panicky interlude. Feel free to do a little panic-commenting if you want: it really does make a person feel better.

Not as I Do

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Last night Paul and I were sitting side-by-side at our computers, and he said, “GEEZ, there is A-1 sauce all OVER my monitor!” And I said, “?” and he said, “Don’t Twitter that.” And then I said, “?” and he said “Don’t Twitter THAT, either.” So I didn’t.

What I did about the Rob situation (the one where he said he’d completed two out of three in-class writing sessions without yet choosing a SUBJECT) is first I helped him choose a topic, and then I told him to tell his teacher what was going on. My mom’s a teacher and I grew up hearing the teacher’s point of view, so now I’m over-sensitized to it to the point where I don’t even want to COMMUNICATE with the teacher in case I accidentally imply that I think my child’s inborn flaws are her fault.

And in this case, this is an inborn flaw of Rob’s I’ve been struggling unsuccessfully with for YEARS: he’ll sit there trying to think of “the perfect thing,” and so he doesn’t think of anything, and the longer he thinks about it the less perfect all the options seem. His first grade teacher mentioned that he would sit during Journal Time getting increasingly stressed and writing nothing, so he and I worked for the entire school year on “just writing what comes into your head, rather than Questing For Perfection.” We made some progress at the time, but when we worked on it again this past summer (I work on it with him each summer, to keep from losing ground) he was all Attitude about it, writing stream-of-consciousness stuff including all the words to the song “B-I-N-G-O” and the numbers 1 to 100, so I kind of threw in the towel and figured it’s good he’s good at math.

Let’s see, where was I? Oh, yes: so I told him to tell his teacher he hadn’t yet started on the assignment he was supposed to have 2/3rds completed. For one thing, I couldn’t think of a way of telling his teacher myself. For another thing, this is the kind of problem he needs to work on NOW, so that maybe he won’t flunk a college history final because he’s too shy to go up to the teacher and say, “Hey, I don’t understand what you mean by that essay question,” which I’m not saying I know anything about but GEEZ why didn’t I just ASK? I mean, teachers don’t BITE.

He was really nervous about telling his teacher, but I was all “Do as I say, not as I do,” and so he did it, and he came home from school saying he was SO RELIEVED. His teacher apparently said, “Okay,” and then she checked all 20 kids’ work and found that Rob was not the only one who was a little behind, and so she’s giving everyone an extra 45-minute writing session, and also Rob said in one session he got everything done up through the rough draft, so all he has to do is the final draft. Woot. And I can’t donate blood this month because I sweated out too much of it over this.

Purple Unicorn

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I was watching We Don’t Live Here Anymore, but I get uncomfortable when a movie tries to indicate marital/life dissatisfaction via crying children, messy kitchen counters, messy hair, spitting out toothpaste, cereal bowls on the table, fighting children chasing each other through the clutter as the parent pleads ineffectually for them to stop, etc. It gives me too vivid a picture to superimpose over my OWN life, which seems happy until I see the elements of it used in film-making to indicate unhappiness. So I thought I’d take a little break.

Paul was talking with Elizabeth and Edward about Christmas (they don’t really remember last Christmas), and it came to light during this conversation that Elizabeth was confidently expecting to receive a unicorn. And not just “a” unicorn but a PURPLE unicorn. Paul tried to delicately extract more information, such as WHY she thought she was getting a purple unicorn, or such as how she knew about unicorns since as far as we know we’ve never mentioned unicorns before, but he got nowhere except to reaffirm that the child didn’t just WANT a purple unicorn, she ASSUMED a purple unicorn. Like, obv, Christmas = unicorn.

This reminded both of us of two Christmases ago when William was in kindergarten, and he revealed to Paul that he was looking forward to the nutcracker he would be receiving for Christmas. This was the first Paul and I had heard about it. So the next day (which was the day before Christmas Eve, and Christmas Eve is the day we celebrate Christmas, so basically it was Christmas Eve if you follow me), I went out to Target with William and was all, “Oh, hey, look at these nutcrackers, is this the kind of thing you’re, um….?” and it was a good thing I DID because Paul and I were thinking of a The Nutcracker kind of nutcracker, like this guy:

but William was thinking of this:

I found a gift set that came with a nutcracker and an assortment of nuts (but no scary dental-looking picks), and I brazened it out: I put it in the cart under something else, and bought it right in front of him, counting on his humming-along-obliviously personality to carry us through, and indeed it did. As soon as we got home I wrapped it and “Oh look what’s that over there”d it under the tree, and it was the hit of Christmas and I had to buy another enormous bag of nuts for him to crack open because he’d gone through all the ones that came with the set. And happily for me, he didn’t even want to EAT the nuts, he just wanted to crack them open, so I got a child bringing me a fresh bowl of snacks every hour or so while I sat there reading my Christmas present books in peace because he was so totally absorbed in the cracking.

With this experience behind us, Paul and I felt motivated to find a purple unicorn. We don’t think of Christmas as an opportunity to fulfill a child’s every material wish, and in fact we generally find it a useful opportunity to cruelly/kindly teach children about how we don’t always get what we want, but there is something particularly irresistible about a child who doesn’t understand this yet and who wants something so reasonable.

I went online and found a purple Beanie Baby one that was $15 ($15 for a Beanie Baby?) plus another $5 for shipping ($20 for a Beanie Baby?), but then I found this much larger unicorn for $15 with free shipping:

(image from Amazon.com)

It’s a make-your-own, but I’m just going to make it myself and give it to her already-made. For one thing, she’s too young to even want to make it herself, and for another thing, I am not the right kind of parent to assist with that project, because I am not relaxed enough to watch a child stuff twice as much stuffing into one leg as into another, and also because I find the whole thing really gross: you get a limp animal skin, and it seems DEAD, and then you’re supposed to coach the child to mess around with the skinned animal’s new, fake innards and implant a “wish” and so forth, and you know FORGET IT. I’ll do it myself and spare her the dead unicorn skin and me the uneven stuffing.

Fourth Grader

44 Replies

I don’t mind telling you that Rob has been driving me CRAZY recently. It is some comfort to be able to swap stories with my friend of many years Astarte, whose fourth-grader is pulling some of the same pre-adolescent stuff. Rob has been sighing, eye-rolling, door-slamming, talking about how things are NOT FAIR, acting like I am the only mother in the world crazy enough to insist on AT LEAST every-other-day showering, etc.

Also, we have forgetfulness/carelessness issues. Almost every day SOMETHING is forgotten at school: his coat, his lunchbox, his clarinet, his homework folder. He left his clarinet at school for THREE DAYS last week, then came home saying, “The good news is, I remembered my clarinet! The bad news is, I forget my lunch box. And my coat.”

This week it came to light that he had lost his clarinet practice book days and days ago, and had just been TOODLING AROUND during practice time, and that furthermore he has not been practicing the songs even when he DOES have the book, and also he’s been including the setting up and putting away as part of the 30 minutes he’s supposed to do.

So since he wanted to act like he didn’t understand he was supposed to use his PRACTICE BOOK when he PRACTICED, I’ve been sitting with him during practice time to make sure actual practicing is taking place. I’m not musical and can’t read music, but even I know that when you play music you’re supposed to play it on a beat, not “as fast as you can”; and that if you don’t know the whole song, you can break it down into smaller parts; and that if you have a song to learn you should PRACTICE PLAYING IT as opposed to saying, “I don’t know how to play it.” In just two sessions with a non-musical coach he’s gone from “Hm, maybe the poor guy has inherited my musical ability” to “Hey! He can play SONGS on that STICK!”

But here’s the situation that’s stressing me out most of all. He told me yesterday that in school this week they’re doing a writing exercise in class, where they do three 45-minute sessions (one per day) on a larger writing assignment, with an outline and a draft and a final copy. They’ve done two of the in-class sessions so far, and he has NOT YET CHOSEN HIS TOPIC. This makes me hyperventilate. I think, “Why didn’t he tell the teacher he’s having trouble??” and “Why isn’t the teacher CHECKING at each stage of this new thing??” and “Why doesn’t he just PICK A TOPIC???” and “OMG is he seriously just sitting there staring into space while everyone else is writing??” and “What is he going to do NOW??” Today is the last 45-minute session, and he said to me that he was pretty sure he could just do the final copy. Yes, but he’s supposed to be learning outlines and drafts, and also he STILL DOESN’T HAVE A TOPIC.

It is very hard to know where to draw the line with these things. At what point is is, “Well, he needs to learn to sink or swim; I’m not going to be able to nag him about his homework when he’s in college,” and at what point is it, “He’s in fourth grade and still needs to be taught good work habits”? And then I look warily at the FOUR MORE CHILDREN I’m going to have to go through this with.

Don’t be ridiculous: I’m always going to be a cute baby, not an eye-rolling pre-adolescent.