Kite Flying

The boys all three got kites for their birthdays from C's brother and his girlfriend. E had been begging to take his out all week, but I kept putting him off. C finally took them out Sunday while I was gone and again Monday morning. I missed out seeing the sea turtle and tree frog fly and apparently M's trick kite turned out to be a little, er, tricky.

Later that day I went out with him and a different kite. First we tried a traditionally kite-shaped kite that he was given several years ago. I don't know if it was the gusty wind or the kite's shape or what, but all we could succeed in doing was getting it to swirl around in loop-de-loops and crash to the ground. I ran back to the house and got his old standby triangular kite (while there I changed the string to regular kite string from fishing-line type string, because ever since he learned that fishing line has lead in it, he calls it "lead string" and freaks out about touching it. I need to figure out if all nylon line has lead, or only some, poor kid!), and I also grabbed my old kite of a similar shape, also switching its string because a long time ago C hooked it up to a fishing reel and since then, I never use it because it's big and heavy and not being a fisher person, I find the cast and reel action not exactly intuitive.

We finally got M's kite in the air--the wind was pretty gusty, so it was difficult--and I got mine up for only a short flight...I needed a lot more string, or a lot lighter, steadier wind.

I seem to remember making kites out of newspaper when I was a kid. Did this really happen or am I confusing my life with an episode of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show? Someone please confirm for me--in the 70's, did we make kites with the Sunday funnies? If so, what did we use for sticks (stays? what are those called?) and tails? Did they actually fly? I guess I should ask my mother or sister if either of them remembers. I've seen kite paper for sale here, so I guess it's technically do-able (but does the paper come with instructions??)

Earth Scout Eggs

We resumed Earth Scouts again this past Monday after a couple of weeks' hiatus. I had taken our ES vests and foraging bags along on a Mothers' Day hike two weeks ago, with the plan of collecting leaves in homemade leaf presses, but finally figured out that when we're away from home, the kids are much happier running along the trail, doing what they want to do, and not being coaxed into any kind of guided activity. Point taken. I didn't even consider doing EarthScouts while we were camping--since we were outdoors in nature for nearly three days straight, we didn't really need additional encouragement.

I still needed to do some needling and wheedling to get everyone outside together on Monday--but we finally settled down on some old sheets with the goal of looking at and drawing birds. Being a sunny and breezy afternoon, there wasn't much bird activity going on, but we drew some out of our heads...and then I remembered the goose eggs. C's mother had blown* out two of them when she was there the previous day, and there was one left in the fridge.

I ran in to blow it out too, but succeeded in blowing it UP...oops...and instead found two last duck eggs in our fridge and blew those instead (we have a regular menagerie of eggs at our house). While we waited for the eggs to dry, I read An Egg is Quiet, which is a gorgeous book (I learned about the book here, and our library actually had it!), and then painted our eggs with watercolors.

Eventually the eggs were covered and when it became clear no more would emerge, the troops wandered off to Lego's, baseball and bikes, and I found these little wooden egg cups I had bought for Easter with the thought of decorating somehow, but never go around to it. I think they're perfect!

*While cleaning out my bathrooms recently, I ran across two nasal aspirators (a.k.a. snot suckers) from the children's infancy, and it turns out that, despite C's and his mother's skepticism, they are ideal egg-blowers (b.t.w., if you're grossed out by the thought of it, I either never or rarely used them to suck snot, if I did it was a long time ago and I washed it well, and I pretty much consider all baby bodily fluids--at least my own babies'--relatively innocuous)

Sailing, Sailing

I went to Rockland Sunday to visit a dear, dear friend who is moving to Western Colorado next week. While I'm extremely happy for her, I'm feeling very sorry for myself. While there, we went on a spontaneous sail in Penobscot Bay on their sailboat.

When her husband went out to fetch the boat in my new canoe (small compensation for being abandoned on the East Coast), he found the tide extremely low and got bogged down a bit. While we waited for our captain to unbog himself, we found all of these big red crabs stranded on the boat launch. Most of them were already dead and/or devoured by seagulls, but this one was still kicking and I transported him (her?) back into the water. I've never even seen big crabs like this in real life (alive in situ), so it was kind of cool, but also disconcerting.

It was a gorgeous evening...the off-again-on-again showers all day had given way to blue blue sky and sunshine. It was only the second time I've been sailing in all (13??) the years I've lived in Maine. I must say, the company this time was much, much more enjoyable. We saw two porpoises and one seal waved its flipper at us.

After collecting some paperbacks and house plants and wresting with canoe straps, I made the long, lonely drive home. Good luck in Colorado JM!!

First Local Meal of the Season

Saturday C and I found ourselves miraculously home alone--the kids were all gone at their grandparents'--for part of the day, and while I spent most of the time cleaning my kitchen (even mopping the floor for the first time in eons), I did get a chance to cook up a luncheon for two made almost entirely of local ingredients.

Our neighbor who has a small farm dropped off a half-dozen goose eggs the other day. Apparently the bottom dropped out of his goose egg market and he was driving them around the neighborhood giving them away.

C picked our first harvest--a bunch of gorgeous Easter-egg radishes.

I sauteed the radishes in butter (unfortunately not home-made) and salt, steamed and sauteed the radish greens and scrambled the greens with the goose eggs and some chives, oregano and sage picked from the herb garden.

A nice white wine would have finished the meal off perfectly, but all we had was water (very local!) To tell the truth, the radishes gave me a touch of indigestion. I need to review the cooking technique before trying them again (we had some raw and some in fritatta the next day and neither bothered me). Oh, and yes, goose eggs taste just like chicken eggs (despite C's mom--who was there sharing our alone time--claiming they taste fishy and don't conform to her "kosher" diet.)

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P.S. New post up at Capital Walks.

Do you ever have one of those days when you seriously question your choices in life and start wishing you had applied for that Watson Fellowship, traveled the world and, finally, settled in the South of France to write novels?

I recently had this email exchange with an old friend of mine from college:

Her: Motherhood seems really tough, but I think that you seem to be doing an excellent job!

Me: You would not have thought so this a.m. Z didn't want to get dressed, so I packed up his clothes to take to daycare. I put on his jacket and socks and he put on one of his shoes before he noticed he still had pajamas on! He started crying and dressed himself in the mud room. Then we got to daycare, and E got mad because I unbuckled his seatbelt for him and he wanted to do it himself. So I said, "fine! Just stay in the car all day." Z and I started walking toward the daycare, when I looked back E looked all sad, so I went back and got him, and did that thing you see moms do, where I dragged him too fast by his arm and he fell on his knee. Ugh...work mornings are the worst!

Her: That sounds like a fabulous morning! I totally cracked up reading that. Our morning went like this- we woke up at 7 and had coffee on the deck and listened to the birds until it was time to get ready for work.

Wow...coffee on the deck listening to birds? Other than the fact that I don't drink coffee (but tea would be fine), and it's still usually too cold at 7 in the morning to sit on the deck, and if you did sit out there, the mosquitoes would devour you alive, it sounds pretty g-d fantastic.

I was daydreaming about a quiet deck morning again today, which started out like this:

6:30 a.m. Get out of bed to change and wash the pee-soaked sheets in the twins bed.
6:45 a.m. Throw one twin in the tub and wash dried poop crumbs off the floor (don't ask). Convince M to get dressed. Dress both twins (without incident), and clip one's nails.
7:00 Try to get self dressed while listening to tussle over breakfast downstairs. Go down to find E moaning over not enough cereal in bowl. Add more to his bowl and milk. Pour Z's cereal. E continues to cry, wail and otherwise carry on, "That not enough!" Take away his cereal and eat it myself.
7:15 Go upstairs to get socks and last-minute items. Hear further crying and breaking pottery. Go downstairs to find one of my polka-dot bowls shattered on the floor
7:25 Sweep up shards and get M out the door.
7:30 Put E (still crying), who is tearing the couch cushions apart and throwing them across the room, out on the front step and tell him he can come back in when he's ready to put the couch back together.
7:35 Get stuff together, let E (still crying) back in.
7:40 Give Z a banana. E puts couch back together and grabs cereal bag, scattering Mesa Sunrise flakes all over kitchen and mudroom.
7:50 Put cereal on plastic container and give him a banana.
7:55 Put his shoes on and send him outside. Drive to daycare.
8:00 Tell Z he can take the monster truck, the airplane and the batman into daycare, but not the two cars which are M's. Z starts crying and cries all the way up the stairs, into daycare and follows me back down the stairs still crying.
8:10 Drive to work daydreaming about drinking tea and listening to birds on the deck. In Maui.

Birthday Week Wrap-Up

We survived Birthday Season yet again--two nights of camping, two nights of celebrations with relatives, two baseball games and one birthday party with buddies. By Friday afternoon, as we drove toward the pool, I realized we had had pizza every night all week (plus one night camping...more on that below) and there was NO WAY I was going to stop for our usual Al's Pizzas on the way home, which made for three VERY disappointed boys when we went home and made spaghetti instead (leftover ice cream acted as a balm to their psychic wounds).

Camping was GREAT. The weather wasn't quite as cooperative as last year (what can you expect in May in Maine?), and we did get pretty wet Saturday night/Sunday, but we all had a good time playing on the beach, mining for garnets (that would be M), and hiking.

We had the infamous grilled pizza again. This time I made it with my usual Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day variation (half wheat/half white), instead of the dough I used last year out of an old issue of Martha Stewart Living. I think the gluten doesn't develop well enough with the no-knead version, and the pizzas did not hold up well to being placed on a grill, but they were tasty anyway. Next time I'll go back to Martha's version.

I freezer-paper-stenciled these shirts for all the little people (very late Thursday night b/c the shirts didn't arrive until Thursday!)

Arctic tern, cormorant, crab, laughing gull, sand piper, hermit crab and sea star. I was going for animals we might see while we were there, but as it turns out not a lot of tide pool critters look like much in silhouette, so I threw in the sea star.

The only minor disaster was M's cake got totally soaked in the bottom of the cooler, but he was OK with that, since he was getting cake again on his actual birthday. Even in the rain Sunday morning everyone seemed to have a good time (other than E who sat in the car while we loaded our soggy gear in saying, "Next time I not want it to rain." But even he got out of the car and came down to the beach, wishing the waves good-bye until all were drenched and shivery.

Milestones Part 3--Baseball

M had his first (and second) baseball game this week. We somehow managed to avoid T-ball the last two years, but this year he really wanted to play, and so now he's a member of the Whitefield Farm League team.

Now everyone always gives soccer mom's a hard time for being too wrapped up in their kids' sports, but soccer was easy--six weeks, one practice a week (by the end of the season it was too dark to practice anyway), one game on Saturday, one hour long (at least one got rained out). The kids run around after the ball for an hour, not always in the right direction, get tired, go home. Done. Most parents don't know much about soccer, so they don't have a lot to say (except one notable game at which one dad alternated side-line coaching his kid and saying to those around him, "I don't know anything about soccer.")

Baseball is a whole 'nother ball game (ha!). First, we started way back in March (in the gym because there were still two feet of snow on the ground). And practices were an hour and a half long (you could see the coaches checking the clock every five minutes). And they kept getting cancelled because of other events being held in the gym (raising the ire of some...causing great releif in others, i.e. me). And lots of politics...people constantly chattering about how much it cost and why it cost so much (rumor has it it's because the commissioner's daughter's team got their names on the backs of their jerseys, gasp!), why aren't there hats, why wasn't my kid put on minor league instead of farm league. And on. And on. And on. Now we have two games a week, 5:30 warmup, with games from 6 to 7:30 or 8 p.m.

At Tuesday night's game, there was pretty steady chatter behind me complaining that the kids got four pitches (instead of three strikes), that every kid was played through (instead of three outs), and that every kid was on the field (instead of the standard, what, nine?). It really interrupted my reading (actually I did watch the whole game--and not just because I thought the other parents would judge me because I was reading--but also because I was actually interested in watching the kids play--especially mine of course--and how they progressed in just one game).

The good things about it are: a. The coach is great (he's M's best buddy's step dad, and really good with kids and totally not into threatening/shaming kids or cutthroat competition...he's helping them learn skills and have fun...which in my opinion is what it's all about); and b. the kids all seem to have a great time. M is in heaven. And although he claimed he didn't like being catcher, he did great--even stopping balls by the end, throwing them to the pitcher, putting his own protective gear on after every inning. I'm sure it was tiring, but he seemed pretty proud standing out there in his protective shell.