You, like me, may be sitting here wondering where the hell October went.
In which I start talking about parenting in a digital age:
- Storytelling: When You Hear the Bell, Turn the Page -- Remember books on record?
- Parenting in a Digital World -- My new project editor gig for BlogHer. I'm pretty excited.
- Will Your School-Agers Still Need Book Covers in Five Years? -- E-books, man.
- From Happy Days to Hoarders: What Do You Think About What Your Kids Watch? -- Personally, I think TV's getting better. In some ways.
In which I try to figure out parenting:
- Do You Fight in Front of Your Kids? I Do. Sort of. -- "Fighting" might have been chosen as a verb for dramatic effect.
- Child Care: It Never Gets Easier to Choose -- I still hate the whole childcare thing with the strength of a thousand suns.
- Pregnancy! It's a Big, Fat Surprise -- Remember the lady pregnant with two babies fertilized at different times? Yeah, it's about that.
Reviews!
- Instructions on reading to your kids -- Cool Mom Picks
- Insatiable -- Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews
In a comment response to my Halloween candy alternatives post, Tracy made the excellent suggestion of creating a pre-Halloween feast, given that there’s time since Halloween falls on a Saturday, and also to fill bellies so there's less room to gorge on candy. Tracy’s Halloween “gross-out menu” includes beet risotto (aka “Blood and Guts”), which another commenter requested. The beet risotto recipe follows below:
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From Tracy:
This method can be adapted to make any type of risotto you feel like having. I like to make it using whatever is on hand (roasted peppers, asparagus and peas, cooked chicken, etc.). This is also a great recipe to add puree (e.g., butternut squash or pumpkin) to. Here are some basic tips, followed by my beet risotto recipe:
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Beet Risotto
Modified from Trish Magwood’s recipe on foodtv.ca
1. Wash and peel beets. Place beets in a medium saucepan, add 3 cups stock + 3 cups water. Bring to a boil, and cook for about 40-45 minutes or until fork-tender. Remove the beets and allow to cool (place in freezer to speed up cooling time if you need to), reserving the stock that the beets were cooking in. Grate beets and set aside.
2. In a wide saucepan over medium heat, add olive oil and butter. Add onion and sauté for about 5 minutes or until tender. Add garlic and continue to sauté for another minute.
3. Add rice to saucepan and stir to coat. Add wine and bring to a boil, cooking for 2 minutes.
4. Add the stock that the beets were cooking in, one ladle at a time. Before adding the next ladle of stock, allow rice to absorb all liquid in the pan. After the first 3 ladles, add the grated beets. Continue adding stock one ladle at a time and cook for about 18-20 minutes or until cooked to desired doneness. Season to taste with salt and pepper and add cheese if you’re using it (we don’t, due to my son’s allergies). Grate cheese over top for garnish.
Image credit: Clipart Graphics
Why yes, there are things happening this weekend that don’t relate to Halloween. Two cool picks that piqued my interest? The Boston Vegetarian Food Festival (Saturday & Sunday) will assemble natural food providers, speakers, chefs, and exhibitors offering food samples, demos, learning opportunities, and a children's activity center. And on Sunday, Design Hive is calling all vintage vixens to Cambridge to stock up on vintage clothing, accessories, and home furnishings from local sellers.
Today, parent educator Hetti Wohlgemuth shares advice on fighting well:
“Bob and I fought last week. Not a big one, but one that prevented us from playing our nightly gin game and one that led me to go to bed mad, something the experts and my parents (their only bit of marital advice) advise against. Fights are not something to avoid at all costs and the experts actually say that a noisy marriage might be better than a quiet one: at least you're talking to one another. Fights happen, yes, but how does it impact our kids? What is a good fight and how can we pull it off?
Know when to let an argument go. Sometimes when we're stressed in other parts of our lives - jobs, extended family, friends, finances, etc. - it's handy and safe to release our fury toward our partner. Whether this is the case or your partner is the cause of the anger, there’s merit to letting the argument go or redirecting the anger toward the actual guilty source. After my spat with Bob, he offered the olive branch the next morning and though I still felt grumpy, I knew I needed to let our little spat go. I did and I'm glad. Fights would not be so much of an issue for kids if they knew that they were only blips on the screen and would disappear with a kiss, a hug, a kind word, and a real desire not to stay mired in unpleasantness.
Vive la difference! Men and women actually are different, so are two women within a couple or two men. We partnered up with our significant other because of our similarities and our differences. Bob is very good at listening to me go on and on about my grievances. But occasionally he rushes in with advice, solutions, and causes – a desire to fix thing when I just want him to listen. Bottom line is he's trying to help in the way he knows how; accept different well intentioned approaches.
Pick your battles. We advise this when dealing with children and we need to abide by this within relationships too. It's not good for you, your partner, or your kids to fight about every teeny tiny resentment. Sometimes it's helpful to not see the unfolded shirts and sweaters or the catalogs piling up on the dining table. Deal with the big elephants and let the others go. As we know but often forget, it's more important to live in a happy home than a perfect and pristine one.
One person cannot meet all our needs. Entanglements ensue when we expect one person to be all and everything to us. We need friends (to give us the response we want or to hear us yet again), babysitting co-ops, babysitters, agreeable family members, and dishwashers (yes, dishwashers!) to fill in and support us when we and/or our partners are at our parenting wit's end. Learn to ask for and accept help.
Fight like an adult, not a three year old. Don't call each other names, blame each other endlessly, or throw sand in each other's hair. If you fight like a grownup, the match stands as a teaching tool. The "good fight" shows children we can get mad, express it in healthy ways, and then move on.
How to fight well. Use the all important, oft mentioned, ‘I statement’ such as, ‘I get mad (or any particular feeling) WHEN you give me causes and solutions (or any other activity) BECAUSE I feel I'm not being heard.’ (Coming up with the clause after 'because' is challenging because you need to take some responsibility for why you actually are mad, frustrated, sad, etc.) Also, don't have these conversations at midnight when the twins are screaming or at the dinner hour when the pot of water boils over and everyone's famished. If you do, everyone will end up (boiling) mad. The good fight may not feel natural at first, but it's worth it. Learning to fight well is an art!
Bottom line. It's not the actual fight that's the problem. It's the quantity (usually too often) and the quality. If you feel like you're fighting every day, then you need to sit down with your partner when you both have time and state where you're both at and what you both need. Listening can be as critical as talking. Occasional (in this case, more is better) expressions of kindness and appreciation are always welcome. Receiving them is just as important as giving them.”
Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
What with Halloween being on a Saturday, there’s plenty of time for advanced partying. Here’s some more upcoming free Halloween fun to enjoy with the kids. On Friday: Harvard Scare! (Cambridge) and on Saturday: Community Halloween Party at Ringer Park (Allston), Brattle Trick or Treat! (Cambridge), USS Constitution Museum Halloween Haunt (Charlestown), Wilson Farms Kids Costume Contest & Haunted Hayride (Lexington), and Halloween Horribles Parade (Winchester).
If you know of other free events, please feel free to share them with the community via comment below!
Also, if you're like me and haven't yet got around to Halloween treat shopping, be sure to check out this awesome collection of ideas for alternatives to offer instead of – or in addition to – traditional candy.
Today I spent some time at Johnson County Community College talking to ninth graders from the Olathe school district about being a writer.
One of the first kids who came up to me asked me if spelling was important. I considered it for a while, then said YES, BY GOD, IT IS. Then he asked if I write things out longhand, and I said, "No," then heard myself uttering, "Although I did when I was your age. We didn't really use computers then."
This kid looked at me as though I were fossilizing before his very eyes.
A series of flat-ironed blond girls streamed past. "What's the demand for your field?" one asked, popping her gum.
"Well," I said, "By the time you're out of college, I think we'll have that all figured out. Right now, it's pretty bad, actually." I paused. "But writing will never be outsourced to another country. Think about that. And corporations aren't really as evil as you'd think." Gah gah gah gah gah
At this point, I looked at the arborist sitting next to me with a giant chainsaw and asked for some of his Purell. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears.
DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE. DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE.
As I waited for more kids to approach, I heard one large boy ask the arborist, "Why would you need a chainsaw that big?"
An alert-looking girl ambled over. She skipped the questions on the preprepared form and went straight for the blogging. "How do you build your following?" she asked. "How long did it take to get one?"
I thought back to 2004, when I had a good day with 30 hits. "It took a long time," I said.
"I have a huge following on DNL," she said. I think that's what she said. I have no idea what DNL is. It must be something the kids are doing these days.
"I push a lot from Twitter," I replied. One of the other girls flipped her hair.
"I don't know how to make Twitter work," said the other girl.
You and most of America.
A teenaged boy came up. "I'm sorry," he said, before he'd said anything. Then he looked nervously at my sign, which said "writer."
"I like to write," he said, "but I don't think I'm very good at it."
"You know what? Nobody's very good at it in ninth grade. If you like it, you're probably better at it than you think. Keep going."
I got into a conversation about Ray Bradbury with an earnest-looking wanna-be reporter. Most of the kids looked through me at the window beyond.
The organizer kept getting on the loudspeaker.
THERE'S NO WAITING AT GARMIN!
The crowd began to rustle.
THERE'S NO WAITING AT THE EDUCATION BOOTH!
No shit. They're in ninth grade. Educators are still "other."
I sat back and listened to my thoughts:
- I had those same elf boots when I was in ninth grade.
- These girls are so lucky they won't regret their high school hair later in life, unlike us unlucky schmucks who came of age in the eighties.
- DON'T TOUCH FACE! DON'T TOUCH FACE!
- Why is your field not in demand? Why don't more people pay you to write?
- Their feet look so BIG.
- Why are these girls so good at liquid eyeliner? Could I learn?
Another girl approached my table. "So, um, how many things have you written?" she asked, looking bored. She scanned my portfolio, flipping the tear sheets and the Sleep Is for the Weak coverage.
My computer hard drive flashed before my eyes -- thousands of individual pieces. How many posts are in this blog? 1,296. I just checked.
How can I tell her the volume of words it takes to get better?
It's overwhelming how much work it takes to get good at something. What should I say?
So I said nothing. I smiled and signed her Career Fair form.
"Hey," I called as she walked away. "Go to school for what you want. There are a lot of great-paying jobs that'll kill your soul."
She smiled, flipped her hair. "Thanks," she said.
And then I flipped back through my portfolio, remembering every single piece.
Get ready for some pumpkin party hopping. Tomorrow, October 29, you can celebrate Halloween at any or all of three free, fun events in Boston. Enjoy trick or treating, crafts, and dance at the Hill House Halloween Party from 3-6pm (and spread the festive mojo by bringing a box of pasta, rice, or canned soup for their food pantry drive to benefit Boston families). Carve and decorate pumpkins and enjoy face painting and fall treats at the Fort Point Pumpkin Pageant from 12-4pm. And experience locally farmed pumpkins and apple cider at the Greenway Pumpkin Party from 12:30-2pm.
A couple of downpouring weekends ago, Laurel and I visited Clay Dreams, a pottery painting studio in Arlington. Simply pick from a range of functional (e.g., dinnerware) and decorative (e.g., pumpkins) pottery options, choose your paint colors, and create. At first, the cost ($5 fee + Laurel chose a $12 large plate and $8 mug) seemed a tad steep for an hour of entertainment but Laurel absolutely adored the experience. (And really, could I spin those pieces and fire them up myself for $25?) And she wasn’t the only one; in addition to various kid/adult pairings, one table was exclusively grownups.
While the experience itself was fun and relaxing, I was particularly won over when we picked up Laurel's pieces. On application the paints look rather pale and unremarkable, but they turn utterly vibrant once glazed and fired. I'm also intrigued to learn how to create some of their professional looking finishes, such as those shown in this image. (Our almost 10-year-old wedding dishes are all chipped up and could stand replacement.)
We're so going back to create holiday gifts for the grandparents. And since Laurel kept the plate and gifted the mug to Jon, I'm really hoping she makes me a piece next time too.
Clay Dreams, 183 Mass. Ave., Arlington; 781-641-3000