Amelia's Adventures

We've been host to a stuffed monkey for the last few days. She is visiting from Pennsylvania. Her family sends her to other people's houses for a few weeks at a time, and they ask the hosts to take Amelia around their city and document it, so that they can learn about other parts of the world.

Amelia Row arrived in Chicago on Monday, March 26. She came with a little wicker suitcase and her own wardrobe, little sunglasses and a toothbrush. Max and Otto were quite excited about her. Otto wanted to change her outfits. Max loved the pajamas. ("Wow, these are so cute!" he exclaimed.) It was fun to have all that little girl stuff in the house.

And then we set about introducing Amelia to Chicago.

Tuesday morning was warm and sunny, so we took Amelia to Unity Park, a park in Logan Square on Kimball and Diversey. We showed her some of our favorite things there. Then we picked up Martin (he was at the dentist) and we all went to lunch at Iguana Cafe, a cute little cafe just north of the Chicago River, on Halsted Street and Grand Avenue. The cafe is in fact home to a pet iguana, which Max and Otto love to visit. We often go to this cafe, as it is around the corner from where Martin works. Martin's office is in a big pink building right on the river, which is famous for being the first converted loft building in Chicago. It is right on the river, and Martin watches boats going by all day long from his office window. It was designed by Harry Weiss and is one of the buildings always mentioned on the Chicago River cruises.


After lunch, we took Amelia to the Blommer Chocolate Factory, whose delightful cacao bean roasting smell permeates Chicago when the wind is just right. This has actually changed in the last year or two, as the EPA cited Blommer with violations for emitting too much cocoa powder in the air. It caused a bit of a controversy here in the city, as many people love this smell and identify it as something unique and special here in Chicago. It was also strange that the EPA came out and took action, since the EPA rarely cites companies for violating these limits, and usually these are coal plants or the like. Blommer is installing filtering equipment, and this will lessen the emissions. And of course, the sweet smell of chocolate is sometimes helpful in overpowering our city's less desirable smells, such as diesel exhaust or sewer scents, and I will miss it.

Anyway, the family-owned company has been making chocolate for the wholesale market since 1939. Machines run around the clock to produce cocoa powder, milk and dark chocolate. You can visit the small factory store and choose from lots of different treats, packaged in bright red bags, or you can get chocolate bars, ranging from small servings to 10-pound bars. We bought our share of candy, and headed out.

We took the Grand Avenue bus with Amelia so she could experience the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority). She sat with Max and Otto and they looked out the window as we passed the sites, including a big fire station.

We went to the end of the line, at Navy Pier. It was just starting to get foggy and cold, and we were not prepared with coats, so we zipped into the building. The giant ferris wheel is located at Navy Pier, and although it was just starting to rain, we thought we'd better show Amelia as much as we could before it got completely wet. So we took her to the base of the ferris wheel. It's not running now, as the whole amusement part of Navy Pier is closed for the winter. She seemed impressed anyway.


We then went to the Children's Museum, which is currently located at the Pier. They have plans to move this lovely museum to Grant Park in the coming years, but for now we have fun visiting this place that we otherwise might not visit (it's sort of a touristy location, and everything there is outrageously expensive, but it's still lots of fun to be there).

We love the Children's Museum, and we showed Amelia some of our favorite spots and activities. We went to a new exhibit they have there called "Making Waves," which is about sound. It was put together by the Blue Man Group, a fabulous percussion group who performs in Chicago. The three percussionists are completely blue (with makeup of course), and they play homemade instruments, mostly made from PVC plumbing pipes and wires and other interesting items.

Another of our favorite exhibits at the museum is called "My Museum," where you can make a self portrait out of paper, or clay, or take photos of yourself, or you can make music. Lots of opportunities for self-expression. Also in this section, they have a great collection of gumball charms, collected by a boy whose name was Otto, when he was 8. He was living in Bucktown in the 1950s, above his parents' candy shop, which was called Otto's Candy. As you can imagine, our Otto loves this exhibit. He always asks us to read the story of little Otto, the collector.

We stayed at the museum until closing, and then we visited some of the Pier's shops, including a magician's shop, where we saw a magician doing some rather disturbing tricks with a raccoon puppet, and we rode on a kid-sized train, another tourist attraction for the Pier. Amelia went along for the ride.

Martin picked us up, as it was really cold by evening (it was almost 7, I think). We headed to the north side of Chicago on an errand, and we ended up having dinner at Wishbone Restaurant, another Chicago institution, in our opinion. There are two locations in Chicago, and we went to the one on Lincoln Avenue. We got an order of the crawfish cakes, with hoppin' john and spinach, so Amelia could get a good taste of their "southern reconstruction cooking." There was a band playing, called the Uptown Strings. Two guitars and a violin. They were fantastic, and Amelia and Otto danced to the music.


It was quite a day, and I think we showed Amelia a good bit of Chicago.

On Thursday, we headed to the Lincoln Park Zoo.

It was a cool gray morning, but it got surprisingly warm and sunny, and we had a lovely time. We showed Amelia the primate house, where there was a very young gorilla who was still very attached to his mama.


We took her on a carousel ride. We looked at lions, tigers, llamas, deer, flamingos. We took her to the Farm Zoo, which is where we go when we need a fix for a bit of farm life—it's not much, but it's nice to have a big barn with a tractor and some farm animals close enough to reach easily. They have a John Deere tractor to ride, and the boys took Amelia on it, since John Deere is another famous Illinois product.

From the zoo, there are great vistas of the Chicago skyline. The zoo is located very close to the lake, in a prime part of the city called Lincoln Park. There are beautiful parks around the zoo, and the zoo itself is quite wonderful. It's a free zoo, and I have to remind myself how lucky we are to be in the city with all these amazing things available to us.


It was a short visit with Amelia, and we had loads of fun with her. Her brother, Mr. Row, arrived this afternoon, and tomorrow, we will take him to Germany with us. We packed up Amelia and sent her home to her family, along with some souveniers from her visit and a lot of photos.

String Theories

Otto practiced his rodeo skills by lassoing all the small chairs with the cord of the vacuum cleaner. He dragged the chairs into the kitchen and then removed the cord, dragged them back to the dining room and started again.

A couple of days later, Otto constructed a complicated system to connect the pull string from our front door hallway light to our doorknob. When you would open the door, the light would turn on. It made it somewhat difficult to actually get in and out of the door, however.

Otto also tied the string from his indoor fishing pole around a dining room chair, so that the pole dangles from the chair. He does not want it to be removed from there.

In a related vein, both boys love to play with tape. They will put tape all around the kitchen, as though the room were cordoned off in a police examination. Tape stretches from the refrigerator to the chairs to the cabinets. They also like to wrap tape around drawer handles. And sometimes they'll just make "X" marks all over the floor with the tape. Perhaps they are planning to bury a treasure somewhere.

Road Trip, Part 2: Kentucky Lake

We spent four days in a cabin in Benton, Kentucky, right on the Kentucky Lake. It was pretty remote, in terms of being far away from conveniences, but it was very close to marinas and the many parks of Land Between the Lakes.

The weather was warm and wonderful. Cool mornings and evenings, warm afternoons. The grass was green, the trees were flowering, the skies were blue. The sun shimmered on the water.

Max and I were the only ones awake on a couple of mornings, and we sat together on the porch, watching the sun rise higher and the fishermen out trying to get the first fish of the day. It was cool enough then to need a blanket, and we'd cuddle up there and look through our binoculars to see the birds. It was so nice to have this quiet time with Max.


The first evening, we chartered a small boat with a friendly captain named Ed. He took us out for the last two hours of light, and we saw the sun set from the boat. The boys dangled their new fishing poles from Grandma and Grandpa in the water, and we all really hoped they would catch something, but we didn't get a single bite. It was still loads of fun. The captain had some fancy equipment that would let us know exactly how deep the water was—it was surprisingly shallow in many parts, and he said he had to constantly watch the depth to be sure we didn't suddenly hit a shallow part and damage the boat (and us!). The sensor also showed fish swimming underneath us. It was fun for us to know that there were fish about, but I imagine that it might be frustrating for a fisherman to be out, knowing there are fish going right under the boat, ignoring his bait.


As for the rest of the days, we had a hard time finding a boat that would fit all five of us. Luckily, the house had its own dock, and it turned out to be perfect to fish from there. We could come and go as we wanted, we could spread out our stuff, sit in chairs, lay down on the dock. We could go up to the house for snacks, bring down a picnic, take bathroom breaks.

There were many boats coming close to the docks for fishing, and my dad said that the record crappie for the area was actually caught from our own dock. We used the boys' new poles, which had a little rubber attachment without a hook so that they could practice casting. We also used two old bamboo poles from my childhood fishing days, mine and my brother's. They don't have reels, so we just set them up with bait and laid them on the dock. My parents had a few other poles with reels, and we rotated around these poles.

We fished each day. On Friday, we had been fishing for about two hours, and we hadn't caught anything. Max got very frustrated and said he was done fishing forever. They had been pretty patient and seemed to be having fun until that point. I asked him why he didn't like it. And he said, "I like fishing, but I don't like not catching anything." Ah, of course. We explained to him that was what fishing was, but of course it made sense that he wanted some action. Luckily, one of the bamboo poles that had just been sitting on the dock, ignored, suddenly saw a surge of action. The bobber went down, and up came a fish. Since it was without a reel, we used the net to get it. About 15 minutes later, same pole, same thing again. So we had two fish. We were not sure what they were, as they weren't crappie, but they were just the right size for us. And then we called it a day. End on a high note, we thought.




We caught two more fish on Saturday, one crappie and one perch. We already had the two fish from the day before, so we put the perch back in the water, and the boys learned about catch and release. I never knew you had to gently reorient the fish before he swims away.

We fried up the fish on Saturday night, breaded with cornmeal, just as my father learned to do from his father. It would have been much more poetic if the first two fish we caught hadn't turned out to be tough and bony and not very good. My dad tried them and declared them unfit for our consumption, admitting himself that if even he didn't like them, that was a pretty good indicator that they should be avoided. So we all shared the crappie filets.

I heavily considered the fact that two fish gave their lives and we did not ultimately eat them. I always feel bad to throw away meat, but I felt especially bad having personally ended their lives and then thrown them away.

We are not religious, so we don't pray before meals, but I think it's good to stop and consider the farmer who grew the food, the animals that gave their lives for us to eat them, and all the people who helped get them to us. To breathe in the smells of our bounty before we gobble it up. I would like to make this part of our ritual before each meal.

I think we are so out of touch with where our food comes from that it can be easy to ignore the fact that eating animals involves killing them, and it's messy. We are meat eaters, and I don't see that changing, but I definitely think it's good to be aware of the whole process. One of my friends told me that her sister didn't want to tell her son that ham was from a pig, because he might not want to eat it if he knew that. But I think it's important to know what you are eating, even if it means that Max doesn't like to eat pork. Otto is relatively unbothered at this point and eats hot dogs almost daily.

We have been members of a Community Supported Agrigulture for several years—we want to know our farmer. We like to visit the farm where our produce is grown and thank all of the workers who grow and harvest and deliver it to us. We eat more seasonally when we receive our box each week, and we know they grow in organically, even biodynamically.

We tend to buy our meat from Whole Foods, where we know it should be of good quality, but where it comes in nice clean cuts, wrapped in pretty paper, far removed from the animal. It's easy to forget about its origins.

Both boys were very sad for the fish we caught, although Max still wanted to catch more and eat them, he said. Otto kept saying "poor fish" after we removed them from the fishing line. It felt good to set one free, and when we were done fishing for the weekend, it was fun to put all the unused minnows in the water and the nightcrawlers into the soil by the house. Sure, the minnows were probably destined to be eaten by bigger fish, but I guess it felt good to give them a little bit of freedom. Max and Otto loved the minnows and wanted to play with them, touch them, all weekend.

We planned to leave Sunday morning, although of course it was after one o'clock before we got on the road. We had one last round of fishing that morning, and although we got a couple of nibbles, we didn't catch anything else. Then I packed up the car while the boys played a bit with Grandma and Grandpa. They were sad to leave their grandparents, but they were also excited to get home to Papa and tell him all about our adventures.




Our trip home was good, and went surprisingly smoothly. We stopped in Arcola near an Amish settlement for lunch, and I wanted to spend more time to visit the village, where there are flowers and rock gardens, old-fashioned shops and buggy rides around the 1940s village. Instead, we ate a quick lunch and got back on the road. We'll stop on another trip, I hope.

It's good to be home, and we are readying ourselves for yet another trip, this time to Germany. Wow, what a fun life.

Road Trip, Part 1: New Harmony, Indiana

The boys and I have just returned from a little road trip to Benton Kentucky, where we went fishing with my parents. On the way, we stopped in New Harmony, Indiana, where we stayed at the New Harmony Inn. We love it there. 125 acres of gardens, ponds, scultpures, bridges, paths. A forest the perfect size for my little explorers. Lovely rooms. Pool and hot tub. Fine dining at the Red Geranium Restaurant. Golf carts for getting around the small town. Max got to drive the golf cart around this beautiful park just a few blocks from the inn. In the town, log cabins, a roofless church with sculptures and gardens. Labyrinths. A pottery studio. Lots of cute shops, which we zipped past in our golf cart.

We have stayed there before on our way to visit my parents for Christmas, so the boys remembered it and were excited to go there. It's a really unusual town, and it has an atmosphere to match. It remains a utopian community of sorts, although the formal attemps for such communities have ended. Spring had already arrived in full, and we appreciated the daffodils and blooming trees. It was just a perfect day.

This is information from a website on the town:
"New Harmony is the site of two of America's great utopian communities. The first, Harmonie on the Wabash (1814-1824), was founded by the Harmony Society, a group of Separatists from the German Lutheran Church. In 1814, led by their charismatic leader Johann Georg Rapp, they left their first American home, Harmonie, PA. Indiana's lower Wabash Valley on the western frontier gave them the opportunity to acquire a much larger tract of land. In 1825, the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania and built the town of Economy near Pittsburgh. Robert Owen, Welsh-born industrialist and social philosopher, bought their Indiana town and the surrounding lands for his communitarian experiment.

"Robert Owen's ambition was to create a more perfect society through free education and the abolition of social classes and personal wealth. World-renowned scientists and educators settled in New Harmony. With the help of William Maclure, the Scottish geologist and businessman, they introduced vocation education, kindergarten and other educational reforms.

"The town is a vacationer's dream and a researcher's paradise, with 12 early 19th century buildings and 20 from mid-19th century, a museum, library, gallery and a theater. The New Harmony Inn with its Conference Center, a unique assemblage of contemporary buildings within the context of the historic community, offers the comforts of city-living in a rural setting. Visitors from all over the world come to experience New Harmony's legacy of creative endeavor which has spanned more than 180 years. They discover a distinctive small town, where the simple wooden structures of the Harmonists, blend with modern architectural masterpieces on quiet tree-lined streets."

One day just wasn't enough to really explore this town, but we will go back again and again. And then we packed up and headed to Benton, Kentucky, where we fished every day. I'll have to write about that trip in another post.

Lazy Sunday

We spent the morning making crepes. We set up two crepe pans, two brushes for the butter, two ladles for the batter, and both boys stood at the stovetop and poured/flipped their crepes. Max was having so much fun at the beginning, he said he wanted to do it all day and into the night. But after about 15 or so, he was done. He did a fine job on those 15 though, and was able to flip most of them over. Then he asked Martin to do the rest.

We sat down and ate them with jam, nutella and bananas, or just plain confectioners sugar.

Shadow Play

Max was playing with his shadow while we were on a walk. He would watch it as it was following him, as it would change when he would run near and far from buildings. He suddenly said, "Look! When I walk toward the building, my shadow doesn't go under it!" He ran toward a wall, and as he got closer, the shadow moved from being on the sidewalk to being on the wall of the building. He was assuming it might stay on the ground and slide under the building, I think.

It's so fun to see him making realizations about the world. And to remember there is magic in things that you have long ago dismissed or forgotten had any wonder about them.

I Like You Too

Max is not big on saying "I love you." In fact, he has never said it to me or to Martin, although I am quite sure that he does love us very much. I say it many times each day to both boys, and I tell them I love their toes and their cheeks and every other part of their being.

Otto says "I love you" quite often. If I hurt myself and say "ow!" he'll come running over, throw his arms around me and say, "I love you!" It has the healing effect intended, as I do instantly forget the owie and feel very loved indeed. Max is also very empathetic to injuries, physical or emotional, but instead of "I love you," he usually just looks concerned and asks if I'm okay and then continues to check on the situation until it is clearly over.

The other night, when we were going to sleep, I turned to Max and said, "I love you, Max." And he said, "I like you too."

It's a start.

Seize the Day

Yesterday was simply gorgeous. We were more ambitious than usual, and we actually visited all of the following:

Einstein's Bagels for breakfast;
Trader Joe's for fruit leathers and Pirate's Booty;
Wagner Farm to visit horses, cows, chickens (and to get extremely muddy!);
Kohl's Children's Museum, where we did the outdoor scavenger hunt as well as several favorite indoor activities;
Botanic Garden, where we spent the last few hours of daylight. We listened to the Carillon bells as they rang in 6 o'clock and finally headed home as the sun went down.

It was a lot to do in one day, but somehow it felt very relaxed and wonderful. The boys wore their short sleeved "Life is Good" shirts for the first time since the fall, and life did indeed seem to be pretty darn good.

Today was a bit more mellow--probably we were recovering from yesterday. But we managed to go to Glazed Expressions, where we painted some banks and some tiles.

Still feeling crafty, we visited a nearby art store and bought some art supplies and a "paint your own doghouse" kit, which includes a little dog and bowl. Max and Otto have both been asking for pets, and at this point, I think the small wooden variety might be the best fit for our family. We'll see how they get along with the dust bunnies.

Springing Forward

It was the perfect weekend to begin daylight savings time. Spring was in the air, and we spent quite a lot of our time outdoors, basking in the sun and mild temperatures.

On Saturday, we basically ate our way through Beverly. We started with lunch at Top Notch, a famous burger joint that was recently written up in the Tribune. Burgers all around. Otto had a large milkshake--it was the biggest milkshake I have ever seen in my life, and it adequately served all four of us. The burgers were good, and we all ate until we could eat no more. On the way out, the boys found a temporary tattoo dispenser. Max selected a fairy, and Otto chose a dog. Do they look like tough guys now?




We then took Martin to Hands on Art to show him around. There was a birthday party there, and it was chaotic, but fun. We are lucky to usually be there during the week, when it is really quiet.

We threw a few creations on the pottery wheel. Max and Otto have a nice touch for controling the pedal (it's similar to the sewing machine pedal, which they also like to control), and they are also pretty successful in shaping the clay as it spins. None of us has mastered the fine tuning, though, and once we get a nice bowl (or volcano, as we tried to create this weekend), we usually collapse it at during the "wall thinning" process. Otto thinks this part is really fun, and neither of them seems to be bothered that we don't always make a piece to fire.



After we were finished with our clay (and covered in it too), we walked to the nearest Starbucks. I mean, it had been at least three hours since we had last eaten...and we had not had coffee yet that day, so it was somewhat necessary.

Then we walked around the neighborhood near Hands on Art, which is beautiful. We speculated about housing costs in the area and met lots of nice residents. Max began to gather sticks, as is his wont. We had quite a load when we passed a house where a woman was tending the garden. She was impressed with Max's bundle, and she said she would have loved his help that morning, when she was volunteering with a group to help clear the Buckthorn from the Dan Ryan Woods.



And then it was time to go home. And yet...we passed Cafe Luna, a quaint little coffee shop. Max was complaining of hunger, and we used it as an excuse for yet another diversion. Max ordered a really decadent chocolate cake, which everyone loved.

We did some gardening of our own on Sunday. It was muddy, but the boys had a great time digging and "planting" some popsicle sticks.



We also emptied our rain barrel, which contained a gigantic block of ice. It was just so fun to be outside.



I'm ready for spring to really be here. Forecast: snow on Thursday.

Some Winter Pictures

Where have all the glasses gone?

Otto was drinking a glass of water with dinner. When he was finished, the glass still partly full, he walked over to the garbage can, flipped open the lid, and threw the glass in, water, glass, and all. I'm glad I realized he did it, and now I wonder if that is a habit of his.

Otto loves to throw things away. I remember when Max was also in this stage--he would throw away the trash belonging to complete strangers when we were at Starbucks. These days at Starbucks, Otto is sometimes so ready for the throwing away part that he will be ready to throw his vanilla milk when it's only half empty. So it certainly makes sense that he thinks we should do the same at home. He was quite miffed when I took the glass out of the trash, and he insisted that he was all done with it. But he ultimately relented and agreed that we could wash the glass and keep it. I'll have to keep an eye out for that.

I haven't noticed that Otto throws things away randomly, as I remember Max doing at some point (I rescued many items from the trash, but I'm sure many things were lost there forever). But perhaps--no, absolutely--I'm not as observant as I was when Max was my sole charge.

Otto does tend to put things in drawers or baskets, not to be found for days. He seems to have his own sense of order about it; for instance, his wooden hammer is almost always to be found in the plastic baggie drawer. He loves to take DVDs out of the player when we are finished watching them, and I have to be sure to "assist" Otto when he removes it, or when I go to look for the DVD, it will be mysteriously gone. His organizational system for the DVDs is usually to slide one in between a couple of cases on the shelf. At least they are in the general vicinity of the television.

This morning, Otto opened his eyes and immediately said, "Let's-watch-Bob-the-Builder-Snowed-Under." I actually think he was dreaming about it (Otto is a very active dreamer, and he talks in his sleep, so I hear many parts from his dreams). When we got into the living room, I opened the DVD case, and it was empty. I looked around for a while, and luckily, I found it between the TV and the video storage boxes. They are now happily watching Scoop and Muck as I type this.

And now I need to get some breakfast together for this hungry bunch.

Crafty Beavers

We've been mostly homebodies for the last week, and that usually means we've been doing lots of crafts.

I've sewn quite a few things, mostly costume accessories: capes for the boys' knight costumes, a hat for Max's clone trooper costume, a pair of "Shrek" ears for Otto.

We finally completed our paper mache storm trooper masks, which we have been working on intermittently for the last few months.

We have been painting everything: foam planets, homemade dough sculptures, wooden letters, train cars (I found wooden train cars made by the Thomas Train Engine company that are "blank"), big sheets of paper, the floor.

One day, while Otto was napping, Max and I made a cooking show together--Max "directed" it. The subject was chili. It was really fun. We did all the preparation work in advance, just like a real cooking show. We had chopped onions, garlic and peppers in little bowls on the table, along with all the other ingredients. Max didn't really want to be in the movie, although that was what I had in mind when we started. I had put the camera on a tripod and thought we'd do the cooking together, but Max preferred to be behind the scenes. He left the camera on the tripod for the beginning, but when we moved in to get shots of the pot, we took it off, and there's some pretty wild handheld footage. At first, Max is focused on me, but then he gets bored, I think, and he starts filming his feet, which are kicking happily, then he scans the entire kitchen, including lots of shots of the floor and ceiling, and then he moves on to some really crazy zooming in and out of the chili cooking on the stove. There are a few scenes with Max in it--he added the chili powder, he stirred. He loves to play with the spices (Max and Otto often make "concoctions" by raiding the spice drawer and mixing them all together with water), so that part was definitely for him. We want to put it together in iMovie one of these days. I think it will be pretty hilarious.

Max has been asking for a digital movie camera. He is really interested in making movies, and all we have is our regular digital camera, which takes about 5 minutes at at time. We've been researching it a bit, and I think we've found one for him. He'll be so excited.

Speaking of movies, we've been watching lots of them, since Otto is a movie maniac at the moment. Max has gotten a bit fed up with Otto's appetite for watching TV--he told him 0that he thought we should only watch one movie a day. I guess he currently likes making them more than watching them. Of course, Max certainly has days where all he wants to do is watch TV. Max has been watching Toy Story and Toy Story 2 over and over again, and then he acts out scenes with his dolls of Buzz Lightyear and Woody, preferably for the camera. Sometimes it seems like for Max, it doesn't count unless we are doing it in front of the camera. Perhaps this is part of growing up in such a technological age, perhaps part of being in a family where the camera is almost always in the diaper bag or in our hands, perhaps it's just Max. It will be fun to see where it takes him.

Oh, and since this post is titled Crafty Beavers, I should at least mention that in addition to all these indoor crafts, we did make it out of the house a couple of days, once to the zoo, where we saw real beavers (they were really energetic, doing back flips and pressing their faces and paws on the glass, right against our faces).

The New World

Max and Otto have been discussing their vision for "The New World." I don't know where or when they got the idea, but they've been talking about it for quite some time. Once, from the backseat of the car, I heard Max say, "Otto, let's talk more about the new world." Both were delighted to make more plans for their vision. This morning, Max said that in order to make the new world, first he needed to make a plan for the world. He got some paper and pens and is drawing it up.

Sadly, he said, there are no trees in this new world. But he says he'll take some acorns along to plant some.

These Go to Eleven

A week or two ago, Max wrote the numbers 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 on a piece of paper. I think it's the first time he has written them all out in order (well, they are not in consecutive order on the finished product, but he wrote them in order). I noted two things when he finished: the first was that he chose to go to 11 (and included the 0). It seems perfect somehow, for these children, who also go to eleven.

The second thing I noticed was that they were all perfectly backwards.

Earlier this week, we were sitting at a Starbucks whose street address was 4558. We were inside, so the number was reversed to us. We were playing "20 Questions," where you choose an item in the room and the others try to find that item by asking questions. Max looked up at the address and very easily said, "Is it the 4558?" (It was not, incidentally.) He took no time to figure out what the numbers were in reverse, he seemed to easily see them that way, and he did not say, "Is it the 8554?" which was the order that they were from our vantage point, reading left to right, although reversed. He knew that they needed to be read from right to left.

A friend told me that her daughter would always draw pictures with balloons coming out of the person's mouth for the dialogue. Her child would draw a person on the left side of the page, put the balloon to the right of the mouth and have the words inside going from left to right, in the usual way. And then, she would draw a person on the right side of the page, put a balloon to the left of the mouth, and draw the letters of the words from right to left, backwards, as you would see them in a mirror. These people were clearly talking to each other. I love this!

I used to like to "mirror write," and I also liked to write upside down. I have always thought I had some sort of strange talent for it, but I didn't consider it very useful. I did not tell Max that his numbers were backwards. I just said, "Wow, you wrote to eleven!"

I remember that when I was first learning to write in cursive, a teacher said that my letters looked like they were dancing, the letters were going left and right, instead of slanting to the right, as she had instructed us. She seemed disturbed by this, and in turn, I was disturbed that she was not pleased. Now when I think back on it, I'd love to see what "dancing letters" look like. I became very aware of my handwriting at that point. I grew up to be so focused on writing that at one of my first jobs, which was working at a book store, I liked to be the one to keep the handwritten log of all the books we received each day. It would bother me to see someone else's "carelessly scrawled" letters after the rows and rows of my very careful writing, and I would be disappointed for the future readers of that record, for the book itself. (I realize this borders on obsessive, or that, at the very least, it is strange.)

It's interesting that I ended up in graphic design, where the consideration of how a word looks is critical. In fact, I even created my own font, from my handwriting, for a school project. I am happy to say that I think that font does dance a bit, although probably a very different one than my third grade writing. I can write so beautifully that it looks like a font. I have sent thank you cards that prove it. But when I am writing for myself or in a hurry, my writing is illegible. It tends to slant in crazy ways. Perhaps that dancing gene is still somewhere in my fingers, but I just don't let it out for the public to see. In public, I'm a wallflower.

This morning, Max and Otto were biting their pretzels into shapes. Again, I noticed that Max held up what looked like a lowercase "e" to me, but he called it a 9. Then he turned it around and looked at it from all different directions, delighted wtih his handiwork. Otto was also delighted with his shapes, but he decided that cutting them up with scissors was more fun. In the end, we again had a messy kitchen. "We can just sweep it up," Otto said, when I suggested that we could aim the pieces for the table instead of the floor. "You're right," I agreed. Life is so much better when I just go with the flow.

If It Rains, Make Bread

It was a grey, rainy day, the kind we tend to spend inside. We mixed up some bread, and Max and Otto had a great time kneading it. While we were working, I was thinking about making bread with my mom when I was a kid. I learned to do it when I was really young, I'm not sure how young, but I've been making it for as long as I can remember, so I was probably Max's age. I have really fond memories of cooking and baking with my parents.

While we were at it (and by this, I mean, making a mess), we made an indoor sand castle. I thought it would be sandy, but it's actually more like playdough. We are anxious for it to dry so we can paint it.



The boys took a long afternoon nap, which hardly ever happens. I mopped the floor, which was covered in flour. And then, I spent the rest of their naptime watching One Ring Zero music videos on YouTube. It was pretty indulgent behavior, since there were lots of other things I should or could have done, but it was fun.

When they woke up, we checked on our bread, which had risen nicely. We made braided bread, the kind my mother always makes (Max calls it "Grandma bread"). And because the kids really wanted to play with the dough (Otto was pulling it apart and making it into balls), we made monkey bread. I'd never made it before, and I think it would more typically be made with a milk bread, but this bread worked pretty well (it's so versatile--thanks, Mom!). They made lots of little balls and rolled them in sugar and cinnamon. We put the coated balls into a loaf pan, and then we poured a syrup of brown sugar and butter over the whole thing. It was really yummy.

I had pulled out just enough dough from all of that to make two little pizzas for us for dinner. Max and Otto had a great time decorating their pizzas. Max made a white pizza with goat cheese, pepperoni and orange peppers. It was delicious. Otto made his standard tomato sauce, cheese and pepperoni. They were really thin, so they were very tasty.



We got a call from Martin, whose flight home from Philadelphia was delayed. The icy rain that kept us inside was also keeping the planes from landing at O'Hare.

We had a fun evening, despite the fact that they missed Papa. They took a bath (Otto realized he was itchy from the flour that had gotten in his shirt). I managed to do most of the dishes from our very industrious day. And then we all cuddled up on the couch and watched "How It's Made." I finally convinced them to come to bed, where we read several books until we finally heard the door downstairs, signaling that Martin was home. It was just after midnight, and we were all tired, but they were so gald to see him.