My kid watches more TV than I like, less than he'd like, and I thank my lucky stars for offerings like Peg Plus Cat. This kid does dig numbers! He's tackling addition and things.
I do boot him out to care for chickens pretty regularly and things like that. We've recently taken up herding the chickens to places. It works best if I block them from going back to the pen and he moves them forward. It works least well if we don't divide the task and just dash around making the chickens all flighty. I figure he's learning patience and self-control -- and I am, too. There's also a certain amount of geometric thinking involved, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he does well in the physics of fields and magnetism after working with what's basically a negative-pole-to-negative-pole problem so many times. In short, you want the chickens between where you are and where you want them to go, but if that's not where they are, you have to move yourself to move them. We have invented a dandy brain game that also burns calories.
In the calorie department, I made a lentil stew yesterday, and the kid ate it! And wanted more for before-bed snack! This is exclamation-worthy, as he's been pretty off meat for a while and I'm delighted to find a complete protein source he'll eat.
1 leek
1 sturdy carrot
(Heat in a little oil at bottom of slow cooker before adding the rest)
1 1/2 c lentils
1 c kamut
1/2 c brown rice
Water
black pepper, lemon peel (dried), sea salt, and mineral supplement to taste. Goes well with corn chips or popcorn.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Self-Publishing While the Kid Watches TV
I am now on Lulu with two different publications in two different formats. If you like small, lightweight paperbacks, I have those, and if you prefer ebooks and the instant gratification on order, I have those, too. Both stories take place in a world where magic exists, is inherited according to the normal genetic rules for recessives, and isn't altogether popular with the rest of humanity. I've written some short stories set there, as well, such as "Merlin's Dolphin" at The Future Fire. Free sample! None of the characters overlap, but the premises that magic isn't altogether nice and isn't supposed to be used in combat carry over.
Meanwhile the kid is watching Disney Junior and snarfing a brunch. We've finally moved him into the big-boy form of his convertible bed and he isn't sleeping well, so he's sleeping long instead. However, I think he's about ready to go romp outside with the chickens and such instead. We have a garden to hoe and a flowerbed to dig. Best to get on it, I say.
Meanwhile the kid is watching Disney Junior and snarfing a brunch. We've finally moved him into the big-boy form of his convertible bed and he isn't sleeping well, so he's sleeping long instead. However, I think he's about ready to go romp outside with the chickens and such instead. We have a garden to hoe and a flowerbed to dig. Best to get on it, I say.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Fueling the Future
I’m watching a show on the end of
oil, which is on CineMoi rather than the national news, and drinking
coffee. There is food for thought in
there. No oil? No caffeine.
Ponder that for a bit; how much fuel does it take to get your coffee or
tea into that cup? How much does it take
to synthesize caffeine? There are
probably sound agricultural reasons we don’t have a Colorado Coffee Company,
but the USA
runs on oil and caffeine. Lose one, we
lose both, and suddenly we are no longer a world power, but a sad lot of
moping, headachy shut-ins.
Another sip, and then I shall go
work on my garden a bit. I’m trying to
cut down our dependence on other people’s vegetables and melons, other people’s
blackberries and eggs, but in the process I am using a gas-powered tiller, and
must confess it’s saving an incredible amount of labor. Otherwise the pit bulls would be hitched to a
small plow, and even they are eating kibble that comes from a manufacturer in Texas.
They’re not happy that I’ve taken
up composting. The division of our
garbage used to be recycling, bin, and dog treats. Now it is recycling, bin, composting, and dog
treats, and the compost pile reduces both from the bin side and the treat side. They’re going to be even less happy when the
chickens start eating more than chick starter; chickens make much better
compostable material out of waste than dogs do, and guess what’s happening to
more of the scraps? If the poor canines
could figure out how to lay eggs, they’d do it, I’m sure. As it is, two of them are learning to pull
and one is learning to herd chickens when it’s called for. If they’re going to live here, they have to
earn their kibble.
Though I must observe that the
manuring they give the nut trees does seem to have a positive effect.
On the larger scale, I ponder man’s
ability to invent his way out of all sorts of problems. Whale oil getting hard to find? Well, that boot-waterproofer works pretty
well for a lot of the same things. And
look at that, the methane can be useful, too.
Running out of easy-access plankton from 100 million years ago? Well, maybe our cooking oil can help out,
too. The question is, do we collect
enough energy from the sun in growing the plant sources of the cooking oil to
offset the energy burned in harvesting with the old cooking oil for fuel? Or do we have to use the energy stored 100
million years ago to survive now?
I don’t have the tools to answer
questions like that, but I’m finding that as I get older, I’m more interested
in learning about these things. I always
was, but sometimes it seems more immediate.
Perhaps it’s the side effect of motherhood; now I’m investing in someone
else’s future. So, there’s a Victory Garden of sorts, to take us out of the
demand side of the equation just a little.
I’m trying hard to develop the ability to say “No” to cheap plastic
toys, or at least to buy used ones.
Someday, maybe, my son will let me pass on some used ones to other
people, but right now he’s at the stage where he loves all his toys, no matter
how outgrown they are. A friend
suggested gathering up a bunch and storing them, not for the purpose of getting
rid of them someday, but for getting out on rainy dull days as a surprise. Absence makes the heart fonder and all that. I tried it, but he’s a scamp at finding stored
toys, it turns out. Judging by the
clutter level, it’s time to try again.
He’s a grand little recycler,
too. We found basketballs by a river on
one of Mommy’s more eco-oriented outings.
We filled two garbage bags and brought home three “new” toys, which he
and the dogs have enjoyed. I’m hoping
none of them absorbed too much river yuckiness, and the basketballs are now
falling apart sufficiently to hit the landfill after just a bit more use has
been extracted from them. The water-bomb
toy gave one dog a great deal of pleasure and me a great deal of cleanup, but
it did have one last hurrah before it, too, became landfill. There’s not much else to be done with some of
the products of our crazy culture.
On the other hand: seriously, why
do we need mass-produced water bombs?
The kid and dog had a good time with it, sure, but they could also have
a wonderful time with a magnolia cone.
Or a stick. Or several other
things that turn up in my yard for free and aren’t any harder to get out of the
carpet once shredded, speaking of energy usage.
My mechanic, after observing my
child on the loose in the waiting room for a few minutes, observed, “He’s
easily amused. That’s good.” My remark at the time was, “He is,” with an
eyeroll to indicate it wasn’t always good, but sometimes I think that’s what’s
lacking in a lot of people’s children.
They can’t amuse themselves; they need something that took a hundred
barrels of oil to produce. My kid got
half an hour’s entertainment out of someone else’s cast-off pistachio shell,
and might have gotten more if his grandmother hadn’t gone and mistaken it for
garbage.
With luck, this means he’ll be able
to solve some of the problems that are absolutely positively guaranteed to come
up in his lifetime. There’s more water
in the air (thus more snow and more flooding), and there will continue to
be. There’s more water in the oceans,
being salty and polluted, and less in the glaciers, and there will continue to
be. There’s more need to find power that
doesn’t involve burning anything, and there will continue to be. I’m gently nudging him toward interests in
practical things like agriculture, meteorology, and engineering. He seems inclined that way anyway. His father is nudging him toward more
abstract things, like logic, and our son seems inclined that way anyway also;
as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) observed, it’s much
easier to teach logic to children than to adults.
Of course, this is also going to
make him into either the weird kid or the cool kid, depending on how he plays
it and who his classmates are. I’m
hoping for the latter but trying discreetly to teach him the skills he needs to
survive the former. Gregarious little
fellow that he is—he picked up TWO girlfriends at a play area yesterday, sequentially,
as he’s also energetic enough to play three sets of kids into the ground before
getting at all tired—he may never need to deal with being the weird kid, but
instead with being the role model. I’m
not sure which is harder.
Like every mom, I spend some time
looking at my child wondering who he’s likely to be. Right now it’s not fair to guess. He’s interested in everything, energetic as
all get-out, and gregarious, but he’s also three. All of these things are perfectly
normal. It’s on me to channel the drives
rather than squash them, and at least I have a little practice in that
department. Maybe everyone should have
to train a working dog before having a kid.
I’ve also encountered the idea that before anyone can have a child, they
should be required to train a chicken.
Now that I’ve tried to take twenty of five chicks from coop to box so I
can clean, I think there’s something to that.
An obliging German shepherd can help mightily with both processes. “You want the chicks to stay in the box? Okay.
You lost the kid behind the hedge again and want me to find him? Okay.
By the way, you know chickens smell bad, right?” My dogs feel free to editorialize. Since I feel free to expect them to contribute
something to the household, fair is fair.
Still, it bothers me that although
French parenting was the talk of the town a year ago, a French take on
consumption of world resources seems to be meeting with a vast yawn. The two do go hand in hand on more than mere
Frenchness. Why are we so determined to
load our kids up with boxes that go bing, as Douglas Adams referred to them
years ago, instead of teaching them the joys of stick plus dirt, as one of my
more cosmopolitan friends advised me to do?
Is it really that much easier? In
the global, thermodynamic sense of energy, we’re now spending incredible
amounts more of it to keep our kids amused than we did when we played with
them, or when we handed them a shucks dolly to keep them out of our hair while
we put our own energy into getting food.
It makes me wonder if we’ve all gone a little nuts.
Mind you, I say this as a mother
who does use the Electronic Babysitter to keep the kid busy while I get the
food or sweep the floor, but I’m seriously considering cutting the
power—“Oopsie!”—and handing him the shucks dolly just to see what happens. It may be that our house will start suffering
more power outages in the next few months than it already does from outside
forces. If nothing else, hitting the
circuit breaker now and again might cut our bills a bit.
Speaking of, time to stop thinking
deep thoughts and go pay ‘em. Ah, modern
living.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
On Chickens
I am one of those peculiar women who always wanted to have a
few chickens. This desire came about
when I was quite young, and my parents actually considered getting a few, then,
through some decision process I was not a party to, didn’t. Then there was a flurry of overly urban life,
dormitories and apartments and whatnot, and then there was the constant
mobility. Now, I am in my early forties,
and my son is in his mid-threes. And he
wanted chickens. “Science project,”
thought I. “Nice creatures who convert
yard pests and weed seeds, both of which we have in plenty, into eggs.”
We have five Buff Orpingtons, a week old, peeping away in
his room now. They’re rather charming
little things, feathering up nicely, each with her own personality. I say “her” with a slight reservation, as
though they are supposed to all be hens, one has a decidedly stumpier, rounder
tail and a slightly more arrogant personality, and also a much greater
confidence in her (his?) wings. I shall
have to consult the feed store about him/her and see if an exchange might be
possible. We do still have neighbors,
and also, I wish to try herding these chickens with my dog and do not need a
creature with spurs in the equation.
Yes, you read that correctly. As I research chickens, I am learning a great
deal of the Buff Orpington, and have concluded that it is the Golden Retriever
of the chicken world. Inexperienced
owner? Get a Golden – er, Buff
Orpington. Parent wanting an agreeable
chicken for the children? Buff Orpington. Petting zoo owner wanting to branch out? Buff Orpingtons. Crazy lady wanting to herd chickens with her
herding dog without inducing mass poultry heart failure? Er...
How about some nice Buff Orpingtons?
The dog has taken to them immediately, and wants to know why
I have not simply dumped the crate of fuzzballs out in the yard so he can boss
the birdies. I feel that a week old is
too young for bossing by a German Shepherd.
Instead, I put their box on the floor, or even hold it, and tell him
“Away to me.” He obligingly circles
counterclockwise until I tell him “Stop,” and then circles the other way when I
tell him “Come by.” We’re getting our
directions that much more solid with no particular trauma to the chicks. Meanwhile, the big brown eyes plead, “Please,
please, please put them on the floor.
Or the grass. Or anywhere at
all. Let me move this livestock! If I cannot have sheep, O let me work those
fuzzy peeping things!”
Dustin has never realized he is not a Border Collie. He’ll herd magnolia cones if nothing better
presents itself, though he’s expressed grave doubts on the subject of
ducks. They move too easily to interest
him, mostly, though the dog-indifferent Muscovies at the park excite him
greatly with their utter rocklike stolidity.
He likes to push. I’m still not
sure exactly what a dog does when he pushes on stock, but sometimes I can feel it,
too, and I’ve seen Dustin part crowds of people who aren’t even facing
him. Subsonics? Some sort of pheromone? Psychic powers? No idea, but it’s fascinating to watch him
lie at the starting post and push sheep back to the fence fifty feet away by
choosing to do so. Also, annoying. One of the things I want from these chickens
is to get “Push” hooked to a command, regardless of what it is that the dog is
doing when he does it. If they choose to
flop rather than move, as experienced herders tell me they might, they will
provide the perfect opportunity.
Still, at this point the chicks are at the science-project
phase of their lives: show the small child what it is to grow from a baby,
while he watches what that is in the plant world as well. It is spring, the time for baby things to be
growing up as though we’re watching time-lapse photography films instead of
real life. The tomato seedlings are
striving out the window; the bell peppers are following. When we turn up the garden soil, we find
small earthworms who will soon become huge on the manure and scraps of the
compost pile, though I hope the non-regional mango and banana peels do not give
them tummyaches. I’m trying to make a
quiet lesson of our worm safaris and garden work, though the immediate
advantage is not academic, but agricultural; nothing but nothing pulverizes
clods of soil like a small boy on a quest to find every worm in the garden.
I measure the quality of our day by the amount of sediment
left in the bathtub at the end of it.
Today, perhaps, we will finish turning and cultivating the
end of the garden destined for cold-weather crops, the peas and spinach and
Brussels sprouts, and plant them. As
they fade, that end will be planted in squashes, whose pests are said to be
repelled if you leave a few straggling, woody radishes among them. We shall see; we always miss a few radishes
in the lot, so they may as well do some good.
The other end of the garden, which is being reclaimed after perhaps a
decade of disuse (and this, too, is an adventure), is intended for the
warmer-weather plants, the tomatoes and corn and peppers and peppers and
peppers. I hope some of the latter
survive, as it appears that my pots now hold about ten bell pepper plants and a
similar number of hot-pepper-mix results.
However, in past years of planters, the peppers have all blossomed like
mad and failed to set fruit, looked spindly for a bit, and then died. I’m hoping our garden soil serves them
better.
I am also hoping that before I get planting on that section,
the chicks can be put out there to scratch and peck for a few days. I have a chicken-tractor setup worked out,
and they could cover a block of some sixteen square feet or so for a day, get
moved over, and keep me company while I dig up yesterday’s bit and they peck
today’s. I could toss them unearthed
grubs and delight their little chicken hearts.
One thing at a time, though.
Today they need their chick crumbles and their newspaper, and they are
telling me so. Peep, peep!
Cross-Posted at my Goodreads blog
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Mercy Me
Hard to believe, but the boy's turned three. I'm considering changing his online name from Mowgli, though it still has its apt points, to Yossarian. He falls in love like a Yossarian.
And he is three. He is three all over the place. His way is always best, and he's a contrary little cuss much of the time. This would be fascinating if it were not so annoying and exhausting. He's such a little PERSON, which is funny for a little fellow who is determined to be a baby elephant when he grows up. His toys pretend to be other toys; he pretends to be Peso the Medic from the Octonauts; he goes hiking with me and is determined to climb up and down "rocky cliffs" of fully half his height.
As far as his eating habits go, his fondness for ice cream and donuts is balanced halfway decently by his fondness for avocado, dried apricots, and broccoli, that last because he can pretend he is a giraffe while he eats it. He's still not crazy for most meats, but we can make up for that with dairy things and peanut butter. Luckily that last is not a brand recently recalled!
He's interested in planets, bugs, and anything with wheels. He's interested in robots. He's interested in how the world looks through his magnifying glass. He is not interested in toilet training. He mostly shares his toys and he flirts with little girls in pink. Mommy is tired, but generally delighted. When we're not fighting.
And he is three. He is three all over the place. His way is always best, and he's a contrary little cuss much of the time. This would be fascinating if it were not so annoying and exhausting. He's such a little PERSON, which is funny for a little fellow who is determined to be a baby elephant when he grows up. His toys pretend to be other toys; he pretends to be Peso the Medic from the Octonauts; he goes hiking with me and is determined to climb up and down "rocky cliffs" of fully half his height.
As far as his eating habits go, his fondness for ice cream and donuts is balanced halfway decently by his fondness for avocado, dried apricots, and broccoli, that last because he can pretend he is a giraffe while he eats it. He's still not crazy for most meats, but we can make up for that with dairy things and peanut butter. Luckily that last is not a brand recently recalled!
He's interested in planets, bugs, and anything with wheels. He's interested in robots. He's interested in how the world looks through his magnifying glass. He is not interested in toilet training. He mostly shares his toys and he flirts with little girls in pink. Mommy is tired, but generally delighted. When we're not fighting.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Growing, talking, climbing
Imagine that, I'm the mother of a toddler and I haven't been blogging lately!
Mowgli occasionally makes a soft popping sound of displaced air and then doesn't fit into the legs of his trousers the same way. If I'm measuring right, he's back up to the 90th percentile after a bit of a lag. This despite the fact that he's still largely a fruitarian--we have reached the compromise position that pizza and noodles are also acceptable, and he'll go for yogurt or eggs now and again as well.
Or, as he would like to add at this point, "donut!" It's his best word. I try not to give in to this request too terribly often, but it's hard to deny a young beanpole the odd bit of junk food.
He has the habit of repeating a new word with a question mark, then solidly with an acceptance: "Ambulance," I say, and he echoes, "Am=lan? Ooooh, am-lan!" as though he should have known it all along but just couldn't recall. It's cute. It was particularly cute when we said we had to buy his new Percy toy, not just run out of the store with it, and he said, "Oh, buy!" and ran to the counter. Since there were already people at the counter (they were already grinning at this, too), we said, "No, we have to wait our turn." "Oh, tun!" he said, and grabbed his new toy off the counter to scoot back to his parents. We laughed. Total strangers laughed. And we told him he was doing very well. For his age he's really pretty patient. Of course, that makes it all the more astonishing when he actually acts two and isn't patient at all.
He also loves to go to the local bounce palace, Leapin' Lizards. He'll bounce for three hours solid, right through nap time, given the choice. He also likes to balance on the log in our yard, run races, chase the dogs and cat, and play the up-down game, the last of which is developing great little child abdominal muscles. Mama should be slimmer from chasing after him.
We're managing. He's Thomas-obsessed and Cars-fond, he's addicted to his bedtime books ("More! Read!"), and he's pretty good about washing his hands. In other words, for a twenty-seven month old boy, he's perfectly normal perhaps with a drift toward the well-behaved side. I remind myself of this when he drops food on the floor and then screeches at whistle-style pitches and volumes when a dog eats the droppage.
Mowgli occasionally makes a soft popping sound of displaced air and then doesn't fit into the legs of his trousers the same way. If I'm measuring right, he's back up to the 90th percentile after a bit of a lag. This despite the fact that he's still largely a fruitarian--we have reached the compromise position that pizza and noodles are also acceptable, and he'll go for yogurt or eggs now and again as well.
Or, as he would like to add at this point, "donut!" It's his best word. I try not to give in to this request too terribly often, but it's hard to deny a young beanpole the odd bit of junk food.
He has the habit of repeating a new word with a question mark, then solidly with an acceptance: "Ambulance," I say, and he echoes, "Am=lan? Ooooh, am-lan!" as though he should have known it all along but just couldn't recall. It's cute. It was particularly cute when we said we had to buy his new Percy toy, not just run out of the store with it, and he said, "Oh, buy!" and ran to the counter. Since there were already people at the counter (they were already grinning at this, too), we said, "No, we have to wait our turn." "Oh, tun!" he said, and grabbed his new toy off the counter to scoot back to his parents. We laughed. Total strangers laughed. And we told him he was doing very well. For his age he's really pretty patient. Of course, that makes it all the more astonishing when he actually acts two and isn't patient at all.
He also loves to go to the local bounce palace, Leapin' Lizards. He'll bounce for three hours solid, right through nap time, given the choice. He also likes to balance on the log in our yard, run races, chase the dogs and cat, and play the up-down game, the last of which is developing great little child abdominal muscles. Mama should be slimmer from chasing after him.
We're managing. He's Thomas-obsessed and Cars-fond, he's addicted to his bedtime books ("More! Read!"), and he's pretty good about washing his hands. In other words, for a twenty-seven month old boy, he's perfectly normal perhaps with a drift toward the well-behaved side. I remind myself of this when he drops food on the floor and then screeches at whistle-style pitches and volumes when a dog eats the droppage.
Labels:
baby books,
first food,
rapid growth,
talking,
toys
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Watching the Kid Grow
Mowgli has experienced Star-Crossed First Love now. In the Wal-Mart yesterday, checking out balls and things with wheels, he found a Lightning McQueen and a Mater, just shy of shoe-box sized and rated for rather older children, and fell in love.
However, I'd been more in the frame of mind to spend maybe three bucks on a ball or a wheeled turtle, and furthermore it was time to go home for lunch and dog care. I insisted that he could have one minute, counted it down, and put away the Cars cars.
He was heartbroken, of course, and also hungry enough to really pitch a fit. Ah, first love, always the toughest. I told him I completely understood how he felt, but that it wasn't going to change anything. He pitched more fit. I did buy him a squeeze-pack of applesauce, which improved things somewhat. I did wash an apricot for him (he'd already given it a nip in the produce area) once it was paid for, and that too went a long way toward cheering him up.
I'm not sure how long a child's memory lasts at this age, but suspect we will find out very soon. I missed a couple of necessities at the store, and we'll have to go back.
However, I'd been more in the frame of mind to spend maybe three bucks on a ball or a wheeled turtle, and furthermore it was time to go home for lunch and dog care. I insisted that he could have one minute, counted it down, and put away the Cars cars.
He was heartbroken, of course, and also hungry enough to really pitch a fit. Ah, first love, always the toughest. I told him I completely understood how he felt, but that it wasn't going to change anything. He pitched more fit. I did buy him a squeeze-pack of applesauce, which improved things somewhat. I did wash an apricot for him (he'd already given it a nip in the produce area) once it was paid for, and that too went a long way toward cheering him up.
I'm not sure how long a child's memory lasts at this age, but suspect we will find out very soon. I missed a couple of necessities at the store, and we'll have to go back.
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