Phew--Photographic Capabilities Return

At long last, I can take normal photos again. Here's a little mini day-in-the-life from today. I've got too much advent calendar planning still to do tonight, so I'll just do some quick captions.

Morning...Ninna (home from preschool recovering from a night-time fever) and Bojey sneaking around in their fort: Post-fort...Jumping. Jumping, to the chicks, is an activity in its own right. You read, you eat, you take a shower, you clean, you jump; it carries equal weight to other seemingly more pressing endeavors:
Noon...Ninna, exhibiting her newest concentration face, plays quietly while Bojey naps:

Afternoon...Post-nap cuddle:
Bojey during one of her favorite activities--putting small items in a ziploc bag:
The aftermath of some horrific Playmobil accident:
Late Afternoon...Two chicks in a cart (wearing silly coordinating mama-made hats):
Evening...Ninna reads Magic School Bus books on the couch before bed:
And that's that. Now I'm off to rush through the final Advent planning before collapsing into bed. More on Advent tomorrow. Good night!

Electricity-Free Evenings

A week or so ago, the chicks and I were getting ready to have an early dinner when our electricity suddenly and unexpectedly turned off. After I assured myself that I did, in fact, pay the bill, I peeked out the window and saw that our neighbors' windows were all dark. It was about 4:45 and we were about fifteen minutes away from total darkness.

I grabbed the kitchen flashlight, and upon pressing the switch realized it needed new batteries. Or so I thought. I changed them, and it still didn't work. I found a tiny maglite on the shelf in the dining room. It didn't work. I changed the batteries. You guessed it. No luck. I tried one more flashlight and then started to feel like I was insane when, in fact, it also did not work.

What I find disturbing about this situation, aside from the fact that we somehow have three broken flashlights and none that actually function, is the fact that my first, second, and third instincts were to grab flashlights. Why not a candle? Aside from the fact that candles are significantly more useful for lighting the surrounding area than flashlights are, they provide much better ambiance. When the electricity went out, I frantically scrambled for more electrical devices.

Once I got us set up with candles--in this huge candle holder on the wall that we rarely use, on the table, on the kitchen counter--we had the most lovely time. It was so peaceful and, honestly, quieter. Between the atmosphere of the candlelight, the lack of stark, artificial light, and the respite from the hum of appliances, even the chicks couldn't help but be at peace.

And all of this reminded me of a group of people I read about not too long ago who are practicing a weekly technology-free night. The idea behind it is not a new one by any means; a work-free day at the end (or start) of the week is a part of many religious and cultural traditions. Most of us are so wrapped up in our daily use of technology, however, that it can be hard to envision life without it.

When I read about this, my first thought was "Great idea! It will probably be too hard with the chicks so young, but I'll try it when they're older." I got it all wrong, though.

Managing the electricity/technology-free night with the chicks was a breeze--much easier than it is when the lights are blazing and the the machines are whirring. The problem came when, at 6:45, the lights came back on.

I was knitting on the couch, and the chicks were playing on the floor oh-so-quietly. Suddenly, as quickly as they turned off, all of our devices turned back on. At first, Ninna asked if we could turn everything back off, and I happily obliged. But another 20 minutes of that scene was all she managed before temptation set in and she turned on the dining room lights. And I have to admit, knitting in the dark was getting a little old at that point, and I didn't ask her to turn them back off.

Now that I've experienced a forced technology and electricity-free evening with the chicks, I'm dying to add it to our weekly rhythm. The question is, can we do it? Could we really keep the lights off, and, more importantly, could I really keep the computer off after the chicks are asleep?

I'll let you know. We'll be trying it again next week.

The Happenings

Some things of note:

**I received some nice feedback and supportive comments on my Simple Kids post. As I suspected, there are lots of single moms out there who feel they aren't being represented in the media aimed at parents. I'm excited to be a part of offering that voice.

**Self-portrait Saturday is on hiatus until I remedy my camera situation, which I believe will be next week.

**I realized this weekend that Bojey thinks a scarf is called a "whisker." After many confusing exchanges (coupled with her inability to pronounce the letter "r,"), I discovered that she wears a whisker around her neck. Since I think this might be the cutest thing I've ever heard, I haven't told her what it's really called. Is that bad?

**I use an invisible counter on my blog and check it sometimes to see where people are coming from. Today, I welcomed a visitor from...drumroll please...The North Pole! Santa, is it you? I've been very good this year. It turns out there is really a city in Alaska named "The North Pole." I'm intrigued. If you're the visitor (Santa or not) and you return, will you leave a comment? I'd love to know more.

**I'll be back tomorrow night with some thoughts on an electricity-free night.

Good night!

Some Thoughts on Volunteering with Small Children

Soon after Ninna was born, I decided that I wanted my children to begin volunteering at a young age. For my first couple of years as a mother, my "volunteering" consisted of showing up at playgroup with a snack to share. Yeah...OK I did absolutely no volunteering for my first 2 1/2 years as a mother.

After Bojey was born and we were somewhat settled into Montreal, I decided to get more serious about it. I was thinking about this the other day and realized that we have actually spent a good bit of time volunteering. Since it's not always easy to figure out what kinds of volunteer activities are open to small children, I thought I'd offer some tips based on what worked for us:

1. Contact your city's volunteer bureau:
Montreal's volunteer bureau helped us set up one of our volunteer programs. Several of us moms decided we'd like to bring the kids into an assisted living home to interact with the residents. The volunteer bureau asked around and found a home who wanted to bring us in.

We took the kids (aged 1-6) into the home every two weeks to spend time with the seniors. It was a hugely popular activity, with the room usually packed to the brim. On many occasions, the staff told us that our kids were the only ones who ever came into the building. Unfortunately, winter in Montreal means frequently sick kids, and the slightest sneeze or sniffle prevented us from going into the assisted living home because of the fragile health of its residents. We had to put the program on hiatus after several months because too often we wouldn't have enough healthy kids. Ninna LOVED going to "the grandmas' and the grandpas'," as we called it, and she asks at least once or twice a week, I kid you not, when we are going back (we haven't been since February.)

Your volunteer bureau might already have a list of kid-friendly volunteer programs, like the one we did at the assisted living home, but if not, they should be able to do some of the leg-work for you as far as finding something.

2. Expand your definition of "volunteering":
The chicks and I participated in a community garden once a week this summer (which I wrote about here and here). I didn't initially think of this as volunteering since we got something in return (a free education in gardening as well as free, fresh-from-the-ground organic produce). As I thought about it more, however, I realized that it was, indeed, volunteering. For one thing, the extraneous produce from the system of gardens (of which our garden is a part) goes to help the hungry in our city.

A more subtle, but perhaps more powerful factor is our contribution to the greening of the city. By participating in the community garden, we are not only helping keep a small patch of the land healthy and productive, but also contributing to an ethos that values green space, organic food, and communal contribution.

Think about what bigger changes you'd like to see in your city. Are there small ways you can participate alongside your kids?

3. When all else fails, create your own volunteer project:
With the garden long done for the season, I'd started to feel like we weren't contributing much. I happened to be looking on craigslist in the "free" section (which I watch like hawk) when I noticed an ad asking for toy donations. Out of curiosity, I contacted the woman who posted it and learned that she worked for an inner city school that was in desperate need of toys for its preschool program. The school also operates a mission that donates toys and clothing to its students' families.

I immediately thought of Ninna's little preschool and how fortunate they are to have so much, and then my mind wandered to our little house and how over-stuffed we were with toys. I knew if I asked around, our friends would be willing to part with some toys too. So I wrote up an explanation letter requesting donations and sent it out via email and Facebook, and we were given an amazing number of really nice toys to donate to the school. This was a shockingly low-effort activity that yielded very great results--I highly recommend it.
Remember to discuss your volunteering with your kiddos:
I involved Ninna in this activity on every step of the way. We talked about how I was sending out the request; she helped choose the toys to donate from our own collection; she helped organize the toys brought over by other families. One morning, my chicks and I were joined by another family, and we made several giant batches of homemade playdough for the school.

Finally, after we had everything collected and organized, my chicks and I (along with another mom and her chicks) made the trip to the school to drop it off. Ninna was able to see the school and the kids who would be using the toys.

All of our volunteering has had a big impact on Ninna. Bojey, at 2 1/2, is still a little young to quite get it, but I'm sure she has benefited in some way as well. During and after every bit of volunteering we've done, I've talked to Ninna about why we were doing it, who would benefit, etc. A week after dropping the toys off at the school, she's still offering up ideas for things to donate. I can see that she has really made the contrast between her good fortune and the hardships of others.

What volunteer opportunities have you found for your kids?
I'm definitely not the Mother Theresa of volunteering with young kids (nor was I Mother Theresa before I had kids--not by a longshot), but I feel relatively satisfied with the amount of service we've been able to do so far. I know there are others who have done much more, and I'd love to hear more ideas for volunteering with toddlers and preschoolers. What are your suggestions?

A Fun Announcement

I'm really excited to share a tidbit of news on a development in my blogging life:

I'm now going to be a regular contributor for the Simple Kids blog! I'll be writing posts over there every so often on the subject of single parenting, a topic at the forefront of my mind since I am a single mama myself.

If you've never visited Simple Kids or the other Simple Living blogs, please do. I can't tell you how many good ideas I've gotten from their huge variety of contributors. My posts over there will be a little more advice-driven and a little more serious, while over here I'll still vacillate between the occasional serious post and talking about things like breast-implant shaped gelatin or accidentally celebrating my daughter's half-birthday in the wrong month.

I've added a Simple Kids Contributor button on the upper right corner of my blog that will link directly to their homepage. My first post is ready to go and will be published tomorrow, so head on over and let me know what you think!

And now if you'll excuse me, I've got a 2 1/2 year old chick crawling on my back singing "The Monster Mash," instead of peacefully sleeping in her bed where she should be...

Fun with Gelatin

(Disclaimer: my camera is still broken, so today's photos are awful. I hope you can still get an idea of this project with the blurry monstrosities I'm about to share.)

Last week, through Ninna's play-based preschool, I had the pleasure of learning about a pioneer in the field of play-based early childhood education--a dynamic woman named Bev Bos. We watched a DVD of various clips of her giving talks on the subject interspersed with one-on-one interviews. During the talks, she stood behind a table full of projects, toys, and tools she recommends for the classroom.

At one point, she picked up a large bowl-shaped gelatinous thing which she proclaimed was a "very large breast implant." Being a tad bit gullible, I believed her at first and wondered how she had access to such a thing. After I realized it was, in fact, gelatin, and after watching clips of children experimenting and playing with it, squirting paint into it, poking holes in it, and so on, I knew we had to replicate this activity at home.

Her explanation of the project calls for pipettes (used to squirt paint into the gelatin as if you are giving it a shot). While I knew what a pipette looked like (primarily from the DVD), I really didn't know what it was for. I stopped at the pharmacy on the way home, thinking that perhaps a pipette would be found in the medical supplies aisle.

Most store employees in my area are bilingual, but I occasionally encounter one whose English is worse than my French, and the logical result is that we conduct our business en francais. On this particular day, I spoke with an employee who was both primarily a French-speaker and hell-bent on finding what I needed. I tried to just keep to myself, knowing I wouldn't be able to communicate, but she wouldn't let me be, so I stood there blank-faced as I tried to figure out how to explain, in French, that I wanted to find some pipettes so that my two children could use them to squirt paint into a breast implant-shaped blob of gelatin.

Eventually an anglophone employee overheard my babbling and directed me to the medical supplies aisle where they did not, in fact, carry pipettes, since pipettes are not a medical device. The closest thing I could find was a large eye dropper/medicine dispenser, so we went with that.

And all of that was a really long way of saying that we did a fun and crazy gelatin activity. When we got home, I found Bos' instructions online here, in a PDF of a book she put together called Oodles of Art Recipes (find "gelatin fun" on page two.)

Bos is particularly adamant about keeping art and science experiences for preschoolers process-focused. I'm pretty good about this already, but watching her inspired me to spend even more time allowing them to just go wild with the materials without focusing at all on a final product.

This activity is excellent in that regard since the longer they play with the gelatin form, the messier and less "finished" it becomes.

Want to play with gelatin?

Here's what to do:

First, gather supplies
**a box of unflavored Knox gelatin
**a pot/pan and spoon
**Pam spray
**containers for molding gelatin
**plates to hold your hardened gelatin
**tools: be creative as you like. Fun ideas include baby nose suckers, eyedroppers, pipettes, toothpicks, etc.
**containers of diluted paint

1. The night before, mix plain, unflavored Knox gelatin with cold water. She recommends 16 packets (don't worry, the box contains something like 20 packets) to 12 cups of water. I made a slightly smaller amount, but I kept the same ratio of packets to cups, and I found the gelatin a tad too dense, so you might want to use slightly less.

2. Heat it on the stove until the gelatin dissolves and is clear. Pour into containers that you've sprayed with Pam or a similar product. I made two large mounds, both in stainless steel mixing bowls. You could use anything you have in your kitchen that can withstand the heat of the liquid gelatin. I can imagine lots of fun shapes--a bundt pan would be particularly fun.

3. Leave it in the fridge overnight. Come back and poke at it every so often if you're impatient and have never made jello before.

4. The next day, when you're ready to be wild and crazy, carefully remove your mounds from their containers. Even with the Pam spray, I had to use my fingernail to loosen the edge of the gelatin from the container and very deliberately remove it so it didn't break. After you've removed it, plop it, flat side down, onto a plate--the larger the better, since this will be messy.




5. Give each kid a mound, distribute the tools, and watch them go crazy. Here's what we used for tools:

From left to right: newborn baby snot-suckers, both saved from when my girls were born (and yes...both washed); vitamin dispensers saved from Bojey's vitamins (we use these all the time for projects); the large dropper we bought at the drugstore; and toothpicks.

Also, dilute some paints in small containers. These are highly diluted--there's really only a squirt of paint in each.

The kids had a ball with this. There is no "right" way to do it; you're just giving them a material (gelatin) and some tools and letting them lead the way. The only thing I did was to suggest to Ninna that she might suck up some paint and poke the blob. Here she is trying this for the first time:

Ninna still laughing from the fart noises the gelatin made when she squirted paint underneath it:
Bojey inserting lots and lots of toothpicks: And the remainders of the great gelatin massacre of 2010:

But wait...there's more. In her explanation, Bos mentions that this can be cooked down and re-formed. Are you kidding me? You can re-melt gelatin and shape it again? So I had to try it. I did my best to strain out the liquid and plopped all the big blobs of gelatin back into the same pan (which was conveniently still dirty from the night before) and, in the interest of not catching the paints on fire, I heated it on low for a long time, staying in the kitchen with it.

And what do you know? It's true--you can melt the gelatin down and start again. Ours ended up a light lavender color from the remaining paint. We poured it back into the two stainless steel bowls, and this time we added silver glitter. They're now taking up half of the fridge, so I suppose that means we'll be doing this again soon.

Now I'm feeling inspired by gelatin, devising all kinds of wild plans for it. I'd never considered it a play material before. What fun things have you done with gelatin?

An Open Letter to Ms. Frizzle, Arnold, Wanda, Liz, The Girl with the Red and Yellow Clothes, and the Other Passengers of the Magic School Bus

Dear Ms. Frizzle et al,

I implore you to immediately discontinue your infiltration of my child's brain. While I appreciate your talent for finding adventure and learning opportunities lurking around every corner, and your vehicle's ability to morph into at least four different nautical devices in just 32 pages, I can no longer spend 98% of my waking moments analyzing and role-playing your lives.

In recent weeks, I have:

**Made at least two cardboard representations of Arnold, one of which boasts a miniature school bus inside his belly;

**Assisted my child in making not one, but two cloth outfits for the plastic lizard who represents Liz in our home;

**Made a puppet of that girl with the yellow and red outfit;

**Read at least five different Magic School Bus books enough times to memorize them;

**Made a birthday card for Arnold (which my child then mysteriously left under Arnold's pillow because she was the tooth fairy...);

**Answered myriad deeply philosophical questions like "What if Ms. Frizzle was totally crazy and couldn't say any words at all?";

**Spent many, many an hour "being Ms. Frizzle."

And it is this last activity that has pushed me over the edge. By all reasonable estimates, I've spent more time being Ms. Frizzle in the last four weeks than I have being Mama. I have reached the point of being unsure at any given moment which I'm supposed to be.

As I type this, one of my children is making gifts for Arnold, while the other is running around the house naked yelling "I'm Ahnold, I'm Ahnold!"

I beg you to move your field trips elsewhere, at least for a few weeks. Please, the fate of my sanity depends heavily on your decision.

Yours kindly,

The Management

Squeezing in the Last of the "Warm Weather" Fun

OK, so 40 degrees (or 4.5 degrees Celsius, as I should now be calling it) is not necessarily warm. Two and a half years ago, in California, I would have thought 40 degrees was downright painful. By that point, I had pushed the memories of the 23 winters I spent in Michigan deep into the recesses of mind, fancying myself a warm-weather person.

And here I am, two and a half years later, calling 40 degrees "warm." More importantly, I stood on the balcony in a short-sleeved shirt this evening watching Ninna draw with chalk on the wet, 40 degree driveway without mittens. If any of the Montreal grandmas who walk around with their watchful eyes would have seen this, I would have, at best, gotten the evil eye, and at worst, gotten a lecture.

But the Montreal grandmas don't realize that somehow, this child was made for winter. She spent her summer talking about how she couldn't wait for snow. While I'm rushing the chicks outside after nap to take advantage of one of the last "warm" days, pre-snow, Ninna is fantasizing about building snowmen and climbing six-foot snowbanks.
Little Bojey, somewhat less of a cold weather girl, watches from afar, undergoing those two-year old internal battles--the desire to both be downstairs with the big girls and be upstairs with mama at the same time, the desire to simultaneously be drawing on a wet driveway and cuddling up in a warm house.
And me? Well, I'm having no internal battles. I know I will fear the snow, and I'll freeze for the first few days, but once the Christmas lights start glittering through the flurries and the rosy cheeked chicks start begging to play in the snow, I'll start making the hot chocolate and bundling us up, remembering again how vibrant the cold weather can make us feel.

A Quick Check-in, and Why is Time Moving so Quickly?

Did you know that, if you are like me, you will need to have your Advent Calendar ready in three weeks? Why do I feel like there used to be much more time between Halloween and Christmas?

Not long ago, I read a tidbit on NPR's website about how the more times we experience something, the more quickly time seems to go by. This explains why summers, to a seven-year old, seem to last decades, but for adults, we blink and they're gone. But shouldn't the fact that I'm experiencing things anew with my chicks slow down time?

I don't believe in living a rushed or overly-busy life (even though to a certain extent, the circumstances of my life dictate that it will be this way), and I am very aware of the dangers of overscheduling children. Yet somehow, things seem rushed and busy right now. So my goal for (the rest of) November is to live slowly and to continue trying to simplify.

I kept us home from Saturday afternoon until this afternoon (with the exception of a brief trip the chicks took to the park with their dad yesterday), and it was lovely. Ninna made at least ten projects (prog-jecks), working tirelessly finger knitting cords, drawing, taping (and taping, and taping, and taping...), making clothing for a tiny plastic lizard, wrapping "presents," and more. Poor Bojey is suffering from a bad cold, but this meant she got plenty of cuddle and story time, much more than she would have had if we were out running around.

I have a ridiculous number of things to do, of course, and this includes planning for December, but I'm going to do everything I can to slow us down over the next few weeks.

And my camera is still broken. I haven't even found a camera shop yet. Finding resources here is sometimes very difficult. I sometimes feel funny blogging with no photos, so I need to get on that (in between relaxation breaks, of course ;).

Learning to Finger Knit: Finding Teachers in Your Community

Ninna has been asking me to teach her to finger knit for ages. Until today, I didn't actually know how to finger knit. I knew it would be easy, and I knew if I just did a search on YouTube, I'd be able to find a huge variety of instructions, but I chose not to. I waited, over a month and a half, to be exact, until our schedules permitted a friend of ours to teach her.

In an age when we can learn so many things from a computer, I'd like the chicks to have plenty of opportunities to learn from real, live people. I'm not opposed to using the computer as a resource; I do it all the time, with and without the chicks. And frankly...I love the internet. I'd be lying if I said otherwise. At the same time, I'd like our use of it to be balanced with other, living, breathing resources.

Reasons to seek out "teachers" in your community:

**A living, breathing teacher can respond to mistakes and questions in the immediate situation.

**Teaching and learning within your community helps build and strengthen bonds.

**Teaching a skill can be used as bartering material; when one person exchanges a service for a lesson in something--be it finger knitting, html, baking bread, or tiling a bathroom, members of a community are valued and contribute to the greater good. And, better yet, there's less need to spend money (I see a post or series of posts on bartering in the future...)

**The learning experience is more meaningful. I'd much rather Ninna remember the day our friend came over and taught her to finger knit like a big girl while the little ones played and ate popcorn, as opposed to remembering the day mom turned on the computer and typed in "finger knitting" on YouTube.

**For those who are homeschooling, it provides opportunities for your children to experience different teaching styles.

And now for the exciting result: Ninna can finger knit, and she's really good at it! I'm so excited, and so proud. After our friend left, she knit several more cords that she's saving up to make into hair things, dollhouse accessories, and Christmas presents. Watching her, I saw so much of myself. Like me, she has a tendency to pull her knitting too tight. Like me, she doesn't like distraction; she asked Bojey to stop jumping near her because she couldn't concentrate on her knitting. Poor girl will, like her mama before her, be unable to do her homework at the coffee shop ;).

Popcorn: Our New All-Purpose Treat

I sort of just discovered popcorn. I myself have eaten plenty of it in my life, of course, but until a few weeks ago, I had never served it to my chicks. To begin with, I have a fear of kids choking. In some ways, I'm a laid-back parent: I fully support things like jumping on my bed, writing on oneself with (washable) marker, and dressing in wildly mismatched outfits. But in other ways, I'm wholly un-laid-back, and my fear of choking falls in this realm.

So the chicks had never eaten popcorn until we went to a birthday party recently, and my friend served popcorn as a snack. After the chicks made it through the party and did not, in fact, choke, I started to think that perhaps I should make popcorn. In the past I had only ever made microwave popcorn, but I haven't had a microwave since my last one caught on fire eight years ago. I was on the phone with a friend and heard static, and upon walking into the kitchen I saw that there were sparks and flames in the microwave flashing about according to the sound pattern of the static in my ear. Needless to say, I'm a little disturbed by microwaves.

For some reason I was under the impression that making popcorn without a microwave is hard. And it turns out that it's pretty much one of the easiest things you can cook. How did I not know this? So now that I've discovered popcorn, I can't stop serving it. So far, we've only eaten it sprinkled with nutritional yeast, a favorite in our home. I'd like to branch out though, so I've looked around online for some popcorn ideas. Here's what I found:

**butter, parmesan, and rosemary

**Sesame Ginger Popcorn: This recipe calls for way too much sugar (not to mention corn syrup), but I'd like to revise it for a healthier version--ginger on popcorn sounds delicious.

**variations on a cracker-jack type thing: Again, most of these recipes require too much sugar, but what I like about this is the addition of nuts which elevates popcorn to a more substantial snack. I'm thinking of something like a cracker-jack/trail mix hybrid.

It turns out that popcorn is also (slightly) healthier than I had imagined. I always thought it was sort of a "nothing" food (plain popcorn, that is), but it does contain fiber and protein. And when paired with something like nutritional yeast, it becomes more purposeful.

So perhaps I'll be posting some fun popcorn recipes soon if the chicks don't tire of it or if I don't fall into the trap of overusing it.

How do you eat your popcorn?

Happy Halloween!

I'm faced with the sad reality that my camera is broken. These terrible photos are all I have to show from today.

Ninna scooping pumpkin innards:
The chicks and their friends eating dinner by candlelight before putting on their costumes:
Our pumpkins:
I hope everyone had a lovely Halloween. Wish me luck figuring out my camera situation tomorrow!