I love water and swimming, and so do both of the kids.  Here is some water frolicking:

I’m glad they are so comfortable in the water, but I really want them to learn to swim independently as quickly as possible.  A couple of months ago, Rosy had a somewhat-near drowning incident that rattled me badly.  We were at our farm, and for “farm school” that day we took the tractor down to the Snoqualmie River to wade in the water.  I had Alden and Rosy and I was also watching my friend’s son, pictured below.

Rosy and Nolan ran along the shore for a while, then he got tired of that and played in the sand.  I couldn’t help myself, I had to strip Alden down and let him play in the murky water too.

I was still keeping a close eye on Rosalind, but she was only wading shin deep so I didn’t have my hyper-aware mama senses turned up, as you can see in this picture.

Still, in a little while I noticed she was getting a little farther away than I was comfortable with, maybe 5 yards distant.  I opened my mouth to call her back, and all of a sudden–she disappeared.  It was terrifying,  but still at first I assumed she’d just tripped.  Clutching my wet slippery baby to me with one arm, I bounded towards her.  I saw her head break the surface as her arms flailed.  I reached her, I grabbed her, and I realized I was in the water up to my chest.  There was a big hole.  In fact, if you look at the pictures of the river carefully, you can see it–the water changes color from brown to dark green, near the log detritus.

When I floundered out of the water back to the beach, a now-wailing baby in one arm and a screaming girl in the other, I saw none of the other many adults on the beach had noticed a thing.

Rosy was completely fine, she hadn’t swallowed any water and although she was hysterical at first, I was able to reassure her immediately that she did the right thing, she swam a little bit and then I came to save her.  I believe I’ve seen that she’s a bit more cautious around water now, but she still has fun in it.  But I am still shaken, two months later.  It would have been so easy not to see her, for the ordinary day to turn into something I can’t even think about.

Life is unpredictable and I can’t really protect my children, or myself, from the randomness of it.  But if I can teach them to swim at a young age, at least that’s something.

Alden sat up so early, I was sure he was going to start crawling when he was six months old.  But he sassed me–his first tentative forward momentum came on October 4, the day he turned *seven* months.  Here’s what he could do on October 8, sufficiently motivated:

He’s a true digital native.

Recently I’ve been getting into some pretty heavy theological discussions with Rosalind.  I am tempted to take this responsibility very seriously.  I want her to be aware of spiritual things; I want her to have an optimistic and hopeful view of the universe; I want to be careful not to “program” her into any particular creed or away of thinking (even if that way of thinking is the absence of a creed.)

But then I actually talk to her and I realize my concerns are totally moot.  After all, I can’t even explain to her why Monday is a preschool day, how I am going to prejudice her notion of God?  She’s going to construct her own strange reality based on bits of pieces of words I don’t even remember saying.  And in fact, that’s what is happenning.

The first talk I had with her, we were about to leave on a longish trip when some missionaries came to the door.  I shooed them away, but I could only get Rosy in the car by telling her I’d explain about the men while we were driving.  Here’s a summary of what I said, although I’m sure it was even less articulate at the time:

“Some people [I use "some people" all the time when talking about religion, but Rosy doesn't notice at all] wonder why there are people, and animals, and the sky, and the water.  Why are these things here?  And some people think, someone must have made them.  And that was God.  And God is in everything, in the sky, in your hand, in the trees and plants and animals.  And some people have some stories about God, and those men wanted to tell me about their stories, but I said ‘No thank you’ because I don’t think their stories are true.  People have all different stories and sometimes they get in a big fight: ‘God had a son named Jesus!’  ‘NO!  God had a prophet named Mohammed!’  ‘NO!  God had a son named Jesus!’ And then they get really mad and try to hurt each other.”

All right, maybe I didn’t need to introduce the concept of religious wars just yet.  But it seemed to capture her imagination, and the whole way to the farm she continued to ask, “Tell me that story again about the guys who get mad.”  But when Nathan got home at night and I asked her to tell him what she learned about God, this is how she distilled it: “Dod is in my fingers!  And the sky!  But we tan’t see Dod.”

That all seemed like a reasonable place to end.  But the ideas are still percolating around in her head.  The other day, several weeks after our initial discussion, I was giving her her nightly bedtime massage and she asked for Dod.

“What?”

“I want Dod.”  She gestured with her hand.

“Uh..  You mean Gollum?”  This is what she was gesturing towards:

I gave it to her, shaking my head.

“This is Dod.  Dod is my friend.  He makes it rain, and also not rain.”

I just read an article about parenting in the New York Times: All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting. It got me a little weepy (but then, lots of stuff does that when I have a baby in the house.)  It’s a well-written and well-researched article, and I don’t have anything really interesting to add.  But I want to go on record now with the resolution that I *will* enjoy my years as a parent.  And I mean, right now, not just in retrospect.

It’s actually easy for me to be vibrantly happy with Alden, just as it was with Rosy when she was a baby.  I don’t just love the transcendant joy of his smiles and giggles, I love the whole lifestyle of nursing and wearing him and sleeping with him and soothing him when he cries–and taking life slow.  But I’m not going to lie, the constant arguments that come with a preschooler (Rosy is not a toddler any more) can wear me down.  I don’t like conflict and drama, and I don’t like to be in control of someone else.  Ha.  The books (yes I read a lot of books) suggest that a zen, non-attachment (take that Dr. Sears) method of parenting is possible, that I can leave the drama and conflict to her and not partake of it.  That I can give her the gift of self-discipline through reasonable choices and reasonable consequences, that I can make her happy and self-confident by letting her know how much she is loved.  And I *do* believe in all this stuff, I do think I can be a good parent this way.  But day-to-day, it still feels like all I do is make thousands of very insignificant decisions and then fight for them with my life and sanity.

So today, I’m going to focus on playing with her and having fun.  Because sometimes, it *is* fun and today is going to be one of those days.

Rosy knows *all* the Christmas Carols.  Even now, in July, she gets out the songbook and we sing them together.  I mean, she knows multiple verses.  Here is a solo act:

This meal is probably in more frequent rotation that any other in our house.  It’s healthy, vegetarian, uses up a lot of produce, and it takes 30 minutes start to finish, (assuming I managed to put the rice in our slow rice cooker earlier in the day.)  And honestly it’s delicious.

Serves two hungry adults plus a kid.

Ingredients:

• 1 block of firm tofu
• peanut oil (or some other kind but unrefined peanut is best
• shiitake mushrooms (you can make it without them, but why?)
• a bunch of different vegetables including at least one green
• a shallot or two, finely chopped
• some garlic (optional), finely chopped
• a tablespoon or two (or three) of fresh (or frozen) ginger, grated
• soy sauce
• vinegar
• white wine or mirin or some kind of stock
• sriracha hot sauce (“rooster”)
• sugar
• a little cornstarch

1. Press the tofu.  Split the block in half horizontally so you have two rectangles about 3/4 of an inch thick.  Put them on a pan over a paper towel, put another paper towel on top and another pan, weighted with a few cans or something.  Set aside.

2. Chop your vegetables however you like them.  You want them all ready to go when it’s time to cook because it doesn’t take long.

3. Fry the tofu.  After ten minutes it’s pressed enough.  (Sometimes I only give it five minutes, but up to 20 is OK.)  Chop it in cubes.  Heat some peanut oil in a (very) nonstick pan over medium high heat.  When it’s hot, add the tofu and then pour a tablespoon or two of soy sauce over it.  Stir with a spatula until it’s coated, then let it cook, turning every few minutes.  Try not to let the tofu stick to the pan.  When the liquid is all evaporated and the tofu is golden on most sides of each cube, turn off the heat.

4. While the tofu is cooking, start cooking the other vegetables.  In a large saute pan or wok, heat some peanut oil on high or medium high heat.  Add the mushrooms and toss to coat with oil.  Stir only every few minutes, until they are nicely seared and delicious but not dry.  Add the rest of your vegetables in order of cooking time: this can take some practice.  In my experience, green beans take way longer to cook than you think, add them first.  Carrots and zucchini and broccoli are next,  then turnips or radishes because you want them to stay kind of crisp, then the greens (bok choy or chard or even kale, especially the curly kind) are last.

5. While the vegetables cook, mix the shallots and ginger in a bowl with some peanut oil.  If I’m feeling kind, I don’t add garlic, because it can upset Nathan’s stomach.  If I’m feeling spicy, I add a clove or two.  When the vegetables are almost done but not quite, add the tofu to the pan and stir.  Then push everything to the sides of the pad, and spoon the shallot mixture into the middle.  It will fry up in the oil and smell delicious–stir it around.  After a minute or two of cooking, mix everything together.

6. IMPORTANT: if you have a kid who doesn’t like spicy food, now’s the time to take our her portion.

7. Make the sauce and add it.  (Really you should have made the sauce in a spare moment earlier, so now you can just dump it on.)  In a bowl, put aboutt 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/3 cup vinegar (I use red wine, but rice is fine too or whatever), 1/3 cup white wine or mirin or stock, 1 tablespoon sugar, half a teaspoon of corn starch, and some squirts of sriracha to taste.  Mix it up and dump on the hot stir fry, stir around for a second or two, turn off the heat and serve over brown rice.

I recommend that the first few times you make this, you get everything all prepared before you start cooking (the sauce made, the shallot mixture prepared, etc.)  Otherwise you will be totally stressed at the end when things start happening fast.  When I first started making this, the kitchenwould look like a bomb went off in it after I was done, and I was so frazzled and stressed about getting things right at the last minute that I ate half my bowl in about twenty seconds.  But practice makes perfect I guess.  Now it only looks like a tornado blew through the kitchen.

Rosy’s first drop-off preschool ended in June.  Enchanted Garden was a sweet little Waldorf program for two and three year olds, in Jacqueline Houston’s home and run solely by her.  She went two mornings a week.  I’s mostly play-based, although they made bread once a week on Thursdays and had some other project on Fridays.  After a bit of a rough patch early on, Rosy seemed to enjoy it pretty well.  I liked it too, the environment and the teacher and the other kids, and I felt really good about sending her there.

But I was a little surprised to get her “report card” at the end–it mostly said she lives in her own world, and doesn’t listen at all.  Now, I can easily believe that she does her own thing instead of always participating in what the other kids are doing.  That’s just her personality, she observes before she acts.  But she does listen.  In fact, for a two year old she is a *great* listener.  Why would she ignore Jacqueline?  I still don’t know.  Maybe the environment was too chaotic so she withdrew.  Maybe it’s a pattern that got set when she started (she was barely two) and never changed.  Anyway, it made me glad she going to a Montessori based program next year where she’ll have a lot of individual attention; I think it will suit her personality to a T.

Rosy in the Enchanted Garden

Her other “graduation” was from her first real gymnastics class: i.e., the first class I didn’t have to attend with her.  She had Coach Tara at the Seattle Gymnastics Academy and she is just wonderful.  At first Rosalind was a little nervous about leaving me but soon enough she was completely comfortable, and what a kick it was to watch from the bleachers as she did her little girl things without me!  This class is how I know she’s really a good listener, not just from her interactions with me (but she does listen to me, too.)  Her wide, serious eyes as she gazed intently at her coach were plain to see.

Straddle bat hang

I abandoned my blog a good long time ago, but here’s an attempt to revitalize it!  So far I have: remembered my passwords, upgraded the software, and got rid of my spam comment problem.  Do I have anything interesting to communicate?  Only time will tell.

My plan, though, is to have weekly posts on various topics.  Here’s what I’m thinking to start:

Monday: Family Day.
What we’ve been up to, news about our lives.

Wednesday: Grandparent Day.
Photos or video or stories about the kids.  Probably totally boring to everyone else.

Friday: Recipe Day.
Something I’ve made in the last week, and it can’t be a recipe I’m copying from somewhere else, either.

Sunday: Outside World Day (optional.)
If I have anything interesting to say that’s NOT about the kids or what I’m cooking for them, here’s where it will go.  Chances are slim.

This is another post that never got published, that I’m just finding 14 months later.

* * *

I had a hot latte waiting for me when I woke up on Mother’s Day this year.  Nathan had gotten up with Rosalind an hour earlier, and they walked out to the little coffee stand together.  It was a lovely start to the day, but it got much better.

We drove out to Wallace Falls, a hike about 1.5 hours from our house on Route 2.  We found the hike in our current favorite book, Best Hikes With Kids: Western Washington. We both thought it sounded familiar, but we didn’t recognize anything when we arrived. Contrary to our expectation (and hope), Rosalind fell asleep in the car on the way over, sleeping the last half hour. There went her nap for the day and, we thought, any hope of making a lot of progress on foot. We didn’t think she’d accept being in the backpack for too long if she wasn’t asleep.

But Rosalind blew away all our expections on this hike. Not only did we complete the entire route, 5 1/2 miles and 1200 feet of elevation, but she must have walked at least a mile and a half of it or more. She made tracks! And she enjoyed nearly every second. What a great hike this is for kids. We were never far from water, or from the rocks necessary for throwing into it. The trail itself was a little rough for a toddler, and there were certainly places where I guarded Rosalind when she walked to keep her from tumbling down a steep bank. But there was so much to keep her interest. She was astonished to see the grand middle falls. At first all she could say was “Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Uh-oh!” When she gathered her senses to explain: “Waters fall down!” (Very true, of a waterfall.) “Waters fall down! Splash! Waters hurt? Waters tying! (crying)” We reassured her that the waters were “O-tay!” and she repeated that to herself a number of times, to ease her mind.

When we finally got to the top, after several wonderful hours, Nathan and I got a surprise. There was a sign up there regarding some missing hikers from some years back. And with that sign, it clicked–we *had* done the hike before. But although today I was in a state of happy awe at its loveliness, the *only* thing I remembered from the previous time was mocking the old newspaper article. (In my defense, it is hard to imagine how those women were so helpless.) I’m quite sure that the last time we were on the trail we did the whole thing in a couple hours, probably thinking black thoughts at the slow families crowding the trail, and at the end I probably just wished we’d driven further out to something a little more off the beaten track. What a difference, now that I’m sharing Rosalind’s perspective, and her joy.

Enthralled by the waterfall

I just noticed this blog post in my “drafts” folder, 16 months later (7/26/2010.)  It’s not much of a post–I probably meant to include some video or something–but it’s part of the record so I’m putting it out there now.

* * *

I haven’t blogged in a few months, and now I have a completely different child.  I guess that’s how it goes.  At Christmas, she was saying some words, and she knew the names of the most important people in her life, and she would do signs that went along with a song.  Today she knows nouns and verbs and adjectives that she can put together in sentences, she can learn a name or any other word the first time hearing it, and she can actually sing recognizable songs herself.  Yesterday we went to the zoo and saw a bunch of animals, some of which frightened her.  This morning she told me me the whole story, about “zoo” and the “pea-tot” that we saw when we first got there, and the “ephant” (she was “scare”), and the monkeys and the lion that also scared her, and the bears.  She said “mama scare?” and when I said no, I wasn’t scared, she asked about her part-time nanny and her friend Nolan.  It’s not just that she has learned a lot of words.  She uses them to describe her experience, and even to express her thoughts.  It’s been such a ridiculously fast trajectory to this point, I am blown away.