Recovery Days Are Vital

Today is one of those that didn't really have a beginning, as last night blurred and bled through to this morning.  Such is the case when you're up close to a dozen times to calm your screaming, night terror-stricken child.  The past couple weeks have been a waxing period of terrors, with last night being the worst so far in this cycle, so my hope is that they'll begin to wane from here and we'll all get a nice recovery period.  

Gracious, sometimes my senseless optimism appalls even me.

Completely, totally me today.

So we're sticking close to the house today, because to do otherwise would be folly, especially for anyone unlucky enough to cross my path and say such provoking things as "Hello," and "Good to see you!"  

At some point during the night/morning/day/what does time even mean anymore, I decided to just give it up and go for a run.  I'd planned on a morning run, anyway, to stay ahead of the heat.

This ended up being a good idea for two important reasons:  I got to bear witness to another summer sunrise over Iowa, and I had so much cranky frustration still sizzling over me at my turn-around point I decided to run an extra couple miles, leaving all that emotional tar smeared over the trail rather than on our children.  I got home and collapsed for a couple blissful hours, as said children are finally getting the hang of sleeping in.  Kind of.  

After so many years, I've got a pretty decent formula for what our day needs (yes, needs) to look like after a bad, bad night.  Everyone gets more chores than usual, which perhaps doesn't sound like the ingredients for a magical childhood but hello, have you seen Mary Poppins?  That chick knew what she was talking/singing about.  I give a rousing speech on pulling together and working hard and the importance of contributing to our collective household, with the promise of an after-chore movie of my choosing, because there are perks to being the mother.  

Now, while I will not lead you to believe that the kiddos in question skip merrily around the domicile, sweeping and dusting, I will say that if we're all working at the same time, I get very little flack from said munchkins, and I'm in a way better mood when the house is in order, because if Momma ain't happy, etc, etc; the opposite is also true.  

It's Atticus's night to help with supper, so the bulk of his work was on supper prep.  He made his first blackberry cobbler, chosen because it's super simple and absolutely capable of being executed by a seven year old.  Please note that the blackberries contained therein are store-bought, as I am still shuddering over last week's wild berry incident.

He also made crock pot fixin's.  I didn't get a picture of those because they're not as exciting as cobbler.  I mean, what is?  

After all that, we settled down to watch The Wizard of Oz, which all of our children have either read or listened to on audiobook, but only Adelaide has seen the movie, and that was several years ago.

Two out of three Crisler offspring thoroughly enjoyed it.  That third one noted, "That's not what Kansas looks like!"  Then he cocked his head, squinted, and said, "Well, sometimes it does, a little."

Did you know that L. Frank Baum had never been to Kansas when he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?  He based his descriptions of my home state on his travels across Nebraska.  I have a decided opinion on this, but being a Christian woman, I can't say it.

Tomorrow we'll venture back out to the land of the living, hopefully at least marginally rested; I already feel better for our little mini-vacation/staycation.  Several times today I've given thanks for the fact that our lives have the flexibility to enjoy a day like this one when we need it.

On a barely related note:  How do you feel about this new term "staycation"?  I vacillate between almost liking it and wanting it to burn in modern vocabulary hell.  

To Watch and To Read

What's that?  You're looking to send June on its way in a lovely, nostalgic fashion- perhaps in song?  Might I recommend two ways to spend the remaining days of one of my favorite months:

And yes, it was in technicolor.

A few weeks ago my mother gave me strict instructions to watch this classic musical ("strict instructions" being "You should really watch Meet Me in St. Louis, it was so good!"), and because I am a good and dutiful daughter [cue laugh track], I picked it up at the library.

The music!  The costumes!  The gorgeous house!  I loved it, Caedmon loved it, Adelaide loved it so much that as soon as it ended she watched the "Making Of" special feature also available on the DVD.  Atticus declared that not only did he not like it, Daddy wouldn't, either, so there.  Whatever, three out of four isn't too bad, and even that cranky fourth absent-mindedly sang the title song for the rest of the day.  So there.


If it's book-learnin' you're after, look no further than this gem:

Why, yes, this is that Call the Midwife, the book upon which the popular television series is based.  I've only seen the pilot episode of the show, and decided it was, you know, fine.  I say I'm pretty picky about which shows I watch, Derek would most likely say I'm difficult to please; either way, I get bored with tv series easily, and it's rare for me to find one that I can watch beyond a few episodes.  I've had approximately one million people tell me how AMAZING this show is, and how I just HAVE to watch it.  Now it's my turn:  Just whatever on the show, okay, but the book?  The book is AMAZING, and you HAVE to read it.  They're the real, honest-to-God recollections of a young nurse working with midwifing nuns (I really don't know if "midwifing" is a verb or not, but it certainly should be, don't you think?) in 1950's, post-war, poverty-stricken east London.  My mom worked in OB at a hospital toward the beginning of her nursing career, and I remember her saying that it is both the happiest and saddest place to work (along with some really depressing anecdotes that I can share if you ever find yourself in need of a good cry).  This memoir agrees with her sentiment:  Oh, gosh, the joy and wonder to be found in some of her stories, but likewise the sadness and futility to be found in others.  Throughout Ms. Worth shares her emotions at the situations she finds herself in, running the gamut from admiration to disgust.  It helps, I think, that she is not a native of Poplar, and as an outsider, describes many things that a local would take for granted.  It all makes for a fascinating story, but a word of (rather obvious, I would hope) warning:  If you are at all squeamish or uncomfortable with the goings-on involved in childbirth, you are going to find yourself, well, squeamish and uncomfortable while reading many pieces of this account.  It's a book about giving birth.  Buck up, soldier.  

There you go:  Something to watch this week, and something to read.  And farewell to any male readers I might ever have had.

AB Pattern

Good:
I made banana ice cream yesterday, and holy cow, was it a hit.  I'd read about it and had a couple friends who made and recommended it, but somehow couldn't manage the complicated process (slicing up a few bananas, freezing them for a couple hours, then sending the frozen chunks through the food processor.  It may have taken five entire minutes) until yesterday.  The kids and I tried it plain, and while it was good, with a surprising ice creamy consistency despite the fact that the sole ingredient is bananas, we all agreed that what it really needed was chocolate, which I sent down the processor's chute with gusto.  Because making completely healthy food unhealthy is evidently a real skill of mine.  I'm making another batch tonight, but this time I'm adding chocolate and peanut butter.



Bad:
Since the weather's been cooler here, I've been forced to dig out my jeans, which led to the unpleasant reminder that last spring I decided to postpone jeans shopping til the fall, because I loathe shopping for jeans.  I love wearing them, but I hate how the level of despair rises with each discarded pair in the dressing room.  I can pick up a dozen pair out on the sales floor, thinking that they look relatively normal and as if there's at least a bare possibility they'll fit, but once I'm actually attempting to shimmy into them?  Puzzlement.  Anguish.  Gnashing of teeth.  Sackcloth begins to sound attractive. Why must it be a modern-day miracle to find a pair of jeans that a) has no machine-made holes, b) allows me to move around without exposing not-to-be-exposed parts of myself, and c) doesn't cost a fortune?

If you hear sobbing coming from an Iowa fitting room next week, don't worry:  It's just me, losing the will to live.

Good:
I think I may have finally cracked Caedmon's chore code.  Both Adelaide and Atticus are relatively good at completing their chores quickly and with minimal fuss, but Caedmon?  Man.  He'd spend more time dragging his feet and voicing how unfair it all was than the time it took to complete the chore itself.  The key?  A timer  (This week, anyway).  Caedmon loves to race a timer, so I'll set the microwave timer for, say, two minutes to put clean silverware away, three minutes to take out and dump the compost bowl, etc, and he'll go as fast as he can to finish before the timer beeps.  I'm not sure why I didn't think of this earlier; when I'm feeling especially lazy and tempted to let a small task go, I'll time myself to see how long it actually takes to unload the dishwasher, fold some clothes, etc, so that I can berate myself afterwards about how lazy I must be to even be tempted to put something off that only took four minutes to complete anyway.  (Hang on, that's not where that was supposed to go...)



Bad:
Did you not see the first "Bad" point?  I HAVE TO GO JEANS SHOPPING NEXT WEEK.



Good/Bad:
A couple weeks ago we checked out the movie The Hobbit from the library.  Not the fancy, modern, quasi-realistic version, but the old 1977 animated version that I remember watching a time or two growing up.  That is, I thought I'd watched it a time or two, until I started it for the kids and began to walk away.

As soon as that music came on, I wheeled right around and sat myself down, caught up in a wave of nostalgia so powerful it was as close as I've ever come to actual time travel.  I knew almost every word of dialogue, every song, sound effect, all of it, to the extent that I have to think we must have had it on constantly for some period of my childhood.  This is strange to me; because I remember so much of my growing-up years so vividly and specifically, it's bewildering when I come across something forgotten.

You can see why it was a childhood favorite.

The only downside to my trip down a Hobbit-strewn memory lane was the nightmare it sparked that night, where a Teddy Ruxpin said one after another cruel thing to me, over and over.  Upon waking, I couldn't remember what he'd said, why I didn't merely walk away, or what was keeping me from dreaming up a baseball bat to take to his furry demon body, just that my brain had officially ruined one of my childhood toys.  Thanks, Brain.

UUUUMMM, I just googled "evil Teddy Ruxpin," you know, for fun, and came across this post:  Your Childhood Games and Toys as Horror Movie Posters.  Oh, Teddy.  I knew it.  Or my brain did, anyway.

A List

• My sister Steph sent me a text yesterday that read "A movie for Atticus."

I can only assume this horror movie is being made by people who have been stalking Derek and me for the past few years, as I'm pretty sure the above is exactly what I look like after a night of our Atticus's night terrors.  I bet this whole movie is a dramatization of what would happen if the parents of night terror-stricken children acted on the irrational and murderous thoughts that run through our brains after years of sleep deprivation.  I'm expecting a new source of income from these film-makers and will use it to invest in a set of fancy ear plugs.  

• It's warm outside today.  So warm that, when Caedmon and I dared to venture out back, he declared it to be "super hot out here!"  He then asked if he could play with play dough (not Play-Doh, because I make our own play dough for pennies as opposed to spending whole dollars on the store-bought stuff), because I am a mean, mean mother who will only let her children near play dough when they are safely outside the confines of her house.  We busted out the play dough I made a couple years ago, but it's starting to get a little overly sticky, so he asked that I make a new batch.  I did, and am now "the best mom ever!"  One of the best parts of having small children is the ability to impress with a little flour, salt, and cream of tartar.  

Amazing how you go from this:

To this just five minutes later:

My aunt Sherry has said that you can use a packet of Kool-Aid instead of food coloring if you also want scented play dough, but I never think to buy Kool-Aid when I'm at the store.  Do people still drink that stuff?  Do they still make that stuff?

A bonus to fresh-out-of-the-pot play dough is that you can use it to warm your hands outside, because what Caedmon and I thought was "super hot" outside turned out to be about 35 degrees.  Warmth is relative, friends.

Sure, I had to clean bits of ice off the table before he could play, and no, he didn't really have a chair to sit in because those go in our basement during the winter, but that still beats digging dough out of our rugs.  

• Caedmon has a bit of a cold.  Nothing too bad (as long as I don't catch it), but enough for him to occasionally run to Adelaide for a bit of comfort.

This is pretty much the cutest thing ever, and yet another benefit to having a four-year-old.

...And The Wicked Step-Sisters Had Their Eyes Pecked Out, But Everyone Else Lived Happily Ever After

I don't read a whole lot of magazines, particularly women's magazines.  I get tired of reading article after article about losing ten pounds while organizing your spice cupboard.  Thanks, but no thanks.

Every so often, though, I'll come across an interesting piece.  When Adelaide was a baby, I remember reading an article arguing that we should be reading traditional fairy tales to our children.  I really don't recall many specifics; something about good and bad archetypes and making your children smarter and... stuff.

Since reading that article, I've harbored the vague idea that I should read fairy tales to our kiddos at some point- and none of that namby pamby Disney stuff, I mean the originals from the likes of the brothers Grimm and Aesop.

I did have a few small reservations.  I have a very clear memory of checking out "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen from my elementary school library.  Somehow I missed the part in the Disney version where every step she takes with her new human legs feels like she's being stabbed with knives, and the part where she dies in the end and washes ashore as seafoam, because evidently that's what happens when merfolk die- they disintegrate into seafoam.  Good news, though!  Although dying here on earth, she does manage to earn an eternal soul.

It was with this in mind that I agreed to read a few stories to Adelaide from our copy of "Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales" recently.  We had read a few stories from it before, but never anything with which she was already familiar.  What she actually requested was to read it herself, but I was a little afraid of what she might come across, and wanted to reserve the right to censor as I saw fit (I know, I know, censorship is evil and blah, blah, blah).

I skimmed Cinderella, saw that it looked relatively close to her beloved Disney version, and decided we'd try it.

It was really pretty similar to the animated version with which we're so familiar, with a few distinctions, like Cinderella crying over her mother's grave, which causes a tree to grow, where a gift-giving bird lives, and the part where the two wicked step-sisters cut off parts of their feet to make them fit into the (gold, not glass) slipper.  Also the part where birds come and peck out the eyes of the sisters at Cinderella's wedding to the prince.

Sorry for ruining the ending for you.

Adelaide seemed to take this slightly less saccharine version in stride.  We both agreed it was a lot less traumatizing than treasures like "The Robber Bridegroom."

Even that one has it's merits, though- our daughter can now accurately define cannibalism!

My Favorite Things

You know what I'm not crazy about?  Those "Favorite Things" lists that celebrities make that consist of a bunch of ridiculously expensive goods like "simple" white t-shirts that cost $50 apiece, or when they list things like "making sugar cookies with my daughter," because you know what?  You probably weigh about 90 pounds, and the closest you'll get to baked goods is a food-scented Yankee candle.  Oh, and don't try to pretend you spend time with your daughter.  If you did, we wouldn't see her all coked-out on the cover of some rag here in about ten years.

I'm not much of a celebrity person.  I feel no need to know what some actor eats for breakfast on Saturday mornings or their parenting "advice."

And this is so not what I meant to write about today.  Let's see if I can get back on track.

Where was I?  Right.  Favorite things.

Well, in addition to not being able to identify with some no-talent hack's favorite things (there I go again), I have a little trouble with the items listed in the song.  You know, from The Sound of Music?  One verse talks about "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens."  While I certainly don't see anything wrong with those things, I couldn't call them my "favorites."  Raindrops on roses are pretty, but I'm allergic to cats, don't believe I've ever actually seen a copper kettle, and wool gives me hives.

I'm just a little ray of sunshine today, aren't I?

Still, I've been hearing that song a lot lately on the Christmas music stations, and it's gotten me to thinking about my favorite things at this time of year.  Here are five of my personal favorites.

5.  Decorating for Christmas.  I love, love, love decorating our house for Christmas.  My mom always went all-out decorating our house right after Thanksgiving, and it always felt so warm and inviting.  I now do the same thing, and being surrounded by the garlands and bells makes our home feel cozy.

4.  Christmas Music.  Fortunately, Derek's pretty tolerant of my need for 24/7 Christmas music, but he does look pretty pained when I put on Amy Grant, and absolutely puts his foot down at the mere mention of The Carpenters.
   
      4a.  Christmas caroling.  Is there anything better than standing in front of people's homes, singing Christmas carols?  Unless it's looking out your front window and seeing people standing on your front lawn, serenading your family.

     4b.  All the live Christmas music.    There are always a plethora of choir, band, and orchestra concerts to choose from, and when we lived in Pittsburg, there was a man who stood outside the entrance to Wal-Mart every morning and played his trumpet while manning the red Salvation Army bucket.

3.  Going to the Nutcracker.  This was a tradition my family had growing up; we would drive the hour north to Wichita to see the ballet performed, and while this is not something we do every year, Derek did take me to see it in New York City one year, and this weekend Adelaide and I will be driving down to Kansas City to see it there (Yaaaaaay!).

2.  Candlelight services.  I don't really think there's anything better than standing in a darkened church lit only by candles, singing Christmas hymns.  I really wish our church did this.

1. This one isn't really Christmas-related, but right now it's my very favorite:  The lurching, halting, unsteady gait of a baby learning to walk.  Caedmon has been walking for several weeks now, but it's only in the past week or two that he's really started using it as his primary means of locomotion.  When I catch sight of that high-stepping stride unique to toddlers that he uses, I find myself stopping whatever I'm doing just to watch him waddle around.  It is so ridiculously cute.  I love to watch him stop at the threshold to a room, where the flooring changes, and ready himself to pass the imaginary precipice.  I love to watch the sheer joy on his face  from something as simple as walking.  He loves it, I love it.  My favorite thing.

This also means he no longer stands still long enough for me to get a good picture.

Books vs Movies

Derek and I watched the final Harry Potter movie last night.  I appreciated how close certain scenes were to those in the book, and I loved the emotional energy the music added.  Overall, I was less disappointed than I expected to be.

You do not want to watch a movie based on a book with me.  I am annoying in the extreme.

To me, watching the film-version of a novel is like listening to a young piano student stumble their way through Beethoven.  You may be able to recognize the familiar strains and hear the potential for beautiful music, but it's nothing compared to listening to a piano virtuoso finesse and lead you through the wonder of a sonata.  There is a richness and depth to a book that is conspicuously absent from their film adaptations.  I watch a movie after reading the book and wonder, Where is the subtlety?  Where is the nuance?  Must everything be so patently obvious?

I realize that not all movies are like this.  The well-known problem is, when adapting a book into it's movie-version, you have to cut a ton of details, large and small, from the story, lest you create a 72-hour film (which I would prefer, but might not make a lot of money- not that movie studios are in it for the money or anything; I'm well aware those Hollywood types would prefer to be non-profit).  And every once in a while, you'll find that rare gem:  a movie as good as it's book.  Like To Kill A Mockingbird, for example.  Maybe The Princess Bride.  And... um... I can't think of any others.

Part of (fine, maybe most) of the fault is my own.  I nearly always read the book before the movie comes out.  It is way easier to listen to the seven-year-old stumble their way through Moonlight Sonata (Charming, you think, this really has the potential to be beautiful.  'A' for effort.) and then listen to the virtuoso play the same piece (Wow!  So that's how it's done), than the other way around.  You can't listen to the professional musician first and then the novice hacking away at the keyboard; it's likewise very difficult to read the book, then watch the movie.  It will never measure up.

One of my favorite authors is Dean Koontz.  I absolutely love his Odd Thomas series of books.  I recently found out they are being made into a movie.

I am terrified.