Light and Momentary

Books for five-year-old boys

Ages ago, so long ago that his five-year-old boy might be six now, my pal Steve from college asked me if I could recommend books for his five-year-old son to enjoy. At the top of my list of Most Versatile Children's Books is the 20th-Century Children's Book Treasury -- I could not tally the number of hours I have spent reading that book to various children.

Five, at the beginning stages of literacy, is a good age to revisit some of the rhyming Dr. Seuss books that might have been out of the rotation for a while. Stella loved Hop on Pop with a fiery ardor when she was a toddler, and then she came back to it when she was beginning to string sounds into words.

You can also go in the opposite direction, and enjoy books with more complex text and pictures. I mentioned St. George and the Dragon in the version of this post that I wrote when Steve's son was 3, but it's one we've gone back to again and again with multiple kids. One of my sons has a peculiar devotion to The Ship's Cat (as in, he can recite almost all of it) that began when he was a wee little guy.

Five is also a great age for sharing longer stories. The Giraffe, the Pelly, and Me is a fun Roald Dahl story -- more picture book than chapter book, but it will probably take a couple of sittings to finish. This graphic novel rendition of The Hobbit has primed all five of our kids to enjoy the full-length version. And have I mentioned our Marcia Williams fandom before? That link goes to her book of Greek myths, which was more popular with the boys than the Shakespeare books that Stella prefers.

It has been five years now since I had a five-year-old boy of my own, so I'm interested in other perspectives. What books did your five-year-old boys love?

Things we have been cooking

I have been a little behind lately, unmotivated to cook or clear off my dresser or follow up with the stupid painting company whose owner talks such a good game but whose crews are perennially incompetent. One result is a pileup of CSA veggies in the crisper drawers. One would think that a crisper drawer should make things crisper, but our veggies have mostly been soggier than when I put them in there. Today we cooked three batches of greens and a cake, and they were all reasonably successful. (The cake was a roaring success, actually.)

For Sunday brunch Elwood cooked slivers of garlic in bacon fat until they were lightly browned. He tossed in a chopped bunch of some funky Japanese green (can't remember the name, but anything in the kale/chard family would work) and coated it in the fat. At this point he added soy sauce, and I assume he clapped the lid on the pan to let it steam. I, however, was too busy stealing pieces of bacon in the dining room to observe his maneuvers in the kitchen. I'll update tomorrow if there's some missing step like "add fairy dust and secret sauce," because they were awesome. They were better than the bacon. We finished the whole bunch.

Not to worry, though, there were plenty of greens left for dinner. I cooked a bunch of beautiful kale with one of my go-to kale strategies: brown half an onion in butter, add a couple of cloves of garlic, toss the ribboned leaves in the hot fat, throw in a glass of white wine and a handful of raisins, and simmer for about 7 minutes on medium-low heat. Add salt and pepper. You might need to add a little more liquid. 

Because I had not served my children quite enough greens in one day to assure my impeachment for Failure to Cook Anything Resembling Items Meant for Human Consumption, I kept going. I rescued the bunch of rapini from the soggier drawer, and cut its stalks into pieces small enough to be bite-sized but large enough to preserve my sanity given the number of dishes somebody was going to have to wash later. I cooked it slowly in olive oil with more garlic, and when it started to soften I added the leaves. I was thinking about how nicely a little sweetness goes with bitter greens (see above re: white wine/raisins) and about how loudly my daughter would protest a dinner consisting of kale, rapini, and green tomato casserole, and I threw in some apple cider. I also added some red pepper flakes, because I wanted some bite.

Hmm, now that I type it up it sounds a little dodgy. But it worked beautifully. While the rapini cooked slowly I browned some breadcrumbs in butter. I cooked up a pound of pasta and tossed it in the skillet with most of the rapini and a mug of pasta cooking water. At the end I stirred in the buttery breadcrumbs. I would have doused it liberally with Parmesan if we'd had any Parmesan, but instead I passed feta at the table. This is sounding weirder and weirder as I type, but -- get this -- the kids snarfed it up. Stella did flip out initially, as predicted, but once she tried it she kept eating more and more. When Pete was in the kitchen later, waiting for cake, he was snitching more pieces of pasta to eat while he waited.

So: the cake. Typepad seems to think you should tip your head 90 degrees to the left to appreciate our cake, and I cannot persuade it otherwise in the time remaining to me tonight. Joe and I watched an episode of Great British Bake-Off this afternoon, and predictably he said, "We should bake something." He pulled out our copy of Ultimate Cake to browse through while he watched, and we settled on a biscuit de Savoie, filled with whipped cream and raspberries and strawberries. It was a perfect Sunday project -- pleasantly but not preposterously involved, and Joe's pretty competent in the kitchen for a 13-year-old. Ours is more ramshackle than the one in the book, but nobody at my house complained.

Seven Quick Takes: Grading Desperation Edition

1. I feel so behind on grading. It is stressing me out. One would think that the solution would be to DO the grading, but apparently I'd rather write a blog post about how it's not done. Just goes to show: you don't have to be smart to have PhD behind your name. Elwood was out of town for most of the week. You know that spoons post? Having Elwood out of town takes about three-quarters of my spoons and melts them into a big ugly ladle, clanking out a bitter tattoo: ALONE ALONE ALONE ALONE ALONE. Saturday I was Fun and Pleasant Mom. Sunday I took homemade cake to the pack meeting and led a three-mile hike cheerfully. But Tuesday I totally spaced the orthodontist appointment (eek) (still haven't called to reschedule) and Wednesday I was refreshing Amtrak's "check status" page like someone whose rescuer was crawling eastward on the California Zephyr. I'm still catching up.

I'm going to do that thing I used to do, grading a couple of papers between each take. If you see a partial version of this post in your feed reader, there might be more to read if you click through. Or I might have jumped on the westbound California Zephyr, abandoning the grading and the relentless email in search of blue skies and green vineyards. 

2. My 15yo just coasted past 6 feet. One morning a few weeks ago he came pelting downstairs. "Mom," he said, "what are these marks on my back?" They were purple, cutting across his back in multiple places. I was worried for a minute, and then I looked closer. "They look like...stretch marks," I said with some puzzlement. Did you know that teens can get stretch marks when they shoot up tall? Turns out they can: Dr. Google told me so, and our doctor's office corroborated it when I called. (Because would you want your son's tombstone to read "Here lies the boy done in by his mother's overreliance on Dr. Google?" I thought not.) Tonight he told me that while he was hanging out with friends they noticed the marks. "It looks like you've been whipped!" they said. Ah, yes, scourging, my favorite discipline strategy.

"But wait," I said, "why could your friends see your back?" "It was a no-shirts party," he explained, "and we were doing pushups. Don't you do that with your friends?" Clearly I need to learn how to live it up a little more.

3. I haven't graded any more papers since I wrote this last take, but I have to tell you about the guy who just wandered onto my porch. There are lots of things to love about living where we do, but the drunk college students are an occasional problem. (One of them was the subject of a whole 7QT post a few years back.) Elwood is away again this evening, and I wasn't expecting any visitors, but suddenly there were footsteps on the porch. When I looked out I saw a muddy guy sitting on the swing. His friends drove him here, he said. He was waiting for his friends. Perhaps I was confused about whose house this really was. After some back and forth he stumbled away. My neighbor and I talked for a minute about what to do -- the neighbor had seen the guy fall down in my yard and lie there for a bit before weaving up to the porch, so he came over with a flashlight. We couldn't decide -- was he drunk enough to need a 911 call? He was out of sight before we came to any conclusions. But I have to say, if he was drunk enough to mistake me for an undergrad, he's  going to have quite the hangover tomorrow.

4. I...[groan]...think...I...can...I...think...I...can.

Just 1.5 more papers to return, at about 20 minutes per. And an exam to finish up, so I can email it to disability services before Monday.

Do you know that part in the early Thomas the Tank Engine stories where Henry needed Welsh coal to run properly? I need some Welsh coal. Or maybe I need the Fat Controller to send another engine along to push my train up to the top of the hill.

5. Oh, alas, in the last one? Plagiarism. I am done but it doesn't even feel good to be done.

6. Dear future self: If there is a future week in which you think, "Oh, sure, I can handle hours of intense grading while my husband is at a work thing for the first half of the week and a fun thing for most of the second half of the week"? Think again.

7. Linking up with Kelly, who invites quick-takers to link to their most popular QT post. Mine is probably the day of the lice infestation + head injury. It puts my current state of mind in perspective. But I'm going to have to add the link tomorrow, because the writing of this take was interrupted by yet another jaunt in the car to retrieve a kid, and I could not be any tireder.

Wherever it pleases, part 2

Two of our kids have uber-Catholic names. You know how you see a byline from Francis X. Clines and you think to yourself, "Yep, Catholic parents"? That kind of name. Here is a weird truth about me: it never crossed my mind that the kids in question might object. I could not begin to list for you the things I worried about while I was pregnant. If I was measuring large, it was probably a cystic hygroma causing polyhydramnios. The baby was sleeping, or was he TANGLED in his UMBILICAL CORD and about to DIE?! What if I had put too much half and half in my coffee and poisoned all my babies with DIOXIN? What if I was a terrible mother for reasons unrelated to my butterfat consumption?

As I wandered in this welter of worries I never dreamed that I'd have a kid who renounced the faith. I would spread holy truth in front of them like an irresistible banquet; I would set an example of faith and spiritual discipline; I would pray for them every day, from the minute I suspected their existence. And they would respond -- surely, ineluctably. They were made to respond -- how could they do otherwise?

Well. I'm here to tell you, on the off chance that you shared my certainty, that they can in fact do otherwise. You can have the kind of homeschool where you parade around the house with the Bible when you finish another book therein; you can set the very most faithful example you are capable of setting. And your kids may say, "Nah. Not for me."

Kendra Tierney wrote a post in August about raising Catholic kids and it made me think a lot of thoughts about the things I knew before I had teenagers. It made me grateful, mostly, that I had recently re-read this Elizabeth Foss post. (Go read it. Right now. Really.) The thing about teenagers is that they are doing a big hard job: they are establishing themselves as separate entities from you. They are looking at who you are and saying, "I am not you." From that perspective, it makes a lot of sense that a kid whose parents have always said, "You can't miss Mass unless you have had a limb amputated within the past 24 hours" may become a teenager who says, "Actually, I can."

There are a lot of Christian parents pushing formulas, I think: for result A, try behavior B. But parenting is not cookery and our kids are not our projects. It's a tricky balance, having high expectations while letting our kids know we accept them as they are, but do you know what? If I get it wrong, I want to err on the side of acceptance.

The posts and books and Facebook links about fostering faith in kids are a little like BabyCenter forum advice on getting pregnant. The forum ladies will tell you to have lots of sex! Put your behind up on a pillow afterward! Or stand on your head! (after. not during.) Or try Instead! Also cough syrup with guaifenesin! The reality is that we don't know exactly what causes new life to spring into being. You can shape the environment, sure, but you have to wait for the spark to catch. You might wait a long time. We are not urging our children into lives defined strictly by rules and habits (or we shouldn't be, at any rate); we are urging them into relationship with God. 

We have to wait for the spark to catch. We might wait a long time.

I have been feeling a little bereft this fall: my oldest is gone; I've had the unexpected experience of hearing a child of mine say with certainty, "Nope, I don't believe that stuff." But I went to confession on Saturday seeking freedom from my more stupid reactions to the situation. It's self-defeating to say "so why bother working on good habits?" I don't want to be stupid, or fatalistic, or gloomy. It's important to take the long view, I know.

Still, I can't help looking back with mixed emotions at the younger version of me-- the one who bestowed a conspicuous name on her child with the best of intentions, certain that he would grow to be a man of courageous faith. This is me shrugging off the temptation to be discouraged, choosing to hope instead. Because I have it on good authority: our hope does not disappoint us.

Wherever it pleases

In May I went out to lunch with a friend. I met her early in my transition out of stay-at-home mom-ness, when she was sending various of her four daughters to the preschool where I was sending various of my four sons. She lives in my neighborhood and we've gotten together a few times over the years. I thought it would be a pleasant chatty lunch: kids-and-husbands small talk.

Instead the Holy Spirit blew into the room. She said, "How did you decide to become Catholic?" and I answered her question and wound up saying (while thinking, "This is a crazy idea"), "Hey, do you want to pop over to my church's adoration chapel?" and also (while thinking, "This is a silly question"), "Have you ever heard of Elizabeth Seton?" Now really, how many Presbyterians have heard of Elizabeth Seton? In a rather surprising coincidence, my friend said, "Actually I read a biography of Elizabeth Seton recently."

I took her to the chapel expecting her to find it weird and foreign, but she said, "This is amazing." And I showed her the statue of Elizabeth Seton, with her quote about the "triumph of joy and gladness" in receiving the Eucharist for the first time.

My friend wanted to receive the Eucharist too.

I sent her off with some books and my prayers, but I wasn't making any bets about what would happen next. She and her husband are really involved in their church. It would be a big change, becoming Catholic. Last week she left a message on my answering machine, but we never did connect.

I'm helping out with the Alpha course my church is running for the first time with RCIA participants. Imagine my delight and surprise when she walked in the door. She hugged me and sat down, and said, "You probably know why I was calling you." [I didn't.] "Will you be my RCIA sponsor?

Dispatches from the House of Geeks

The kids' take on The Martian: "Too much action. Not enough science."

This cracks me up. What Hollywood really needs is more equations, obviously.

P.S. We liked it despite the oversimplifications.