Childhood

We've had a series of very chill weekends of late - weekends that have found us lazing on the couch after Saturday's Big Yam AM activity glut has abated, watching TV.  Some grocery shopping, some minor visiting, trips to the hill for sledding, being cozy and insular.

We watched the film Boyhood recently, which is tied with Grand Budapest Hotel for my pick as the most deserving best picture nominee.  My film friend at work, D, claims you can never take into account the project or context for a film in your assessment - he's of the opinion that each film has to be based on what you see in front of you.  I think with Boyhood, it's too difficult to disentangle the scope of the project from what you're seeing - the collapse of time, the rumination on memory, on what makes a life, the creation of something that suggests epic in the mundane banality of childhood giving way to nascent adulthood - they're all invoked and evoked in this film.  I'm not generally a huge Richard Linklater fan, but this is an extraordinary film.  To me, it veered ever-so-slightly into melodrama (more than I would have liked), but the performances are outstanding, and the ability for this shambling series of vignettes to conjure what it means to be a kid, growing up, is incredibly, powerfully, affecting.

The film is called Boyhood, but it is just as much about the growing of all the central characters - the boy, his sister, the mom, the dad.  They all grow and change and morph on screen.  The 12 years encapsulated by the film passing by in a series of discrete non-events - the way lives are lived and remembered.  Patricia Arquette's breakdown when she realizes her son is leaving home really hit home (keep in mind, the Big Yam is my child who is closest to university-age and he's four).  I just really empathized with her state of mind.  I am going to be a WRECK when they leave home.  A wreck!  You spend 20 years of your life growing this kid and then they're supposed to go off and be independent?!  AND FORGET YOU?!?  Nuh-uh.  My heart hurts just to think of it.  Like, how can I hold onto Lindsay's awe at what happens when you crack an egg, forever?

I hope this never leaves me.  Classic Quincess with his little cocked head, observing and thinking, thinking, thinking always.

Lindsay's vocabulary has skyrocketed in recent days.  He says "pancake" and "binky" and holds up his hands when he doesn't know where something is.  He likes to enter a room and say, "Hello!" and is always good for a reaction in the vein of what you saw above.  He can do a version of the "Happy Birthday" song that is pretty recognizable.  He's a treasure.  The Quincess' latest tip has been to get a lot of epic nosebleeds in the night (Must. Remember. To. Turn. On. Humidifier).  They both understand so much!  I will never get over the sight of Quincess, the little homunculus, being a tiny walker, moving from room to room with something in his hand.

He suddenly got a fever on Sunday night and was a lethargic little homunculus hot water bottle.  Sitting dazed on the Dotytron for hours.  I'd been talking to Dr. Rei who is in a measles, anti-vax spiral and I got all freaked out Monday morning and made our caregiver bring the babies back from the drop-in centre.  She said he looked "lonely in the eyes" all day, but he seemed to recover by Tuesday.  No more fever, 78% less eye-lonely.  All good signs.

We met up with some Markham crew and drove up in a bonafide snowstorm to experience our first ever escape room.  Uhhh, those things are hella fun.  Why haven't I spent my whole life doing this?  There was a lot of back and forth and we ended up in the "easiest" room.  Despite being told, repeatedly, not to over-think things, we totally overthought things and got owned.  It was a crushing defeat:

The upside was that I got to take the gang to Phoenix and spent about $40 on 4 dishes of food for me and the Dotytron and expose everyone to my favorite restaurant.

We also celebrated Ehmdo's birthday and I made this ombré cake that was quite delicious, though a touch labour intensive.

It's a dark chocolate cake with a mint buttercream frosting and a mint ganache.  I was worried it would be too minty but it was delicious.  Kind of peppy and fresh and worth the hassle in the end.  I've attached the recipe at the end of this post.  The Baked guys tend to favour a buttercream that's akin to the roux-based buttercream that I use on my classic Hershey's chocolate cake.  I actually think I prefer that cake recipe to this one.  The buttercream quality was indistinguishable from the one the Baked guys use.  I would make this again.

We watched Episode 4 with the Big Yam, with frequent pauses so he could understand and process what he was seeing.  He still calls Obi Wan "the old man" and Han Solo "the pilot" and is weirdly fixated on the death stuff, but he's working that out at the moment and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.  I feel like his questions about death are his own personal journey he's undertaking at the moment.

We went mid-week to see the Dotyron play in this school board wide band that mixes teachers and students.  He was playing the bass clarinet.  Guys, having instruments around is FUN.  I can't wait to get a piano!

I ate my weight's worth in the crispy browned cheese on top of my skillet lasagne

I tried my hand at making Jamaican stew oxtail.  It was lacking.  The oxtail was tender, but it wasn't as full-bodied as I would like.  Most of the recipes I encountered had you adding in some kind of all purpose "brown sauce" or "gravy" agent and that's just not my bag.  We served it with mashed squash and brown rice.

A lot of my time has been taken up with a fundraiser I'm organizing - a family dance for a local non-profit that's also kind of a city agency.  It's complicated (the City pays for 1-2 staff positions and the rest are matched by fundraising and government grants).  I'm on the revenue generation committee and I floated the idea for the dance so I'm spearheading the coordination.  Anna and Elsa from Frozen will be in attendance.  The Dotytron will be DJing.  There will be face painting and treats.  It should be a good time!  I hope it's successful.  I sent the poster I put together to a local mom who maintains a mailing list and she kind of shamed me, "Want to put together the same thing for [Big Yam's School]?  He still goes there, you know."  

I was like, B***H, please!  How dare you?  I sat on parent council for about 3 meetings before bailing.  I joined with a very specific purpose, to fundraise to improve the music programming.  Picture the most mind-numbingly circular, redundant, namby-pamby work meeting you've ever had to sit through, and then multiply it by a factor of 50.  That was it.  No decisions, no movement, a lot of talk and opinions.  A lot of older (I'm so ageist, I know), one-and-done, stay at home moms who were freaking tits about weird stuff.  Their financials were a mess.  I couldn't read the sheets at all.  It was a nightmare.  When they decided they didn't want to put money towards what I was interested in, I bailed.  But seriously?  Why do I have to defend how I choose to be philanthropic and give to the community to YOU, SAHM?  I didn't see YOU at any of the meetings?  It was infuriating.  PS, my kid was one of the top fundraisers for his grade at the Walkathon, so SHADDUP!    

It's beyond aggravating.  

Stuff like that is the reason why I don't want to go to any of your "parent socials."  In fact, I brought up that very thing at one of the parent council meetings I attended.  I was like, "um, if I'm going to the trouble of arranging babysitting, I kind of want to hang out with my own friends."  I got some nods of understanding and some people were like, "well, I consider the other parents my friends."  WHICH IS SO REVEALING, NO?!?  If all your friends are parents?  Worst!  I was asking at my book club last month, "Are you supposed to be friends with your kid's friends' parents?" and most of the women there, who are generally about 5-8 years up on me, and have kids who are older than mine, were like, "NO."  Phew!  That just seems exhausting.

Like, if it happens organically, then fine.  But also, people are jack a**es.  Like, mean and small and socially awkward.  It's the worst.  If you go to the playground for drop-off and pick-up, there are full-on cliques happening!  All the people who are kind of "like me" (the vaguely hipster, but weathered, parent) cluster together and don't make an effort to reach out beyond people "like them."  No one talks to the South Asian parents, or the parents who clearly aren't "in the know" and don't work from home, or don't have that weird fantasy work set-up that allows them to do pick up and drop off EVERY DAY and be totally integrated into their kids' lives.  My neighbour (who has become a friend), was saying that she went with her daughter to a schoolmate's birthday party and it was so cliquey and no one was talking to her, because the other parents already knew each other.

People suck.  Like seriously?  Just try to be a nice, normal human being and reach out.  If the person happens to be a recluse introvert who doesn't know how to connect, fine, at least you can say you gave it ye olde college trye.  Excluding people because you're too scared and fragile, as someone in your 30s, to be decent and expose yourself and all you want to stick with what you know, is not a good MO.  And I say this as someone, who is a champion grumbler, who probably needs a "No new friends" t-shirt the most.

Rant over (for now).  I've also been feeling particularly rant-y because of the whole vaccine thing making the rounds.  The Dotytron's cousin, who is a chiropractor (I know, I know), posted this stupid article critiquing vaccines (from a nephrologist, of course).  When I pointed out that none of the sources referenced by the author were peer reviewed, she linked to all the sources and pointed out they were reputable journals (Journal of Pediatrics, etc.)  What she didn't know (because reading comprehension, what?) was that all the peer-reviewed citations were for quotes, that Dr. Kook was REFUTING.

My manager sent me this photo recently and it basically applies to our world, all the time, but especially anti-vax moms in the western world who have no idea how to read, use a computer, do research, be critical.  Like, they're functionally illiterate and IS NO ONE WORRIED ABOUT THAT?!

This photo is my life right now.

I've also been mildly obsessing about the kerfuffle with Kanye at the Grammys.  I am a well-documented Kanye apologist.  I can't help it.  I think hating on 'Ye is hating on someone who is putting themselves out there, all the time, and that people who slag on him just can't read the nuances.  He's sublime.  He is self-aware and oblivious at the same time.  He tries so hard!  He's the person who said on network television that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."  When has Jigga or Beyoncé, with their carefully constructed personas, ever put themselves on the line and opened themselves up to potential ridicule?  Never, because they're robots.  I don't GET the Beygency.  Anyway, never forget:

The fact that anyone would bother caring about how Kanye "disrespected" Beck, or Taylor Swift is so funny to me.  It's the Grammys.  Like, you actually care?  You actually have an opinion on that other than "let's see what people are wearing and hear the performances, okay it's a bunch of people that only basic people care about, k thx bye"?  Like, we're going to talk about how "rude" it is when Kanye interrupted Swifty?  So bizarre.  I'm sorry, I didn't read the etiquette guide for appropriate behaviour at MTV VMAs.  

"No, Kanye" forever.  This is the first time they've seemed not like robots.

“Well first of all, Beck is one of the nicest guys and one of the most respected musicians in the game. So, there’s nothing that I will want to do as a fellow musician to disrespect him in any way,” Kanye said on the air. “And the weird thing is like, and I don’t feel like I have the right to take away from people’s moments, but the reality of it is — and case in point by who came up to me right afterwards — is it’s almost like a chiropractor. You know, you just get a little crook out like, ‘Wow, this crook has been there!’ It’s just a little jolt of truth, right? And then you know, everyone feels better after the fact, or everyone is way more famous after the fact, or everyone sells way more albums after the fact, and then Kanye just goes on being an a**hole to everyone.”

Realness.

Lagerfeld OUT.

Fin.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baked Wintermint Cake
not adapted at all from Baked Celebrations
serves 18-20 people

Classic Chocolate Cake:

3⁄4 cup dark cocoa powder

1 1⁄4 cups hot water

2⁄3 cup sour cream

2 2⁄3 cups flour, plus more for dusting

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

3⁄4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1⁄2 cup unflavored shortening

1 1⁄2 cups sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla

Peppermint Buttercream:

1 1⁄2 cups sugar

1⁄3 cup all-purpose flour

1 1 ⁄2 cups milk

1⁄3 cup heavy cream

1 1⁄2 cups unsalted butter, soft but cool, cut into small pieces

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Mint Chocolate Ganache:

6 oz dark chocolate (60–72%), chopped coarsely

1⁄2 cup heavy cream

1⁄2 teaspoon peppermint extract

For the Classic Chocolate Cake, preheat oven to 325° degrees.

- Butter and flour 3 cake pans, line with parchment, and butter the parchment

- Mix cocoa powder, hot water, and sour cream together and set aside to cool.

- Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, and set aside.

- Beat butter and shortening together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.  Add sugars beat until light and fluffy, about 5 more minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and then vanilla, and beat until incorporated. Then, slowly add the dry mixture and cocoa mixture to the batter, alternating the 2 kinds and ending with dry.

- Divide batter between 3 pans and spread evenly. Bake for 35–40 minutes (rotate the pans halfway through) or until a toothpick comes out clean. Then cool for 20 minutes then invert onto a rack to cool completely.

For the Peppermint Buttercream

-  In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk sugar and flour together. Then add milk and cream and cook over medium heat, whisking occasionally, until mixture comes to a boil and has thickened. This will take about 10–15 minutes.

- Transfer mixture to bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on high until cool, which will take about 7–9 minutes of mixing. Tip: Speed up the process by pressing bags of frozen berries or frozen corn against the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl.

- Reduce speed to low and add butter. Mix until incorporated.

- Increase to medium-high and beat until frosting is light and fluffy, about 1–2 minutes.

- Add vanilla and peppermint extract and continue mixing until combined. If frosting is too soft, put bowl in refrigerator to chill slightly, then beat again until it is proper consistency. If frosting is too firm, set bowl over a pot of simmering water and beat with a wooden spoon until it is the proper consistency.

For the Mint Chocolate Ganache

- In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring cream just to a boil.  Turn off the heat, add the chocolate.  Let it sit for a few minutes and then whisk together until the ganache is smooth.

eat and pour over bowl of chocolate. Then, let ganache come to room temperature.

To assemble the Wintermint Cake

- place 1 cake layer on a serving platter. Use an offset spatula to spread about 1⁄4 cup of ganache on top only. Let set for 1 minute in refrigerator.  Spread approximately 11⁄4 cups of buttercream on top of ganache.

Repeat with following 2 layers.

Crumb coat cake and refrigerate briefly, for around 15 minutes.

Frost sides and top of cake with remaining buttercream.

Mama Guilt

Guys, I just noticed after watching the Lindsay "Whoa" video posted the other day that the Quincess reaches his little hand out for a chance to crack the egg and I didn't even notice because I was so focused on recording Lindsay's reaction.  UGH!  I'm stewing with guilt, here.

I'm also stewing with guilt because I was a total psycho and was mean to the Big Yam when I was at the end of my rope and he had a deuce-related semi-accident.

Those are recent parenting fails I've experienced.  Me when I'm not at my best.  Ugh!  Why am I the worst, sometimes?!

I planned an outing with a neighbour earlier this week.  Our local library was holding a "Star Talk" with a professor from U of T's department of Astronomy and Astrophysics giving a short introduction on how to navigate the winter night sky and then a chance to look at Jupiter and its moons through some cool telescopes. In my head, I pictured the Big Yam sharing my enthusiasm for a learning experience, marveling at the cosmos, providing examples of his brilliance and his ability to formulate an oh-so-cute "question" for the professor.  What I got was: him winking his eye and holding it about 6" away from the eyepiece of the telescope and complaining that he couldn't see anything, hucking chunks of ice off the platform onto the sidewalk, tittering with his friend and distracting the audience during the Q & A, and then refusing to pick up and put on his coat/hat/scarf/mittens.  It was a real treat.  Then, when he came home, he kicked one of our cats in frustration and we had to put him to bed without stories.

On the plus side, **I** got a lot of out the talk and it wasn't the most egregious example of a planning outing gone astray, but it wasn't the best.  I get that he's a kid, and his days are long, and he's tired, and his life is full of upheaval and he's not great at regulating his emotions.  I'm TERRIBLE at regulating my emotions.  Half my life is spent atoning for my inability to regulate my emotions.  It's such a poor use of time!  The Big Yam is trying on a bunch of new stuff and I get that.  He's learned that saying something/someone is "stupid" is not acceptable in our house and he's been trying some 4 year old rebellion on for size.  We told him that if he wants to use "bad" words, he can go up to his room and close the door and practice saying them up there.  I also gave him the option of going outside on the weekend, shoveling snow, and shouting his "bad" words as loud as he wanted.  He took me up on my offer, which resulted in some hilarity.  A kid out back, bundled up, screaming, "YOU'RE STUPID!!!" as loud as he can must be a pretty funny sight for our neighbours.  Anyway, we all just try to do better the next day.  That's what I tell him during our fireside chats, and that's just what we all have to do.  You get up and you try better the next day.

Does this mean that when you are doing the bedtime routine after a day when you haven't been your best, and your kid turns to you all drowsy and smushy and gives an umprompted, "I love you" that your heart doesn't try to fly out of your chest while you simultaneously squirm with how undeserving you feel of that gift after your wretchedness?  No.  But you take that squirmy discomfort and you go to sleep, get up, and try again, for better, the next day.

Yesterday was Chinese New Year.  I took the day off of work and went up to Markham to hang with my mum because a) the cousins were in town and the Big Yam loooooves hanging with his cousins; and b) our power was going to be shut off in our house all day (on one of the coldest days of the year!) so I needed somewhere to take the kids.  The power was shut off because when we dug down the basement my once-chest-height electrical panel was now unreachable and for SOME REASON the Electrical Safety Authority thinks that's a safety risk.  Pfft!  So I dressed up the kids in chinoiserie and we went up there and ate lunch and hung out:

COME ON, right?  So cute!  I got hosed on the outfits at Pac Mall on the 

weekend, but it's so worth it.  

The Big Yam and Little little cousin are so funny together.  Little little cousin calls the Big Yam, "See-O" and they were working together on this lift-the-flaps alphabet puzzle type thing.  Little little cousin goes: "You should do 'S' See-O because it's in your name."  Big Yam, "No it's not!"

We went to visit my grandma at the nursing home.  Best group shot of life for the following reasons: a) Quincess' face/expression/puffed up hair, b) Lindsay's muscle-man shoulders from his outfit being bunched up, c) the level of colour coordination and balance in the picture is amazing.

Usually when you put them down for a nap, there's at least 10 minutes (and sometimes, up to a half an hour) of this kind of giggling, gabbing, and chicanery.  So cute.  These guys love a classic "smush your face against something see-through" gag, hard.

Tonight I'm rolling solo with the three while the Dotytron gets his tattoo coloured.  Even though I did it twice a week (and more) on mat leave, rolling solo with the three now always fills me with a faint dread.  We have been SO SPOILED having a nanny!  It's insane.  We have gone soft.  Friday night rolling solo is way more manageable though.  It should (will) be fine.  I'm not actually concerned, but there's always a bit of "How am I ever going to fill the TIME?!"

Thank god for Friday Night Movie Night and a fridge full of delicious Congee Queen leftovers.

Fin.

The Thick of It

The heart of winter - we are in it.  The Xmas decorations have come down, our xmas lights hang mournful and unlit in the window, waiting for a warm day when we can take them down.  *Edit: we just flicked the switch last night and turned them back on again!  Huzzah!  Casa Dotytron-Lagerfeld - leaving our Christmas lights on until April, since 2010.  Bits and pieces of our life strewn around the house, in a holding pattern because this renovation is taking a million years (which I guess makes sense when your contractor works a solid, 8 hour work week on your job?!).  It's unremittingly cold outside and the worst kind of winter cold, too - the kind with no snow!  What's the point of winter without snow?

Truthfully, I don't mind.  Our lives have been busy and full.  One might say too busy and full, really.  Weekend visits, hosting, the return of extra curriculars in our lives, made possible by the age of the babies now mitigating prospective babysitter's qualms.  The Dotytron went to a weekly neighbourhood jazz jam last week, I went to a Board meeting on Monday and hit up Quilt Sunday at a Parkdale sewing shop.  We hosted some friends for dinner Sunday, hosted a Friday PA day Micelli Monday session...we are happy, fulfilled.  Did I go to bed at 9pm last night?  Yes.  Was I lured in part because I'm reading a corker of a book?  Yes.  See?  No complaints.

Except for how I was verbally threatened by a psycho on my way home from picking out the basement flooring.  I might have cut a guy off (but I'm not sure?), he leaned on the horn, I gave him the customary gesture one does, he stopped his car in front of mine (in the middle of the road), got out, and started banging on the window the my car and saying all kinds of rude, racist, sexually graphic things.  It was terrifying.  He looked like Bob from Twin Peaks.  He was probably mentally unhinged, definitely had anger management issues.  I took down his license plate and have been meaning to call it into the police non emergency line.  I wish I had pepper spray in my car, I would have sprayed his eyes out.  I don't understand why people (men) think it's okay to say certain things to people (women) in anger.  Like, why go there?  It reminds me of the "appropriate" responses we're constantly trying to inculcate in our children - like, the Big Yam now will (sometimes) say, "I'm SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW!" I totally get that response.  People and strangers can make you mad.  If the guy had said, "You cut me off and I'm SO MAD AT YOUR RIGHT NOW!!!" I would have been like, fair enough, you're entitled to feel how you feel.  The level of detail and sexually charged violent undercurrent is not cool.  The galling thing is he took down MY license plate number (!)

The upside is that we picked out our flooring?  *Weak laugh*  We have decided on a white ash looking laminate.  We went back and forth.  Our architect recommend vinyl flooring.  They have high end vinyl now that looks like wood, comes with an acoustic backing, is virtually indestructible and 100% waterproof.  It's also kind of pricey (the good stuff is, anyway).  It's also plastic, at the end of the day.  The laminate we chose was 1/2 the price of the vinyl, and really, the basement is going to be for our personal use - it's not super high traffic, it's not a rental, we're not a condo building, so it's okay.  The waterproof argument is specious to me.  If my washer malfunctions and floods the basement, sure the floors will be okay, but it's not like I'm not going to have to replace drywall and all the other business, right?

We chose something that looks like this:

It's a white ash.  I wanted something neutral, light, and airy for the basement.  It's a basement, it doesn't get any natural light (only the bathroom and the bedroom down there will), so I wanted something that would contribute as much as possible to making the room seem expansive.  It has a slight grey wash to it, without being aggressively grey, and the floor doesn't have orange tones, which I like, because those orange tones just remind me of that awful 80s/90s parquet flooring that everyone had.

This is kind of the feel I'm going for, without being quite so stark and overtly Scandinavian/Helmut Newton-y.  About 75% less Helmut Newton.  And Helmet Lang.  LOL!  It's going to be warmed up with brass and warm wood, and big fluffy rug, and colourful throws, and oh yeah, a million kids toys and pieces of lego crunching underfoot.

This week I played a bass clarinet that the Dotytron brought home to practice with and we watched the movie Birdman and last night I went with an old friend to see Miranda July interviewed by Sheila Heti:

The average median age of the audience was about 25 and everyone looked like they had just slouched out of an Urban Outfitters store.  I was in my work clothes - black & white ikat print dress over a black turtleneck, tan belt, forest green (what my friend KD calls my "Masters" green blazer) blazer, and forest green tights, with black boots - I think I looked like I had slouched out of an Anthropologie - so one step up!  Probably more like I slouched off the Modcloth webpage.  Oh well.

Sheila Heti is the editor of that book Women In Clothes which I haven't taken a look at yet, but is all the rage with the McSweeney's set.  She's generally all the rage with the McSweeney's set.  I haven't read any of her work, but I'm thinking of suggesting her novel, How Should A Person Be? for the next next Academic Book Club.  It's described as "...A raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friendship, sex, and love in the new millenium."  It's a mix of memoir and fiction and apparently features graphic, uncomfortable sex scenes.  Like Girls meets The New Yorker.  I think it would be a good hate-read and at least engender a fruitful and spirited discussion.  I suspect the book will infuriate me and I won't find her a good writer, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?  Book club is never good when we read something beautiful and affecting and unimpeachable.  I read a critique about her much-lauded Women In Clothes project that takes the editors to task for featuring mostly white people.  Heti herself sports the misguided baby bangs of Janeane Garofolo circa Reality Bites.  Also, she's not young.  She seems nice - she smiled shyly at me when I passed her at the venue.  She makes for a horrid interviewer though.  Apparently she and Miranda July are quite close friends, but you wouldn't have known that from their interaction.  It was quite stilted and awkward.  Heti's questions didn't really seem to go anywhere and July's answers kind of spun off into nothingness.  I was like, guys, did you not go over this in advance?!?  Come ON.

It's always interesting to hear artists talk about their process and I did enjoy Miranda July's first film, You Me and Everyone We Know.  I also read her first collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, when it first came out, but was unmoved by the writing at the time.  That being said, she wasn't a very pithy speaker.  It was all very airy and floaty, words floating above their heads without coming down to ground on anything concrete.  She talked about a performance art piece she does where she auctions off items' belonging to members' of the audience and then gives the accumulated money to the person in the audience who "needs it the most" at that very moment.  I found it an interesting take on the fluidity of capital.  In that vein, I accompanied my friend who got her book signed and so I had Miranda July sign the paper bag that had held my kathi roll dinner and I'm thinking of putting it up on ebay.  The Dotytron and I had a conversation about performativity and capital afterwards which means that the talk wasn't for naught.

Heti and July referenced Tavi Gevinson so I think that's all you need to know about that.  I admire Tavi but I will also say that her performance in the film Enough Said was the worst element about what was otherwise a sweet, naturalistic, grown-up movie.

I'm glad I went.  I like going to things like that.  It is inspiring and gets me thinking, which I need.

Otherwise, I'm knitting a cowl that is the first knitting project that I've worked on in some time that has excited me.  Perfect for winter.  This is the yarn I'm using - the softest, squishiest, delicious yarn in my collection at the moment:

I tried my hand at free motion quilting for the first time using a fancy-fancy machine at the Workroom and I FELL IN LOVE with the process.  I'm going to try tackling it at home with my perfectly serviceable but not as bells-and-whistles-loaded machine.  This quilt is for the Quincess.  It suits his personality, methinks.  

This is a latin-style "porchetta" sandwich and a shrimp po' boy from a sandwich shop (Sully's) that opened up recently in the 'hood.  These were pretty good.  The fries there are tasty.  I would go back but I'm not about to rave about it or insist you travel across town to check it out.  So don't do that, okay?  You can do whatever you want, but don't blame me if it doesn't live up to the hype.  I'm not hyping it up.

A Spanish chorizo, tripe, pork belly and chickpea dish I had in the freezer, served atop polenta with a fried egg and gremolata.  That's good stuff, folks.

Classic weeknight meal - pasta with sausage, chickpeas, and kale and parm.  The babies have been jerks lately and are only eating the pasta.  It's not good.

See?  Look at how much attitude I get during a single dinner!  By the way, that "Waof?" Lindsey says while pointing upstairs is his way of asking for a bath.  Lately, he's been pretty good about saying "puh" and then pointing upstairs at the bathroom AFTER he's already done the deed.  We are so close to a breakthrough, but it eludes us yet.

Busy weekend ahead.  Heavy agenda ahead of eating burgers and fries and chocolate pudding with salted caramel, chocolate crumbs, and whipped cream, and watching movies with the boys, tonight.  Saturday is the Big Yam's day of activities: Chinese school, then ballet, then hip hop.  Meanwhile, the twins have inexplicably been invited to a birthday party (!)  Sunday is family chill time and then Super Bowl which for us means eating ribs and nachos and baked potato skins.  All in all, forecast is calling for a pretty cozy weekend in.

Fin.

Amirite?!

I try to resist gender norms, but seriously, guys with colds are the suckiest, giantest babies of babydom.  Admittedly, the Dotytron doesn't come from strong stock.  He's a delicate flower produced by a parental lineage of delicate flowers.  I've never heard someone complain MORE when they have a case of the sniffles.  It's all boohooing, and dramatic, public neti-pot irrigation, and huddling under blankets and really, I'm like, "the degree to which you are removed from being an immigrant could not be MORE APPARENT right now."  

The world grinds to a standstill.  He was going to take a sick day on Monday, and then our caregiver called in early Monday morning because her friend/roommate was having a baby, and oh yeah, her friend/roommate is here alone (her partner is still in the Philippines) and is of a somewhat advanced maternal age, and this is her FIRST child.  You know what?  THAT lady is going through something.  The Dotytron?  Not so much.  Anyway, I had a big interview on Monday, so I couldn't stay home, which means I heard even more moaning and groaning about HOW HARD it was going to be to be home with the babies all day and "don't expect me to take them to the drop-in centre" and I was luckily distracted from being completely enraged (newsflash: they're YOUR kids, too, remember?!) by my interview to comment that, OH YEAH, THIS WAS EVERY TIME I WAS SICK ON MAT LEAVE, YA DUMMY.   Deal wit it.

This is why white, middle class Canadians haven't accomplished anything of note, like, ever.  Because they are giant baby diapers about regular life.

I am teasing a bit, but I also want to note that I came home to: a disheveled Dotytron trying to put dinner together (dinner which consisted of warming a frozen soup **I** had made in advance, and assembling a mashed squash toast **I** had made in advance), after no less than 3 different phone calls to my cell clarifying things (I had already sent him detailed instructions during the day), in a kitchen that was almost completely upended, and a tiny Quincess placidly hacking away at a D battery on the floor with a phillips head screwdriver.  My Discerning Coyote friend noted on Facebook that the Quincess was probably minutes away from completing his perpetual motion machine, which is probably true, though no less dangerous.

We had dinner at our friends' JJ & S's house last Saturday night, and JJ noted, as the Dotytron and I po-go'd in and out of our seats throughout the night to: feed babies, close the door to the basement, bring babies down from bar stools they had clambered up onto, remove glass jars from baby hands, change diapers, and so on and so forth, "this is the most labour-intensive time in parenting."  I COULDN'T AGREE MORE.  Quincess is full-on walking now, and while Lindsey isn't as keen and loves being carried more than anything, they are irrepressible imps who climb/destroy/reconfigure/disregard anything and everything.  We've started having to be more disciplined with them, which means that I've started to get quite stern with Lindsey.  He likes to chuck his food off of his high chair tray so the other night, I told him quite firmly, no, and if he did it again, he wouldn't be able to eat with us.  He's only 19 months old, so of course he didn't get it, which means I had to turn his high chair away from the table and the Dotytron and I desperately tried not to crack up at the sight of his big, open, Lindsey-Lou-Lou face craning around and being all confused and mildly dismayed.

There have been some very funny Big Yam moments lately.  Like:

The Big Yam, spying my discarded bra on the bed: "I'm going to wear these boobies!"  Puts it on, and then: "it fits perfectly." Strutting around, he pauses, "I'm a...babysitter" (with a tone of wonder).

The other night, while we were debriefing from an evening that featured a bunch of fireside chats, punctuated with time outs and screaming (both).  Me, probing, "Do you think you had a good day?" Big Yam: "No."  "Why?" "I had to do a lot of dealing. With you. About me."

We drove down to visit my sister this past weekend and drove down with my mum in the car.  She was sitting in the back with the Big Yam and as we pulled across the border, asked if we'd seen a show called "Border Security" which shows people trying to smuggle stuff across the border?  I guess?  I don't know, we don't have cable.  She asks us if we've seen the show and is explaining it when the Big Yam replied, "No.  We don't even know what you're talking about."  LOL!  The best is how he answered for all of us.  So good.

The Dotytron hosted an inaugural Bourbon Night two weeks ago.  People (all guys this time) paid a small amount to get pours from 6-7 bottles in his collection, food, beer, and their name entered to win a bottle that was raffled off.  It seemed to be a good time.  Our buddy is a chef at a local barbecue restaurant and HOOKED the Dotytron up.  He served smoked chicken wings, ribs, brisket burnt ends, smoked duck tacos and fixings, barbecued jalepeno poppers, cornbread, pickles, baked beans...it was unreal.  My ex bf came over and had a visit before I made myself scarce and went out.  It's funny reconnecting with people now that I'm a fully realized adult (or something like it.)  I'm just not fussed about stuff any more.  I don't even know why I lost touch with some people.  It really is true that when you hit your prime 30s, you just don't have room in your life for anything extra.  Living is too much of a slog to give into the dramas.

My ex bf reading Lenny a story.

This weekend was fairly chill.  We went down to the States, I got my George Nelson bubble lamp (swoon!) fixture for our basement.  We ate more than we should.  We caught up on movies and played charades.  I attended my niece's hockey scrimmage and complained the ENTIRE TIME about how I don't see the point of sports (a bit of an over exaggeration) and how I could never see myself actually CARING about how my kid's sports team does.  It's just not in me.  Anyway, it was a good time.  The Big Yam loves being with his cousins.

The two cousins off on a mission to Mars.

 Lenny was so pleased with his little cowboy hat that we shelled out $15 in the Cracker Barrel "General Store" to get it.  He loves wearing it and has been chasing it around the house - "hat. Hat. hat."

An osso buco, polenta, gremolata dinner recently.

Freezer wedding soup with a mashed squash toast based on a Smitten recipe.  I used kabocha squash, halved, drizzled with oil and salt and pepper and roasted in an oven until soft.  Then we mashed the flesh with some salt and pepper and spread it on ricotta-smeared toast and topped it with caramelized onions and a drizzle of good balsamic.  This was a BIG hit.  Huge.  All three kids went to town on it.  The key was toasting the toast in a frying pan (oil both sides and then toast over medium heat until crunchy on the outside but still soft-middled).

A recent breakfast - leftover bacon-wrapped smoked jalepeno poppers (spicy!) sliced on top of avocado toast, topped with a fried egg.

Rice cooker soy sauce chicken thigh rice with dried shitakes, Chinese sausage, and garlic sautéed choi on the side.

Fin.

Winding down 2014

As is seemingly the norm around here, I started drafting this post three weeks ago.  In that time, we've had Christmas, New Year, a Dotyron birthday, a Dotytron inking, a horrible anniversary marked, and now this, the Sunday afternoon before the return to thrumming, frenetic, "normal" life.  The babies are asleep, the Dotytron is napping, the Big Yam is serving out his weekend "quiet time" with relative calm in his room, playing with Lego, and I've taken a break from piecing the back of a quilt to update.

Quiet time and lazy Sundays are the stuff that parents-of-young babies dreams' are made of.  The idea that there will be a guaranteed two hour block of everyone engaged in their own individual, quiet, personal pursuits is the harbor that the Dotytron and I cling to when we're raking a tsunami of Duplo off our carpet for the 15th time in a day.  When every counter in our newly renovated kitchen is covered with last night's dinner tailings because we just weren't up for the last and final wave of cleaning after rousing ourselves from the daily 9pm "trying to find just the right thing to watch on Netflix, giving up, and passing out" ritual, and each child is clamoring for a different morning dairy product (cottage cheese! Yogurt! Smoothie!), the flashes of the Great Promise that is family weekend quiet time is what sustains us.  Two uninterrupted hours to work are a glorious, glorious thing.

Our two week holiday was as usual, about half holiday and half visits, eating, some stress, living.  We actually had our s**t pretty much together this year - so much so that I managed to bang out a quilt top and quilt back this break.  That's not nothing, folks.  We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with Momma D and Emdo.  We spent Boxing Day weekend with my family.  We had 4 (FOUR!) meals out (!!!!) and a very low-key NYE.

I'm telling you, man, I'm not buying a single thing for my kids ever again.  Especially not around the holidays.  It's insane!  Every year, we talk about "scaling back" and every year, present opening takes a minimum of 2 hours and by the end of it we're all pasty and clammy and shell-shocked from the whole ordeal.  The Big Yam has been consistently asking for a "skeleton" from Santa since about the end of Halloween (I think he got his holidays confused) and opened his present from Santa on Christmas Day and was such a giant nerd about how into it he was:

I love my nerdbomber kid, so much.  
Post present opening remark: "How did Santa know I like dead things?"

Pre-hairtcut photo shoot for grandparental units

Quincess Leia "cheese face"

Cousins shot - Lenny doing his "cheese" face like whoa

Lenny "cheese" face in detail

Classic Quincess - such a little daydream believer

The one year anniversary of Cousin Al's death happened over the break.  This coincided with Pixar's Up joining the regular rotation in our household which means that the Dotytron and I have had to sit through the opening montage which contains all of human life and love in one dialogue-less sucker punch to the gut (and tear ducts).  Lots of crying ensues.  Lots of tears shed into the Big Yam's head as we pull him into a wriggling, confused embrace and use him as a human handkerchief to sop up our tears.  We've found some solace recently when I showed Guillermo del Toro's new animated film, The Book of Life, which talks about the tradition of the Day of the Dead in Mexico, and how those departed loved ones of ours live a glorious, joy filled existence in the Land of the Remembered, so long as you continue to honour them and keep their memory alive.  I've said it before, but it is such a beautiful way of constructing a cosmology and taking back at least a little agency from the grip of sadness in the wake of a loved one's death.  It also mitigates the anger, too - at the capriciousness of fates, at the inevitability of our own mortality.

We celebrated the Dotytron's birthday with a Louis CK style "bang bang" (two different meals at two different restaurants).  We started at Kintori Yakitori with the seafood selection sampler and the yaktori (chicken) sampler, and added some grilled tongue and chicken knee cartilage, fried.  This place is owned and operated by the Guu crew and I dunno, man, those places just SPEAK to me.  There's something about it all - the vibe, the music, the hot Japanese cooks, the fact that the Asian to non-Asian ratio is about 80:1 - these are my people.  We hopped downstairs and hit up some shio ramen at Kinton Ramen after.  Technically, I know that it's not a true "bang bang" - I don't think it would fulfill the requirements - the meals aren't different enough and aren't like, "full" meals, but I did finish my entire bowl of ramen down to the last drop, as I decided that I wanted to join the "Kinton Bowler" club which requires you to eat insane amounts of ramen to get some throwaway prizes (30 bowls gets you a Kinton towel though!)

Other things that happened:

We left the babies with our caregiver and snuck off and ate a delicious medianoche-filled lunch at La Cubana one day.  I really like that place, teensy tiny tables, delicious habanero honey fried calamari and all.  I really hope that the normalization of Cuban-American relations doesn't change the cuisine.

I went to the AGO with the Big Yam and my friend Montreal I to check the Alex Colville exhibit.  The Big Yam was not a fan.  I was, but unfortunately, if you pay for a special exhibit, bringing a person the Big Yam's age to the AGO is not your friend.  You are working at cross-purposes.  He found the exhibit "boring," the paintings with the animals "scary," and I got a lot of "I want to go home."  He wanted to run around in the Henry Moore sculpture gallery, which is what we ended up doing.  

Mid-haircut, I had to tour a new electrician around our basement wearing this amazeballs shirt that Momma D got me for Xmas.  It would be an XL on Rita McNeil.  It is hilarious.  Oh, did I mention that half my hair was straightened and clipped up (only half?!)  

I hung out with this little bobblehead.  HOW CUTE IS THIS BABY?!?  Short answer: the cutest. 

We had the Roomie, and Montreal I, and L'Armi over one night and we were all in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner when L'Armi called disinterestedly from the living room, "Uh, we have a bit of a situation here."  So we all walked over and saw that the Quincess had smeared about half a tub of Vaseline over half his face.

I made this malted buttercream chocolate stump (it's supposed to be a buche de noel turned on its' side - or what Dr. Rei calls a "log of yule") courtesy of the Baked team.  Recipe is here.  Overall, the recipe was a bit fussy and indulgent (17 eggs!) for a decent yield.  You make a genoise and spread the buttercream on and roll it up.  I don't think I would make it in that form again.  Or maybe cut the recipe in half?  I always find genoise cakes kind of dry.  

My 2014 Xmas cookie plate (left to right, top to bottom): Tartine's salted chocolate rye cookies, classic chocolate chip, chocolate oatmeal, Smitten's buckeyes, Martha Stewart's gingerbread, malted chocolate chip, maple brown sugar, gingersnaps, Dutch vanilla almond sugar cookies.  I would re-do the Tartine ones.  The buckeyes are now standard, the gingerbread recipe produces a nice, cakey, soft gingerbread so that's our go-to now as well, as are the malted milk chocolate.  My gingersnaps always over-baked and got too crisp this year.  The Dutch sugar cookies were a bit bland and disappointing (I was supposed to be able to pipe the batter but it almost made two piping bags explode!), and the maple brown sugar ones were also too sweet.  

Our New Year's eve saw me lining up at Diana's seafood on the BUSIEST SEAFOOD DAY OF THE YEAR like a total idiot for oysters.  We also made some fresh pasta and then the Dotytron went out briefly for drinks with his friends while I snuggled in with the Big Yam and contentedly fell asleep at 9pm.  Good times.

Sunday supper was a return to normalcy (read: not cookies for dinner).  A bastardized Hungarian goulash (according to Tillers, my choice to omit the caraway is sacrilege), whole wheat spaetzle, and braised cabbage.  

I'm nearly finished a quilt!  Fastest turnaround time, ever.  Details to come, but suffice to say that on Sunday night, while the Dotytron and I puzzled through the amorphous and entirely implausible motivations of the sadistic multinational corporation pulling the strings in the Maze Runner movie, I enlisted his help with basting.  Which I will never do again as almost all his pins were stuck to the carpet and we had to re-do them anyway.  But also, look at my handsome progressive partner in his Zubaz!

Fin.

Oh Hai

Remember me?  What's been going on with you?

I have a kitchen reno post all spooled up, an epic book review post, and now this general catch-up post.

I lost track of time and then all of a sudden December was upon us, with all that "December" entails - frantic gift buying, cookie baking, friend visiting, and memory-making - made all the more challenging by the fact that all our stuff is currently in Momma D's basement/garage.  Compounded by the fact that we just spent an ungodly amount of money (that we don't have, per se) making a giant litterbox for our cats in our basement (at least, that's how they're thinking of it) and it was only going to be sealed up with concrete yesterday.

All that being said, here is the latest from my renovation diaries:  I can't recommend my Underpinners enough.  They BLASTED through the job.  What usually takes them 6 weeks took them 4.  Yesterday we got our concrete pad poured which means we'll be able to walk on the floor today.  As of right now, the staircase is short about 4 steps and we've been going up and down on it into the basement, using a pallet leaned up against the wall as the last 4 "stairs."  I'm a little confused how a staircase minus the bottom third can even support any weight, but I guess wood is a magical substance?  That's how I'm rationalizing it anyway.  I basically HAVE to believe that wood is a magical substance after seeing the state of the 100+ year old joists in my home.  Bonus points to this text exchange from one of the guys on my underpinning team:

Steven: "...the concrete pour went smoothly."
Me: "Is that a pun? Cuz if so, I like it."
Steven: "I was hoping you'd catch that."  

Obviously, the sexual tension is unbearable.  J/K J/K J/K.

We've had a contractor in to quote us on HVAC and framing, drywall, and finishing.  As I've mentioned, I'm acting as the general contractor on this job so I'm scheduling my own drains guy, a plumber (who is different from a drains guy, as it turns out), and an electrician.  I'm learning a LOT about building code and permits and I'm feeling pretty good about the contractor we've hired.  He's worked for a friend of ours and according to my friend, the contractor and I will be a match made in heaven.  He's VERY cheap and I basically just need him to be my hands.  With my design vision and his labour, we should be able to make a beautiful space together.

We bought our Xmas tree this weekend.  Even though the Dotytron is 6'4" and WE KNOW THIS, we saw that the tree was towering over him and still convinced ourselves we could get it into the house?  I don't know why.  We ended up lopping off about 2 feet and the point is scratching the ceiling.  The Dotytron gets super-angsty about the tree every year.  He has very specific tastes and they are never appeased.  This year, we bought off some dude who owns a farm, sets up shop in the Canadian Tire parking lot, and lives in a trailer for the month of December, probably subsisting on the Canadian Tire chip truck fries, which isn't a bad life, if you ask me (they are hands-down the best chip truck fries I've ever encountered).  We bought a white fir, which has a lot of breathing room between the levels of boughs.  This is good for decorating - lots of boughs for hanging decorations on.  However, the bark seems soft and I think the tree is leaning.  The memory of our tree falling over last year is still fresh in my mind, so I feel like I'm walking around with a nervous weight in my chest as I await the call from our caregiver that the tree fell on one/both of the babies and (even worse) all my vintage ornaments got smashed to pieces.

In preparation for the furniture rejigging that's going to occur once the basement is done and our official family recreation room goes subterranean, I've been trawling Craigslist and Kijiji for furniture deals.  I found a Thonet-style chrome rocker for $40.  FORTY!!!  I'm probably going to end up re-selling it for more.  Another find was two Bertoia style diamond chairs (even the knock-offs go for $450 EACH!) for $260 (total for both).  I bought two sheepskins to throw on there and I finally unpacked them the other night and let's just say, the bliss of lying on a fluffy sheepskin was so nice that it resulted in me and the Dotytron looking up queen-sized sheepskin blankets, which obviously spiralled into looking into fur blankets.  I was so taken with my sheepskin that $3000 for a red fox comforter suddenly seemed like a sound idea (within the YOLO framework).  Anyway, get a sheepskin.  They are AMAZING!  I laid on one and put the other one upside down (so that the fleece was touching me) so I was in a sheepskin cocoon and basically had the best nap of my life.  I bought them online - they were $60 each, which I think is a pretty good price.

Both Wonder Twins are now walking, with the Quincess having made up for his earlier deficit.  He now walks more often and confidently than Lindsay Lou-Lou, and is a big fan of giving himself a round of applause after a display of upright prowess.

This video is long and only appeals to people related by blood to the Wonder Twins.  I no longer have time to edit the videos I'm throwing up on here.  However, video footage of kids is the best.  We went down memory lane and checked out video footage of the Big Yam from two years' ago, this time and it was heart-rending.  Also, if you stick around to the 2:20 mark you see Lenny's crip-crawl and at the 3:19 mark you can hear the disgustingly adorable way Quincess says "peeakaboo."

Here is what I've been cooking lately:

Homemade sticky buns!  I subbed out 1/2 the flour called for in the recipe with whole wheat flour.  The sticky sauce is delightful - a bit of honey adds some depth and acidity to the sweetness.  I only used half the amount of the sticky sauce called for, but drizzled a bit on each bun as they were warmed and eaten.  Recipe here.

Brisket!  I love making brisket because it means we have brisket braising liquid in the house, which means that our shepherd's pies, mushroom pastas and the like are considerably enriched.

This was freezer pozole I warmed up one night when I was manning the dinner mayhem solo.  This was a lifesaver.

Biscuits!  I'll also post my go-to biscuits recipe below.  It's a little fussier than most, but I do love it - the results are tender and flaky, with a good burnished crust.  Sturdy enough to take being sandwiched around eggs and bacon, and delicious on their own with butter and jam.

I don't think I've made a double-crust apple pie in over a decade.  I made this one and instantly questioned why I had avoided for so long.  Based on this recipe from Joy the Baker.  Overall, I was happy with all elements of the recipe except I would dial back or omit the nutmeg entirely, and my apples shrunk down a lot so there was huge gap between the top lid and the filling.  Possibly due to my choice of apples (granny smith).  I might try golden delicious next time and see if it yields better results.

Rice cooker one-pot meals!  Soy sauce chicken rice with Chinese sausage (lap cheong), chicken thighs, dried shitake mushrooms, brown basmati rice, and some stir baby bok choy added at the last minute.  I used low sodium soy sauce and this was a HUGE hit.  

I feel like I eat a variation on this meal about once every two weeks.  "Slop on a plate topped with a fried egg and served with guacamole."  In this case, we have black bean and sweet potato migas.  Traditional migas has you stirring scrambled eggs into the mixtures along with the crumbled tortillas chips.  I wasn't sure how that would be received by the younger folk, so I added the eggs on the side.  

Last night we had my mom over for dinner so we had a classic Sunday night lasagna with caesar salad. I made two, so we have one for the freezer.  Each lasagne got a layer of 1lb of frozen chopped spinach incorporated, which means the kids got some vegetables in there as well.

In terms of kid eating habits, I can say that one of the good points of having a nanny is that the babies pretty much only eat my food, and are thus maintaining their ability to be good eaters.  They obviously have their favorites - yogurt, hot dogs, and sweets - and we have definitely been more lax about letting them have the odd treat than we ever were with the Big Yam.  They also have their preferences - they will rarely touch raw vegetables (save avocado, and the odd grape tomato), but they eat cooked ones fine.  The Quincess loves his carbs, hard.  We have been referring to him as the "rice queen" (tongue in cheek, of course) because he loves rice so much.  They will also eat anything in a pie shell - so a spinach and ricotta pie or a quiche loaded with vegetables goes down the hatch easy, to the point where one 9" pie isn't enough for the whole family.  This is frightening.  The Big Yam is a bit more resistant.  He eats baby carrots, and loves cooked beans and peas.  Other vegetables are a bit of a crap-shoot, but we can make him try, with reasonable success.  One of the things working in our favour is his lack of numeracy skills.  When we're negotiating the number of bites he has to eat, he frequently overshoots.  "How many bites do you think?" "TWENTY TWELVE!"  

As we enter the holiday season, here are some fun gift suggestions for kids the Big Yam's age.  This is all spurred by this awesome birthday present my sister got him, which is a logic/reasoning game called "Rush Hour Jr.":  

Different levels require you to block the ice cream truck in with other vehicles and the kid has to figure out how to get the ice cream truck out  the opening, while only moving the other vehicles as their orientation/path dictate.  It's super-fun, and the Big Yam has a great time playing it.  This lead me to other games made by the same company, Thinkfun.  They're all kind of nerdy, fun, logic/reasoning games.

This game allegedly teaches kids coding and programming and is "the most backed boardgame in Kickstarter history." It's won a tonne of awards.  

Bug Trails is a colour-based dominoes-type game.  I tried to find it for a stocking stuffer, but no luck.  

Mighty Mind is a classic, Montessori-type "toy".  It allows kids to make the shapes/figures outlines on the cards using shapes.  Kids learn dexterity and geometry and develop their spatial reasoning.  This was a component on the gifted test, and I have always nerdily been into IQ test type "games" - so this is right up my alley.  They make a magnetic version which would be good for travelling/road trips. I bought this as a stocking stuffer on the pricier side of things.

Magformers are a magnet-based building system that allows kids to do non-directed building and construction of three dimensional objects.  The fact that the sides of the shapes are magnetized is a big plus for me - not only is it cool, it's also handy for clean-up purposes.  For reasons I can't quite fathom, Magformers are RIDICULOUSLY expensive.  Like, the standard set is $100.  That's crazytown.  This reminds me that I should start looking online on Craigslist or Kijiji to see if I can find anything used.

For kids who like BopIt! (which my kid does), then Simon is the classic.  It's a pattern matching game - Simon shows you an increasingly complicated sequence that you have to match.  They apparently make a pocket-sized one (again, this would be good for travel) that I've heard retails for $9.99 but for some reason Amazon.ca is listing it for SIXTY FIVE DOLLARS, which is bananas.  I'm not sure why it's so expensive, unless there's been a run on them?

We kept it fairly simple (?) for the Big Yam this year.  We got him a robe, because our house is always cold, a fact that should be ameliorated once we get all our ducts connected.  One of the good things about the basement reno is that pulling everything open and apart revealed that  we have entire sections of HVAC that aren't connected properly, which we will have rectified and then maybe our house won't be an icebox all the time.   I bought him some books.  We got him the magnetic Mighty Mind and my mom bought him the Robot Turtle game.  I also got this Thinkfun dice game as a stocking stuffer, alongside some boxes of Smarties (which he loves), a magnifying glass, and some cheap wind-up toys.  The babies are being given the gift of life, in addition to a set of jammies that matches a set we got for the Big Yam.  I also bought a set of second hand gears for them, which should go along with a hand-me-down gear set that I gave my nephew ages ago.  

What are all you parents getting for your wee ones this Xmas?

Fin.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Buttermilk Biscuits

4 2/3 c. all purpose flour

1 1/2 t. cream of tartar

1 1/2 t. baking soda

1 1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. cold vegetable shortening

approx 2 c. buttermilk

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into chunks and softened at room temperature

1 T. unsalted butter, melted.

- stir together dry ingredients, then blend in shortening with your fingertips or a pastry cutter until no big chunks of shortening remain.  The mixture should look like a crumbly streusel.

- add 1 3/4 c. buttermilk and stir, adding the remaining buttermilk a bit at a time if the dough seems dry.  You want a soft, sticky dough.  Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat into a flat rectangle, about 1" thick.

- Take 1/2 of the butter and spread it on the top 2/3 of the dough.  Fold the dough in thirds like a letter, and then turn the dough letter 90 degrees.  Pat it out again into a 1" thickness and repeat with the remaining butter.

- Pat out the dough 3/4" thick and then use a circle cutter to cut out the biscuits.  Brush with the melted butter and bake in a preheated 450F oven until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes.