Your First Real Knife

For Carbon's 8th birthday we gave him his first swiss army knife. His dad still remembers the first knife that his dad gave to him ... it's part of childhood, and in our culture especially boyhood, to carve and whittle and mess about with a pocket knife.

So far he has peeled the bark from a few sticks to make wands, and has gifted those to his friends. Watching that I am struck by the parts of childhood that aren't a "fad", the parts that seem unchangeable and classic ... and how much more meaningful those classic activities seem to be.

The Song of the Dandelion Fairy

Here's the Dandelion's rhyme:

see my leaves with tooth-like edges;

Blow my clocks to tell the time;

See me flaunting by the hedges,

In the meadow, in the lane,

Gay and naughty in the garden;

Pull me up - I grow again,

Asking neither leave nor pardon.

Sillies, what are you about

With your spades and hoes of iron?

You can never drive me out ---

Me, the dauntless Dandelion!

-- Cicely Mary Barker

And how true is that? I will always be behind the curve in pulling these beauties up - I even tried setting a bounty on them and paying the kids a dime for each dandelion they pulled and brought to me. We cannot defeat them - only live with them, and maybe even admire them.

Family Dinners

I'm trying to put more emphasis on our dinners as a time for the whole family to gather around the table, practice some more refined manners, talk to one another, and avoid other distractions for awhile. In this effort, I'm inspired by recently having The Family Dinner by Laurie David. The Family Dinner is partly a cookbook, but also a loving account of how one family made dinner the foundation of their family life. I didn't have time to try any of the recipes before it had to go back to the library, but I was inspired by the message none-the-less.

So I'm trying some new recipes - looking for things that feel fun, that invite participation at the table, that will surprise the kids a bit, and that are also healthy and economical.

I borrowed The Earthbound Cook from the library, and had one good recipe out of it and one disappointing recipe out of it. But the whole family liked the red curry chickpeas recipe, and it was pretty easy to put together quickly, so that was a winner.

Stuffed peppers from this recipe were fun, and the kids were mostly OK with them with BBQ sauce.

And we all really enjoyed Chicken Chutney Wrap Ups from The Splendid Table's How to Eat Dinner.

What are your favorite fun meals for family dinner?

Birthday Boy

My boy is about to turn 8! And so it was my maternal duty to throw him a party (or two, after tomorrow's family one).

We went simple: a pool party at the YMCA, a little juice and snacks, cupcakes, and those little Dover thrift books as party favors. It was fun, and just about right. I don't always have to work my fingers to the bones to make it fancy - the kids really have pretty simple tastes.

A bit of garden beauty

Each time I come home right now, I am struck by these lovely blooms in my front yard. Even the fairy bells, which are little more than aggressive weeds, are lovely this time of year as they ring the tree in our yard. A bit of beauty is good for my soul, and I'm glad to have some right outside my own front door.

and more institutional awareness ....

Pardon the photo quality ... all I had was my phone camera. But I wanted to show you these pictures from our Monday tour of the county government offices. We toured the Permitting Office (not too exciting for the kids), the Court House (where they got the coolest pencils with gavel shaped erasers), the Commisioners chambers, the Juvenile Courts, and the Coroner's Office (where there were real dead bodies). It was a long day, but the kids held up and were pretty polite and well-behaved, and they got to see how some of our government really works!




Real Judge's robes!

speaking of institutional awareness and kids ...

Last Sunday at church I tried something new and held an Annual Children's Meeting for all the kids in the religious education program.

As Unitarian Universalists, our fifth principle is The Right of Concience and the Use of the Democratic Process. For the kids, I usually translate that as "Believe in Your Ideas and Speak Up for Them, and Listen to Others' Ideas as Well", but really - how better to teach this than to do it.

And there is no point to practicing democracy if there are no real choices to be made. So on Sunday the kids had real choices: what program we would do in religious education classes this summer, where to send the money they collected this year in their children's offering, and what the homecoming party in the fall would be. I picked topics and choices I thought they would be interested in.

Then at the meeting we sorted into three committees, just like how the adults at church work on committees. The committees were:

The Open Minds Committee

The Helping Hands Committee

The Loving Hearts Committee

I had pre-written instructions for the "Chair", and whichever was the eldest child on that committee was chair and had those instructions for how to run the meeting. They asked for volunteer Recorders to keep notes on the meeting, but in the end only adults volunteered for that task. Oh well.

All the meetings went very well, and some cool decisions were reached. For the offering, the Helping Hands Committee created posters for five possible recipients they had selected, and then every child (all committees) got a sticker that was their vote, and they placed their vote on the poster they wanted the money to go to. The final vote was to send the money to relief efforts in Japan.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures taken of the action. Also, because it was Mother's Day our attendance was low - which made it easier to do this but fewer kids got to take part. I'm excited though, to make this part of our tradition in this religious education program, and to perhaps even give committees of children and youth more authority to make real choices and help design the sort of program they want to have.