May Faire

Posted on March 28, 2010 by jeannie

One of my favorite events of last year was the May Faire that was hosted by the Waldorf School of Orange County and it’s almost that time again. This year’s May Faire will be May 1, 2010. I am definitely going again. It is everything you could want in a family-oriented holiday celebration.

Imagine hundreds of children (and parents!) dressed in white and wearing flower crowns. There were flowers EVERYWHERE! Honestly, you’ve never seen so many flowers in one place in your life.

Every grade performed a May Pole dance of increasing difficulty, until the sixth grade did some kind of spider dance that wound the entire pole in an intricate pastel pattern – and they UNdanced the pole. It was fascinating and impressive to watch.

The audience, on picnic blankets, was rapt. None of the vendor or food booths were opened until after the performances were over.

Folks entering the Faire. The flowers smelled wonderful and set a festive, gay tone.

After the grade school performances there was a small bluegrass band called Dogwood performing for the rest of the day – with a CALLER! She called square dances, Virginia reels, line dances, and other simple fun dances for the whole family, all day long. That alone was more than worth the cost of admission (which I don’t remember precisely – but it seemed small – under ten dollars.)

There were also some craft booths (making a flower garland was free – making a small bumblebee from wool roving cost a dollar), game booths, vendors of artisan wooden crafts, and other natural products, and the food? Well, you might expect some hippy vegetarian grub, and while that was an option, there were lovely grilled turkey panini sandwiches and heaps and heaps of buttery baked treats for sale. You could also choose grilled eggplant panini – yummmm. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food, considering that it was a school fundraiser picnic – but I shouldn’t have been – everything detail of this event was deliberately and consciously planned. I even caught myself wanting to meet the organizer and offering to be her apprentice!

It was all very very sweet and I look forward to attending this year. Christian will enjoy it even more this time around. Maybe we’ll see you there?

Posted in SoCal attractions, south OC, waldorf | Leave a comment

Letter to Christian at 22 Months

Posted on March 25, 2010 by jeannie

The degree of his lean shows his devotion to his Ganma - and Christian's not the type of kid to cuddle grownups besides his mama and daddy. Windmills and dandelions on his shirt.

On the train to San Diego with Anna and Aiden, two of your favorite peeps.

Playing with sticks at our weekly playgroup in the woods (yup - no shirts in Feb!)

What you typically look like when I'm at the computer.

Hi Baby!

You are gently snoring away on the bed behind me as I type. Your Ganma came to spend the day with you last week, and she kept making comments on the variation of, “Boy! He sure has a lot of energy!” Yes. You do. (She also kept saying, “LOOK at that grin!) You adore your ganma – and we’ll have to continue to make sure you see her regularly.

You’ve been knocking back those baby milestones with ease. You can stand on the window ledge by yourself! You can sneak out of the house while I’m cooking! You can open Mama’s sewing box and sprinkle pins around the dining room! You can drop keys into spots only accessible to San Diego Gas and Electric! (and yes I met them…) You can pee into your potty standing up! And yesterday when you dropped a toy from the patio onto the ground near the worm box, you made your way down the stairs, scrambled behind the hedge, emerged triumphantly holding the stuffed bunny, and started climbing back up the stairs, all in the time it took me to go in the house and put on my flip-flops.

Yes, you are growing up.

Your favorite mode of transportation. Moments earlier, you had your chin resting on your hand...

And you’ve started singing quite a bit too. I’m holding on to the hope that you are musically inclined. (Bella, while talented in many arenas, cannot hold a tune to save her life.) You sing bits of the alphabet song with made-up sign language symbols, Twinkle, Twinkle, Itsy-Bitsy Spider, etc. The other day when I sang the blessing for our lunch, you said “Blessings on meal” as soon as I was finished. I love LOVE hearing you sing. I only wish I could capture some of it on video, but just the act of bringing out the camera evaporates the mood and makes you self-conscious (and stop what you are doing to say, “cheeeeeese”).

Oh, what we'll endure for a dum-dum lollipop.

So far, you seem to love not just singing, but musical instruments as well. You yell if you spot a piano, so we always have to stop a moment to let you play. Yesterday you noticed that your daddy’s blanket had stripes that looked like piano keys, so you crouched down and started to pretend plunk away. I’m starting to brood on how to get a keyboard or piano into this house – and think too about suzuki method violin for you later.

Other tricks you do:

You come up and hug me and say “Love you, Mama.”

When I sneeze, you say “Gesundheit!”

If you are diaperless and you have to pee, you yell “PEE-PEE” and run hell-bent for the toilet to pee.

You can distinguish all three car keys from eachother and you LOVE to put keys in keyholes.

We lots going on – as per usual. You love your buddies from our weekly playgroup, and we are keeping up with our monthly visits to the Huntington Gardens. We’re even squeezing in San Diego Zoo trips pretty regularly – I’ll have to post pics from our last adventure there (we took the train for Anna’s birthday).

I feel like I had so much more to say, but it’s time to pick up your sister from school.

Until next time.

I love you Baby.

Love,

Mama

Your first bike (a balance bike - no pedals)! A joint, belated Christmas gift from Mama, Daddy, and my parents.

Posted in Christian Holden | 2 Comments

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Posted on March 24, 2010 by jeannie

The way my friend Sierra responded when I tried to show her this book mirrored my own reluctance to take on yet another fad – and then my quick acceptance and now championing of the book by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

It went something like this:

Sierra, you have to check out this book.

Aren’t you going to blog about it? I’ll try it after you blog about it.

You really get fresh baked bread every day for hardly any work…

Can you summarize?

Just look at the recipe – it’s two pages! Amazing bread! You should see the picture at Jaimie’s blog! I thought it was a picture from the book, but it was HER bread – her first loaf!

OK, let me see that… (pause) … Can I borrow this for one night?

The next day Sierra showed up at the park with fresh-baked artisan bread. And that’s about how it goes.

The basic premise is to mix, not knead, enough dough for several (4-8) loaves of bread and store it in the refrigerator. The dough is very wet and loose, which allows the gluten to align itself properly without kneading with the passage of enough time. When you want a loaf, you cut off a bit, “cloak” it, let it rise and bake. It really only takes five minutes – and we’ve had fresh bread with dinner ever since I put my first batch of dough in the fridge.

Now I love kneading bread, but the bare truth is, that I haven’t done it in years. Although I love fresh-baked bread, the time factor leans heavily in favor of my bread machine. Also, I’ve never made bread that looked so heavenly like European artisanal bread before I tried the recipe in this book.

I am a convert and yes, I am going to share some of the zealous buzz with you – right now.

While I recommend buying and reading this book for more explicit directions, here are enough guidelines for somebody who has already read the book to recreate the bread magic.

1. In a large lidded bowl (I used the ceramic insert of my slow cooker), mix 3 cups warm water, 1 1/2 tablespoons of yeast, and 1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt.

2. Mix in 6 1/2 cups flour, using a scoop-and-sweep method.

3. Allow to rise for at least 2 hours or until it begins to collapse.

4. Cover (not airtight) and store in fridge.

5. Before starting to make dinner, throw flour on top of the dough and cut off a grapefruit ball size lump of dough. Cloak it (with well-floured hands – stretch the surface of the dough and tuck underneath itself about 3 times) and put it on a well-floured pizza peel (I used a cutting board).

6. Let it rest for 40 minutes.

7. Begin preheating the oven with a pizza stone, cast iron pan, or cast iron lid already inside. It needs to preheat for at least 20 minutes. An oven thermometer is recommended.

8. Before putting in the bread, slide in a broiler pan with at least one cup of warm water in it into the same oven. That’s for steam.

9. Sprinkle more flour on top of the dough and slash the top a few times.

10. Slide the dough onto the pre-heated pizza stone and bake for 30 minutes.

You won’t believe your eyes.

And the rest of the book is filled with variations on this recipe – including cinnamon buns.

For 8 loaves, remember 6-3-3-13.

6 cups water, 3 T salt, 3T yeast, and 13 cups of flour.

Jaimie's first loaf - her pictures are much better than mine! Click on the pic if you'd like to visit her blog.

Posted in books, food, recipes | 9 Comments

Kyrgyzstan Scholarship

Posted on March 18, 2010 by jeannie

Many of you know that my brother Songbae, once a well-heeled finance banker in NYC, is now working for a non-profit economic development organization in Kyrgyzstan. He’s returning to his Peace Corps roots, I think.

In any case he’s setting up a “mini” scholarship program for the local employees in his current office.

If you are interested in donating money and love the idea of a 44 cent overhead (that’s a postage stamp these days, right?), read on.

From Songbae:

“Short version:

I am hitting you up for money.

Long version:

Background

When I say “mini”, I mean pretty small.  Last year our office paid for ten employees to take English classes four times a week after work.  The total cost was $250 for one month (that’s $250 for all ten employees).  The program was discontinued because of the cost, the economic downturn and poor attendance.

The Project

I’d like to re-start that program with private funds, i.e. your money, with two basic changes. First, only 50% of the payment will be made upfront with the remainder made if attendance requirement are met.  Second, other classes besides English would be included, e.g. accounting, etc.

The Ask

I’d like to make this a three month long “pilot” program and am looking for roughly eight donations of $100 (at $250/month for a total of $750).  In return, whoever you sponsor would be required to send you monthly email updates, tell you about their life in Kyrgyzstan and send pictures.

If you’re interested, you can just send a check in my name to my sister in LA.  Let me know and I will send you her address (though I haven’t asked her if it’s ok yet! Note: It is okay – let me know if you need my address).  Please don’t worry if this doesn’t sound interesting to you.  I’m sure I will think of other future projects that will need “funding” as well.

Hope all of you are well!

Songbae

P.S. I have no problem paying for this myself but I don’t think they’d let me :)”

Posted in do some good, says Songbae | 1 Comment

Spring Cycle 4 Circle Songs

Posted on March 16, 2010 by jeannie

Here are the new songs we’ll be using for our Waldorf in the Woods playgroup in April and May. Aren’t we lucky to have Jaimie’s lovely voice accompanying my piano plinking?

A Little Garden Flower

A little garden flower is lying in its bed.

The sun shines bright, overhead.

Down came the rain, dancing to and fro.

The little garden flower awakens, and now begins to grow.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU6V9ijMdzM]

Spring is Coming by Elisabeth Lebret

Spring is coming, spring is coming, birdies build your nest!

Weave together straw and feathers, doing each your best. Doing each your best.

Spring is coming, spring is coming

Flowers are coming too.

Daisies, lilies, daffodillies

All are coming through! All are coming through.

Spring is coming, spring is coming, birdies build your nest!

Weave together straw and feathers, doing each your best. Doing each your best.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP7Ke2-PiEM]

Mother Earth by Eileen Hutchins

Mother Earth, Mother Earth! Take our seed and give it birth.

Father Sun! Gleam and glow! Until the roots begin to grow.

Sister Rain, Sister Rain! Shed thy tears to swell the grain.

Brother Wind! Breathe and blow – Then the blade green will grow.

Earth and Sun, Wind and Rain! Turn to gold the living Grain.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJAZ_Z9k9tU]

Two Little Hands (Do all the actions in the verse)

Two little hands go clap, clap, clap.

Two little feet go tap, tap, tap.

Two little hands go thump, thump, thump.

Two little feet go jump, jump, jump.

One little body turns round and round.

One little body sits quietly down.

My Garden by Betty Jones

This is my wee garden plot

Extend palm, point to it with index finger of other hand.

I’ll rake it with care and it will grow a lot!

Make rake with spread fingers and stroke it over palm.

Peas and carrots and salad from seeds,

Poke index finger around palm to plant seeds.

I’ll plant and water and pull out the weeds.

Extend thumb from fist to pour; pinch palm to weed.

The sun will shine and bathe my garden in light,

Flex and contract fingers as sun

All the plants will be happy and taste just right!

Face palms up and wiggle fingers.

Here, try some, have a bite!

Extend garden palm outward, pick plant, pop into mouth, and chew.


Bunny and the Garden by Betty Jones

Begin by sitting in a circle; all children act like the bunny.

A bunny sits with pricked ears,

Listens well before he dares

To hop, hop, hop from his bunny hole

To the farmer’s garden where the carrots grow

To pick and nibble those crunchy delights

From the cabbage too, he takes a few bites.

With his tummy full, he washes his face

‘Til the farmer yells and begins the chase!

With a hippity-hop-hop and a leaping bound,

Bunny hides safely in his hole in the ground.

The Goodbye Song (REVISED to reflect lyrics and tune from A Child’s Seasonal Treasury)

Goodbye now, good-bye now, we leave you now and home we go.

Good bye now, good bye now. Good bye to all of you.

It’s time to go or we’ll be late.

Let the children lead us to the gate.

Good bye now, good bye now, we’ll see you soon again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MBYZQ8N7e8]

Posted in waldorf | 3 Comments

Alex Katz

Posted on March 15, 2010 by jeannie

Daytona Beach (1-5), 1996

It is a pleasure to see the landscapes and smaller works of Alex Katz, who is largely known for his portraits; they are imbued with the same stillness and inquiry into form and color that informs his more famous works. While not entirely escaping representation, the daubs of paints and etched lines are looser – and call more attention to themselves as materials. In Daytona Beach (1-5), 1996, a simple painted gesture progresses through a series of five aquatints of deepening hues. The first two plates are repeated, creating a moment of pause, before the brushstroke begins to increase in force, capturing the swelling intensity of an Atlantic wave (Greenfield Sacks Gallery, Bergamot).

Posted in art | 1 Comment

Woolen Pompom Chicks

Posted on March 12, 2010 by jeannie

The kids playing while the mamas are crafting. (Remember, one mama is always watching the kidlets.)

I’d like to post all the crafts we did for our cycle 4 of the Waldorf in the Woods playgroup, but this particular craft deserves a post of its own.

With Devana‘s directions (she’s our friend who happens to be a Waldorf teacher), we made adorable chicks for our Easter/Spring baskets.

We used less than an ounce of well-carded chick-colored wool roving and TWO cardboard circles with the centers cut out. Yarn will work too. You'll also need a piece of string.

Wrap the wool roving (or yarn) tightly around BOTH circles until you can't squeeze through the center anymore for maximum fluffiness.

Using a sharp pair of scissors, cut the wool roving BETWEEN the two circles.

Tie the piece of string around the whole thing between the two cardboard circles. TIE TIGHTLY. DOUBLE TIE. Trim ends.

Slip off the cardboard circles. If you don't need to use them again, you can cut them off carefully.

You'll have a shaggy, soft pompom. Trim into a proper chick shape with sharp scissors.

Finished chick has a tiny felt beak and bead eyes glued on. We wet-felted an egg (around a wooden egg) as our project the following week. These will be great in our candy-free baskets!

Posted in crafts, waldorf | 2 Comments

Taking Care of Baby Teeth

Posted on March 11, 2010 by jeannie

One might think that since I played games with names like Who Can Go the Longest Without Brushing Their Teeth as a child that I might not be a good source of information on this particular topic.

Public opinion has never stopped me before though.

Chad and I have made a dedicated effort to brush Christian’s teeth twice a day now for about six months. When people ask what we do when Christian resists – I answer that I do what Dr. Bob Sears recommended: Pin him down. He’ll stop fighting it after a night or two.

Granted, we use all the regular parental wiles first: we have a regular routine, we brush our teeth at the same time, we use a (fluoride-free) vanilla ice cream-flavored toothpaste, a tooth-brushing walrus finger puppet comes to sing, and we like to use a couple of teeth-brushing songs (Brush, brush, brush your teeth, Brush them everyday! First you brush the top, Then you brush the bottom, Keeps the cavities away – to the tune of Row Row Row Your Boat)

Christian rarely eats candy or drinks juice (we don’t buy it, but it still falls into our path). We do occasionally indulge in chocolate, and he gets a piece. He also likes raisins in his morning oatmeal, and sometimes I give him a fruit leather in the car for long drives.

Still, Christian got a cavity. We noticed a brown spot between two of his upper teeth and  a couple days later it was a full-fledged hole.

We visited an excellent pediatric dentist yesterday, Dr. Leslie Aspis. Her office is right across the way from Fashion Island. She is supportive of breastfeeding and attachment parenting. Christian’s teeth were cleaned and examined with his head resting in the doctor’s lap. Her gloves were bubble gum flavored.

It has been determined that she’ll probably be able to fill it without sedating him in six months or so. In the meantime, we’re keeping an eye on it, building comfort with the dentist’s office, and sticking to our teeth brushing routine with zeal. We’ll also start flossing every day.

What I know so far:

Brush baby teeth twice a day as soon as they appear.

Floss once a day.

You can start using fluoridated toothpaste when they know how to spit it out – around 2 years.

Despite the popular belief that breastmilk causes tooth decay, studies show that breastmilk can only cause decay if there is already tartar on the tooth. This means the dentist will recommend that you wipe your baby’s teeth with a damp washcloth after s/he is done nursing especially if s/he has fallen asleep.

If you would rather risk tooth decay than wake your baby on a nightly basis by sticking a wet cloth into your slumbering baby’s mouth, then make sure you are brushing those teeth with zeal. Pay close attention to the gum line.

Some dentists recommend using xylitol (via gum and toothpaste or sugar replacement) 5-6 a day to change the pH of the mouth, which studies have shown to reduce cavities. I get gum online at xclear.com.

Posted in babies, health | 2 Comments

Finishing One Project at a Time

Posted on March 10, 2010 by jeannie

However painful it is, my projects do sometimes reach a conclusion.

I like beginnings better.

Here are two endings from this week.

Birthday socks for Caryn. Note: the second one came out differently than its mate - sorry! Pattern is Classic Socks for the Family by Yankee Knitter. (Great pattern)

This is the spiral crocheted ball I made for Oliver's first birthday - the picture is a link that will take you to the pattern at withatangledskein.blogspot.com, but *warning* the pattern needs to be corrected. There's a bell inside.

Now to tackle Christian’s woolen vest that I started last winter. Just need to do the neck and arm ribbing and put the sucker together!

Posted in crafts, gifts | 2 Comments

Sharing the Love

Posted on March 9, 2010 by jeannie

For Oscar night I made a double layer devil’s food cake with a layer of raspberry and then smothered the whole thing in chocolate buttercream frosting.

Waaaay better than angel’s food cake, in my opinion.

But probably unnecessary to make a double batch of cake for four adults – even if we had five kids between us. It would have been perfect as one batch split between two pans with more raspberry in the middle and decorated with fresh raspberries on top. Wouldn’t have been such a weighty tower of temptation then, though.

We had enough to leave a quarter-cake slice with the friends who hosted the evening, and then still enough to share with no less than four of our neighbors the next day.

I think this might have to be my birthday cake this year, instead of the carrot cake I’ve been making for years.

Both the cake and frosting recipe are from williams and sonoma online – I followed the recipe to the letter except I substituted Earth Balance and soy milk for butter and milk. No wait, I reduced the sugar by 1/2 cup (so less 1/4 cup per batch) and for the frosting I used bittersweet chocolate and reduced the confectioner’s sugar to 2 cups (instead of using unsweetened chocolate and SIX cups of confectioner’s sugar). I guess I never follow recipes to the letter.

Posted in recipes | 3 Comments