tiny bridges

I made two bread-based things this week and was all excited to post about my results, but the actual bread didn’t turn out well and I think it was due to operator error, rather than the recipe, so I’m going to try again and tell you about it later.

The other recipe was for bagels, which turned out great. (Although, being me I feel the need to make some changes next time). The story behind the breakfast: Saturday night I fell asleep putting Fiona to bed and didn’t clean the kitchen. The next morning I took one look and decided that Fiona and I would go out for bagels. Naturally I then thought “I could make these at home” So I did.

Here is the recipe I used, chosen because the picture looked the way I wanted mine to turn out and I had most of the ingredients. I used wheat germ instead of bran flakes, since that’s what I had on hand and I think I’ll add more salt next time (this may have been because I don’t generally measure salt when making dough). I’d also like to try some kind of egg wash, or possibly just boiling each side a bit longer, for a more bagely exterior. Fiona and I have been eating them up every morning since.

For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to finish some of the piles of half-done projects lying around, and I’ve been making progress. (Although it may be a two steps forward, one step back scenario, since I’ve also started some new projects).

So far I have:
Sewn up and fulled my pumpkin
Hooked and attempted to full my ?
Fixed a wonky sleeve on a refashioned shirt for me
Mended holes in a pile of shirts, pjs and pants for the whole family
Embellished a few more stockings for our Advent Calendar
Weaved in the ends on some dishcloths I knit, well…let’s not think about how long ago

And I have the feeling there are a few others I’ve forgotten about. Goal for this week: Remake Fiona’s Butterfly Dress so it will actually fit her, finish another dress I’ve made for her out of an old shirt and make matching bloomers, fix the hole in Liam’s pajama pants, refashion another long sleeved shirt for me…well I could probably go on, but realistically that’s probably already more than I can do. I’m ready to try, though!

So Fiona is still pretty much obsessed with The Magic School Bus Series. When we’re not reading the books we’re pretending to be the characters or Fiona is pleading with me to read just one more. The books are fun, but pretty long. For those of you not familiar with the series, it’s sort of a cross between a picture book, a comic and a text book. The main text tells the story and gives a few facts, the illustrations include speech and thought bubbles that are mostly jokes and there are “reports” from the students on most pages that explain some aspect of the subject of the book.
Dinosaurs are still the most popular subject, so I checked out the MSB chapter book about dinosaurs as well. Fiona likes the beginning and the end, but we’ve had to skip over the middle parts starting from the Troodon attack, which is too scary. We tried the Magic Tree House book on dinosaurs as well (Conveniently it’s the first in the series) but it got too scary at the second to last chapter.
We recently read Ricki-Ticki-Tavi, which she seemed to like. We’ve also re-read My Best Sweet Potato, which we both love.

I’ve been reading a lot of YA lately, since that’s where we spend time at the library. The Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls was fun, it’s a riff on the Wizard of Oz with very, very dry humor. Mortal Engiens is proving to be a bit of a slog through, which is disappointing. I’d checked it out based on a rave review of a book later in the series, but maybe it’s just not for me. I’m having lots of fun with cryptarithmetic from More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School, which I remember finding tedious as a kid.

I’ve had the idea that Monday should be “book day” rattling around my brain for some time now and this post at Posie Gets Cozy has made me think that maybe Fiona would like to know about the books she was reading some day. So today I’ll talk about her current favorites and I’ll aim to put up something about what one or both of us is reading each Monday. We go through books like crazy, but she does tend to repeat a few over and over.

Right now The Magic School Bus is definitely the lead obsession. The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs was most popular for a while, but lately we’ve been going through The Magic School Bus and the Five Senses and The Magic School Bus Under the Ocean as well. We did check out The Magic School Bus and the Science Fair Expedition from the library and read it many times in the course of the week, but lately she hasn’t been as interested, so I think it’s going back. (Not surprisingly we tend to have a slightly ridiculous number of books out at any given time). Reading these so frequently also means that at any given moment Fiona and I are likely to be Liz (the class pet lizard), Ms. Frizzle (the wacky teacher), Arnold (the field-trip dreading member of the class) or any of the other characters. Today we took the “school bus” to the market.

Also from the library we have The Bob Books for pre-readers. Fiona picked these up and I wasn’t sure she’d want repeat reads, but we go through the whole stack of twelve over and over.

We have a whole stack of dinosaur books, some we own and some from the library, but we page through those rather than reading the whole thing. A stegosaurus and a velociraptor had lunch together at our house this afternoon.

On the swing at the park Wednesday afternoon, Fiona sang me her favorite song:

When I was a baby I was born
My mama rocked me in her arms
But I’m not born anymore
and so I sing this song.

I play with the boys and girls
We play tag and basketball
And I throw the ball
throw the ball

Fiona and I have been sitting down for school sessions once or twice a day lately, and it’s lots of fun. Our subjects right now are Letters, Numbers, Mazes and Scissors, I’m trying to do Scissors and Numbers and Letters and Mazes in two sessions. We’re using the Kumon books and another that I found on clearance at a books store. I like the structure of the Kumon books, there is a clear progression from one page to the next. The Letters book, for example, starts with vertical and horizontal lines and then the letters that use just those lines. Once all those letters are done, there is a page or two for practicing diagonal lines, then those letters and so on. Beyond that, the books are attractive. I know that sounds somewhat irrelevant, but you wouldn’t believe how garish most of the kid’s workbooks are. I spent a lengthy time at the bookstore paging through quite a few that were too annoying to use. The second book I picked up I chose largely because of the set of tangrams that came with it. I am so excited about these, and, luckily, Fiona is enjoying them, too.

Now what I’m thinking about is organization and storage. I wish we had somewhere to put a desk for her, but she probably would just sit on top of it anyway. So I think I need a few smaller boxes for storing crayons, markers, tangrams, cards and so on and then a larger box to hold everything. I’ve been thinking about some sort of lap-desk, since we frequently sit on the couch, but I think it will be a DIY project. I also need to find more maze books, dot-to-dot books and some more pages for scissor practice, since Fiona wants to do them over and over and I’m worried we’ll run out of pages.

I knit a pair of Alligator Mittens for a friend for Christmas. And I just shipped them off, so hopefully she got them today, or will tomorrow. To make a set, I added a Calorimetry to match.

I’m pleased with how they turned out, and I hope she really likes them. The Mitts are the pattern from Stitch N Bitch Nation and the Calorimetry is from Knitty, and if you’re dying for all the details you can find them on Ravelry.

Oh Library Book Sale time, we love it so much. Even Fiona was super excited, although I think she would have been happier if we’d left a little more quickly.

Top Finds:
A boxed set of 10 Magic School Bus books that I thought we may need a little time to grow into, but which Fiona has been requesting over and over and picture reading on her own
Some classics, including Frederick, by Leo Lionni, Elmer by David McKee, Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg, and Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
A stack of dinosaur books including this one which she would not put down
Some of Fiona’s personal favorites, Martha and Skits by Susan Meddaugh, Fancy Nancy: Let’s Get Fancy Together! by Jane O’Conner and Robin Priess Glasser (and it seems to have all the pieces) and Spring Cleaning by Pat Tornburg
Plus a stack for me from the bag sale, and a bunch of other kid’s books. So very satisfying.

One day there was a sad ogre and he was sad because he had no money and he cried and cried and cried and he was a baby ogre and he cried and cried and his name was Nate the Tate and he decided to go to the grocery store to get groceries and money. So he went to the grocery store and he got groceries and he buyed them and went outside and shouted “Hooray! Hooray! I have money to buy blackberry juice!” So he put it in his lion cup because he liked lions and he drank more and more and more and more and spilled all over. But he decided to clean it up before mama ogre came out of the store and Mama Ogre was so happy because the kitchen floor was so clean and the baby ogre slept and slept and said “I’m thirsty, may I have some juice” and Mama Ogre said “Okay” and laughed and laughed and poured more and more and more into his cup and made another mess and the pink kitty lapped it up and mama was so happy the kitten lapped it all up. The end.

Thanks to my new (well, newish) internet radio I’ve been listening to all sorts of pod-casts and audio books. Recently I listened to Anne of Green Gables and it was so fun and enlightening. It’s easily been more than a dozen years since I last read it, the last time I remember reading the whole series (which was the only way I would read them once I had all the books) was when I had a terrible cold in 7th or 8th grade and had to stay home sick. The first time I read it was a revelation, and I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8. I can’t count how many times I re-read it after that. I read all but 2 or 3 of L. M. Montgomery’s novels and most of her short story collections and I hadn’t realized the degree of influence her style still has on me.

I was amazed, not by how much I remembered (there are bits I could almost recite) but the things I had forgotten, or not understood at the time. Anne’s history of her life before Green Gables is so brief that I completely missed the fact that she was little more than a half-starved servant before being sent to the orphan asylum. And Marilla is so very strict! Anne’s melodrama was totally lost on me, probably because I was in the middle of being just as melodramatic. Many of the classical allusions were completely lost on 10 year old me, and I admit that while I can place more of them now it’s more a matter of being able to recognize that something is one, without being familiar with the source material.

What really stuck with me this time was just how cheerful and happy Anne is. Whatever happens, she finds a bright side to it. Each morning brings a new day “with no mistakes in it”. I’m hoping that’s what will stick with me this time.