The Story of Stuff

I can’t remember or find out via which blog I discovered this (my apologies), but it is fantastic and I want to spread the word. It is “The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard,”  an informative, entertaining and especially rousing little movie (20 minutes long) about, you know, stuff. Go have a look-see!

I’ll just reproduce an old cartoon I penned years ago, when our condo – 25 units – didn’t have recycling (yet) and DH and I volunteered to make weekly trips in our Geo Prizm hauling everyone’s recycling away. That may explain DH’s reluctance in the comic…

Comic Strip of Bol and Bol and the Environment

In other news: I caught Amie’s cold and though she is on the upswing, I am succumbing to the sneezy snottering coughies and the ringing-of-the-ears, o the ringing!

Still, I am cheered when I think of my little two-year-old’s statement yesterday afternoon, after L, the babysitter, came that morning:

“When Baba comes home, and when L comes home, we’ll all have dinner!”

A Morning at Peets

Peets coffeeshop at Coolidge Corner, Brookline (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

This morning I told Amie L would come and play with her while Mama also went to office. L iz her favorite assistant at daycare and the only one to have babysat her, once before.

She cried for a minute and asked me to stay. I said I could stay a little bit. She asked could I stay a more bit, a much bit? I promised half an hour, which she considered and then approved, though she wasn’t convinced. It didn’t matter. L came in at 9 and Amie was so excited to see her he jumped and chattered nonstop, showing L all her toys. She even asked me to leave, already, for office!

It was almost guilt free.

I left after the promised half hour and risked life and limb on the slippery sidewalks. Potential ambulance ride and trip to the ER: $1000.

I did spend some time (15 minutes) browsing at our local independent bookstore, the Booksmith. Babysitter while I “relaxed”: $4.

I made it to Peets unharmed, where I purchased a scone and a latte to justify my presence there: $4.64. (If the babysitting doesn’t bankrupt us, Peets will.)

4 hours of babysitting at $15: worth it, because of the other side of the ledger.

  • 4 hours of solid work on the novel – which, you know, will be the next bestseller, and let’s not forget the movie rights!
  • 4 hours of unadulterated fun for Amie.

When I returned home with lunch for everyone, L had even done the dishes. She did this the first time she came, and I had reminded myself to absolutely forbid her to do it again – for of course we had dishes! But I forgot in the whirl of leave taking and kisses and searching for cell phone and gloves.

So, yes: not wholly guiltess, but so worth it!

Sinterklaas, you ask? It didn’t happen. Amie’s cold was much worse yesterday – one kid’s runny nose, you know, is Amie’s bronchitis. She was also disappointed. Sinterklaas comes to New England only one day a year. She will have to make do with Santa Claus, who – in all honesty and with my apologies to the Americans – is a sorry excuse for Sinterklaas! (You can read more about  that here.) Next year…

6 am and 6 pm

scones (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

The scones that Amie and Mama made this morning at 6 am. In the background some of the silver dinnerware Amie received as gifts from her family in India. While she was patting down the batter, she said “I’m a big girl. I’m doing a good job. I’m a good Mama”. I immediately forgave the mess of butter and flour.

Amie painting (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

Painting at 6 pm. We have phased out the plastics for food consumption, but those IKEA cups still do great service as paint containers. When we’re done, I simply stretch plastic wrap over them and seal them with a rubber band. Works like a charm.

In between we must have read at least 20 books, many of them twice, and took one nap, way too early in the day. We didn’t venture outside because Amie caught a cold. Hopefully we’ve contained it so we can visit Sinterklaas tomorrow.

She has been saying she wants to go. She will sit on Sinterklaas’ lap and tell him she’s been a good girl. I know what he will say (what I’ve instructed him to say): “You should eat your vegetables, tough”. Well, it’s worth a try! It will also be a great opportunity to catch up with our friends from Belgium.

Enjoy our Sundays, everyone!

American Elf

It’s like an early Christmas present! Just when I was going to subscribe to American Elf to catch up, James Kochalka launched the brandnew American Elf Supersite and the archives are free! I laughed so hard at some of the strips I got cramps in my side! (That Bonus Elf seems interesting, though, so I am still going to invest.) 

I once tried to write a daily strip about our daily life. But I can’t draw for peanuts (witness here) so, being a perfectionist, I got more than a little frustrated and strapped for time. Maybe my life wasn’t interesting enough, either, before we had Amie. Now that we have a talking toddler, I would have more grist for the mill but… there is so much else to do!

Amie’s Little Bird and the Cuckoo Clock

While in Kolkata, I got hooked on birds again. It happens at times, especially in Spring. It stands to reason that I should be a birdwatcher: I love quietly observing, recording in notebooks, classifying. I love birds – of all the animals, I think they are the most wonderful. I have several bird guidebooks to show for my interest, though no lifelists, and no real knowledge. The problem is that, once I’ve admired the cardinals, blue jays, mallards and American robins, I turn to the many sparrows and get frustrated.

In Kolkata, which most of you know as Calcutta, we stayed in a gated community in the middle of the city yet curiously quiet and lush with plantings. Our building stood on the edge of a small copse of trees and shrubs, and we stayed on the fourth floor. From the balcony I spotted many (to me) exotic birds, so colorful that it was easy for me to identify them.

Amie at 2 years and 3 months was still too young to observe birds for more than a minute. She still had (and has) some trouble following their rapid movements. But she appreciated what came to be called, over the ten days of our stay there, “Amie’s Little Bird”.

She became more familiar with the bird in her grandparents’ Swiss cuckoo-clock. I am ashamed to admit, that I failed to observe this bird closely and that therefore I cannot identify it, though it did visit faithfully every hour on the hour.

One day I was spotting birds on the balcony while Amie was inside painting. I heard Amie’s Little Bird before I saw it: I recognized its chew chew. Suddenly there it was, not 10 yards away on a dead branch right at my eye level. I grabbed my digital camera.

Coppersmith Barbet in Kolkata, India, November (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

When I came into the living room to announce my good luck – I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to identify the bird and this still image would definitely help – Amie had painted the following:

Amie’s Bird in Kolkata November 2007 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

Amie’s Little Bird! Can you see it, hovering above the cuckoo-clock?

She had no help beyond some verbal guidance from her Baba, who only asked her where the bird’s legs and wings should go.

Later I risked my neck crossing Park Street in the evening rush hour (those of you who have been to Kolkata know what that means!) to reach the Oxford Bookstore, where I bought Salim Ali’s The Book of Indian Birds. Amie’s Little Bird was easy to find, on Plate 40. It is a Coppersmith or Crimson-Breasted Barbet (Megalaima haemacephala).

Aaaargh Children’s Music!

cover of Preeti Sagar Hindi Nursery Rhymes

Amie’s auntie, my sister-in-law, whom Amie calls Toot-Toot-Pishi (“Pishi” is the Bengali word for aunt-on-the-paternal-side), so very generously gave us a wonderful cd of English nursery rhymes as sung by Preeti Sagar, an Indian singer (see insert on cd cover above).

Well! Thanks a bunch!

The problem is not that Preeti, who is otherwise sweet-voiced, pronounces “heatlhy, wealthy” as “healdy, wealdy” – I’m used to that by now. Or that she changes the alphabet song and ends it with “zed”, which is sure to confuse my American kid…

No, it’s that those darned songs have invaded my skull and glued themselves to every neuron in my brain! That I find myself walking in the street singing “Little Jack Horner”. I have the same problem with the “Family Music Makers” cd that was gifted to us by our daycare, and which mercifully has not been requested in this household for several weeks now. Those are the only two children’s music cds we own… and I’d like to keep it that way.

Amie loves that music, of course, but I wonder if it has an equally dementing effect on her brain as it does on mine. Has anyone done research on this?

I think with envy of that good soul, Catherine Newman. In Waiting for Birdie (the book that saved me from the clutches of the baby-blues in my first month of motherhood), she writes that her three-year-old son, who was never introduced to children music, sang along with Led Zeppelin etc. Sigh! I tried that, but outside forces conspired against me.

I really should be napping with Amie right now, to combat my jetlag, but I know I’d only be lying awake reheasing “Georgy Porgy”.

Settling Back In with Blogland News

Cooking really helped me settle back in domestically. I made a hearty potato-leek soup and a Flemish soup/stew called “Gentse Waterzooi”, which means “watery mess from Ghent”. Both are essentially winter and comfort foods (served hot, with heavy cream and lots of potatoes), so that also took care of our climatic shock (Singapore 85 F, 90% humidity / Boston 18F, 60%)! The dishes turned out so good, I posted their recipes on Suite101, here and here.

Another effective way of getting back in the groove is finding out what has happened in blogland while I was away.

  1. Turns out Zane from Lichenology has taken his first concrete steps in local ecological activism (he lives on Vancouver Island). I always thought he was already a local activist, simply by his lifestyle.
  2. Congratulations to James Kochalka of American Elf on his becoming father a second time, to Oliver. I can’t believe I missed the event! I’m a daily reader of his comic, of which each current strip can be viewed for free. I will gladly pay the the small subscription so I can catch up!
  3. Rebecca at Irish Sally Gardens has broken out their homemade air dried ham and it was a success, though not on first sight. What a commitment to sustainable homesteading!
  4. At A Foothill Home Companion, little Aidan is struggling with school – something I relate to with Amie, who still can’t be her own little self when at daycare. I’m holding my breath about what preschool will bring (we are interviewing for one this Friday). I’m sure we’ll be taking mental health days too.
  5. Winter has set in at SouleMama’s, where the christmas tree is getting decorated by many hands. Here we won’t have a tree (no room), but we will have some decorations and lights. But first we are going to a Sinterklaas party. 
  6. Madeline at Barn-Raising and Angie at Children in the Corn are each dealing with Christmas in their own ways.
  7. I love the winter shots at Little Red Caboose: kids in winter are so photogenic.
  8. Ryder at BlueYonder turned 3. I love reading about kids a little bit older than Amie: it helps me see what’s around the corner!
  9. And Chase at Swallowfield turned 7, wow (can’t imagine that, yet)! i love Jennifer’s artwork (look at this spread). In fact, all these Mamas are so incredibly creative!
  10. I’ll have to take the mitten tutorial at Write, Mama. Write very soon, as none of Amie’s gloves seem to stay on for very long.
  11. I made a new friend: Anja at Middlemonth. Het little Thumki is full of surprises! Amie also went to see dolphins, you know, in Singapore. She had the same look Thumki that had when watching them.
  12. On the home front, MamaStories got a Page Rank! Yeay! I guess over three weeks of absence improves once ranking.
  13. On the downside, not one good sentence was written on my novel – those darn monkeys!

Now if only our sleeping pattern normalized! We’ve been waking up around 4:30 am and getting up around 5. I don’t really mind, because those early morning hours are kind of cosy, and thankfully the heating in our condo is already on, so down here in the basement it’s warm and cosy. If only I weren’t a wreck by 8 pm.

Next post: what Amie learned, and what Mama learned, of airplanes and airports, malls in Singapore and money in India, and so much more.

Home Again and heavily Jetlagged

We returned on Friday evening from Singapore (that’s a non-stop 18-hour flight to Newark, a 3-hour layover, a 36-minute flight to Boston and a 30-minute cabride to Brookline… it tires me out all over again, writing this!). Singapore, by the way, is 13 hours ahead of Boston.

The last two nights Amie has been waking up at 2 am, to play and chatter, wide-awake, until 5 am, when we can “force” her to sleep. About the jetlag, one thing is for sure, that coming  back to the States is harder than going to Singapore: it’s easier to will yourself awake, to keep Amie up and to regulate a short mid-day nap when you arrive in the early morning, than to will yourself and to get Amie to sleep when you arrive in the late evening. The two of us slept for perhaps 4 hours during the trip, but Amie slept more, so we’re not on the same track.

First up in terms of shock was the weather: moving from sultry Singapore to cold and blustery Boston was painful, especially since we missed the run-up to winter.

Second, our basement flat felt warm and cosy, but so dark compared to the 22nd floor where my parents-in-law stay. And it was, most of all of course, empty. Amie doesn’t talk about them not being here with us, but she calls them up on her “phone” and has long conversations with them, so they are on her mind.

And I dislike unpacking, dealing (or not) with the stuff and junk and laundry, the food gone bad in the fridge, the lack of milk for a comforting cup of tea.

Clearing away the junk, shopping for food, and cooking are the best ways to settle back in. Today I cooked a hearty leek-and-potato soup and also “Gentse waterzooi”: a chicken soup-stew. Recipes and more about our trip soon!