Mushroom Walk

September had 20+ days of at least a trace amount of rain here in Virginia, which means our mushroom population enjoyed a renaissance. Tucker loves to find mushrooms and show me (it is always urgent that I drop whatever I am doing to look). I proactively addressed the situation by taking the camera and searching for every mushroom I could find with him in the yard. We got a lot. (Note, this was a couple weeks ago, the crutches have put a damper on these kind of activities for the moment!)

What I know about you

I realized the other day that Blogger keeps track of this blog's stats, so I looked into them for the first time.

What I learned was...
*The favorite post, by far, was on 6/10/09 about "Hail the Size of Half Dollars"... apparently this comes up when people search on the term "hail"
*I've gotten numerous hits from 9 other countries besides the US
*In the Mac vs PC world, the PCs are winning--2/3 of my readers use Windows and only 25% use Macs (the rest are blackberrys and other devices)
*I get more than 800 page views a month now, and almost 20,000 page views total, which seems like

The things you learn!

Disney World

The kids and I are visiting my mom in Cocoa Beach this week. Austin is having man time in Virginia with a veritable home improvement frenzy. Flying here with the two of them alone was a bit daunting, but we didn't hit any major snags and arrived more or less in one piece (well, three pieces if you consider that there are three of us).

Our big adventure of the trip was yesterday: going to Disney World. Austin told me on Monday night that he would rather fly with the kids (he considers being trapped on an airplane with his two children akin to a small form of torture) than go to Disney World with them. He was wrong, of course, because we had an absolutely fabulous time. I'm not sure how it could have gone better. The key: don't stand in any line longer than 10 minutes. This eliminates a lot of the possible rides, but there are no rides that are worth standing in a line with a 3 year-old longer than 10 minutes.

We rode Dumbo first thing in the morning before the line got long. Tucker had never been on a high-flying ride like that before, and I wondered how he would do. He loved it. He ate it all up. The only hitch was we didn't get a green elephant and he wanted the green one. He seemed satisfied enough when I called the teal one we were on "green."

Next we went to find Mickey. On our way, we stumbled on Goofy's airplane ride and I sent Tucker and my mom on that one. Once they entered the line, I turned to look at the rest of the ride and was shocked to discover that what I thought was a little kiddie ride actually was a medium-sized roller coaster. I frantically tried to call to them not to go, concerned my sensitive little boy would be scarred for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, Tucker's heart was already set on it so they went. He loved it. (The only tears of the day came late in the afternoon when he begged to go on it again.) My mom, though, was scarred from the ride and wants the record to reflect that I sent her as the sacrificial adult on that one. Oops.


After soaking in Goofy's thrills, we wandered into Mickey's house. It wasn't very exciting, but it spit us out in a line that was for some sort of Mickey show, we thought. It wasn't a long line, and there were old Mickey cartoons playing so Tucker was rapt and we just stayed not quite sure where it would lead. It turns out that the line was for a private audience with Mickey. When Tucker got up-close-and-personal with his favorite rodent, he just melted in awe to the ground. He couldn't even look up he was so excited and overwhelmed. It might've been a little cute.



We then had a sit-down lunch with Winnie the Pooh and friends, which was a much-needed break in the middle of the day. Arranging that lunch was a great call. Surprisingly, the Winnie the Pooh lunch wasn't ridiculously priced... only about double what you'd spend on a lunch of hot dogs and fries at a cafeteria in Disney World, and the buffet actually had good food. Of course, it also included large furry friends and Tucker got into the hang of the character thing and started giving them all big hugs.









Other highlights that day: seeing the Mickey show in the middle of the park, the Parade in the afternoon, riding the train around the park, and going on rides.





The very best part of our afternoon was: Winnie the Pooh's house. Tucker loved Pooh's tree. He spent ages hugging Pooh's honey pots, protecting them from bees, eating the honey, and doing it all again, and again and again. It was ridiculous. The only way we were able to get him out of there was that we had tickets to ride in Winnie's honey pot on a ride.





These are some videos of Tucker's playing with the honey:


Molly was a star all day, basically just hanging out and being easy. She specializes in eating quickly so I didn't have to nurse her all the time in random places. She napped in her car seat, snuggled and enjoyed meeting the characters (Mickey and Minnie especially loved her). She also went on the Winnie the Pooh ride and screamed for the part of it in the dark (but the music was loud so no one could here her).


When we got to the car, we were all exhausted. But then Tucker rallied into pure hysteria on the way home, wanting to play his version of peek-a-boo and "break the pickle--tickle, tickle!" for approximately an hour. I don't blame him; it was a pretty exciting day.

Clutter, Part 2

My friend Alison in her comment yesterday has ESP on where I was going with the second part of this clutter post: kid stuff. Toys are a whole category of stuff that stumps me as a clutter-clearer. People who visit tell me that our house isn’t over run with toys like some houses they’ve been to. Maybe. I find this not a particular compliment for us, but more an indictment of how kids are growing up today. Too many toys aren’t a plus for parent OR child. Besides the parental frustration of an endless amount of mixed-up junk that gets piled around randomly or that forms a skim over all available surfaces, too many toys frustrates a child’s ability to focus and play creatively. There really is such a thing as too many choices.

I do the old take-toys-away-while-Tucker’s-asleep trick and have a stash of toys in the attic to cycle in as new every few months. I have gotten more merciless on culling for good the toys that Tucker has never been drawn to (though I make sure to ask the thrift store ladies not to put out our toy donations until we’ve left the store). I also am starting to be wiser about some categories of toys.

Trucks: really, all of these do the same thing in terms of play-value so only one or two favorites need to be out at one time, at least now that Tucker has other interests.

Art supplies: NEVER buy the 64 pack of crayons, at least for a preschooler. Fewer things means they are easier kept track of and better cared for and more easily replaced when they are used up.

Gifts: I’m trying to think more in terms of non-durable goods. For Tucker’s stocking I’m focusing on things that have a shelf life, like fun band-aids, punch ball balloons, animal crackers, glitter pens and coloring books… things that will be special and thoroughly enjoyed but won’t add to the sheer quantity of stuff in our house long-term. Another tactic is to give experiences or extra special clothes that he will eventually grow out of (ie Mickey Mouse slippers), and less of those things (however nice) that hang around indefinitely.

I may even institute a one-toy-in-one-toy-out policy except for Christmas and birthdays, and start engaging Tucker more in this process of giving things away. I also want to be more consistent in the New Year about teaching Tucker to take better care of his stuff so that sets of things remain together and can actually be used.

Clutter, Part 1

One of Gretchen Rubin’s favorite activities in the Happiness Project is purging the house of clutter. She, like me, fit in that dubious category of people who enjoy organizing purely for its own sake. Clutter-clearing is her own addition to her Happiness Project; apparently, none of the sages of old (or even modern happiness researchers) has devoted time to the subject of getting rid of the stuff that weighs us down. Getting rid of clutter as a means to boosting happiness, is basically saying that our physical surroundings matter to our internal state. I think her words are that outer order leads to inner calm, or something along those lines. (To digress, this is actually a very Anglican idea, that the physical world matters to the internal world, that you are affected by whether you wear jeans to church or your best clothes, your posture during prayer, etc.)

She talks about different categories of items that shouldn’t have a place in your life. One is aspirational clutter: things you have because you’d like to be the sort of person who uses them, even though you don’t actually use them. In my case this might be a shirt that is a bit too fashionably tight or low-cut… it looks nice, but I never actually feel comfortable wearing it. I forget her catchy names for the other types of clutter but they include nostalgic clutter (the shirt you used to really love), washed-up clutter (the shirt that has stains on it), and duplicative clutter (five pairs of black pants when you only ever wear two).

Basically, the idea is to have high standards and not surround ourselves with things that we a) don’t like, b) don’t use, c) aren’t nice, or d) are easily replaceable (if a future need might arise). Obviously this is not brain science, but it’s amazing how many things I took to the thrift store using this criteria. The wedding present that was nice but I never used, which felt like a burden because I should have used it (because it was nice). The empty binders hanging out in my desk drawer even though I haven’t needed a binder in years and don’t currently have a need for a binder. The dog brush we never use because we got one that works better. It really is amazing and strangely liberating to let those things move on to their second life.

84 lbs+ of apples and counting

A bushel of apples weighs somewhere between 42 and 48 pounds, depending on your data source. It's pretty impressive then that our family of three has already gone through two bushels of apples this season (I just bought our third today!). That is consuming about 12 pounds of apples a week, maybe somewhat more. Wow.

What have we been doing with all these apples?
-Apple syrup
-Freezing apple slices for pies
-Apple sauce
-Apple crisps and pies (some of these we've given away and entertained with...)
-Dried apples
-Apple-pumpkin soup
-Lots of apples for eating

Tucker eats fresh apples in the messiest way ever--nibbling off the peel and spitting the peel out wherever he is. He confessed to eating the apple this way at preschool even (I am now dutifully cutting and peeling the apples for him in that setting). Still, he loves apples, doesn't cough on them like last year, and easily eats at least two a day (more if there is opportunity). Ben likes Tucker to eat as many apples as possible because of the mess. Apples would be a horrible food disaster if Ben wasn't so diligent in cleaning up after the boy.

When I get a bushel, I usually fill a whole big drawer of our fridge with apples, put about an equivalent amount in two layers separated by brown grocery bags in a cooler that Austin takes into our basement for storage, and then use the rest in the moment for apple sauce or drying or some similar project.

This level of apple eating verges on the ridiculous, but when I can get a bushel of apples for $10 at our local orchard, why not???? I feel like I'm practically stealing the apples from them, but they seem to be glad to sell them and tell me they'll be manning the apple shed until Christmas. I imagine we'll all be a bit sick of apples by then.

Strawberry Picking

Tucker likes strawberry picking a lot. Even more than last year. And it was made even better this year because GoGo got to come along. Tucker is really at the perfect age for this kind of fun, (though maybe not the perfect age to actually accumulate a lot of berries!).

Collecting sap for our own maple syrup

We are making our own maple syrup this year. Really. I gave Austin 8 taps for Christmas, and he put them out today, attached to gallon jugs to start collecting the sap. By the end of the day we already had 4 gallons of sap.

Sugar maples don't grow well in our part of Virginia but apparently you can tap any variety of maple, and a couple other types of trees as well. What our property is lacking in sugar maple, it makes up with gigantic old silver maples, and so our maple syrup experiment is in business.

Apparently it takes about 10 gallons of sap to make a quart of syrup, which means we have to figure out how to store all these gallons of sap in a cold place before undertaking the monumental task of boiling it all down to make syrup. Austin bought a food grade 5 gallon bucket for the storage task, but we filled just about the whole thing up in one day. Hmmmm.

Also yet to be determined is exactly how to boil the sap down as there is a burn ban in effect in Virginia, and you really need to boil the sap outdoors so that all the moisture boiled off isn't released into the house. One solution would to build a cinder-block enclosure so that the fire can be technically argued to be enclosed, but that stills begs the question of what type of container to use. Anything from inside the kitchen would get fouled up with the creosote of the fire, and you also need something with a lot of surface area.

I'll let you know how all of this goes!