I'm reading Ethan Beverly Cleary's "Henry Huggins" series. These are wonderful, funny books about a 3rd-grade boy who gets himself into one fix after another, whether it's trying to sneak a dog home on a bus or digging up and selling nightcrawlers to pay for a friend's football he accidentally threw into a moving car. I think they are great for boys, and Sean loved them.

But Ethan is contrary by nature. He feels obliged to reject anything I read to him unless it was a book he picked out himself. I compromise by letting him pick the book we read every other night. When it's my choice, I pick Henry Huggins. Tonight I read him a chapter of Henry Huggins, and we had this conversation when I finished:

Ethan: READ MORE.
Me: It's bedtime.
Ethan: I'M NOT GOING TO BED UNTIL YOU READ MORE.
Me: (closing book) Bedtime. You like this Henry Huggins book, don't you?
Ethan: (sly smile) No.
Me: Well, go get in bed.
Ethan: BUT I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!

I'm not home-schooling Ethan by any means--he's in public school--but it's surprising how much of my day is spent working with him. He gets reading homework several days a week, and that involves my sitting with him while he reads. He is starting to "get" reading. He isn't truly reading yet, but he does pick out some words. Out of the blue, he says things like, "'Cole.' That starts with C, mom! Ka, ka, ka." He also obsessively watches "Between the Lions" (fabulous PBS show that teaches reading in the way that Sesame Street teaches letters and numbers). I think it's going to all come together for him soon.

I've enrolled Ethan in his first chess tournament, so I've been working with him on endgame strategies. Lots of beginning chess players know the basics of how to capture pieces, but when it comes to checkmating the king, they're lost. It's easy to screw up and turn a winnable game into a stalemate. In a tournament, a win earns you a whole point while a stalemate earns you half a point. Every half point matters, so it's important to know how to cash in on a game you've played well and get the win rather than a stalemate.

We started with the technique for checkmating with two rooks, then did rook and queen, then rook and king (significantly harder). That exhausts my personal knowledge--I am not much of a chess player. Sean is going to teach him how to checkmate with two bishops. And tonight we're going to practice Scholar's mate--how to execute it, and more importantly, how to defend against it. Scholar's mate (a checkmate you can pull off in just four moves) is a really cheap way to win a game. It only works against beginners, and I am afraid that if Ethan has some early success with it, he may come to rely on it more than he should. But he's got to know it so he doesn't fall into the trap himself.

Then there's piano. I have switched him to a new teacher. Most piano teachers, including Ethan's previous teacher, are neighborhood moms who learned piano as kids and now teach it to earn extra money. This new teacher is different. He's a concert pianist who teaches very advanced students (including other concert pianists), and he takes on a few beginners as well. Ethan will be one of his beginners.

It's a fabulous opportunity, but a double-edged sword. The lessons are very expensive, over twice what I was paying before. And the teacher is very demanding. Ethan enjoys playing piano but he's not shown a huge affinity for it, so there is a risk this teacher could drive away Ethan's modest interest. If that happens, I'll have to switch him back to his old teacher. But I'd like to give this a try. Even a few months with an exceptional instructor could help him a great deal.

The new teacher spent Ethan's entire first lesson working on his hand position (something Ethan's old teacher talked about a bit, but did not emphasize). Ethan needs to keep his shoulders down and loose, his elbows loose, his wrists high and loose (as if held up by helium balloons, the teacher says), his fingers "dropping" onto the keys instead of pressing on them. His fingers must not be allowed to fly up (e.g. when he plays a note with his index finger, his pinkie tends to fly up). Our assignment for the week is to practice just the C-major and G-major scales, one hand at a time, working purely on hand position. I have to sit there with him, with my hand under his wrist to make sure he does not press, watching the fingers to make sure they don't fly up, watching the shoulders to make sure they do not rise, and the elbow to make sure it doesn't tense. We're supposed to do this 15 minutes a day, every day, until the next lesson.

Ethan HATES this work. He does not want to practice scales and hand position--he wants to play songs. To make it more bearable, I divide his practice into two daily sessions, an 8-minute one on the C-major scale, and a 7-minute one on the G-major. He is improving rapidly. But I hope we get to move on to something more interesting soon.

Several of Ethan's friends take lessons from this instructor, which provides a little positive peer pressure. We originally learned about this instructor through one of Sean's friends, who is a genuine piano prodigy. My jaw drops when I see that kid play piano.

Soccer season is over, so I'm looking for a new activity to replace it. Basketball or horsebackriding, probably. I'm learning towards horseback because Ethan's school does not offer basketball at the kindergarten level. We may wait until the holiday season is over; I feel too busy right now to take on anything new.

Ethan has a new best friend! It's a boy in his kindergarten. I invited him over for a playdate. The kid comes from a large family (5 kids) that apparently puts a huge emphasis on education, because the kid attends TWO kindergartens. He goes to Ethan's kindergarten in the morning, then a private Montessori one in the afternoon! I'm looking forward to meeting him.

We are still walking to school every day, with friends, but yesterday we had a mishap. Ethan was running ahead with his friend, holding Spirit on the flexi-leash. Something happened, and he tripped--maybe over the dog or over the leash. He bloodied his lip, nose (inside and out), forehead, and both knees. I took him home, patched him up, and let him lie on the couch for a while watching "Between the Lions." Then I drove him to school, but I let him skip swimming that evening because he didn't want to go in the water with all those cuts and scrapes.

Everything is going fine with Sean. He requires a lot less hands-on help than Ethan, but I still spend time with him, reading to him and playing WOW with him. He's doing well in school. He is still learning the viola and practicing nightly, and he goes to two chess clubs and takes swimming lessons. He wants to quit swimming, but I won't let him yet. He's still biking to school 2 days a week. I was surprised he stuck with it after the weather got nasty--he seems to enjoy the independence. Sean wrote a paper for school yesterday, which I thought was really cute. I may post it here sometime. His birthday is coming up. He will be 11 soon!

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

This is a nonfiction book by a journalist who spent over a couple decades studying a "random family" in the Bronx. If you want to know what life is like for people living in extreme poverty, this book has all the details, and it's related in a matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental and unsentimental way. Just the facts. And the facts are devastating.

Some of the people in this book I hated, namely Jessica and Boy George. Jessica, in her teens, drops out of school and has three babies by two different men. She abandons all her babies and hooks up with Boy George, a heroin dealer, who installs her in an apartment as one of his many mistresses, uses her as an accomplice (and for sex), and regularly beats her, once fracturing her skull. Once he murders one of Jessica's friends when he suspects the friend has stolen from him. The police eventually catch up to him. Boy George gets a life sentence without parole and Jessica gets 10 years for abetting him.

In prison, Jessica seduces a prison guard (who is married with children). When she gets pregnant, she falsely alleges rape by a prison repairman. DNA tests reveal the truth, and the guard loses his marriage and his job. Later, he becomes a born-again Christian who believes Jessica was sent by the devil to tempt him. Jessica has twin boys, which she abandons (no choice, since she's in prison, but when she gets out, she doesn't take care of them either).

The other couple we follow are Coco and Cesar. (Cesar is Jessica's brother.) Coco, while in her teens, has a daughter by Cesar and goes on public support to raise it (welfare, food stamps, WIC, housing for the homeless). Cesar, also in his teens, graduates from juvenile delinquency to violent muggings and armed robbery. He's caught and spends time in juvie. Upon his release, he lasts 7 months before accidentally shooting and killing his best friend (not an innocent situation; he meant to shoot someone else). He's tried as an adult and gets a jail sentence of 10-18 years.

( Read more )

I'm an enthusiastic cook, and I'm always trying out new recipes. This weekend I tried three new ones: cheesecake cookies, pork scaloppini, and stuffed onions.

I had high hopes for the cheesecake cookies, but in the end I was disappointed. They were a bit bland. (I took them to a party anyway, and one guy loved them, so I guess they were not too bad.) The pork scaloppini was okay but didn't wow me enough to earn a spot in my recipe file.

But the stuffed onions: YUM!

And what a shame it's a recipe I can't really share because of the onions == bad breath problem. It wouldn't be a smart thing to serve to a date or to bring to a party. And the kids won't eat it because they hate all recipes involving vegetables or more than two ingredients. It's a recipe I'll probably only make when I'm eating at home alone. Too bad, because it's so good!

Bean recipes are also problematic. I make a really good red beans and rice, and an equally good hoppin' john. Both are favorite comfort foods for this Southern transplant. But people up here seem reluctant to eat them. It might be cultural--beans may seem a strange food if you don't grow up eating them. But I think it's more likely to be the beans-make-you-fart problem.

Here's the thing. Neither of those bean dishes makes me fart (no more than any other food does). I read once that if you soak the beans before cooking, it eliminates the problem. I do soak the beans for red beans and rice, so that may explain it. But I don't soak the beans for hoppin' john, so it's not the whole explanation. Anyway, I think it's a shame so many people avoid beans. They're delicious and good for you and cheap, all at the same time.

Speaking of food, I am thinking about trying to grow my own spinach. I've heard you can grow it in your own kitchen, by a window, and it grows very aggressively, keeping you in fresh spinach constantly. I buy a lot of spinach, so it would be cool to instead just harvest my own whenever I need it.

I'm hesitating, though, because spinach is such a pain to wash. Do any of you remember what a pain it was to cook fresh spinach in the days before bagged prewashed greens? You had to fill a sink with water, dump the spinach in and swish it all around. All this nasty dirty and grit settles on the bottom. Scoop out the spinach, drain and clean the sink, repeat two more times. Such a hassle! That's why I nearly always ate frozen spinach instead of fresh. When someone in the family cooked fresh spinach, it was a big deal. We practically fought over the stuff!

Now I cook fresh spinach all the time, and the kids won't even eat it. Sigh.

ETA: I did some reading on the internets, and it turns out the kind of bean used in hoppin' john (the black-eyed pea) is one of the innocuous beans; it doesn't make people fart. So I guess that explains it.

I'm not really the type to go to haunted houses, but I'm always up for an evening out with my girlfriends. My friend skamamawa and her husband are connoisseurs of all things horror. They watch horror films, and go to zombie events, and when Halloween rolls around, they like to check out all the haunted houses. She invited a bunch of us to go with her to a couple of them: "Field of Screams" in Snohomish, and "Seattle House of Horrors" in Kirkland. Then the next evening, we went to Issaquah's "Nightmare at Beaver Lake" during family hour (the scariness is toned down) and brought the kids.

All three of them were great! "Field of Screams" is set in an actual cornfield, which gives it a special scary ambiance. "Seattle House of Horrors" is an indoor haunted house, smaller and darker than the others, with music to heighten the suspense. "Nightmare at Beaver Lake" is a one-mile walk through the woods and is of larger scale than the others--they have things like headless horsemen (riding actual horses) and a giant working trebuchet (which isn't exactly horror-themed, but Sean loved it). I couldn't say which one was best; they were all well done.

Two of the houses had a cylinder you walk through with psychedelic colors inside. The cylinder spins and it creates an optical illusion where your brain thinks the cylinder is fixed and the ground is moving, so you keep thinking you are walking sideways or even upside down, and without the guard rails, you'd likely fall over. These cylinders were my favorite parts of the houses that had them. Ethan agreed with me. When someone asked him what was his favorite part of "Nightmare," he said, "The part where we walked upside down."

The funny part is that none of the haunted houses scare me. I know they scare other people. In the big group of kids we took to Nightmare, two of the girls got scared, one so much she had to leave. The other cried a bit, but toughed it out. Sean got a little freaked out near the end and grabbed onto my arm for a while. And then there was Ethan, one of the youngest in the group at 6 years old, and tromping along like it was nothing, often getting ahead of the group because he wanted to be first. I asked him a couple of times, "Is it scary?" He said, "Yes," and just kept going.

Whatever it is that keeps him from being truly scared, I must have it too. I wanted to be scared, but I just wasn't. I don't seem to be able to suspend disbelief for these things--I know the actors are just that, actors, and even when they're running at me with a chainsaw, they're just not scary. Some of my girlfriends got scared, though. Angie seemed pretty scared, which is odd because in real life (sailing class, for example) she's much braver than me. And when the chainsaw guy came after us, skamamawa ran for the hills, leaving the rest of us behind! We joked about it later, how she abandoned us to our fate :).

I'm still waiting for the haunted house that can truly scare me. But even if they aren't scary, they're still really fun.

I give you the stuff of nightmares... this morning's line for H1N1 immunizations!



My ex-husband had the dubious honor of taking the kids in this morning for their H1N1 "mist" immunization (he snapped this photo with his cell phone). They had a long wait, but the deed is done. Both kids are immunized! Though the job's not quite finished yet. Ethan, because of his age, will need a second dose later on. Also, Sean was uncooperative--this is a problem with the mist vaccine, the kid has to cooperate about sniffing it in, unlike a shot where if worst comes to worst, you can just hold them down. So we're not sure he got a proper dose of vaccine. But for him, we'll have to hope for the best, I think. Given the vaccine shortage, it doesn't seem fair to request an additional dose.

I'm not in the high-risk group, so I'll have to wait a while before I can get immunized myself.

I went out to the car to go to Ethan's Halloween party at school. Started the car, then realized I'd forgotten my camera. Turned off the car, got the camera, came back... and the car wouldn't start. Called two friends to see if I could get a ride; no one was home.

By that time I was starting to think about the rest of my obligations for the day and how I was going to need a car for them. I spent an agonizing 5 minutes trying to decide whether to walk to school and arrive at the party 30 minutes late (with a sore hip to boot), or call AAA and spend the next few hours getting my car fixed for everything else I needed to get done, including helping with Sean's party later on. My hip might tolerate one walk up that hill, but not two.

In the end, I called AAA.

So now I am at home, miserable, waiting for AAA and thinking about how disappointed Ethan will be that I'm not there, and that this is the only kindergarten Halloween party he will ever have.

Stoopid car battery.

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (YA dystopian science fiction)

I've read 75 books so far in 2009, and this one is my hands-down favorite.

Back in February, I posted this review of The Hunger Games. I loved The Hunger Games, but I thought it would be an impossible book to write a sequel for. How could the author possibly follow it up with anything remotely as satisfying?

Oh me of little faith!

I had the great privilege of reading the page proofs of Catching Fire this spring. I'm not going to go into details of plot because I don't want to spoil either this book or the first one. But I'll tell you a little about the reading experience.

This was a book so intense that at times I had to walk away from it. I would literally get up and pace around the room, letting my emotional reaction dissipate. Then, of course, I would go right back to it because I had to know what happened next. There were times when I would think, "Oh, author, you're not going there. PLEASE don't go there. Oh my God. You went there."

I passionately love this book, and I'm not the only one. Go read a few of the Amazon reviews and see how strongly this book affects people. In my opinion, ALL WRITERS should read this book to see how Ms. Collins creates and sustains tension. It is a masterwork of craft and pacing.

I have long thought The Hunger Games would make an excellent movie, and apparently a movie is in the works by Lionsgate. Suzanne Collins, who has a background in TV writing, is adapting the screenplay herself.

The book is YA ages 13 and up. I let Sean read it (he's 10) and he loved it, but be careful introducing this book to younger children as it is violent and emotionally intense.

My kids are scheduled to be immunized against H1N1 (with the mist version) this Saturday. Here's hoping they don't catch it between now and then, and the pediatrician doesn't run out of vaccine! We are lucky to have any at all. Other pediatricians in the area don't have it.

Sean was a voracious reader who devoured anything and everything in his path. 6-year-old Ethan is pickier. Most books I read him, he doesn't like. But every so often, he falls in love with a book. Here is his new favorite:

Zomo the Rabbit, by Gerald McDermott

We've actually had the book for years, and he only just became interested in it. It's the pictures more than the story that drew him in (though the story is cute). He spends hours paging through the book, looking at them.

I was delighted to discover it's part of a series, all with illustrations in the same style. I bought him Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest and Coyote: A Trickster Tale from the American Southwest. He loves them both. There are at least two more in the series. The Raven one is funny because it's about the land being too dark and raven stealing the sun to brighten the skies. How very appropriate for the Pacific Northwest!

So, if you're looking for some charming picture books, here they are. Ethan likes them, and he doesn't like just anything.

Look! My Venus Fly-trap is eating one of its own traps:



It grew that way naturally. The outer trap keeps closing on the inner one, mistaking its growth for the movement of a fly. This photo shows the outer trap closed on the inner, but it's hard to see because the inner trap is not visible at all.



After watching it for a couple days out of curiosity, I separated the traps.