Gross Gourd

We've made a little discovery about 6 of 8.


That whole pumpkin carving thing?


For 6 of 8?


Um, not so much....





Now the rest of the kiddos would find reason to carve a pumpkin a month...a Santa pumpkin, a Happy 2009 pumpkin, a Valentine heart pumpkin...





But 6 of 8?...





I don't think there's even a caption worthy of the above expression.




Why, look!!!  It's a rare sighting of a ruminant, reticulated gourd-kicker!  Wow!  That's two sightings in a very short period of time!







Save some Reese's Peanut Butter cups for me tonight,

A Halloween Riddle

Got a riddle for ya...what is classified as a ruminant mammal, often has a reticulated pattern and kicks a gourd?

Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Okay, here's another clue...



You're getting warmer...

Oh, you're so close. But I'll just spare you anymore guesses and tell ya...

It's a pumpkin kicking giraffe.




Yes, you're right...they are a rare sight in nature...



We've been trying to domesticate this one. You can probably guess how well that's been going...


And can you even believe we were fortunate enough to capture this elusive creature of film while on the photo shoot safari of the gourd-kicking giraffe?


It's the car-riding purple unicorn!

I should totally send these to National Geographic...

Cookin' with Octamom!

You know, when I started this blog, I started with a vision. I started with a guiding principle, the light by which I would navigate, a governor for all my posts, all my photography, all my heart and thoughts and wisdom.

And that shining facet, of course, was you.

How could I make your life better? What could I add to your experience? How could I enhance your life, your world, your walk on this earth? That is what guides me. That is what motivates me.

So, I think about you. I think about what I can post that will enlarge your life. And that's how I came up with idea to post a little recipe here.

Because I am that caring.

I know a lot of blogs dabble in food and photography. I know that there may not be more I can bring to the table that hasn't already been covered.

But I'm a risk-taker.

I'm going to assume that you don't know about an amazing little recipe, a little concoction that takes time and patience and negligence.

I speak of Sippy Cup Cheese.

I've become a connoisseur of sorts through my years of parenting. And I have to say, my most prolific crop of Sippy Cup Cheese has been developing through the toddlerhoods of the twins. Two small people who have recently discovered the joys and mayhem of exploring every nook and cranny of the house. Two little kidlings who love to take a beverage with them as they continue in their explorations. It has yielded a bumper crop of Sippy Cup Cheese this year.

I am so proud.

And so I thought I would catalog here, through the use of clear directions and smashing food photography, the ancient process involved in the making of sippy cup cheese.

1. Get some small children.
2. Give them milk or a similar dairy product in a cup that will hopefully not leak.
3. Forget that you have given them these cups and proceed to let them roam the house.
4. In a Heavy Estrogen Cleaning Spree, decide that it is extremely important to move furniture around and vacuum underneath said pieces.
5. Discover sippy cups, the older and more aged the better.
6. Harvest the cheese.

Behold...

The Casks...



This is the level of fermentation you want to see when you use a wrench to open the sippy cup. Be warned, those lids can develop a vacuum seal, depending on how long you allow the sippy cups to cure...



I knew you'd want a close-up...



And here is our finished product! Can't you just smell the aroma?!?





Ever the Epicurean,

Peanut, Peanut Butter...and Mucus!

Okay, here's the thing.


The big family thing?  It can render you a noodle.


Maybe it's because all the cuteness wears you down, maybe it's because you've missed so much sleep that you lose the ability to accurately estimate how long it's going to take you to clean up a mess.


 But by Kid Numero Ocho, you start finding this kind of thing hilarious...





Which leads to this...








And this just looks like the cutest thing you've ever seen...








And you even begin to think that somehow the mucus trailing down the peanut butter makes it all the cuter...





And instead of stopping him, you grab your camera...and you post it on your blog...and you think that everyone will find peanut butter and snot as cute as you do....


Just thought it was only fair to warn you...should you be ovulating...

Monday Musings...Family History

"Heirlooms we don't have in our family. But stories we've got."

Author: Rose Cherin

 

My family has always loved telling stories, reciting the humorous experiences of days past.  Because of our story-telling proclevities, I am fortunate to have several little pieces of oral history tucked away in the memory banks, little glimmers of the lives of my grandparents and even a few little tales from the lives of my great-grandparents.

 

M's glorious 96-year-old Grammy passed away in February and I put together a video of her life, delving into piles of pictures from her journey whilst on the planet.  While I do know several stories of her life, I was still so struck with the number of pictures for which I had no information, no adventure to attach to the square of celluloid.  

 

And it got me to thinking.

 

Our generation is becoming illiterate in oral history.

 

Oral history used to be the means by which the wisdom and chronicles of the ancestors were passed down to the future generations.  Families told each other the stories of their families, the recitations of lineage and language and lore.

We don't do that much anymore.

 

I think it's because we rely on the film mediums of photographs and video and we assume that we are capturing biography.

 

But I learned in putting together Grammy's video that while I had some beautiful film resources of her life, I had not often asked for the stories behind those images.  And some of the photographs were so interesting, it made me a bit heartsick to not know the memoir behind it, even though the individuals appearing in the photograph had been carefully catalogued in ink on the back of each picture.

 

And it made me realize further that while I do know some of the biographical sketches of relatives back to about my great-greats, if you will, the stories of those great-great's parents and grandparents and great-grandparents are not known.  Those stories didn't get passed down, weren't handed along in a genetic assembly line of connection.

 

I look at the scratchy black and whites I have from some of those generations.  And I wonder.

 

I wonder about their dreams, about their fears.  I wonder how some of them worked up the courage to head for new land they knew nothing about, to farm and sweat and build a life.  I wonder how they saw their lives, how they saw their purpose in their sojourn here.  I wonder.

 

And so, my Dear Readers, I challenge you.  Tell me a story of your family.  Tell me the oldest one you know.  If you have one about Great-great-great Grandma, share it.  Create your own post and link it here in the Mister Linky box below or tell one in the comment  box.  Exercise that oral history and tradition.  And remember to tell your own stories.  Your great-great-great grandkids will want to know.

Sunday Selah

Catch for us the foxes,
       the little foxes
       that ruin the vineyards,
       our vineyards that are in bloom.

Song of Solomon 2:15 

It begins with a coffee mug.

A travel coffee mug, to be exact.

It is placed next to the sink, asking to be rinsed out and dried in anticipation of the next day's commute to work or commute to the homeschool table, ready to receive a fresh infusion of organic ground coffee bean and a splash of chemical-laden artificial creamer. 

We have a collection of these travel coffee mugs, the receptacles of our beverage breakfast of sorts.  Over the course of a few days, a small congregation of them can gather at the edge of the sink, brushed stainless steel surfaces gleaming. 

And it causes a problem.

Because the presence of just one travel coffee mug adjacent the sink indicates a permission I didn't intend.  It allows other members of the family to come to the belief that all the rules about putting one's own dishes in the dishwasher, all the rules about cleaning up after oneself, all the requests that the counters of the kitchen stay free of stray items, the presence of that one little travel mug wipes all those rules and requests right out.

And then a cup of milk is left on the other side of the sink.

And then a Barbie shoe is set down next to the cup of milk.

And then a glass of water is left next to the Barbie shoe.

And then a plate with the remnants of French toast.

And then a stray spoon.

And soon, the brim of the sink is grimily jeweled with glass and pastel sippy cups and silver forks.

It all starts with that one little fox, that one slip from the household principle, rendering  a counter top of exceptions, more little foxes.

And without vigilance, without maintenance, the simple surface, the platform for building nutritious meals, for mixing up ingredients of comfort cookies, becomes cluttered and chaotic.

And it all starts with the travel mug.

Those little travel mugs creep around the well-spring of my heart.  I allow a little something to sit at the edge of my heart, something that seems harmless, a little clean-up I'll get to a little later.  But it sits there a while.  And then a new little issue comes along, a cup of gossip, a glass of nettle.  And soon, the surfaces of my life become cluttered and messy, lots of little messes that had they been cleaned up instead of set down to be dealt with at a more convenient time, the larger compilation would not have developed.

So I'm clearing the conscience counters again, I'm washing up the population of cups and dishes and travel mugs.  I'm motivated again to deal with the little stains, the smaller chores.

Because things just seem to go so much smoother when the borders of my soul are kept clean.

When the little foxes are chased off.

When I keep the travel coffee mug off the counter.

Selah.

JPEG of the Week

~Pecan Harvest~

A Little Fosse, Anyone?

I wasn't raised a dancer. Didn't take dance classes, didn't study it as an art form, didn't don a leotard and join in the discipline.


But, oh my, have I raised some dancers.


Kids 1 thru 6 have all taken dance and I'm assuming 7 and 8 will follow suit. Each of them has experienced their own take on the art form. And I have loved learning about a discipline that I have always admired but have known little about (pardon my dangling participle...).


2 of 8 is our strongest devotee to the dance. She is loving the experience of training not only in the ballet forms of Royal Ballet and Vaganova but also in the discipline of Cecchetti. She has been very blessed to have instructors who have received extensive training in these forms and recently made another discovery;  one of her teachers actually trained with Bob Fosse, famous theatrical choreographer and jazz dancer.  2 of 8 has very enthusiastically picked up a top hat and toy trumpet to begin learning the Fosse style.







2 of 8 was thrilled to have attended a recent Cecchetti conference here in our city, taking her next level of exams and also being able to take a Fosse-based class from her instructor who worked with Fosse.  It's such an amazing thing to see a kid take a cute little hobby, a thing they enjoy, and begin to turn it into a product of beauty, discipline and grace.  When I see 2 of 8 perform, I can still visualize the chubby little three year old who first danced on-stage in a puffy baby blue costume, squeezable baby legs encased in bright pink tights.  But in seeing the little girl of my memory, I now overlay it with the vision of the young woman she is now, daughter, student, athlete, dancer, artist.




And it is just a delight.

A Matter of Perspective

There are some amazing resources for burgeoning photographers out there on ye ol' web and the proliferation of affordable, high-quality digital cameras is making photography an art form that anyone can dabble in.

I love photography. I've been shooting for many years now and am simply delighted with the cameras, editing programs and photography products available these days. I do love my spankin' new Canon 40D, but today, I thought I'd show you what you can do with a $100 point and shoot.

We made a trip to the state capitol. I brought my big new fancy-shmancy camera--and upon pulling out the Canon to take a few shots, realized that I had failed to charge the battery. I then pulled out my fantastic Sony Cybershot, which has an incredible fast flash-burst speed and fully customizable settings--and then realized I had failed to put my memory card back in after my latest photo upload. 1 of 8 then put her little Kodak point-and-shoot in my hands to soothe my photographically-deprived psyche.

Two little things to remember as I show you what you can pull off with one of these little babies. First, I never, never, never (okay, well, almost never) use the flash. I've been doing natural light photography for a long time and am a firm adherent. So I set the little Kodak on 'manual' and turned the aperture to 2.8. Now, if you're not terribly familiar with what all those terms mean, google some photography sites and take a look at some wonderful articles. Or, you can just trust me, turn your little camera to manual, set your camera to 2.8 and give it a try.

Take advantage of the natural light coming through a window. Your photos may be a bit dark, but don't forget about all the editing programs available. I used to take great pride back in my chemical film days for getting all the right exposure and saturation and filter and blah,blah,blah...I'm over myself. Use those programs. Lighten shots if they need it. Tweak whatever you want.

Something else that is a take-away from the above shot; when I was in television, even though I was an on-camera personality, I still went through a photography/videography seminar with a well-known videographer from San Francisco as I would sometimes end up in a situation where I would need to video my own story. He told us of the need to think of our shots as a story, to get several perspectives of the same scene, one more broad, one slightly closer in, and then yet another even closer in. This way of thinking about, of looking at potential shots, does change the way you might choose to take the picture. Think of it from the perspective of wanting your shot to tell a story, all within the context of the visual content.

Also consider having your human subject in a corner of the frame, showing the perspective they are viewing...

Look for unusual angles, unique visuals...

And again, all of these shots were made with an inexpensive, point-and-shoot digital camera. Mess around with your settings. Play with all the amazing editing suites out there. Bend those old knees. Look at your world from a different perspective. Tell a story with your pictures. And when you do, be sure and let me see the results of your creativity.

Happy Perspective-Altering,

Baby Signs

Let me preface today's post by saying that if you've left me a comment and haven't heard from me yet, I'm not ignoring you--I've had a wicked head cold going on for a couple of days and my main side effect with taking cold medication is a serious case of Loopy. I just get crazy loopy--so hopefully, I have responded to your comments; if not, give me a little grace. Conversely, due to being in the depths of Loopy, I may have responded multiple times to your comments--what can I say?


I'm often asked about various parenting techniques we use with our brood. Hopefully over the course of our experience of the last eighteen years, we've picked up a few useful items along the way.


Using a hybrid of sign language with babies has certainly come into vogue over the last few years. Proponents of baby signing believe that giving babies an ability to communicate needs through the venue of signs can lead to earlier communication and less frustration on the part of baby. Baby signs can be used before the child has developed verbal language.


Do we use baby signs? Well, yes. However, we have chosen to develop our own version of it, one that also takes into account the communicative ability of facial expressions as well as repetitive oral sounds. Through careful study and years of experience, we have honed our interpretive abilities and feel somewhat expert in understanding this grouping of signs and early language. I offer the following photographic menu along with the accompanying interpretations.


Here is the Baby Sign for 'Get Me Out of This High Chair Now'...





Be careful not to confuse it with the more subtle sign, pictured here, which means, 'You are Going to Have a Heck of a Diaper to Change in About Five Minutes'...





And here is the sign for 'You Should Have Gotten Me out of This High Chair Five Minutes Ago Instead of Getting the Camera' (we have chosen to use highly specialized baby signs...)





Now, this is the baby sign for 'I Believe in Chocolate Milk'...





And this is the closely associated sign, 'I Love the Camera'...





And this would be the sign, usually only seen with multiples, that means 'I'm Being the Easy Baby Today as Compared With My Screaming Twin'...





Now, this next collection of signs is very subtle, very difficult to interpret as a new parent. Don't fret if you're not able to pick up on these faint signals...with time, you will be able to decode these effectively...


This is the sign for 'I'm Done With My Scrambled Eggs'...





Yes, I know, I know, this one is tough to read. Let me include another shot so that maybe you can begin to recognize what is being communicated here...





Hope this has been helpful as you look for ways to understand what your baby is trying to tell you. I'll be sure and post more of our baby signs. Just trying to serve the greater good, you know....