Happy Halloween, peoples

There's not much in the way of festivals or trick or treating in these parts, and I haven't seen one carved pumpkin.* 

But Elliot's cousin Jack gave him a great costume.  

And it's Elliot's very first Halloween, so we stuffed him in it.  

And he loved it. 

But today we didn't really have anywhere to go Halloween-y**, but we did have to go to the grocery store***, so we dressed the little man up and went there.

I'm pretty sure he didn't know the difference.

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*At least not in our neighborhood, dang it.  There probably are somewhere else in the country, just not around where I am sitting right now.

**Husband and I were invited to a party. This is us last year.  We couldn't top it, so we're staying home.  Also, it's hard (and expensive) to get babysitters.

***This was also a lesson on why I will never ever let him eat candy given out in a public place.  Not only was it not wrapped, there was one kid who ran his fingers through the whole pile (and I am pretty sure he licked them, too.)

Countryside, Wild People and a Lack of High Chairs

All sorts of things have been happening these days, but there are very few of them I can talk about just yet, so in the meantime, here are a few things I've been thinking about...

1) Norway's countryside can be incredibly beautiful.

Every week, Elliot and I go to meet with our moms and babies group.  This week we went out to a place called Kvernaland, which is about 30-45 minutes from where we live.  The first time we went there, we were about two hours late because I couldn't find our way there.*

This time, I couldn't find our way back. I took a left when I should have taken a right or maybe the other way around.  

In any case, we ended up in a place called Tu, which is so small that it only gets two letters and most likely you will never go there either unless of course you are lost as well.

So we just enjoyed the view for a bit....

(These photos do not do justice at all.  Imagine that you can actually see the rich blues and clear whites and strong greens.  Also, please imagine my car windows are clean.  That would be great, too.)

2) Sometimes I pretend to lament that Elliot is so mobile and energetic and wild, but I don't mean it at all. 

I love the fact that he is curious and funny and looks like he's growing into a sweet, slightly headstrong little person. 

I also love that he is starting to understand "No."

But all that said....

3) We will never again go for a family lunch at a place that doesn't have high chairs.

*The first time out, the problem was that I wasn't going far enough.  And on this second time, we got home by trusting that eventually there would be a sign for the highway.  There are probably some life lessons in those two sentences.  I will leave that to you.

Every single day

I plan things.  

So does Elliot.

Those two  plans do not necessarily mesh.

Asian fast food

Pre-Elliot, I would try a million different recipes.  I would tear them out of magazines, borrow them from  websites and hound BigD for directions of how to make whatever it was that I remembered from the dinner table when I was eight.

These days, while I will try new things occasionally, I have gotten into a bit of a rut. Along with a few surprises every now and again, our staples are Husband's favorite tacos, the BigD classic*, Jenny's wok recipe and crispy chicken wraps.  Most of these are not created from scratch.**

But even as my head is still clouded with Elliot-things: like getting to know each other and helping him learn important skills, I am slowly trying to get back to cooking meals that are a little more fun than what can be found on the packet aisle at the grocery store.

Last week, we ate lunch with a friend from Singapore.  She served us soup that was so good and so pretty that I asked for the recipe.  She said that it was "just Asian fast food."  That it was nothing special and that in Asia you could buy it on the street for just a few dollars, but it was special and a few nights later, I made it for Husband.

And it was good...

Here's what you need...adjust the amount of each ingredient for the amount of soup you'd like to make.  Keep reading...I think it will make sense...***

And, depending on your level of skill and time, you can create every single bit from scratch or cheat a bit and get it from cans and jars.****

Pork filet

Cha sui marinade, which is kind of like Asian BBQ sauce, sweet and a little tangy

Kernels of corn

Chopped green onions

Cooked udon Noodles

Medium boiled egg sliced in half

Miso soup

Marinate a pork fillet in Cha Sui sauce for a few hours.

Bake it in the oven at about 250 degrees C until it's done (flipping and spooning the sauce over it about every ten minutes or so).  Make sure it's still a little bit rare in the middle...the timing depends on the size of the piece of meat.

In the meantime chop the vegetables or pour them out of a can.

Boil an egg to medium (about 8 minutes)

When the meat is cooked, set it out and when it is slightly cooled, slice in disks.

Cook the miso soup to boiling.

Put noodles in bowl about 1/2 way, then pour boiling soup over top.

Add in slice of egg, disks of pork, onions and corn.

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*Awesome pasta with zucchini and squash. If you've ever eaten dinner at my house, you probably have had it.  It's one of my absolute favorites and no one cooks it better than the BigD herself.  But I try.

**I didn't know that "from scratch" was a good thing until I was about 25.  My elfin grandmother, who was not an elf, but was about the same size as an elf, was a fantastic cook (Her fried chicken is unparalleled to this day).  But she was sadly lacking in baking skills---with the exception of pound cake and chocolate cake...those were TASTY.  She was not aware of this and often would proudly present her brownies, proclaiming that they were "from scratch." We would take a bite, praying not to chip a tooth. For years afterward, I was certain "from scratch" was polite code for "tasted horrible" and would avoid it at all costs.


***There is a talent to writing recipes. I am pretty sure I don't have it, but hopefully you'll understand it anyway.

****Guess what I did?  And really, it's Asian fast food.  Also, I'm not in the business of judging.

Yesterday's yoga

So how did Baby Yoga go you may wonder?

In case you didn't read yesterday, Elliot had been running amuck.  All the other babies were calm and good.  I thought it was stressful and tried to turn in my classes to no avail.

So we went back.

And it was better, mainly because Elliot had an entire room to himself.  Seriously.  The yoga room is giant and L-shaped.  The class happens in one end of the "L" and the other part is supposed to be sort of off limits because the footfalls disturb a doctor who works underneath.

Apparently the yoga people were willing to make an exception for Elliot.  And it's not like he's all that noisy other than a few thuds and the occasionally LOUD babble.

They had even baby-proofed.  The electrical sockets were filled in, the heating coils were off.

I did have to go through the room and move all the giant loops of rope hanging from the wall.  Other classes use them when the students lie on the floor, then grab the loops to pull for leverage.  They were right at Elliot's neck level, but were easy enough to loop higher than his little hands.

And this time, I only had to get up five times during the class, which split over an hour, averages about once every 20 minutes and that may not seem like much, but if you consider that about 15 minutes was spent working with Elliot.  And also that the teacher took him and carried him with her for the last ten minutes, that's alot of popping up and down.

But we've (really meaning "me") has switched my attitude about it all.  I have given up any hope of yoga-ing myself and have decided to look at it as Elliot's play time.

Because Elliot loves it.

One of our friends and her daughter comes and he loves to see them.

He thinks the massages are the best thing ever and he laughs and laughs.

When I pop up to save him, it's big fun for me to come and play with him.

Sometimes, the teacher will pick him up and let him sit with her, so he gets a different view of the class.

And really, Elliot is my funny little love and any mischief he causes in only in the spirit of curiosity and having fun. And I cannot blame him a bit for it* and overall, think it is the best thing ever.

And, this time, the "worst" thing I caught him doing was leaning over another baby blowing raspberries in her face.  And, she loved it too.

Only five more classes to go.

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*He cannot help his gene pool.

Baby yoga would be less stressful without the baby

Baby yoga is the most stressful activity we do all week.

(Also the room is absolutely not baby-proofed, but why would it be?  But, check the hazards in the photo. No joke.)

Bar none.

This is counting:

- Stopping at the grocery store when Elliot should be napping.
- Changing a dirty diaper in the back seat of a car.
- Looking for a place to feed Elliot where we will not be in complete plain sight.

So when I say it’s stressful, I mean it.

Several months ago I ran into a local yoga instructor at an event.

She had just had a baby.

Elliot was about ten weeks old and we got to chatting.

I asked about Baby Yoga because, several years ago, I loved going to yoga.  I felt fit and relaxed and the good kind of “yoga high.”  And on this studio’s website were many photos of babies perched on their mothers while in the warrior pose. 

It looked like fun.

But because I had only known Elliot a short while, I asked all about the class...By the time we started he would be seven months, is that too old?  What was the skill level, etc…. 

We chatted for a long time about how her own children went until they were about a year and loved it still.  And at the time, Elliot while always sweet, was loud* and demanding and I thought that maybe a little yoga could calm the little man down.

But over the ensuing months, Elliot and I have gotten to know each other better.  I can handle him much more effectively and he’s not so demanding because he doesn’t have to be.**

He also has gotten completely mobile.  He has a funny way of getting around which is a combination of conventional crawling, rolling, military crawling and hurling himself into space. 

So when we got to our first Baby Yoga class, I was excited.  Elliot would be into it.  I’d get a little stretch.  All would be well.

Clearly I was nuts. 

Baby Yoga is not yoga for mothers and babies.  It is yoga for mothers and immobile babies.***

The mothers gather their equipment…mats, blocks and such, while the babies lies on their blankets with a soft toy.  Then the babies play quietly for the first 45 minutes while the mothers stretch and do poses. 

Most babies.  Not my baby.  My baby runs amuck. 

Seriously. 

Amuck.

I close my eyes for a second and he’s four mats down “borrowing” another baby’s toy.

So I pop up, gather him and make apologies.

I close my eyes for another second and he’s on the instructor’s mat cramming her class plan into his mouth.

So I pop up, gather him and make apologies.

I after that, I never close my eyes again.

I save him from the heating coils lining the walls.  I save another baby from his rolling.  I save the yoga blocks from his spit up.  I save his head from thumping the floor too hard and when I can’t, I comfort him, which means…

I pop up, gather him and make apologies.

When we finally get to the last fifteen minutes of class, we pick up the babies, massage them and do a few yoga poses with them.  It’s supposed to be relaxing and calming.  Elliot will have none of it.  He thinks the massage is HILARIOUS which makes him laugh his head off. 

And holding him during the poses?  Forget it. 

It’s the most stressful hour of the week.

I tried to trade in the classes for a few of the yoga classes.  The plain yoga classes.  The ones where sweet Elliot stays at home with Husband and I head off for a basic class, alone. 

I wrote an email explaining my case, praising the teacher (who is seriously good, but is the teacher, not the baby minder).  I hoped for mercy.

There was none. 

I got shamed for not practicing with Elliot every day to get him more used to it.  I was instructed to move to the back of the room so he would have more space to wiggle about where I could control him better.  And also she reminded me that her babies loved it until they were a year old.****

But the number one reason why I can’t trade in the class for other classes?

It is not fair to all the people who couldn’t get into it in the first place.

So we’re going to try it one more time.*****

Today. 

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*He is still loud.  I don’t mind that.
**Yeah, he may be the daytime boss of me, but that boss sleeps for 10 hours every single night and another two during the day, so while I work hard during the on-time, I have off-time as well.  Plus he’s funny and easy on the eyes…pretty much the best boss I’ve had thus far.

***He is also not the oldest baby there.
****I should have taken the gene pool into consideration.  She probably had serene, calm yoga babies.  I  have unruly, loud wild babies.

*****Why don't I just quit?  We already paid for it and I am ridiculously optimistic.  Maybe this time will be different...

Think Pink

There are almost 2,600,000 million people in the United States who are survivors of breast cancer.  Depending on what statistics you follow, that’s roughly one in ten. 

One in ten.

Just based on probability, you know someone who has survived the second most common cancer. 

The first most common cancer is non-melonoma skin cancer.  You probably know someone who has had that too, and I am not discounting the trauma of it, but clipping off a mole is not the same as removing a breast. It’s just not. 

And it’s not epidemic just in the United States, it’s worldwide.  Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the United Kingdom.

And in Norway it’s the most common as well. 

One in ten women can expect to get it, which is slightly less than the one in eight that can expect to get it in the United States.

And this is not even considering the statistics about the people who die from it.

I say "people" because men get it, too. Not as frequently, but they do as well. 

So do something about it.* 

Support a walker.

Save second base.**

Or, if you'd rather spend corporate dollars and not your own, just click. 

*Also, if you have a favorite breast cancer site, put the link in the comments and I'll add it to the post.

**Thanks Cherie.

Kind of Blue

One hearty bug

In almost two years in Norway, I've only seen one other bug.  This is the second.

May the Force be with You

Every single morning, at least for the last month or so, I wake up at about 5:30am when Elliot does. I feed him, put him back down and then go downstairs to make sure that he has enough milk to mix with his cereal and various food stuffs for the day.

This may sound super early and it is, but it's not so bad.

Not when you consider that he's been in bed since 7:30 or 8pm the night before.

Also when you consider it's a tiny bit of complete quiet time, all by myself, while I take care of the business at hand.

So of course, I do not spend it improving my mind reading classic novels or even watching CNN. I browse my favorite websites* for editor-selected chunks of goodness.

And this morning, I saw a quote on Jezebel.com about what Carrie Fisher had to say about what she writes.**

I love Carrie Fisher. I think she is funny and smart and honest and doesn't have any phobias about embarrassment, either. ***

When I was little, we lived in Southwest Georgia on a farm**** about 20 miles outside of an 800-person town (Or thereabouts...). And every summer, BigD would drive us to North Georgia (where I grew up the rest of the time) to Nana and Papa's where we would stay for a good chunk of the summer.

We would spend the days swimming at the local pool with our cousins and eating the very best fresh sliced tomato and Durkee's sandwiches, ever.

Every now and again, Nana would hand each one of us a sandwich baggie filled with multicolored popcorn, a few of the small individual Hershey's chocolate bars and a can of Coke. Then she would load all of the cousins into her giant yellow Cadillac and take us to a matinee.

Sometimes it would be Pippi Longstocking or maybe The Apple Dumpling Gang, but one summer it was Star Wars. Like the vast majority of theatergoers that summer, we LOVED it. We begged and begged to go again and again.

And that summer, we must have seen it about three times.*****

When we got back to school that fall, playing Star Wars was all the rage. The Middle County Elementary School had a playground with some swings and a concrete area for Four Square and lots of room to run, but occasionally we'd have recess or PE across the street on the baseball field. They'd just let us loose.

As you may guess, I was not one of the ultra-popular kids. I was usually hanging out with one of my best friends or maybe over in the corner, reading a book. But this fall, every now and again, BigD would roll my hair up into those giant buns and when we all played outside at recess, I would get to be Princess Leia.******

And really, who wouldn't want to be? She was a awesome princess. Yeah, she needed a little assistance rescuing herself, but she shot a gun and smack-talked and figured out how to send R2D2 and C3Po out for help.

Cut to almost three decades later:

I'm back in Atlanta, at the Georgia Aquarium and I'm on assignment. Jane Fonda is being roasted for her charity, the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention. And the room is full of the celebrity types, all looking swanky.

Early in the evening, before I started to work, I found a place and perched at the top of the staircase, surveying the crowd of pretty people. After a few minutes, the crowd shifted, and I felt a touch on my shoulder and a woman said "Excuse me."

I turned around to face Carrie Fisher.*******

I had collided with the ex-Princess Leia, and now, even cooler, a hilarious writer.

We both offered apologies and then chit-chatted for a moment about the night.

After a moment, she stared at me up and down and said, "You look great, but I think you need one thing."

Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a little spray bottle, said, "May I?"

She reached into my hair, poofed it out just a bit and sprayed.

"It's glitter spray," she said and tilted her head down. "See, I'm wearing it, too. And, really, everything is better with a little bit of glitter."

THE END

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*Most of them are in the lists to the right. Good stuff, really.

**Scroll down to the bottom of the list for the quote and if you want to read the full Vanity Fair piece, click here.

***I am well aware I am no Carrie Fisher, for a variety of reasons. But if you count the good ones, she's a pretty good, even great example to have.

****Not a "momma go outside and pick up the eggs from the chickenhouse farm." It was/is a commercial farm where, back then, my dad grew peanuts and soybeans and corn. There was even some livestock in the back corner of the main field. (The livestock was really a bunch of pigs, but doesn't livestock sound less muddy?)

*****This was a VERY big deal. No joke. My grandparents grew up without much money and did not believe in wasting anything, not Christmas wrapping, not the crusts from the sandwich bread and certainly not money to see a movie more than once. But this summer, we did.

******They would also play Dallas. I wasn't allowed to watch soap operas, plus we couldn't get all channels on the tv at the farm because Big D thought satellite dishes were tacky.

*******No joke...she's not that tall. Neither am I.

Spanish Holiday

Last Saturday morning as we drove the 82 kilometers between the villa we rented and the Alicante airport, I counted 14 double decker buses roaring down the roads heading to the area we just left.

The windows on the fronts and the sides were almost full glass.*And every seat was filled with enthusiastic visitors of the geriatric sort.

Apparently, in the non-summer months**, the Costa Blanca region of Spain, where we took a little holiday last week is the European version of Palm Springs and most of Florida all wrapped into one.

And, in this area, if you weren't a local or an imported retiree snowbirding, you were a family with small, younger than school-age children who were doing the exact same thing we were.

This is not a bad thing, if you are us. We wanted a bit of a break, in the sunshine and because we travel in a pack of three, it was important that Elliot was welcomed in places that Husband and I wanted to be, like restaurants that served tasty local food and once a pub.

And without a doubt, he was. We couldn't walk down the street without being stopped with a "Guapo bebé."*** And when he occasionally made a little noise when we were out eating, that was completely fine.***** Someone would say, "Oh oh that is what babies do. Guapo, guapo."

And it was a great week, full of good things like fish:

Two headed fish

Two fish that turned into

This:

(I promise you, one day, you should come over and eat what Husband cooks. When he has the time, he's good. And when I say time, I mean time. He is also slow. But that's okay. We like to visit.)

We had lots of good food out as well...here we will soon have paella***** on our plate for lunch. Elliot started out asleep, but when he heard the main course arrive...

He woke up.

Who could blame him really? So eventually, everyone ate.

We spent a happy afternoon at a place called Munda Mar, which is no kidding, awesome. It's a small-ish zoo with great exhibits and hilarious access to the animals. Elliot loved the fish, especially. When we go back to the US, whether it's for good or for a visit, we're going to hang out at The Georgia Aquarium.

And it was just right. There was just enough sunshine. So we'd sit out every single day.

And eat out in the sunshine.

And then visit all day.

And visit all evening.

And that was our holiday. It was just exactly right.

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*Once, when my brother and I were little (in the pre-dear sister days), the BigD and our dad took us to Florida to ride the glass bottomed boats. These buses were like that, but different. Not boats, not bottoms, but still noses pressed against glass, totally excited about the view.

**In the summer months, it is more akin to Panama City and Myrtle Beach, all wrapped into one.

***Also, in a pottery shop, when the owner admired Elliot, she also told me in great detail that he needed to have some time on the beach because he was too white. That it was okay to be worried about the sun in July, but not in September, that we should leave immediately and go to the water. He would be fine. I'm pretty sure that's what it all meant because I know blanco, bebe, la playa, julio, septiembre, various verbage of tengo, tiene, guapo, etc... This went on a long time, then she shooed up out, all the way to the door and pointed up to the sun. But never once stopped clucking and smiling at Elliot. The Spanish are multi-taskers.

****Not grumpy noise, he rarely makes those. The noises are squeals or laughing or just general babbling. He likes to visit. Shockingly enough, my son is social.

*****For which we were mocked when Husband pronounced it (paella) on an installment of HKS a few days ago...I cleared it up with a Spanish friend of mine who is from the Basque region and apparently there are five (maybe more??) regions of Spain, each with a slightly different accent, which in over-simplified terms translates into different stresses and uses of the "ll" and "c." Trust.