Our Blueberry Haul

This morning we went to opening weekend at a blueberry farm just outside town. The kids were able to stay focused for a reasonable amount of time despite the warm weather conditions, and we came home with almost 7 pounds of blueberries (two big bags like the one pictured above)! Actually, let me rephrase that: we checked out with almost 7 pounds of blueberries. Quite a number of them were consumed in the car on the way home...

This is just one more perk of living in a rural area. When I was a kid I don't think I actually knew where blueberries came from (trees? plants?), much less had a chance to pick and eat them right off the bushes. And boy are they delicious this way; I can hardly blame the kids for wanting to eat them by the handful. In fact, I am planning a blueberry cobbler for dessert tonight and blueberry muffins for Father's Day breakfast tomorrow. I'm wondering if it is possible to actually turn into a blueberry, like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ("I have a blueberry for a daughter!"). Gosh, let's hope not.

Today was a good indulgence of my recent Michael Pollan "know where your food comes from" kick. We're thinking about buying some grass-fed beef this fall from some friends who have a small farm and herd. I wonder if the kids will be as excited to eat burgers when they've actually previously met Bessie the Cow (actually, this family names all their cows Lord of the Rings names, so it would probably be more like Gimli the Cow or something). I can't imagine that going over as well as the berries. Then again, it's hard to imagine anything going over as well as the berries. I guess we'll see...

Joy Joy Joy!

Today was a great day, and what I would like to consider the official start to the Sterup family summer. It started off early in the morning; as I was leaving to go jogging the dogs just looked so excited and hopeful to see me putting on my shoes that I couldn't resist letting them come along. And though my run in general was less than refreshing (it's HOT, even early in the morning, and I am SLOW, just now getting back to exercise after being sick), the sight of Barney and Bailey excitedly trotting down the street with their ears back and their tails wagging really made my morning.

We had homemade cherry almond scones leftover from the weekend (they'd been frozen, we weren't eating stale pastries), then Kyle emptied the dishwasher while I was in the shower (least favorite chore: completed for the day). After Kyle went in to work the kids and I went to the doctor to have Eva's leg looked at, and Dr. Bailey pronounced her healed enough to REMOVE HER CAST!!!

The saw was VERY loud, and Eva screamed bloody murder the whole time they cut the cast off. But Daniel was very sweet, standing with his hands over his ears in the furthest possible corner from us, yelling "It's okay, Eva! Don't cry! It's okay!" over and over. And the whole thing was very quick; we were out of the office in 20 minutes, and made it to the library program I had assumed we'd have to miss.

We had a great time at the library. The weather was good, so they held the show in a nice shady area outside instead of cramming us all into the building. At last week's event the librarian had billed this as a mime act, but there was a distinct absence of white grease paint and quite a bit of talking. It was very funny, though, with lots of juggling and magic tricks. Both the kids won super-cool stuff in the door prize drawing, and I wasn't fined for returning a book a day late, which is kind of like a prize for me.

After that we had a picnic in the park and played on the playground to celebrate Eva's two-legged freedom. When we got home the kids collapsed, sweaty and exhausted, for some glorious simultaneous naps. I saw an e-mail for a sale on children's clothing, but after a few minutes I realized there is really nothing we need. And THAT is a good feeling.

So energized was I by our fantastic morning that this afternoon I cleaned our bathrooms, sorted laundry, and swept, mopped, and vacuumed all our floors. We used gift certificates the kids earned through the summer reading program to go out for pizza for dinner, and then all went to Daniel's t-ball game. He actually fielded the ball twice, which he has never done before in a game, and he was so thrilled that he'd actually touched the ball.

I am surprised at what a relief it is to have Eva's cast off, for her to be able to run in the mud or go to the pool or take a bath. I'm glad to be over being sick, and to have some energy. The weather forecast had predicted rain for today, so the sunshine we got feels like something sneaky we got away with. We are getting used to Kyle's and my more relaxed summer schedules, and the local blueberry farm opens for picking tomorrow. Today just seems like the first day of the rest of our summer, and it was a really good one.

At some point during the day while we were in the car, Daniel just started saying "Joy, joy, joy!" over and over in a sing-song kind of way in the back seat. As I sit here tonight, belly full of pizza, in our clean, air-conditioned house with my healthy family all sleeping peacefully, all I have to say is:
My thoughts exactly.

C is for Coyly Threatening Your Mother

Today the kids and I finally got around to making the cutout cookies I'd planned on baking before I got sick a couple of weeks ago. It was rainy here today, so it was the perfect thing to keep the kids occupied. Eva and I made the dough this morning while Daniel was playing at a friend's house, then after lunch Daniel and I rolled out and cut out all the cookies while Eva napped. By the time Kyle got home from school we'd just finished baking and we all frosted them together (This really is an all-day thing; this recipe makes about 12 dozen cutout cookies. If they weren't amazingly delicious we'd never make them). Everybody had fun with the sprinkles, and when we were done we each had one cookie. Happy day, right?

Before we'd even eaten our "one cookie each," Daniel started working on me about being allowed a second one after dinner. I put him off with the classic parental "We'll see...," but really I knew I'd end up giving him one. After all, he's a four-year-old who spent the entire afternoon focused on this project; I thought he kind of deserved a second. So eventually we settled on one extra cookie to anyone who ate a good dinner. I should have seen it coming, what with all the dough-eating, the licking of dripped frosting, the sampling of sprinkles. Nobody ate dinner. Well, nobody under the age of 30, anyway.

I made a meal the kids like, we gave lots of warnings, we encouraged and cajoled and gave them way past the end of the meal until I'd cleaned up the kitchen, but still no dice. So we calmly announced there were no cookies and started bath time. And you would think these kids had never seen a consequence before in their lives. Eva spent her first 30 minutes in bed tonight wailing "YES COOOOKIEEEE!," while Daniel came to the kitchen to "help" me put the cookies into containers to be given away or frozen. Our conversation went something like this:

"You know, I am feeling very angry to you right now."
"Oh yeah, Bud?"
"Yeah. You know just now when I asked you for a cookie for dessert and you said 'NO!!' (scrunching his face and yelling wickedly); that made me really mad. Do you REALLY want me to be angry to you?"
"Well, actually I was willing to give you a cookie if you ate your dinner. You're the one who decided not to eat. Maybe you should be angry with yourself."

Silence, thinking... Now very calmly, in a kind of menacing tone...

"You know, tomorrow, we will go somewhere and I will see someone and I will tell them that you did not give me ANY dessert, and they will say 'YOUR MOMMY DID NOT GIVE YOU ANY DESSERT?!?!,' and I will say, "Yes."

End of conversation.

Well, let's hope we don't run into any law enforcement officers or DFS workers tomorrow. Maybe they'll let me off the hook if I give them a cookie. :)

Two Heads Are Better Than One

This past week was our son Daniel's birthday, and this weekend was the long-awaited birthday party. I'd mentioned to him sometime in March or so that we might think about inviting some friends over, and have subsequently been asked on a weekly basis to calculate the number of days remaining until the party. Yes, it was quite an anticipated event, with the extra excitement of a dinosaur theme and a visit from Grandma Jan thrown in for good measure.

And, as many kids' birthday parties seem to be, this started out as a simple idea that got more complicated as time went on. Now, I am not implying that we had an extravagant party or anything; there were no ponies or bouncy houses or ice sculptures. Just that, as these kinds of things go, it's hard to pick just two or three friends to invite knowing we're leaving out others. And once you buy the dinosaur plates you might as well get the matching cups and invitations. And, well, if our friends are bringing Daniel presents the least we can do is make up some games and send them home with some party favors. We were happy to do these things, but they turn a little get-together into a formal event, and while this seemed like a fine idea two months ago our family's recent health surprises (see previous two posts) put a kink in my advance planning.

And so my mother arrived on Thursday to find me miserably sick, Kyle tired and stuffed up as well, Eva in need of extra attention, and our house not exactly dirty but certainly not clean. Now, like many women, usually I have a love/hate relationship with visits from my mother. On the one hand, she brings too many toys, fruit snacks, and cereal I would never buy. She buys restaurant food for every meal and lies to the kids to get compliance (like telling Eva her nose will fall off if she picks it instead of just saying it's bad manners). On the other hand, she is great with the kids, and they LOVE to play with her. I do like doing things with her and talking to her in the evenings, and she is a good sport about going along with whatever stuff we've got planned for the week. She is as generous with Kyle and me as she is with the kids, and after all who doesn't enjoy getting out of cooking for a few days?

This week, though, a visit from my mom was just what the doctor ordered. She had good ideas for things to put in the goody bags for the party, bought me cold medicine and a patio umbrella, gave the kids the extra attention they needed, and let Kyle and me use her convertible to go out to eat without the kids Saturday night. I was more than happy to just order out all weekend, and to have extra help preparing for the party.

The other major thing that my mom did was design and help make the cake. Daniel had mentioned when we first started planning the party that he really wanted a dinosaur cake. So my mother went on a search for something that would be doable, but also really cool for Daniel. She happened to be taking a cake decorating class this winter and spring, so she arrived this weekend with a fully stocked arsenal of cake decorating supplies and knowledge. When I first saw the design for the cake I was a little intimidated: I had never made a 3D cake before, and I wasn't sure about all the little frosting stars and something that required a dowel rod. But she said she could do it and I agreed that the cake might be achievable with her help.

So Friday afternoon we baked the cakes, and after the kids went to bed Friday night we began assembling and frosting this thing. It really was easy enough, though it was time-consuming and the three batches of buttercream frosting made a big greasy mess all over the kitchen. Finally, at 1:00 in the morning the cake was complete. We dyed and toasted some coconut for "grass" to put around it, put it up where the kids couldn't mess with it, and took some pictures. We'd had some problems getting the head to stay together, but had finally gotten enough frosting to stick everything together fairly well. We crossed our fingers and went to get ready for bed.



Somehow, though, while I was brushing my teeth, I had a feeling that we were not home free. I only noticed it when I looked at the cake through the lens of the camera, but it seemed like the neck was pulling away a bit. I prayed that God would let the cake stay together until the party, then chastised myself for praying for something so completely frivolous. I revised it as a prayer for appropriate perspective on a silly dinosaur cake. Which was good, because when I finished brushing my teeth and went in to shut the lights off, the head had come completely unattached, fallen down, and broken into several pieces on the coconut grass. I went downstairs to tell my mom, and after examining the cake and bellyaching for a few minutes we decided to just go to bed and redo the head in the morning.

And so, about an hour before the party, we fashioned a different head (one that did NOT stand up) out of a store-bought angel food cake and covered it in a tub of premade Wilton frosting. Mom was dyeing and piping that frosting on like the Cake Boss himself. And in the end, I think it looked better than the original. We had a fun party, and Daniel has claimed the head as his own special piece of cake leftovers.


So Grandma Jan saved the day, for the cake and also for our tired little family. Thanks, Mom! We love you!

Rash Thinking

My last post was about our daughter Eva's trip to the hospital, and our family's general not-healthiness last week. This post is not entirely about that, though I'm afraid things around here have only gotten worse.



Eva woke up yesterday morning with a rash from head to toe (I took these pictures this morning at breakfast, and they really don't do it much justice). We spent the morning getting her new cast put on and the afternoon at the family doctor for the ear infection follow-up and rash inspection. The medical opinion is that the rash is due to a virus, and that the same virus has caused the wheezy breathing and cough that Daniel had last week, and that Eva, Kyle, and I all have this week. In Eva's case, though, the doctors got a good listen to her lungs and started talking pneumonia. She is quite a mess; between the bright purple cast, the bright red rash, and the Darth Vader breathing we certainly turned some heads at Daniel's preschool drop-off this morning.

In the long term, I'm sure Eva is going to be fine. She, of course, is totally unfazed by all of this. She may look and sound sick, but is not acting the part at all. She has revived the monkey crawl from her younger days, and is destroying our house at, well, roughly the rate of any other two year-old on steroids. We had to rent a nebulizer to give her breathing treatments, and even for these she sits cheerfully in her booster seat, looking around while the steam puffs out of her little mask.

What really is going to be hurt the most by these recent happenings is the way I think of myself as a mother. Last night I was giving Polka-Dot-Eva a sponge bath and thinking to myself, "Now, how did I let all of this happen again?" This morning it was difficult to miss the moms and teachers at Daniel's school visibly cringing at the sight of Eva. Yesterday at the doctor's office and pharmacy Daniel (tired, I think, of seeing Eva get all the attention) made himself such a bratty nuisance that I could barely have a conversation with the doctor and pharmacist. I think it's easy to allow myself to think that I can always control what happens to my family, or the way my children behave, and to even take credit for them when they're being good.

Along with this comes a pressure (from myself) to uphold a certain imaginary parenting standard. And we are NOT meeting it this week. Last night Kyle was drinking the Blue Death-flavored nighttime cough medicine right out of the bottle. We are both tired, phlegm-y, and "itchy" (Daniel's word for "achy"). I have done zero housework this week, despite the fact that I am not teaching right now and my mother is coming to visit later this week. Daniel's birthday is the day after tomorrow, and we have not bought him a present yet. But nobody seems as upset about this as I am.

I had planned to spend the day today making birthday cookies for Daniel to take to school tomorrow, but the recipe (from my friend Jennifer for literally the BEST cutout cookies in the universe) requires lots of time to make, chill, roll, cutout, bake, and frost the cookies. Sometime late this morning it occurred to me that I could just buy some cookies at the store. Though I could feel the relief just at the THOUGHT of not spending my whole day on this project, I went back and forth about it for a full hour or so. Why? Do I think Daniel's teacher will think I'm a better mother for sending homemade cookies? Do I think Daniel will care, so long as there is a quarter-inch of frosting on his cookie?

I think the bottom line is that somehow I've fooled myself into thinking that store-bought cookies would be fine for other mothers, but that I should just do BETTER. That somehow, saving my kids from red dye number five and high-fructose corn syrup means that I love them more than if I don't. That having a cleaner house makes me a better person, and that I really must be the perfect from-scratch cook and mother and housekeeper. And now I sound like the latest flavor-of-the-month author on what's wrong with modern mothers (and NOBODY wants to hear about that again).

So here it is, America. My daughter looks like a contagious train wreck and I am taking her to my son's t-ball practice anyway (we'll just keep our distance). We will probably eat take-out tonight for dinner. Tomorrow I will send bought cookies to school because I took a nap today instead of baking. There are large tufts of dog hair on the floor under my dining room table, and the sheets in the guest room are not clean (okay, maybe we'll remedy that one before Thursday, Mom). We will probably be up late the night before Daniel's birthday purchasing and assembling a big-boy bicycle. And at the end of this week, at least we will have plenty of material to have a big, long, laugh at ourselves. And hopefully for everyone else's sake, this will be the last you'll have to read about the Sterup health saga.

Curious Eva Goes to the Hospital

When thinking of a title for this post, I considered many alternatives. First was "Well, I Guess We've Met Our Deductible," then "Sickly Sterups" and "...Had a Great Fall," followed by "Of Course There's a Recall on Children's Tylenol Right Now" and finally "Just Forward Our Paychecks Right to Pfizer." Let's just say we've had a less-than-healthy week, starting with Eva's ear infection and Kyle's allergies (both requiring visits to the doctor on Monday), continuing with Daniel's wicked cough and my equally wicked migraine headache, and culminating in Eva's broken leg yesterday afternoon.

Neither Kyle nor I was in the room when it happened, but we think that Eva climbed on either her stepstool or her toybox to get a book off her shelf and fell (was pushed?) down. Funny that she would get so injured on a short fall that has happened a hundred times before. Kyle came downstairs to find her crying and unable to stand up. I was on my way to Moberly to attend graduation for the community college where I work, and had to make my carpool turn around when Kyle called me.

The thing about having a barely-2-year-old with an injury is that they're not very specific about where exactly it hurts. "Leg hurts" was all we could get out of her, and the doctors couldn't find anywhere that was bruised or swollen, so we had to have 8 X-rays done of her pelvis, hips, legs, and ankles in order to find the problem. As I helped the tech get Eva arranged on the X-ray table, all I could think of was Curious George Goes to the Hospital:

In the next room stood a big table, and a doctor was just putting on a heavy apron. Then he gave the man one just like it. George was curious: Would he get one too? No, he did not.
"You get on that table, George," the doctor said. "I am going to take some X-ray pictures of your insides." He pushed a button and there was a funny noise.

It didn't take long after the X-ray for the doctors to find the problem (lower left leg), measure and apply a splint, and give us our discharge papers. Which was good, because from the second they applied the wet, plaster-y splint, Eva started screaming, "Off! Off! OFF!" As Kyle carried her out, I heard nearly everyone we passed do the "Aww... Poor baby!" face and corresponding noise. If you've not seen a tiny child with a cast on, it IS a fairly pathetic sight:


Since last night, I've had a number of thoughts regarding our little situation, and the first is this:

Yesterday, on the way home from a program at Daniel's preschool, Eva took her shoes off in the car. Daniel pointed out that she had a hole in her sock and suggested we throw it away and put new socks on her. I pointed out that she also had pink punch spilled down the front of her dress, and said that we were just going to ride out the rest of the day with the dirty shirt and holey sock and start again tomorrow. If I'd known that we'd be taking her to the Emergency Room later in the day, and that half the staff of Northeast Regional Medical Center would get a good look at that punch dress and holey sock, I'd have just gone ahead and changed her. I'm sure nobody was judging us, but I'd have felt more confident filling out the DFS form recounting EXACTLY how it was my child broke her leg if she looked like we took better care of her. I guess it's kind of like that motherly admonition to always wear clean underwear in case you're in an accident.

Secondly, this event has reinforced for me what horrible eyewitnesses children are. The first time Kyle asked Daniel what happened, he insisted that he and Eva had been innocently standing on the floor in the middle of the room when she just fell over (hard enough to break her leg). As we pressed him more, and the doctors asked him about it, he wavered back and forth between Eva being on her stool and on her toybox when it happened. Sometimes the fall involved both he and Eva on top of each other, and sometimes it was just her that fell. Either way, let's hope that my children are never the only witnesses to some heinous crime.

Thirdly, I am not sure what a visit to the ER, 8 X-rays, a temporary cast, a couple visits to the orthopedic surgeon, a permanent cast, and whatever other accessories come with that costs, but I'm pretty sure it will be at least as much as our insurance deductible. This will end the debate over what we will spend Kyle's summer school earnings on, but will also free the rest of us up to go to the doctor whenever we need to the rest of the year. It's kind of nice to know I might actually be able to consider seeing someone about my migraines or some funny-looking mole instead of putting it off.

Finally, I have concluded that the author of the helpful ER brochure on fractures does not have children, as it suggests things like "not tampering with the splint or dressings" and "keeping the fracture elevated" while "avoiding unnecessary movement." I am wondering how VERY many times Eva will try to get up and walk, then cry "Leg hurts!" until she's picked up and rearranged, only to get back up immediately to try again.

Let's all pray for a speedy recovery, shall we?

Patrons of The Arts

This month has been a busy one in our house so far. And a surprisingly creative one, too. As I thought about how to summarize all that's been going on in our family recently, the one theme I can find is that we've all been busy creating something or other, or enjoying the fruits of each others' creations. It all started with Eva's birthday...

Painting
Several members of our extended family went together to buy a swing set for the kids' birthdays. It came in (literally) hundreds of little pieces, and Kyle, Kyle's mom Barb, and I spent a couple of evenings in the garage brushing water sealant on all the boards.

Sculpture
On a Saturday, my dad and his fiance Karen drove up with my brother, and we had a long day assembling the set. They worked from mid-morning until dark, and ALMOST finished.


Culinary Arts
While everyone was in town we had a nice little family party for Eva's birthday, and Barb and I worked hard the night before making a monkey cake for the occasion.


More Sculpture, Acrobatics
Kyle spent a few nights after school finishing up the swingset, and the kids have had a ball, playing on it any time we have a break from the rain.



Performing Arts
Unfortunately, we have actually had quite a lot of rain, so we've been forced to devise some inside activities to entertain the kids. On Tuesday we went to the circus (see Kyle's blog for more details on that). It was a great time; I think we all had a different favorite act.

We also went to a kids' carnival Saturday that was put on by the local Ambulance District. The weather held out long enough for us to go in the bouncy house, down the big slide, and on the train. There was a clown making balloon animals, and Eva asked for a doggy. That poor dog almost made it all the way home in the backseat with the kids. We knew it was in trouble when Daniel commented that Eva was pulling on the doggy, and that it was starting to look more like a worm.

Mixed Media
The kids have also recently struck up an interest in... we'll call it "card-making." What this really means is getting out lots of paper, crayons, stickers, glue, scissors, markers, and a stapler, and going to town making lots of creations for our family and friends. Daniel is currently very enthralled with the stapler. This afternoon I had to refill it with staples two different times. Seriously, if there is someone out there with some tedious office work, this kid would be all over it.

Vocal Stylings
Finally, our kids have been big into singing lately; especially Eva. In her case, though, there is really only one song that she likes to sing, and it is "Happy Birthday." She sings it over and over, happy birthday to me and Daniel and our dog Bailey. And she sings it in this breathy little voice reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe singing "happy birthday, Mr President..." This morning on the way to church we tried to get her to sing something else, and after saying "No, no, NO!" about our singing, she went right on back to the birthday song.

This evening Daniel was walking around the house singing "Jesus likes the little children; all the children of the world." I've posted about Daniel's and my tendency to mangle song lyrics, and he remains strong in this area.

Hopefully the weather will warm up and dry up soon, so I can work on the art of gardening and the kids can continue in the art of getting dirty. Keep your fingers crossed for us, and in the meantime anyone looking for a little culture is welcome at our house.