Snolfs

I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve barely had time to collect my thoughts, much less rub two of ’em together to see if they spark. This morning, however, vivid images past and present swirled in my mind; aided by a thread elsewhere, I resisted the urge to squash a poetic moment. And upon contemplating the result, I decided I liked it enough to put it here.

We finally had a deviation from the unusually damp and cool spring here, and I made good use of it. I’ve been dodging the showers as best I can, getting the garden plot ready for planting. Yesterday morning, I finished that task; and in the afternoon, the snolfs and I finally got the garden planted!

Both snolfs like the Asterix and Obelix books, but Snolf the First really enjoys them. He re-reads the books we have regularly, has adopted some of the phrases and mannerisms that run through the books, and has long wanted to have roast boar.

But I am so pleased with our Darlin’ Daughter (AKA Snolf the Second). A few days ago, I invited her to read a book with me, the deal being that we’d alternate reading pages. She very reluctantly agreed—not surprising, that, since she has been telling herself for quite some time that she can’t read.

Yes, her reading was slow and halting, with a lot of the drawn-out sounds characteristic of someone who is sounding out words. (Her cute, high voice doing this, with an invariably rising pitch at the end of each sound, sent me into fits of giggles, which did not help the situation. But, thankfully, she giggled too, rather than get mad at me.) I think she surprised herself by how well she was doing; the next day she hopped into my lap and asked when we would continue reading the story. And her reading was noticeably better than the first day.

We just finished today’s session, in which we started reading a different book. D.D. still sounds out a few words very slowly, and her overall pace is that of a beginning reader, but I do believe she can be called a “reader” now. A little bit of phonics work, and I think she’ll be soaring on her own!

I’m so thankful Lobo and I resisted our inclinations to try to push her on this. Yeah, she may be starting later than most kids, but some just seem to need more time to be ready to handle reading. Pushing will not help that, and will almost certainly hurt the child’s attitude and interest in learning how to read. Reading is far too critical a skill to risk like that, especially for the dubious aim of remaining on the educrats’ timetable.

Warning: lots of self-indulgent emoting and navel-gazing follows.

Well, it turns out that we will end up appearing to be more traditional than we actually are. I’d forgotten that it’s Easter season when I ordered a Kentucky country ham earlier this week. It is now in its daylong bath to remove a lot of the excess salt, in preparation for a lovely feast tomorrow. I do believe this is a good excuse to get some more Maker’s Mark ... a bourbon glaze is just the thing for this ham!

In a bit – after all the breakfasting is done – I’ll be boiling some eggs so that we can undertake our first experiments with coloring them with natural dyes. I have wanted to do this for years, and it’s quite possible that I am more excited about the project than the snolfs are. Look for a report, possibly with some pictures, to follow – if I survive the process, that is.

One of my favorite meats is turkey; and it’s also a meal that I greatly enjoy preparing. Transforming that pale, slippery skin into a golden, crisp covering for the juicy meat beneath is very satisfying ... and even a small turkey provides a good amount of meat. MAL has been known to bring home a turkey in the summer, and even then I’m happy to fire up the oven and stovetop to roast the turkey and make mashed potatoes and gravy.

Someday I’ll post my oven-roasted turkey recipe, and challenge Ian to a turkey cook-off—he’s already posted his brining and cooking procedure (I’m too lazy to look it up at the moment). For now, I’m focusing on ways to handle leftovers. I’ve got a good turkey soup recipe down pat, as well as turkey-potato cakes, but it’s nice to add another variation to one’s recipe box.

The other day, I set out a bunch of frozen turkey meat without a clear idea of what I was going to do with it for dinner. I started tossing things into a saucepan, stirring and sampling, and what I ended up with was a dish MAL and I really liked. The snolfs, however, did not. Having just read parts of a Calvin and Hobbes book, they dubbed my creation “Bat Barf”. I doubt that it resembles bat barf at all, but I’ve a feeling the name will stick (another of my creations has the lovely title “Ick and Yuck”).

Anyway, I’d told Ian that if he posted a chicken rotis recipe he’d mentioned, I’d post my bat barf recipe. Ian has come through in his singular style – here’s his amusing method for making chicken rotis. Read on – if you dare! – for the soon-to-be-legendary [or maybe not] recipe for Bat Barf.

Snolf the First was sick all day yesterday—fever, chills, very scratchy throat, awful headache, weak ... so guess who’s got the bug today? Darlin’ Daughter and I, that’s who. This headache rivals some of my worst hangovers.

With any luck I’ll be more vertical tomorrow ... but for now, back to bed with the wiggly, sick snolf.

They’re here! The snolfs, that is. We had a grand weekend, consisting mostly of feasting, reading, playing, and of course, our belated new year’s celebration. I had to go to a nearby Big City airport to fetch them from Lobo ... Wow. That’s about all I can say about that experience.

As I've been seeing to other business over the past couple of days, the business of child-rearing has remained in my mind. As I mentioned in a comment yesterday, creativity is an important element of the undertaking.


Ever since I was old enough to notice it, I've despised the idea of parents treating all their children the same. Not being the oldest child, I felt that my parents unjustly, and unjustifiably tied my options to my elder sibling's behavior -- and I had no control over that! My focus has shifted since then, of course, but I still dislike the practice.

I'm not saying that some children "are more equal than others". I'm saying that children, just like adults, are individuals, and that forgetting that, especially for a parent, can be problematic. Adults don't generally think much about the variability that babies show in acquiring certain skills -- learning to walk and talk chief among them -- as long as it isn't unusually delayed. It's accepted as normal that some children will learn to walk at nine months, and others won't until twelve or even fifteen months. So why is it apparently acceptable to try to use the same learning or disciplinary techniques on different children, just because they're in the same family?

Many people will respond that doing so is only "fair", especially to the children involved. And even though I too railed against the unfairness of the world when I was younger, it didn't take me too long to realize that fairness is one of those grand-sounding schemes that reduce to sucking the uniqueness out of life. Life isn't fair; it is random and capricious and opportunistic, and I think we do ourselves and our children no favors if we expect otherwise. Trying to keep discipline "fair" among children means that square, heptagonal, and decagonal children all are expected to fit into a round slot. It also encourages the children to accept (or endure) such attempts at pruning. Neither of these ideas sits well with my goal of trying to help my children discover and capitalize on the best within themselves.

It took a few attempts at using time-out with my daughter to really bring this lesson home to me. She, unlike her older brother, simply didn't care about being in time out. Thus, a warning of an impending time out wasn't sufficient to get her to rethink her current actions. However, she very much enjoys special mother-daughter time. Thus, telling her that I wouldn't be willing to spend time combing her hair or reading poems to her is highly effective.

Many parents also don't seem to recognize that they can learn a lot from even their young children. The flow of knowledge seems to be thought of as unidirectional, with the parents imparting insights and the children soaking them up. But both are active participants in that dynamic activity, and I think it's very important for children to experience their parents learning new things, rethinking existing ideas, and such. So my children get credit from me when they help me learn something new, or when they enable me to make a connection between things I hadn't seen before. Since everybody gets a turn, so to speak, at being "leader" and "follower", they learn more about social interactions (including how those can differ for girls and boys) and dynamics in addition to whatever subject is under consideration.

I've a feeling I'm not communicating all that I want to very well this morning. But, rather than ramble on, I trust anyone wishing to explore further will ask or comment.

One of the advantages of insomnia is that it gives one the opportunity to make productive use of more time than usual. So, with the sunlight just beginning to penetrate the heavy morning mist here, I'll respond very briefly to the AAA question on child-rearing, and share other thoughts as may want to tumble out of my head.

After seeing my Musical Maunderings selections in this month's Salon, a friend commented on how eclectic my music collection is. Is it ever! But to be honest, it isn't just "my" collection -- the music at my fingertips comes from three grownups who all enjoy music very much, plus some contributions from the teenagers. I'm not brave enough to set my music player on random—I just don't think I can handle a sequence of, say, Miles Davis – Tone Loc – Merle Haggard – Frank Zappa – Dread Zeppelin – Metallica – Fairport Convention – Henry Mancini—but I do select unfamiliar artists from time to time, and usually enjoy at least a song or two. And the snolfs are often nearby, absorbing whatever bits of the musical stream that catch their attention.

So, it was met with some surprise the other evening when my daughter requested Tom Lehrer's Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. My son was a bit upset—he seemed to think it an endorsement of the activity. I don't think so ... but all the same, I'm glad we don't have any rat poison around for her to experiment with. Mostly because we don't have pigeons around here, but an assortment of lovely birds, including a recent influx of robins, and it'd be a shame to lose them.

In case you're wondering, yes, I've fielded some questions such as, "What's 'making book'?" and "What's a poll tax?" Hey, they're getting a good education from it, right? Heh.

Within the past six months or so, both of my children have become much more interested in music. Despite hearing various elder family members singing along on a regular basis, they never seemed to grok that that's what was going on: singing the words that someone else was singing with the music. Now that they both get it, more often than not my listening is interrupted with their requests to hear some favorites. Here's what some of those favorites seem to be right now.

Both snolfs: Help I'm a Rock; They're Coming to Take Me Away; Little Boxes; Carra Barra Wirra Canna; Waltzing Matilda; Botany Bay [yes, I hear a lot of Rolf Harris these days]; Big Balls; No!; Older; and various Ozzie Black Sabbath songs (that's mostly from their older half-brothers).

Snolf #1 (male, 8): I'm So Glad; Roll the Bones; Veteran of the Psychic Wars; Tom Paine's Bones.

Snolf #2 (female, 6): Wowie Zowie; Orange Colored Sky; Swing Sucks! (a compilation disk; her faves seem to be Detroit Swing City and Mildred, Won't You Behave).

There are others I'm just not thinking of at the moment; often they'll hum or sing a snippet of something as they play, or come into my room. It pleases me that they enjoy music so much; in addition to listening to songs, #2 likes to come up with her own songs. As you'd expect from a young child, they're rambling improvisations without a lot of melody; but she's got a pretty good ear for rhyme that goes beyond a basic understanding. I'd say they're starting out pretty well.

Lobo and I have never tried to indoctrinate our children with our beliefs -- that is, to become obedient soldiers in the war for freedom. We have tried to instill in them our values, which include a deep respect for life and property, and being a person of honor. But we don't try to hide our dislike of the state or other busybodies from them, either. (Leads to some highly raised eyebrows when we answer some of their questions in public, and folks are listening in -- a consistent source of amusement ...)

The snolfs have long enjoyed playing with my cookie cutters, but they aren't good at taking proper care of them (many are from my mother's collection, which means some are easily 50 years old), so they're generally off limits. This was the first year I thought both of them could handle all the steps in making cut-out cookies, so I gave it a try. We had a lot of fun, and amazingly enough, they lost interest in the cutting and decorating before we ran out of dough. For those who want to see some of the doings, please continue on.