Lessons in colour

 

 

I happened to glance at a calendar this week and was hit with the sudden and unbelievable realization that it is almost October already.  September seems to have disappeared in the blink of an eye. As fallen leaves have been swirling madly all around me on the sidewalk, propelled by gusts of wind that blow with determination this time of year, my mind, too has been spinning in a whirlwind of activity in recent weeks, making me hardly aware of the passage of time.  Everything is busy: family and home life, school and extra-curricular activities, and my own creative projects, the ideas for which seem to be coming to me fast and furiously these days.  The constant movement creates a humming that becomes very difficult to ignore. Even the nights have no longer been restful; in the dark hours I close my eyes, but behind them I am mulling over thoughts and solving problems in the form of crazy dreams while tossing and turning for hours on end. I love the energy and motivation that comes from all of this thinking and organizing and figuring out; sometimes it's a catalyst for making wonderful things happen in life and the source of deep satisfaction.  But I don't love when I start to feel as though my head might just explode....

I think many people find the early fall an especially busy time.  We start running the day after Labour Day and the wheel we're on just seems to keep spinning faster and faster as the weeks go by and we always find more that needs to be done.  How quickly we forget what summer taught us about how good it feels to just relax sometimes.  But fall has her own lessons, if we care to listen to them; her trees are filled with leaves of breathtaking colour that call to our hearts to stop and notice, even when our minds want to tell us to keep our heads down and plow ahead.  

Today I listened to the leaves.  When a sunny Saturday morning lay before me with no scheduled activities, I chose not to fill it with items I could check off my to-do list; instead I gathered up my three guys and we headed to a favourite local trail that meanders through some woods by the river.  After the first ten minutes or so (during which Will, who was not sure he liked my plan, complained about being tired and itchy and unimpressed), everyone grew quiet.  We spent an hour and a half on that trail, soaking up the morning sun and the glorious reds and oranges and yellows that glowed happily from the trees.  We noticed birds of all kinds, sniffed cheerful yellow snapdragons, and watched dozens of large, fuzzy brown and black caterpillars inch across our path.  (We also learned, when Will let one of these caterpillars crawl across his finger, that they bite!)  Our lungs filled with fresh air, and the beautiful landscape filled our hearts with peace and joy. 

 

I wonder why we so often forget how simple it is to find this quiet happiness, even in the middle of our busiest seasons.  I'm grateful for the beautiful leaves and their reminder that in nurturing the parts of ourselves that crave calm and meaningful reflection, we reveal our own most vibrant and lovely colours.

Asking for your votes...

This is just a quick little Friday afternoon post to ask a favour of you!

I am participating in the Circle of Moms Top 25 Canadian Moms 2012 blogger contest.  If you enjoy what you read here in this space, I would love it if you could go to this link and vote for Pocketfuls.  (You will need to look for me in the "Pending Appoval" section for now, as I just entered the contest today.)  You may vote once every 24 hours from now until October 11, so please return and vote often if you can.

Thanks so very much for your support -- it means a lot to me.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Slow-cooker beef and vegetable stew

The boys' swim practice schedule this year calls for us to eat dinner early three nights a week (and by early, I mean eating by 4:30 pm at the absolute latest.)  It's a little challenging some days to deal with school agendas and notes, unpacking lunch bags, making sure the boys complete their homework, and getting a healthy, home-cooked meal on the table in the hour and fifteen minutes I have once the boys get home from school.  This is where the slow cooker becomes a good friend in the kitchen.  At least once a week, I plan a meal that I can prepare in the morning when I'm not so rushed.  Once the prep work is done, dinner simmers away all day, making the house smell wonderfully inviting and allowing me to simply dish out a bowl of goodness once it's time for everyone to eat.

This beef and vegetable stew recipe is one of our family's favourite slow-cooker creations.  The combination of tender morsels of beef and flavourful vegetables is hearty, nutritious, and satisfying, and it warms everyone up on a chilly fall day.

Slow-Cooker Beef and Vegetable Stew

 

 

1 pound stewing beef, cut into one-inch cubes (I use pasture-raised beef we order every fall from a local organic farm) 

1 tbsp olive oil

4 red potatoes (unpeeled), scrubbed and cut into one-inch pieces

3 carrots, peeled and cut into one-inch pieces

half a red onion, chopped

1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped

1 large clove of garlic, minced

1 cup red wine

1 cup water

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

sea salt and pepper, to taste

2 dried bay leaves

2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

 

Early in the day, heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the beef cubes and brown them all over. 

While the meat is browing, chop the potatoes, carrots, onion, and bell pepper and place them in the slow cooker.  Add the minced clove of garlic.  Once the meat is browned, add the beef to the slow cooker as well.

Pour in the red wine, water, and balsamic vinegar.  Add sea salt and pepper to taste, and stir the mixture carefully to combine all of the ingredients.  Toss the bay leaves into the slow cooker, put the lid on, and simmer the mixture for 7 to 8 hours on low.  In the last half hour of cooking time, add the chopped fresh parsley to the slow cooker and stir it in gently.  Place the lid back on and cook for the remaining time.

Serve the stew in shallow bowls.  We like to enjoy ours with some crusty rolls (Will loves the little gluten-free ones we get from Organic Works Bakery) and a mixed green salad.

 

Delicious!

School field trip (and a dancing tractor video)

When you grow up in a more northern Ontario place like Sault Ste. Marie, school field trips of the outdoor variety involve going out into the woods and learning skills that will either help you to get around in six feet of snow, or to manage should you ever find yourself lost among the gazillion-and-three trees that surround your city.  As a middle-school aged child, I remember learning to snowshoe, to use a compass properly, and to identify the footprints and know the eating habits of various wild animals (so we would understand which ones to stay clear of if we didn't want to be eaten ourselves).  One year, we even completed an entire winter survival unit, in which we were taught how to build a quinzhee (basically a glorified snow fort), and then we actually went out into the forest as a class, built said quinzhees, and slept in them overnight.  (I am not making this up.)

Photo credit:  M. M. Felts

 

I have never heard of students in Noah and Will's school going on these kinds of field trips, probably because the outdoor educational opportunities in a more southern city surrounded by farms are quite different than those in a northern city surrounded by lakes and woods. (Or maybe because these days, it is frowned upon to send children out into the forest to sleep in a hollowed-out snow pile with the wolves.  I don't know.)  This past week, though, I had the opportunity to join Will and his class on a different (and equally exciting) field trip to the International Plowing Match in Roseville.

 

We never actually saw any of the plowing matches (they were off in another area from where we were), but we did spend several hours walking around the enormous collection of tents and displays about rural life, and everyone had a great time.   We were entertained by a dog show filled with exciting tricks, got up close to real live horses, cows, sheep, and cute little piglets, checked out rows and rows of antique farm equipment, and watched bees busy making honey.  There was mud (oh, the mud -- it had poured rain the day before and the entire site was like a real live pig wallow), and Will, who is not too fond of squishy things, kept making gagging noises as he tried to tiptoe through the muck with his most disgusted face on, and decided that most likely he will not be a farmer.  

 

 

 

He did reconsider once he got to sit on some tractors, though.

 

 

 

One of the highlights of the trip was the dancing tractor demonstration, and I thought I'd share a little video of it here to add a bit of lightheartedness to your Monday.  I dare you not to smile as you watch it.

 

 

It's interesting to me that my happy childhood memories of forest adventure field trips (yes, even the one involving quinzhee building!) are so different from the wonderful memories the boys are making as they visit pumpkin farms and apple cider mills and watch barn raising demonstrations.  I'm glad I have the opportunity to share some of these new experiences with Will and Noah; in some ways, it's like getting to be a kid all over again.

Food allergies in the classroom -- what is the answer?

 

I read an article in our local paper this morning about a highly emotionally charged issue, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.  Parents of some students at a school in our region are outraged after the school has banned all dairy and egg products from kindergarten classrooms to ensure the safety of a young child starting at the school next week who has anaphylactic reactions to both foods.  At a meeting this week, parents were given a list of allowable foods to pack in their children's lunch boxes, and because dairy and egg products are found in many kinds of packaged foods, there are restrictions on what brands of bread, lunchmeats, soups, crackers, cookies, pastas, and spreads are allowed as well.  The parents were also told that if they send unsafe foods to school, those foods would be confiscated.  The concept of banning foods in schools is not a new one; most schools I know of have been nut-free for years, but this particular food ban is more far-reaching and complex, and parents, while they say they understand the severity of the child's allergies, are frustrated and angry about the restrictions being placed on what their children can eat at school.  I feel uneasy thinking about this situation from either side of the fence.

My family's experiences with food sensitivities allow me to be sympathetic both to the allergic child and his or her family, and to the families whose children share a classroom with that child.  While my son Will's reactions to various foods he's sensitive to are thankfully mild compared to anaphylaxis, I think I can appreciate the feelings and concerns of the parents of that allergic child, and their desire to protect their child from harm.  It must be absolutely frightening for them to send their child to school every day, away from their watchful eyes and judgement, and to trust that others will do what they should to make sure that their child comes home safe and healthy at the end of the afternoon.  I imagine that having a dairy and egg ban in place in their child's classroom would give them enough peace of mind to let their child go and have the regular school experiences he or she deserves to have (though I can't imagine the worry ever completely goes away).  My heart breaks for that family when I think about how I would feel if it were my child who caused the school to ban several foods from the classroom.  Knowing how angry other parents were about the situation and worrying that my child would be singled out as the target for other children's frustration about not being able to eat cheese or yogourt at school anymore would make for a very anxious and unhappy feeling about my child's first years in the education system.  It's sad that this family (and I'm sure there are others in schools everywhere who are in a similar situation) is faced with such negativity when the fact that their child has allergies is completely beyond their control.

On the other hand, I can understand how parents of non-allergic children, suddenly faced with a short list of allowable (and sometimes unfamiliar) foods to pack in their children's lunch boxes, are shocked and angry (and in some cases, refusing to agree to the food ban).  I can tell you first hand, as the mom of a child who is intolerant to dairy, eggs, and gluten (as well as several other foods), that suddenly removing whole groups of foods from your child's diet and still ensuring that he is eating in a well-balanced, healthy way is no easy feat -- it requires research, lots of time (and a willingness) for experimenting and making foods from scratch at home, extra money spent on special ingredients, and creativity.  Not every family has these resources available to them, and, let's be honest, even if they did, not every family of a non-allergic child is going to want to put in the extra effort it takes to pack an allergy-friendly lunch and snacks.    When it is your own child with food issues, there is a huge motivation to do what is necessary to feed your child in a way that is both nutritious and safe, and you do it out of love.  It's a lot harder to devote that kind of time and energy to food when it's not your child's issue, and if you feel, as many of this local school's parents do, that by complying with the food bans, you're just "depriving" (their word) your kids of the foods they enjoy and need to grow.  It should also be mentioned that children with strong opinions about foods and which ones they're willing to eat (I know many of these kinds of children!) may not "like" the substitute foods that the school has suggested (such as soy yogourt and WOW butter), and some parents may not see these suggestions as suitable food choices for their family for a variety of reasons.  I can't even imagine the nightmare that will unfold in that kindergarten classroom at lunchtime in the coming weeks, where the teacher or lunch-supervisor will have to somehow patrol lunches and confiscate foods that don't comply (if they can even identify them), and small children might be hungry some days because they're not allowed to eat part of their lunch, or they don't like the unfamiliar foods that their parents who have complied with the ban have packed for them.  My head spins just thinking about it.

Gone are the days where going to school was as simple as walking out the door with your books and a sandwich and an apple for the lunch hour.  Today's schools see many, many children with severe allergies to a variety of different foods, and it's become a real challenge for those in charge to ensure the safety of all students while still respecting the rights of every family to feed their children as they see fit.  I don't envy school officials who have to make these difficult policy decisions, and honestly, I don't know what the "right" answer is in these kinds of situations.  Having spent many hours volunteering in kindergarten classrooms and seeing how hard it would be to ensure no food allergens get spread around the room when little hands touch everything, it seems clear to me that some kind of safety system needs to be put in place.  Should that be in the form of outright food bans?  If so, then how far are we willing to go in this direction?  Do we ban all foods that any child in the class has an anaphylactic reaction to?  What happens if that eliminates several whole food groups in one classroom?  How do we go about ensuring 100% compliance with these food bans, when foods like dairy and eggs are present in some form in a wide, wide variety of foods? (Without such compliance, the classroom is still not safe.) Should teachers and lunch supervisors be expected to be able to identify whether or not their students have brought allowable brands of breads and lunchmeats and other foods to school?  If we don't want to ban foods, is it possible to create separate eating areas in schools, away from educational areas (because in many schools I've been in, children eat at their desks or tables in their own classrooms), and do we try to create "allergen-free" eating zones within the rooms designated for eating?  And how do we do that without singling out allergic children and making them feel ostracized?  Do schools even have the money or space to allow for such a set up?

It's difficult when an issue as emotional and personal as food and eating weaves itself into the complex fabric of the public education system.  Sadly, I can't see any family from that local kindergarten class feeling especially positive about school next week.  What are your thoughts on this very sensitive subject?

Update:  September 22

This morning's paper published an article that shared the thoughts and feelings of the father of the little boy with the dairy and egg allergies.  According to the article, the banning of all foods containing dairy and eggs from the classroom was not the choice of the family.  The parents of the allergic boy do not want other families to have to change their eating habits; what they asked instead was that the kindergarten students eat in a different room than their classroom to reduce the risk of surfaces in the classroom being contaminated with foods that are dangerous to their child.  The mom of the little boy has also volunteered to make the food for special occasions at school, such as pancake days.  The boy's father points out that the school board's choice to implement a food ban puts the onus for a safe school environment on other parents, which he is not comfortable with, and he expresses concern that his son will now start school as the subject of a spectacle.  It's sad that a family has been placed in the centre of such controversy when a food ban was not what they even wanted. 

School boards have an extremely important responsibility to minimize risks and to ensure the safety of every child in their care, but if the policies they put into place are not ones that are accepted by the families they rely on to comply with them, then how safe are our schools for allergic children?  This is an issue that needs some more thought.

The search (or the story of missing clothes that weren't missing at all)

This week swim practices started back up for both boys;  Noah is at the pool four times a week this year, and Will is there twice.  That means six opportunities every week for their stuff to get lost somewhere in the black hole that is the university pool's men's locker room.  I get twitchy just thinking about it.

Based on the boys' previous poor records in the "making sure we have all of our stuff before we leave the change room" department, I am not so foolish as to actually believe this year will be any better.  Still, I sent them both to the pool this week with swim bags full of all of their necessary gear, carefully labelled with their names, and a hopeful reminder about mental checklists and double-checking their bags at the end of the evening.  And then I crossed my fingers and waited.

Noah is two for two so far;  both nights he's had practice, he has returned home with everything stuffed back in his bag.  (Wait, could this be a turning point?  Is this one of the positive changes that parents see in eleven year olds, an increased ability to be responsible for their own stuff?  If so, I'll gladly take it, because it will help to offset the other, not-quite-so-pleasant changes I've noticed in Noah in the few weeks since he started grade 6.  The fact that he is rolling his eyes right now at this statement while he reads it from his Playbook in his bedroom with the door closed and is muttering under his breath that I just don't understand will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.)  But Will, who had his first practice at the pool last night, got off to a bit of a rougher start in the keeping track of stuff department.

Matt was heading down the stairs to meet Will outside of the locker room after practice, once he figured Will would have had enough time to have showered and changed back into his clothes.  He was greeted on the staircase by one of Will's buddies, who was dressed and ready to go home, and Will, who indeed had his backpack with most of his swim stuff in it, but who was also still clad only in his Speedo and goggles.  Will and his friend simultaneously started shouting at Matt, "SOMEONE STOLE MY CLOTHES! / SOMEONE STOLE WILL'S CLOTHES!".  Thus began a search of epic proportions.

Now, because I wasn't at the pool last night, these next details in the story are a little fuzzy and, frankly, incomprehensible to me.  It seems that Will had put his stuff in a locker right by his friend's locker when they got to the pool.  His friend had no trouble locating his own locker and clothes afterwards, and apparently they had checked the locker they thought Will's stuff should be in, but "it wasn't there".  It would seem to me that all that they needed to do once Matt arrived to help was to check the lockers close by the one where Will thought he had put his stuff and, assuming the clothes hadn't indeed been stolen (which was very unlikely, because no university student could possibly be interested in Will's tiny size 6 children's clothing or size 13 shoes), the search should have easily turned up his things.  But apparently it didn't quite go that way.  Matt and Will and his buddy scoured every locker in half the change room with no luck, and Matt even went to speak to the people at the front desk to see if anyone had heard of any incident involving kids' clothes.  At one point during the search, a frantic Will exclaimed to Matt, "CALL MOM!  CALL MOM!".

When I heard this bit of the story last night after everyone was back home (and, I might add, wearing clothes, which eventually were found in the exact locker where Will had left them), I couldn't help but laugh.  I wondered what on earth Will thought could be accomplished by calling me at home in the middle of this crisis.  Even if I had been there, I wouldn't have been able to go into the men's locker room to find his stuff.  I asked Will what his reason was for wanting to call me, and he said, "Well, you know, you're the one in this family who is the most organized (and he used finger quotation marks when he said the word "organized", as if he were highlighting it as some rare skill I possess).  It seemed that in his moment of panic, he was clinging to the desperate hope that if he called "the organized one" in the family, maybe his missing clothes might somehow magically reappear.

I'm glad things ended well and Will had clothes to wear home from the pool last night, and I hope that this incident might make Will a little more receptive to the suggestions I often give him for being more "organized" himself. Will might regularly argue with me and point out that I'm wrong about things, but at least he recognizes my apparent superpowers in his time of need.  It's nice to be appreciated.

A girl can dream...

Every fall, once the craziness of the first few weeks of school passes and things start to settle down in my brain, I find myself inspired to change the way things look in our home.  The cooler weather and rich autumn hues in the trees outdoors make me feel like adding warmth through colours and fabrics and cozy details in our inside spaces as well, and I find myself excitedly poring over the pages of home decor magazines and websites for ideas I can use to this end.  

This past weekend, Matt and I shared a lovely little getaway, just the two of us, in the Niagara region.  We did some sightseeing, stayed in a luxurious hotel, enjoyed a fantastic grown-up dinner out with my aunt Christina and her husband James, and did a bit of shopping in the States (which is so very enjoyable when there are no children present to complain about how bored they are!).  I came out of the mall with an armload of catalogues from one of my favourite home decor stores and spent most of the drive home yesterday absorbing the beautiful rooms pictured on the glossy pages and figuring out how I could recreate some of the looks in our home. By the time we pulled into the driveway, I had all kinds of visions and mental shopping lists and plans to apply, and was convinced that in no time, our house, too, would look like it was worthy of being on the pages of a current magazine.

It must have been the fact that I had been away from my children for 24 hours that allowed me to have such lofty (you might even say ridiculous) ambitions. Somehow I had completely blocked out the very real vision of what living with two boys looks like (and the knowledge that those pristine catalogue pictures are of staged rooms that are perpetually undisturbed by the "living" that boys like to do.) In the 24 hours since I've been back home, I've come across dozens of scenes that are the exact opposite of what I had envisioned. Instead of neatly lined rows of attractive baskets, perfectly stacked books, cozily placed throws, and decorative pillows with just the right dimple pressed into them, I've discovered dented storage boxes with lids half off, newspapers separated page by page and scattered all over three rooms, throws balled up into non-descript wads and abandoned in a heap, and all the decorative pillows in the house piled into one giant mountain to provide a suitable landing spot for the jumping portion of an obstacle course. Rather than seeing bedroom doors open at an inviting angle, revealing serene places for relaxation at the end of the day, I've been faced with doors that have long, mangled strings attached to them (Noah rigged up a system for opening and closing his door from the comfort of his bed) and that open up onto rooms that look like a herd of buffalo just trampled through them. Never in a decorating magazine have I noticed dirty socks left on stairs or yesterday's clothes stuffed behind the bathroom door (both Will's doing), or Lego robotics parts strewn across a coffee table and then forgotten, or hallways littered with homemade cardboard swords fashioned from wrapping paper rolls and hockey tape, but I saw all of these things and more at our house in the past day. 

I've crashed back down to Earth now, and have realized that while I can try all I want to have a home that looks like something out of Pottery Barn, the reality of day-to-day life with boys will always look a little more like just Barn.  Luckily, I've always had a real soft spot for cute looking animals.