Give em’ pumpkins; they make pies

A neighbor friend of mine had written up a sweet blog post about her two girls and their fascination with the mini pumpkins. She talked about how they would carry the pumpkins around, line them up, organize them, make them into imaginary families, etc. I thought this was something my kids might actually be capable of doing. What a great idea: local produce turned into toys. What could be more “green” than that?

Upon our exit of Cox Farms yesterday, I purchased four mini pumpkins on top of the three smallish ones that were provided. My kids were stoked. I’m thinking, “rock on” we have a great activity ahead of us. They clutched their pumpkins on the way home as if they were prized possessions. We talked about pumpkins and where they come from and what we do with them during the fall season.

After arriving home with their new “toys” in hand, I watched as my monkeys proceeded to make pumpkins into pumpkin pies. Instead of sorting, stacking, and organizing, they decided to play with them true-to-form-Alex style. They were hurled from the back door onto the deck to see whose could fly the farthest. They were rolled into the street to see which one could hit the acorns. They were dropped from the sofa to see how loud they could sound. Finally, they were used as bowling balls down the steps. I should have let them continue, and I would have had my pumpkin mush for pie. But I kind of felt sorry for these poor pumpkins. Perhaps we’ll just paint them instead.

Virginia's Cox Farms: Worth every penny and a return visit

I don’t know how we’ve been here a year and never been to Cox Farms in Centerville, Virginia. Knowing the temperature would probably be better today after the rain, we made the short drive to the Cox Fall Festival. This was by far, one of the most fun activities we’ve done here, as well as one of the most imaginative Halloween festivals for children I’ve seen. In fact, not intending to bash Northern Virginia, (which I think really lacks in creative things for kids) this was one of the best things I’ve seen since we’ve been here.

We were greeted by one of the most enthusiastic workers I have ever seen. She was excited to see us and told us it was a beautiful day for the farm. She was right. There were bales of hay strategically arranged for kids to climb and crawl through, slides made of cool materials that become slipperier in the sun, wooden structures and ladders to climb, castles to crawl in, volcanoes to explore and a play area with goats running around. My kids loved the rope swings best of all. Even my 2-year old managed to hold on and drop into the pit of hay-looking foam.


We took a hayride around the farm, through the corn fields, big giant puddles, back in the woods—all with fun characters and scenes for the kids. The driver seemed thrilled to be there as well and was excited about her journey around the farm. You have to really look when you go through because some made me laugh. The Three Little Pigs in a house next to a stack of hay and a blown over screen door. It’s hard to notice fun stuff like that when kids are talking about the spaceman they just saw. Yep, there’s one of those too--a countdown to blastoff and an alien comes out to dance for you. The hayride concluded with a “scary” barn party complete with ghost sounds and polka music.

I’m afraid to say what I felt about this for fear of hearing everyone sigh….it was actually a bit Swedish.

If that’s not enough, there were pigs, chicks, and some cows to see and pet. You could even help milk the cow during certain times of the day. Food and drink is there to purchase, but a little pricey considering the entrance fee. We luckily brought a picnic to help offset the cost. Upon leaving, every ticketed visitor got a free pumpkin to take home. I think my kids thought that was the best part. Of course now the pumpkins have been confiscated since they were being used as bowling balls down the steps.

My only complaint, beside the cost of the food, is that I don’t think kids under age three should be charged. My two-year old played pretty well on most of the stuff, but she only did it because Alex did it. I think if my two-year old had been there alone, I would have felt robbed paying the full-price ticket for her. But it’s a local farm that had great festival so I’m willing to suck it up and pay the money for all of us.

Thursday’s Dish: Pasta w/ Roasted Vegetables

Unfortunately this week, all attempted dishes were a big thumbs down with the kids. So, as promised, I will only post recipes that all members of my family will eat. This recipe came from Cary in my mom’s group. My kids will not necessarily eat all the veggies, but once in a while someone will at least try some, depending on what I do throw in there. This makes a lot of leftovers as well.

Pasta w/ Roasted Vegetables
1 eggplant
1 red pepper
1 red onion
1 yellow pepper
1 package of mushrooms
1 box small pasta like penne or orzo
2 lemons
1 package of the crumbled feta
olive oil
salt/pepper
handful of chopped fresh basil
1/3 cup of toasted pine nuts (optional)
Chicken or shrimp is optional.

Chop the vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Place them on baking/cookie sheets and toss w/ olive oil and salt and pepper (so they won't stick). Cook at 400 for about 20 min (watch them-you want them tender but not too soft). Feel free to substitute vegetables. Asparagus is also good in there.

Cook pasta according to package directions, drain and place in large pasta bowl. Dump the cooked vegetables, the feta, nuts, basil and juice of two lemons in and toss. Add about 1/4c. of olive oil...enough to get the flavors to meld together. Add salt/pepper as needed.

It's good hot or cold.

Please drive through . . . Safeway?

One of the other things I miss about Sweden is small markets. I used to stop on the way home from somewhere at our local (very small grocery store) corner market, jump out, grab a dozen eggs/carton of milk/veggies and dash out. No big parking lots, no big lines and easy to navigate--just your typical European corner market. The clincher on this one that made it even easier sometimes…..I could leave my kids in the car. [Gasp] I know moms around the country are ready to just call in right now and report me to Child Protective Services. And, no, I have not done this here, believe me, my husband warned me about that before we came back. But in our little suburb in Stockholm we could do this. Just leave the kids strapped in the car and dash in for a few items. It was great for a mom of two under two. In fact, you could even leave them outside the shop sleeping in a pram and run in and shop. Crazy, huh? I think a Danish woman in NYC was arrested for this.

This is why I think some inventive grocery store needs to come up with a drive-through window. No, it’s not that I’m lazy. I often do walk to our grocery store. But sometimes on the way home from somewhere, you just need a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread to hold you over until morning. With two little ones, it is hellish to unload kids, wrestle them into the cart , run in the store, stand in line and reload everyone into carseats for just one item.

I would love to go somewhere that has a drive through where you call ahead, give them your name and you just pick it up your item(s) without unloading the kids. It would have to be 5 items or less, and you’d have to not be picky about the brand, but I think it could work. If grocery stores like Wegmans (see Reston Baby related blog post) can come up with child care for grocery stores, surely someone can make a drive-through window.

Idiocracy at Dairy Queen

If you haven’t seen the movie Idiocracy, you should. It really should be required viewing for everyone on what this world may turn out to be if we’re not careful. Yesterday, I came face-to-face with my own scene from this movie at Dairy Queen. Now I’m not going to say anything about Dairy Queen and its workers because I’m sure many people out there have held high school summer jobs at places like this, but this was pretty bad so I thought it needed telling.

After our shopping trip to Safeway, we stopped off at the nearby Dairy Queen. It was hot. The kids had been good so I thought a cold treat might help with the walk home. We walk in and I ask if they have kid size cones and/or cups. My kids don’t need a full serving of ice cream and most of it ends up on them anyway so it seems silly to pay a bunch of money ice cream on their pants. The 16-year old worker looks at me dumbfounded by my request. I explain that they will lose ½ the ice cream and could he somehow give me a smaller version of their “small.” Again, he just stares at me. He shows me the small cone. I say, fine, but can you fill it just a bit and charge me a little less than $2 for the cone for only a droplet of ice cream. Apparently this cannot be done. (You’ll understand why in a minute.) Alex is insisting that he can eat the whole thing and that he’ll be fine. So I order a small cup for Anna and a small regular cone for Alex. The total comes to $4.18 which I believe is highway robbery for ice cream for kids, but by this point I was tired of Dairy Queen. I give the man $5.18. He looks stunned. Asks me if the change I gave him was 18 cents. I said, yes. He then turned to his friggin’ calculator and proceeded to subtract!!! I started laughing. (I know, bad mommy manners.) So I tell him, “My change is a dollar. I get a dollar back.” He does the calculation and says, “Your change is a dollar, you’re right.” Oh….my….God! Is this guy for real?

This supposed high school kid (same one who couldn’t do the change) puts the ice cream in the cone. Alex’s eyes pop out of his head, as do mine. The soft serve ice cream is piled so high that it’s actually bigger than the cone itself AND tilted to one side. I guess after the whole money thing clogged his brain he didn’t remember that the discussion was about my kids not needing tons of ice cream. I rolled my eyes, stared at him in disbelief then asked for a spoon and a cup and did what I should have done from the beginning: put half of the ice cream in the cup and gave it to Anna. The guy looked shocked that I had come up with this solution.

The funny thing is, this isn’t the first time this has happen. The other dialogues haven’t been quite as ridiculous as this. But I will say that most of the ice cream places have a hard time negotiating around the concept of “kid sized” for our wee ones. Ben and Jerry’s did agree to split the one scoop into two cups, but that will put you back about $3-4. Whoa! Baskin Robbins does do a mini kid cup. For future trips, I would recommend to anyone else that encounters scenes from Idiocracy at the ice cream shop to get the smallest size and just splitting it into two cups for the kids. Live and learn.

Making a come back from babydom

The baby cycle can be harsh for some of us. I have friends who seem to bounce back from “Babydom” so quickly that I’m convinced not only are their bodies made for babies, but so are their souls. While I love my kids more than words can possibly express, I have a bit of a selfish streak in me that wants parts of my former life back from BK (before kids) in order to feel myself again.

Now, I know that things will never be as they were because my kids have changed me forever. Parenthood has made me a completely different woman. But there seems to be cycle for some moms of integrating back into society after babies.

Well, for those of us with babies two years apart or less sometimes that’s a bit difficult to ever complete the cycle. By the time you have slimmed down enough to fit into anything other than jogging pants, grown back the hair that was lost from post-partum hormone changes, and hesitantly found your way back to some exercise, then BAM you’re pregnant again!

My youngest is now 2 and I finally accomplished one of the last things I needed to do in order to reintegrate back into something other than babies all the time. That big moment was to read a few books that were not parenting books. For many this is an easy task. For me, reading means having segments of time during the day to dedicate to a story. I prefer to use those blocks of time to write, play computer or craft. I’m sure everyone’s “recovery” from baby is different, but I did laugh when I actually wrote it out and saw how much had to do with jeans and weight. Why is that?

My post-partum routine goes something like this:

1. Baby is born. (Whew, glad that is over with)
2. Eat and drink all the stuff I couldn’t while pregnant. (Wine and wine sometimes this is even before I leave the hospital.)
3. Get back into non pregnancy clothes
4. Get back into any pair of jeans
5. Get back into MY old pair of jeans
6. Get myself to the gym (This is when I found out I was pregnant with Anna) 7. Find a wardrobe that fits new lifestyle with baby
8. Find a babysitter who can sit with my kids so I can go out once in a while
9. Think about something besides babies and kids
10. Read anything besides something about babies and kids (this includes a newspaper)
11. Get back into a hobby
12. Get myself back into real shape (Not just walking on the treadmill) But I'm trying to get there still. . . .
13. Converse with people, including other moms, about something other than kids
14. Start reading real books. (Bingo! I have read 5 books in 2 months)

So this is a big deal for me. This I consider my full recovery from babydom. I hear my friends talking about having third and fourth babies, and all I can think is, ‘I’ve just come back. I need some time to enjoy life before I dive back in to the cycle again.’

Real strawberries and apples

We are now into week 8 of our pantry overhaul. Not one Goldfish has taken up residence in our house in almost 2 months. Whoa! Even I can’t believe that. My kids have learned to accept that at-home snacks consist of fruits, raisins, cheese, cereal, crackers, yogurt, homemade baked goods, etc. We’re really trying to get rid of the snacky snack foods at home since I know they get them elsewhere.

But what I also want them to develop is a sense of adventure with food. Yes, apples are great, but sometimes apples mixed in things are OK too. It’s fun to experiment with foods. Anna is a bit more game for this than Alex. Yesterday it started with a special treat of strawberry yogurt. Believe it or not, my kids both love plain yogurt. No flavors, just the yogurt. But Anna loves strawberry as well. So I bought a few little ones. She devoured hers in seconds. Alex starts to eat it and makes a face. “What’s this mommy?” I explain it’s strawberries in the yogurt. Both things that he loves: strawberries and yogurt. “Eeww, I don’t like strawberries in here. I only like real strawberries.” Later upon serving him the apple cake I made from our fresh farm-picked apples, he managed to pick out all the apples (which he also eats) and listened to him tell me about how apples shouldn’t be in cake. There is cake and there are apples, apparently. I could go on with a million examples, but you get the idea. My son is a purist with food. No adventure. No experimenting.

Anna is no stranger to this game either. A week ago I took her to Target for a rather long shopping trip. I bribed her full on with a muffin from Starbucks. She picked out the muffin which happened to be Pumpkin Cream Cheese. She yummied it down as fast as she could until she go to the cream cheese part.

“No like the banana, mommy,” she says. I explain that it’s not banana (which she does eat) but it’s cream cheese (which she also eats). She reinforced yet again that she didn’t like the banana in the muffin and could I eat it for her. We go round and round with this until she gives up. Crumbles the rest of the muffin her hand. Cries about the mess on her hands and dress. Cries that the muffin is gone. Throws her head back and hits the back of the seat and cries because she’s hurt. Lucky for me I got a bite of the muffin before we got to this point. It was really good, especially the cream cheese. Next time, though, I think I might buy Goldfish.