we had a busy week with many emergencies and surprises last week, so our menu got switched around a lot and we...ah...ate out once (twice if you count the spaghetti dinner at church yesterday, but i planned for that, if you'll remember). so a few of these meals may look familiar as i planned them for last week, but we're eating them this week.

the beautiful thing about planning ahead is that i can switch everything around and have a new menu this week, without having to shop for more than my weekly dairy and produce needs.

monday: turkey sausage with noodles and cabbage (late st. patty's dinner!)
tuesday: chicken curry with brown rice
wednesday: baked chicken with ziti and veggie
thursday: aloo gobi
friday: sweet and sour pork over brown rice
saturday: leftovers
sunday: crusty pork tenderloin with sweet potato and apple compote

for more menu plans, visit OrgJunkie.

now that i'm sure i got your attention over there in Arizona....

today we picked up a box of Cheerios. the name-brand kind, not the store-brand, or the natural brand (although Cheerios is sold in Whole Foods, so "it's got to be good"). because when it comes to Cheerios...the name brand is the real deal. i just can't eat, or make my kids eat, a different "version." it's like reading cliff's notes for a shakespeare play. or worse...baking with sucralose.

so we picked up a box of Cheerios because they are adam's favorite finger food these days. they wrap up a meal well for him...he likes to delicately balance a cheerio that is stuck to the end of his saliva-ed index finger, and pinch it closed with this thumb and s-l-o-w-l-y bring it to his mouth. it's quite a sight - and very different than sawyer-at-9-months who took a fist of cheerios and jammed them into his mouth like cookie monster (complete with cheerio crumbs flying everywhere).

the boys (and i!) were excited to see eric carle's "very hungry caterpiller" gracing the front of this particular Cheerios box (sawyer kept saying, "looks like MY book!"). eric carle is donating 100,000 copies of his book The Tiny Seed to the state that answers (and votes for!) the most correct children's book trivia questions.

so...only those of you who live in MY STATE...go to www.firstbook.org/carle and have fun answering some children's book trivia (i didn't get that many correct, but i did find new books to add to the boys' wishlist) and vote for our state to be the recipiants of his book. we already own this book, and it's actually a favorite of rowan's. and the artwork doesn't disappoint (especially if you're a fan of carle's illustrations).

while you're online, hop on over to carle's other great cause at www.picturebookart.org. there's some fun artwork to look at, booklists, and activities.

and no, eric carle or General Mills is in no way paying me for this post. i could only be so lucky.

i don't know what you'd call my friend audrey and i.  we're two peas in a pod? anomalies? coincidences? twilight zone characters? separated at birth?

we have these odd similarities that just kept popping up over the years as we got to know each other. and we're not talking about "i liked ralph macchio in high school...OMG so did I!" or "my prom dress was yellow...OMG so was mine!" here are just some of our odd similarities:

1. my full name is elizabeth anne. she was meant to be named beth ann (but for some reason her parents decided on audrey).
2. my mom's name is diane. her sister's name is diane. (okay not so weird...a lot of us have similarities like this.)
3. we both have a niece who is the same age AND named sadie rae. same spelling.
4. we both remember watching "Hatchey Malatchey" - a children's program that i used to watch when visiting my grandparents in their home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. when i found out that audrey was a graduate of this show as well, i was floored. NOBODY (and i was beginning to think it was a figment of my imagination) had ever heard of that show before, until it was mentioned in passing one day in one of our conversations.
5. we're both BIG Twin Peaks fans.
6. We're both BIG Gypsy Kings fans.
7. She has a Nana and Pop-pop, and so do I. and now my parents are Nana and Pop-pop.
8. We're both fans of burnt hot dogs. And we mean blackened. MMMMMMmmmmmm!
9. Her husband, Tom, and I share a birthday: March 7th.
10. The biggie: We've both been blessed with pilonoidal cysts (i was going to post a link, but if you really want to know, you can research that on your own!)

perhaps these don't seem odd to you, but when we come up with yet another odd "thing" that we share, we just shake our head and laugh.

a mutual friend of ours, amy, and i also have fun similarities. my favorite is that amy is one of the only adults that i know who also likes Peeps and candy corn. we agree that it is better, hands down, over chocolate any day of the week. if i had to, i could live on Peeps and candy corn and nothing else.

but i don't. because if i did, i'd have much bigger dental problems.


ps. if you'd like to donate a year's supply of Peeps or candy corn for my friends and i, please email me for my address. thank you.

*update at end of post!

when we first moved here almost a year ago, i posted about my fear of the "really bad bear problem in the neighborhood." it turns out that the REAL problem we have in "these here parts" aren't bear, but ticks.

you'll remember that a few weeks after adam was born, kenny contracted Lyme Disease. and a few weeks after that, he picked a deer tick off of his arm. well, this morning, as the boys and i settled into our morning reading-on-momma's lap position, i do what i always do - run my fingers through their hair while i read. and this morning, there was a large "thing" on rowan's head which made me stop reading immediately to take a look. a tick, head in...legs a waving all over the place.

if kenny hadn't contracted Lyme's, i think my reaction would have been different. i might have waited for him to come home (7 hours later) to take it off himself. but i know that TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE when it comes to getting deer ticks out. we now know a whole lot about deer ticks and how to prevent Lyme's. so i called the pediatrician's office and told them i was on my way.

{yes, i know i should learn to pull ticks out myself. i will, eventually...but now i trust the experts.}

of course there was freezing rain, and of course i'm the world's worst worrier. but someOne took a hold of me and told me to breathe.

rowan is extremely in tune with our emotions. he knows when i'm angry, sad, or happy...he tells me when i'm angry, sad, or happy. and i didn't want him to be scared. every muscle in my body was screaming to be nervous. but stronger than that was my desire to make sure rowan wasn't afraid. he knew was that he was the special boy this bug chose to land on, and that the doctor had a special instrument to get the bug off of his head. i couldn't lie to him. i couldn't tell him that we were headed to the grocer, only to show up at the pediatrician's office and tell him he had to keep his head still for a minute. he is nearly 4 years old...he's smart enough to know when his mom isn't telling the truth. i was a bit nervous that this story wouldn't fly...or worse...would make him afraid. he was quiet on our way to the doctor, but once we got there, he said to me, "will the doctor show me the bug that's on my head?" i was relieved that my fear hadn't shown. so we talked more about the instrument (tweezers!) that the doctor would use to get the bug, and what the bug looks like, and how he was going to get ice cream for lunch if he held his head really still.

the procedure went well. rowan was amazing. he held his head so still and let the doctore YANK the bug out of his head (along with about 10 hairs!). he was so excited to see it and laughed at the little legs still waving. my heart sunk as i knew it wasn't a dog tick. every picture i saw of deer ticks looked exactly like the one on the pediatrician's tweezers.

so now we wait and pray. the odds are in our favor...a small amount of deer ticks actually carry Lyme and only smaller larva ticks carry the Lyme (this was a larger, female tick). but i'm his mother. i'm wired to worry.

my friend ellen called me tonight (because she had just watched Grey Gardens after I recommended it to her), and when she asked how i was doing, I let out, "I found a tick on Rowan this morning!" And her reaction calmed me...she grew up  "in the country" and knows that this is probably not the last tick we'll pull off our boys. But she made me feel as though I can deal with these little critters. that, in fact, it's not a good enough reason to move back to the city. :)

i guess we're going to be having ice cream for lunch a few more times in the next decade....

________________

Update!
the pediatrician's office informed me this morning that the tick we pulled off rowan was NOT a deer tick. whew. even though i swore up and down that it was...in retrospect, i think they're right. it was a lot larger than a "poppy seed" and round and flat, just like a dog tick. not at all swollen, and was very easy to spot.
rowan loves to talk about how brave he was. and we're still proud as punch of him.

it's definitely not appropriate for a married woman to burst into "you make me feel like a natural woman" right in the middle of her endodontist's office, but i wanted to sing at the top of my lungs to dr. dahlkemper, d.m.d., the minute he began to numb my mouth. it was the first time i felt no pain in over two weeks. plus, it would probably sound really funny coming from someone who was numb-in-the-mouth.

thank you for regaling me with your dental/dentist stories (and i answered you in the comments section!). i know it's sad, but it is so comforting to know i'm not the only one in the world with problems at the dentist. kenny and i have been fighting with our new dentist now for the last month and a half. he had an issue with an extraction that ended up with dry socket but they treated it as though it were infected, so he was on antibiotics that (of course!) wasn't treating the dry socket, and his pain got worse and worse. my root canal this morning was on a tooth that was filled just four short weeks ago. i am not an expert in dental work (although i should be by now!), but my poor tooth has been through the ringer this past month.

and doesn't EVERYTHING seem harder when you have a toothache?

and "joyful" brought up the issue of insurance. let's talk about dental insurance shall we? why even have it if your copay is the same amount you pay for a down payment on a new home (equal to a root canal and crown) or a car (equal to a filling)? why is dental insurance so bad? why can't it be just like health insurance (i know...the price of health insurance is rising steadily as well...but dental insurance is so much worse).  i guarantee more people would go to the dentist if it weren't so expensive. well, that and the metal on teeth thing.....

onto some GOOD NEWS!

did you know  that tomorrow (march 15) starbucks is giving away a free "tall" cup of coffee? just make sure you get to a starbucks between the hours of 10 a.m. to 12 noon. i'd love to partake...but besides there being no bookstore (i know you're getting sick of hearing that!), guess what else we don't have in our neck of the woods? i know that many of you would think that is a good thing (my husband included), but i happen to like their coffee. so....if you're near a starbucks, go and enjoy free joe on the house!

i'm generally not a "one-upper" and i am very uncomfortable around people who love to "one-up" others in conversations. but i'm begging you to one-up me this morning.

i'm living a dental nightmare right now, but thank GOD for my husband who found a dentist who could fit me in today (what ever happened to dentists taking emergency cases? i'm on two waiting lists and cancellation lists, but no one i called could get me in tomorrow (which is today). there needs to be a dental ER in every city.).

so please share with me your worst dental/toothpain/dentist experience. and i'll feel better. much better.  or hopefully today's visit with the endodontist will take all the pain away.

this is my beautiful 9-month-old baby boy. i know he's scowling a bit, but he is, afterall, eating his first few bites of yogurt and he had to aquire a taste for it, very unlike his older brothers who inhaled it from their first bites. but that is not why i'm posting this photo. first, a little background:

i went to calvin college, which is located just under the half-way points between the pinky finger and ring finger of the right palm. (i didn't know what that meant either until i lived in michigan, so if you don't get it, don't worry.) roughly 94% of the city is dutch. 98% of the college population is dutch. these statistics might be slightly off as they are guesses based only on my experience at the college. to give you a taste of the dutch culture of calvin college, i give you the names of a few of the dorms: schultze-eldersveld, noordewier-vanderwerp, kalsbeek-huizenga.

if you think pronouncing them is difficult...try learning to spell them.

there is a little known fact that dutch people are above average in height. i stand at a whopping 5'4", and i was way below average height in college. my older brother married a dutch woman and their kids are off the charts when it comes to height and weight percentiles. they joke about it being the dutch blood.

getting back to the picture of my beautiful 9-month-old baby boy. normally i'd emphasize the "beautiful" in the description, but i'm emphasizing his age to prove this point: doesn't it look like he's 4 months old? could it be because he's SWIMMING in that bib? the bib reads, "there's a place for me at calvin college" and i received one for each of my kids when i updated my alumni status at the college's web site, reporting the birth of each of our boys.

folks, this bib FINALLY fits rowan. rowan is nearly 4 years old and 4-year-olds don't wear bibs! the bib manufacturers for the calvin college baby-congrats-gift MUST be dutch. they must have used their very own children as models for these bibs, and only dutch babies can, in fact, wear them when they need to wear them.

i'm afraid our boys will never be of dutch height. kenny, although strapping and handsome, isn't much taller than me ("5'8" on a good day" - his words, not mine) and our boys are always under the 50th height percentiles at their checkups. i'm hoping that they'll be interested in calvin as a potential college, but it's not going to be because they wore these bibs telling them of their placeholder at the college.

but they'll never remember the bibs they "wore" any way. do you actually remember any of the bibs you wore as a baby?

Monday: Roast chicken with veggies 
Tuesday: Leftovers or homemade chicken soup made with leftovers (if I'm feeling adventurous)
Wednesday: Spaghetti Chicken Pie, salad
Thursday: Baked Chicken and ziti with veggie (we didn't have it on Sunday, so we're having it today!)
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday: St. Patrick's Day! Noodles with turkey sausage and cabbage. Guinness. Whiskey cake (recipe below)
Sunday: We're supporting a cub pack fundraiser after church: spaghetti dinner

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Irish Whiskey Cake

• 2 cups golden raisins
• 3 tablespoons grated lemon zest
• 1/4 cup whiskey
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 3 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
• 1 lemon, juiced

1. Place the raisins, lemon rind, and whiskey in a small bowl and let them soak overnight. Line bottom of an eight-inch square cake pan with parchment paper that is buttered and dusted with flour. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift the flour, salt, cloves and baking powder into a bowl and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and beat well. Quickly beat in the flour mixture. Stir in the soaked raisins.
3. In a separate clean bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture. Pour this into your prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 to 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake thoroughly on a wire rack.
4. To make the glaze: Mix the lemon juice with the sifted powdered sugar and just enough whiskey and warm water so that you can drizzle icing over the cake.

find more menu ideas here!

i'm EXTREMELY excited to be entering the warmer months, but that also means i'll be doing more outside work and needing less hibernation (aka, reading cozied up under a blanket come 7:00 pm every night). but my stack-o-books keeps getting larger (thanks, in part, to my mother) and i'm excited to be involved in callapidder's "spring reading thing 2007":

thanks to Rocks in My Dryer for this meme....

Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback? Hardback, when I can.

Amazon or brick and mortar? I love bookstores. But there are no bookstores here. So we use Amazon.

Barnes and Noble or Borders? Barnes and Noble (the train table in the kids' section!!!).

Bookmark or dogear?   Dogear. It's a bad habit?  Really?

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?   I wish I were as organized (like my friend Emily). But my books are just thrown on shelves in random rooms. At least we have shelves!

Keep, throw away, or sell?   I'd love to keep them all. Kenny likes to cull through them from time to time. We generally keep, and give to Goodwill when we find books that haven't been opened since 1995.

Keep dustjacket or toss it?  I love dustjackets...the boys tears theirs off. So I try to keep theirs neatly in a pile on their dressers so they don't rip them to shreds. 

Read with dustjacket or remove it?  But I normally take it off to read it. And then replace it when I'm done (if it's not lost)

Short story or novel?   Novel.

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)?  Collection. Especially when it's Raymond Carver.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? Um. I'm not sure what Lemony Snicket is. And I love Harry Potter!!!!

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?  I love to try to get to the end of a chapter, but sometimes I drop the book because I've fallen asleep before I get ot the end. And then I get all mad because i"ve lost my place...

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?  Once Upon a Time. I want to like mystery novels - I really do. There's a whole bookstore devoted to mystery lovers near Pittsburgh and I want to be a patron. But they just don't catch my interest. Every once in a while I'll read one...I think I read one by Jane Smiley once and liked it.

Buy or Borrow?  I love owning books. But I love the library. I have a lot of my mother's books, though.

New or used?  Used.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse? Recommendation and browse. And "read previous books by same author and liked it."

Tidy ending or cliffhanger?  Tidy ending, please.

Morning reading, afternoon reading or nighttime reading? I can really only read right before bed. Or right after we put the kids to bed.

Stand-alone or series? Stand-alone. I love Harry Potter, but I'm ready for the books to be done and over with, I think.

Favorite series? The Mitford Series - I cannot, however, stand that these books are done. I want MORE.

Favorite children's book?  Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Guess How Much I Love You by Sam Mcbratney and Anita Jeram.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?  Celia's House - I read it when I was in 6th grade and I'm always looking for it.

Favorite books read last year?  Last year, I moved and had a baby. There was no reading. But this year...I just finished The Memory Keepers Daughter  by Kim Edwards and reallyreally loved it.

Favorite books of all time? A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (the end of each chapter gives me shivers...), 

Least favorite book you finished last year?  I reread More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon and I didn't love it the way I loved it the first time. 

What are you reading right now?  This morning, I just finished a The Memory Keepers Daughter (see link above), and now I think I'll read...(see next question)

What are you reading next?  Leeway Cottage by Beth Gutcheon. I still love her even though I can only read her books once. I think.

we love books. i come from a family that loves books. it's all i ever ask for when people ask what the boys need for christmas or birthdays...i point them to their amazon wishlist. i love going through bookstores browsing childrens books with amazing artwork and great writing. i think the artwork is important especially since our boys aren't reading themselves yet. i love glancing over at one of the boys sitting on the floor with a book spread across their lap. they'll usually stare at a picture for a few minutes, study each part of it, then bring the book over to me or kenny and ask a question about what they've seen in the picture: "mommy, why is that fish eating that other fish?"

we've hit the "why" stage with both boys. rowan recently (6 weeks ago) started asking a string of "why" questions. before we got to this stage with the boys - before they started talking - i wanted to make the effort to always answer their "why" questions. i know that kids go through the "whys" and i didn't want to just answer, "because i said so" because it was the easy answer to get them to stop asking. asking questions is how they'll learn. and i love that they want to learn (or that they're wired to learn already!).

but this is a lot harder than i thought it would be. sawyer, especially, loves asking "why?" he can ask upwards of 7-8 "whys" in one conversation alone. and each time it happens, it's based on different subjects, so i have no "canned responses" for him. i overheard a conversation between the boys the other day: sawyer was asking rowan a string of "whys" and by the second or third one, rowan asnwered, "sawyer, i just don't know. be quiet." i understood his frustration. because even i don't know the answer to some of his "why" questions!

i find that i'm ending a lot of these questions with the answer, "because that's how God created him/her/it/them." and that seems to be the answer that quenches their thirst for answers (albeit breifly). however, i want them to eventually ask "why?" when i tell them that God created something a particular way. because the answer to that will usually be, "i don't know." and i want them to know (and believe themselves) our belief in God as creator, Jesus as Saviour, and Holy Spirit as comforter. but we don't have all the answers. kenny and i want nothing more than our kids to know and receive the love of Christ. but we want them to come to that knowledge through Him alone, and not through keeping them from the world by building protective walls around them with bible verses plastered all over them. we'll work to the bone to teach them why we believe what we believe, and we'll eagerly pray for them everyday. but they'll only get to a deep faith by learning or wanting to learn it themselves.

so we trust that they'll get the right answers when they start asking the hard questions. when we can't be there to answer them. or when we just don't have the answers.

the other day, the older two boys and i constructed simple snowmen made of cotton. it's just too cold to be outside in the real snow, and i think sawyer's having a hard time with the fact that real snowmen melt. he has a hard time saying goodbye. this way, he'll have his snowman with him as long as he wants. if i can convince him they're NOT marshmallows, therefore are NOT edible.

i started off showing them how to paste the cotton onto the paper. then the "sticks" onto the paper. pasting the eyes and buttons were a bit tricky, but i let them pick out which type of decoration they wanted for the eyes, mouth, and buttons.


it seemed like a simple project...i was proud of myself for being creative using grape stems for the arms: i'm NOT digging in the snow for real sticks. the boys loved eating the "jimmies" i found on my christmas cookie decorating shelf a bit too much. we ran out of jimmies before they were able to paste on their own buttons:



here is where i question...do i need to worry about sawyer's artistic vision? i don't think he meant to make his snowman demon-possessed. but it ended up that way, and now i'm afraid to be in the same room with his little creation: