Mama Bwoke a Twee Down...

Tuesday morning Coen followed me into my bedroom and noticed a toy train he'd left on our bedside table.  He walked over happily, picked it up and began to scream. For a moment I thought he'd gotten an electric shock from our alarm clock, but when I swooped him up he was grabbing at his neck and when I pulled his little fingers away a squashed wasp fell to the floor.  His pinky and his neck began to swell. And he cried. It was awful.  I held him and snuggled him and he called daddy on my phone.

He said: "Daddy, make you feel better?"  It was heartbreaking.


Things improved when he went down for a nap.  It was his first in days and an extra long one--probably due to all the wasp venom.  He woke up refreshed and the swelling from his stings had subsided.  We all happily went outside to play.

While they played in puddles I walked over to check out a tree.  It had red leaves and pink blossoms and was lovely save for a gnarled, dead branch that looked barely attached.  Yet when I yanked it, to my utter surprise, the whole tree came crashing down.

Someone screamed and I spun around.  Coen, my little shadow, was under the tree.  My heart stopped.

Miraculously he was unscathed save for a few, faint scratches on the side of his face. He stood right in the middle of the canopy but, somehow, the heavier branches had missed him completely.

Pat arrived home from work minutes after it happened while I was still snuggling and consoling the little munchkin.  The tree was lying across the driveway, straddling a plastic flowerpot that marked where Coen had been.  With the little guy crying on my lap it did not take much for Pat to decipher what had happened.  But Coen quickly cleared it up for him anyway:

"Mama bwoke a twee down and it scwatch you!" He sniffled.  "Daddy make you feel better?"

 Yep that's a robin's nest. As though I didn't feel guilty enough! :(

We're workin' as a team--yeah, yeah!

Mama and son-bonfire time! 

I'm in Deep....Litter

Yesterday I spent about three hours cleaning out the chicken coop.  We used the "deep litter" method this winter which means that we'd regularly add dry layers of bedding on top while the bedding beneath started to compost and so release heat into the coop.   It worked great.  But I ended up hauling out a pile of used-bedding two straw bales wide, one bale deep and taller than me!

I've known for a while that everyone at our house was full-of-it, and now it's been proven beyond a doubt that our chickens are too.

Eking is good

I've started a new blog for writing-related thingy-ma-bobs.  It's at www.alinabklein.com  I am going to try to get this one back up on its feet as well.  I've been reading over the archives and laughing at the memories.  I know I'll be happy I made time for it someday.  Time to eke out time.

Conference Reviews for Writers

These are my experiences with the writer/book conferences I've attended. Perhaps they'll be helpful to other writers.

SCBWI National Summer Conference (LA): Such fun. An amazing event with a lot happening. Great place to meet other writers and learn about the business. You can possibly meet face-to-face with agents/editors if you arrange for a paid critique, but sometimes you end up in the overflow with an author--which is helpful, but not likely to get your manuscript requested. Or you could hit the jackpot at an open-mic, but I didn't see many professionals attending the one I participated in.

If you attend the workshops you will often get a free pass to submit directly to the speaker afterwards, and I've heard stories of that working out to a writer's advantage. But, it would be really hard to approach/mingle with an agent or editor outside of scheduled events--even if you have the cajones--because they don't usually stick around. They tend to leave together and have special events for them alone that the average schmo can't attend. If they *are* around, they are usually surrounded by a small crowd.

I met some wonderful and welcoming authors there, though. I chatted for a long time with Sid Fleischman (obviously this was several years ago) which will always be a warm memory for me. I asked him to sign a book for my husband and he wrote: "I love your wife!" :D All this to say, I *Highly Recommend* the conference and would go every year if I could. It was the most fun of all of them, really, but I still felt it would be a tough place to make that personal contact with a professional that we all want.

ALA: This was great for the free books and bling, but, also, the people manning the booths? Editors! The people walking around talking to them? Agents! And librarians and authors and other outrageously cool people.

It's much less structured than an SCBWI conference and eager writers are fewer and farther between. So, if you're willing to put yourself out there and be friendly and sociable with perfect strangers--and NOT be obnoxious about the fact that you're a writer but wait for somebody to ASK you, then you WILL make those important contacts. Seriously. You have to be brave, though. Gush about the books you love. Ask questions. Let them know that you know how things work and you're not an idiot who is just trying to sell them something.

I had several editors request my book including my editor now--though he didn't remember it. This happened 5 years before he bought it (It took me 9 years to write my book--all 40,000 words--eesh!). It wasn't until he requested it again that I told him he'd requested it before at ALA. :) I figured that previous request had long ago expired so I wasn't going to bring it up--it was too pathetic. But it made it especially great to get a brand spanking new one. :)

Local SCBWI conferences: These are awesome. Small, cozy, fabulous, inexpensive. I would also highly recommend getting involved with your local chapter of SCBWI. Volunteer! For me, after several years of volunteering and trying to help breathe life into our local chapter, I started a new listserv and began moderating it. Our subsequent, amazing RAs asked me to continue doing so and then, eventually, I ended up being asked to join the INSCBWI Steering Committee. So now I get to help with events, go to most of the local conferences for free and even join the special guests for dinner, etc. It does mean I might miss some of the "show" because I'm off being helpful, but the paybacks are enormous. It took several years to start reaping the rewards, though, so do it just for "the love" if you do it at all.

I really think you get the most bang for your buck with local (and regional) SCBWI conferences--and I'm not just saying that because I sold my book as the direct result of one. Don't think just because they're small they're not effective.

Last but not least,

Big Sur Children's Writing Workshop: Beautiful location. Great agents--though limited to one agency. (Amendment: I've been informed by one-who-would-know that sometimes agents from other agencies attend as well. Cool beans!) Time to write and hike and think. Personal/professional feedback. Marvelous writers to befriend. And, the best part, for me, was that I got a request for my book and years later that agent still remembered it and asked a friend I attended with, who is repped by an agent with Andrea Brown, if I'd ever finished it because she'd still love to see it. When he told me that it made my day/week/month.

The bottom line is, attend any professional conferences you can manage to attend. Make friends, cherish the hard-won pats on the back and return them in kind. It's the connections that make this business tick and you never know where they might lead you.

There are plenty of other fabulous conferences out there and others will have experiences that support or contradict my own. I'd love to hear them.

Living a charmed life

I don't know how I got so lucky. I have two gorgeous children, the nicest, most hilarious husband in the world, a beautiful house (that could stand to be cleaner), healthy animals, a greenhouse full of greens. And now a book deal. Something many, many excellent writers face years of rejection to accomplish. What did I do to deserve all of this? With so many people in the world struggling, it makes me a little squirmy to have so much good fortune, and some part of me wonders when the other shoe will drop.

So I try to justify it: I've worked hard on my book for many years. I go out of my way to be generous and kind to people--even those I've never met. I try not to take the things I have for granted, though I sometimes don't appreciate my life as much as I should. But no matter how I justify my good luck, I feel like I'm just asking to be walloped by the Universe one of these days.

So I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, and keep trying to do my part to make everyone else's life as charmed as mine.

Now, some recent funnies. :D

Funny words:

Fintan: Macnin (napkin)

Coen: Apkin (napkin)

Fintan: Venomen (venom)

*****************

Coen: (says this a lot at 5 a.m.) "Downsteers? No get back in bed! Downsteers? No rocking! Downsteers? No bites! (pacifiers) Downsteers? Yay! (He claps and smiles and gives a big hug to whomever he's suckered). Eat cupcakes?"

*****************

Fintan (yelling from the bathroom): "Mommy, are you still in there?"

Me: "Nope, I escaped!"

Fintan: "Well, after you wipe my bottom I'm getting my rope and taking you right back to jail."

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Pat (to Fintan last night at bedtime): "Tomorrow afternoon you get to go with me to see where I work and then we'll meet Papa and Nini and go to a basketball game! And we're going to eat dinner at Steak n' Shake. Do you know what they have there? Teeny tiny french fries!

Fintan: "and shrimp?!"

******************

Pat: "There's something sticky on the floor over here."

Me: "I have no idea what it could be."

Pat: "I'm guessing candied drool."

*******************

I love my boys. :)

When I grow up...

Do I want to be a farmer? Apparently. I have 26 chickens, 19 guineas, 3 turkeys, 2 ducks, 2 dogs, 1 giant rabbit, and 1 cat who lives on the neighbor's front porch. I also have 1 large, unhappy garden with a few large, happy watermelons and two dozen tomato plants that boast tomatoes only above the level to which a chicken can jump--and a chicken can jump surprisingly high as it turns out.

Do I want to be a writer? Certainly. Will I ever manage to finish my novel? Yes. In approximately 5-6 more years at the current rate.

Do I want to be a mom? Wait, do I have a choice? Oh, right, made that choice. And who wouldn't want to be a mom to these two little nuggets of nuggety goodness:

Do I want to be a housekeeper? Not even sort of.

A blogger? Of course. Can't you tell?

I just need a few more hours in the day and I can be all of it. If I ever actually grow up, that is.

Counting with Coen

This morning Coen was counting my fingers and apparently I have eleventeen of them. It's a number that comes after dooteen and booteen...

My hero

This evening a minivan got stuck in a snowdrift right at the end of our driveway.

I called Pat and he was still 30 minutes away. He lamented missing the opportunity to be a "hero".

When he got home he examined the depth of the drift and told me it was fairly likely someone else would get stuck in it so he still might get his chance. He said maybe he should go ahead and get his snowpants on to be ready when it happened. Or better still he could get them on and wait down there for a car to come by then jump out and wave his arms madly at the driver to warn them of the approaching drift. He'd wear a ski mask for warmth, a hockey mask for protection and wield an axe to use on stubborn ice just in case they dismissed his warning and got stuck anyway. The chainsaw in his the other hand would be for possible downed tree branches or whole trees (this cold makes trees brittle and we do have lots of trees down there) and the shovel waiting nearby would be to...well...clean up the mess.

Talk about good Samaritan, huh? His mama raised him right...

A Bumblebee and a Snowman

I love listening to Fintan playing with his daddy. It usually sounds something like this:

"Daddy, will you play with me?"

"Of course. I'd love to! What do you want to play?"

"I'll be a bumble bee and you be the Abominable Snow Man. Okay, Daddy?."

"Okay."

"And you chase me."

"Okay!"

(Stomp, stomp, stomp, squeal!)

"I'm gonna get you! Gnowrlll!"

"No you're not!"

"Yes I am. I almost got y--!"

"STING!"

"Oooeee! Aw man, I almost had you, too. Grrnowgl! Now I'm gonna get--."

"STING!"

"Ooh, Yeeowwy!"

*laughter*

"Daddy, now you be the daddy bumblebee and I'll be the baby bumblebee, okay?"

"Okay."

"Now you say, 'Hey, baby bumblebee!'".

"Hey, baby bumblebee!"

"What?"

Levels of brightness

I actually had this conversation this weekend with a close friend who is going through a divorce:

Her: "We're dividing up weekends so they stay with him one night and all the next day and me the other night and day."
Me: "Ah. So, when they stay with him on Sunday nights do they then just stay with your in-laws all day on Monday while you work?"
Her: "Alina...they come to your house on Mondays."
Me: "Oh yeah!"

I laughed about it on the way home and said, "boy I am not very bright, huh?"
Pat said, "You're bright... just bright more like a strobe light."
I laughed and agreed.
But I'd say I'm bright more like a motion detector.

Blogger doesn't know "pulmonology" is a word

I know I can't stop talking about the things my boys like to eat, and this post will be no different. Fair warning.

Today was a rough one. No lie. We spent the morning at the Pediatric Pulmonology office to have them checked out regarding their long-term "smokers" coughs. There were two things that made this visit difficult--not even counting the bitterly cold weather we had today. 1. The appointment was 2 1/2 hours long. and 2. NO SNACKS IN THE EXAM ROOMS (this was for the safety of food allergic patients--something I totally respect.)! Now the second difficulty wouldn't have been so bad had I known beforehand, but I didn't so I'd loaded a small tote up to the gills with snacks--and in that tiny room I had no way to hide them. No way at all. And I learned, in no uncertain terms, that the most effective way to torture a 17 month old, is simply to refuse him access to snacks he can see...and see again...and then see SOME MORE!

At one point I was holding a bag of snacks out of toddler-reach, holding the door closed with one foot so Coen couldn't escape the exam room, and signing consent forms while explaining to my tearful 3 year old why we were actually going to get the H1N1 booster shot I'd promised him that morning we weren't going to get.

After the appointment I took the boys down to the cafeteria for a well deserved lunch. Coen's little onsie flaps were unsnapped and outside of his pants, his face was streaked with tears and he was doing that sad little huff that babies do when they've been denied snacks that they can see. People felt sorry for us and were kind. Thank goodness for kind people.

I got the boy's the lunch special: beef stroganoff with mushrooms and then loaded a to-go container from the salad bar. Fintan kept saying things like "Yummy, tomatoes!" and "Oooh, fruit! Can we get more olives than that?" Our helpful helpers got a big kick out of his excitement over the salad bar selection. Then I let Fintan pick out his "special treat" for being such a good boy for the doctor. He picked out a gigantic tub of chocolate pudding with cookie crumbles and whipped cream on top. The boys ate a great lunch. They demolished the beef stroganoff and made short work of the salad bar selection (Mommy unfortunately didn't get enough hard-boiled eggs to suit their taste). Finally it was time for dessert. Fintan got the chocolate pudding and Coen got the coveted 100 calorie pack of cookies he'd so desperately wanted in the exam room. Fintan loved his pudding, but he made me laugh out loud when he paused between spoonfuls of chocolaty goodness to pick up, and eat, the three remaining slices of cucumber from his salad dish.

A kale chip off the ol' block.

"What is this?" Fintan asked me this morning, his mouth full.
"They're called 'kale chips'," I answered.
"Mmmm, I like kale chips."
Through the monitor I heard Coen crying again, adamantly refusing his nap, and I gave up. I brought him down and asked them, "Would you guys like to go to the indoor playground today?"
"Yes!" Fintan said. "But first I want some more kale chips." He held out his empty bowl.
"That's all we had, Sweetie, they're all gone."
"But I want more!"
Well, would you rather go out to the greenhouse and harvest more kale for chips or go to the indoor playground?"
His pause was long and thoughtful as rain sheeted against the windows.
"Go to the indoor playground."

This evening I put on a hat, a puffy coat, wellies and a headlamp and went out into the freezing rain to harvest kale so Fintan could have kale chips in his preschool lunch tomorrow. He and his daddy watched me from the window while I worked and Fintan said, "I wish I was big so I could put on a headlamp and a big coat and go out all by myself when it's dark and harvest greens."

Gosh, I love that little boy.

He loves dagoons

Coen is learning a lot of new words. He is even putting a few words together like "see you". He has a hard time with his "B" sound, though. This has led to some adorable variations on words. For example, instead of saying "balloon" he says "dagoon". And that boy loves dagoons. Also, instead of saying "bye!" he says "DIE!" very very loudly--and then there is a delayed wave. It's fun to see the looks on people's faces at the grocery store when we're leaving.

Coen also loves songs. He can keep a tune pretty well, too! He makes sounds to go with the songs, but you can definitely pick out what he's singing when he does it. One of his favorites is "Old MacDonald had a Farm".

Today we were working on body parts a little bit and plurals. I pointed to my left eye and said "Eye", then pointed to my right eye and said, "Eye" then pointed to both of my eyes and said "Eyessss". Coen followed my lead. He pointed to my left eye and said "Eye" then pointed to my right eye and said "Eye" then pressed his sharp little fingers into both of my eyes and sang "Ohhhh!"

Halloween cuteness

We had a great Halloween, this year!

Fintan was an anteater, an idea he came up with all by himself, and he was so excited about it.  Here he is getting ready to march in his school's Halloween parade. 

And here he is waving to his adoring fans while parading.

Little Coen, was an ant.

 

A really cute one!

Most people didn't get to oogle his adorableness, though, because he spent most of the evening like this:

 

having the time of his life.

He loved kickin' back in his wagon.  And behind him, so did his little pirate cousin, Logan.

Fintan had a great time walking and trick-or-treating with his cousins.  And they didn't mind being held up by his carefree pace--too much.

Here's a group photo that includes most of the cousins.  (To get Coen in it we had to strategically place him at the top of the hill and let the magnetic pull of the road draw him into the frame.)

My boys adore their cousins. Fintan's best (and most repeated) joke of the evening involved licking his cousin Shaun with his long anteater tongue and telling everyone "I'm eating a three amigo!"

All in all it was a wonderful night with loved ones, and I'm grateful.

Don't fall in any lakes, okay?

This morning Fintan has already made me laugh out loud three times with things he's said.

The first, when his daddy was leaving: "Drive careful, Daddy. Don't fall in any lakes."

The second while we were eating breakfast. He folded his hands together and said: "We're eating breftast now--but one of us is missing." I laughed and asked, "Who's missing?" and he told me, "My daddy".

The third was when "breftast" was finished and I was cleaning the grits off of his face and hands. I said, "You're a mess!" He pointed to the only grit-free spot on his shirt and said "I did a good job of keeping myself clean right here."

Trouble with a capital tea

Fintan asked yesterday. "So, does a green stop sign mean go?"
"Hmmm, you'd think so, but no."

Tonight in the middle of playing Fintan went tearing off down the hallway and through the kitchen. I yelled after him to come back and he ignored me. He raced out onto the porch, with me following not-too-happily behind, and picked up a little metal kitchen pot he'd left out there earlier. He'd played with it in the water table this afternoon but I hadn't looked closely at it when he'd set it down after we finished. Now he brought the pan carefully to his lips, took a couple sips and said "Aaaah, I needed a little tea!" He set it back down and raced back into the house. I looked in the pot and saw that he had a lemon balm leaf floating in the water.

Twerps and castrators

No, not Fintan. He's not a twerp. Well, he sometimes is a twerp, I suppose, but I've never called him one! "Twerp" is what he calls the waistband of his pants. I don't know where this word came from. When we play tickle games and he's "trying" to get away, he'll yell "catch me by my twerp!" as he runs by. The first few times I said, "huh?" Now I find myself thinking: "Where's my belt? My twerp's riding a little low."

Whenever we play "store" Fintan tells me to wait while he goes and gets his "castrator". It's a small device with a door that dings open when you press "cash" and it has lots of little numbers on it. It looks like a cash register but apparently it has a little calculator buried somewhere in its ancestory--soooo, it's a castrator!

Wanna play, guys?

Let there be beans

The snap-beans have arrived in bulk and I am glad. But...I don't know how to can them. I can freeze them but I don't really like frozen beans much. I'd rather eat them fresh while I have the chance, but how many ways can you eat snap beans?

Here's one. Green bean soup. It's every bit as good as the author says it is. I made it with real potatoes, though. Two baking sized potatoes, peeled and diced and simmered in the broth (six cups) and water until they became soft and I could mash them with the potato masher. I just kept going back and mashing until they had "disappeared" to thicken the broth. Potato flakes (as in the recipe) would make this a super quick meal, though.

I'm actually going to copy and paste the recipe here, just in case the other page ever disappears. I don't want to lost this one!

4 cups chicken broth
1 cup water or milk
1/2 cup instant mashed potato flakes
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 quart fresh green beans, snapped into bite size pieces
2 eggs, well beaten
3 Tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

In a large pot, bring the stock and water to a simmering boil. While waiting for it to heat up, start snapping the beans. Add the potato flakes and pepper. Stir occasionally as the potatoes dissolve to make a thickened soup base. Add the prepared snap beans and continue simmering the soup. Meanwhile, make the dough for the dumplings. Beat the eggs in a bowl with a fork, then stir in the cheese and the flour. You should have a sticky dough that's just solid enough to pull away from the edges of your bowl into a big lump as you stir. If in doubt, add a bit more flour. When the beans are tender-crisp (nearly done), it's time to add the dumplings. Use two spoons to dip up and scrape off lumps of dough into the bubbling soup. The dumplings cook quickly, in just a few minutes. When they bob back up to the surface, they need just another minute or two until they're cooked through.

The hungry-boys both loved it! And snap beans from the grocery would serve just fine, too--except for missing out on watching the purple ones turn green in the hot broth. That's all sorts of scientific fun.

Growing in the garden

My boys are always hungry. Always. Especially the little one. And finding a snack in the garden is a fun way to keep his bitty belly full.

This is quite easy to do because he thinks mulberries are tasty.

This tasty!

And tomatoes are good. Very very good.

But he has to share the mulberries with the birds and the cherry tomatoes have been slow to blush--we get only a few a day, much to his dismay.

So Coen has to be resilient and move on to the next thing that's as tall as he is. Squash. Mmmmm.

While Coen is eating, Fintan is harvesting. His favorite phrase in the garden is "Holy cow, look at the size of this one! It's enormous!" Whether he's talking about a toad, a tomato, or an overripe zucchini.

Here's a picture of a recent harvest. We love to harvest. Harvesting is fun.

And even though we've grown our fair share of weird veggies in the garden,

we sure grow some cute boys out there!