Kwasnica.
My favorite Polish soup by far: traditional kwasnica, made from smoked ribs, sauerkraut, a hunk of pork, bacon, and love.
42
Tuesday 13 January 2015
Month: January 2015
42
Hiding
We played hide and seek for a bit this evening — historically a simple game with the Girl. Always so easily frightened, she would hide in the same places, places that felt safe and relatively near people, again and again, and it was never really all that difficult to find her. It was even easier when she was a toddler and would reply to the standard “Ready or not, here I come!” with a confirmation: “I’m ready!”
Today, playing with the Boy, we couldn’t find her. I directed the Boy to look in all the usual places, but she was in none of the usual places.
“Could she have dared to go downstairs?” I asked the Boy rhetorically, for his standard answer these days is “Yep.”
But we kept looking, adding a few new places. In her closet. Under K’s and my bed. Under the Boy’s bed. Finally, it was time for dinner, and we gave up. But I knew one trick to get her out: turn off all the upstairs lights.
And as I headed downstairs, there she was, in the hall closet, where she’d never hidden before. Where I would have never thought to look because imagining her closing herself in a tight dark space was simply unimaginable.
An eight-year-old is braver than a seven-year-old, it seems. A second-grader is able to keep quiet for a lot longer than a first-grader, it seems.
Examen
Though I don’t do it daily, I should. It’s probably one of the best things converting to Catholicism has done for me — the daily examen. The form I use comes from St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises and has some simple steps:
- Become aware of God’s presence.
- Review the day with gratitude.
- Pay attention to your emotions.
- Choose one feature of the day and pray from it.
- Look toward tomorrow.
As part of L’s widening spiritual education, she and I have begun doing this together. We’ve been using a podcast to help us out, and we sit in her room and reflect on our day using the podcast labeled “examen for children.” It could really work for anyone, though. It boils everything down to a few ideas.
- What did you do that made you happy today? Give God thanks for it.
- What did you do that made you sad today? Apologize to God for it (and it adds that you might need to apologize to a person as well).
- What do you think you might need help with tomorrow? Ask God for that help.
Tonight, we shared with each other our joyful moments. It was fairly simple, and we had the same moment: when she and I with E played with Legos.
What an impressive array of equipment we now have, using the old Legos Nana saved from my childhood combined with the new sets the Girl has been collecting. We have a camper, a log cabin, a yacht, a space craft, an alien ship, an alien prison. We had fierce space battles in the morning and attacks on humans in the evening, with our brave defenders battling the Borg — though I didn’t explain the whole concept of “we will assimilate you!” as I attacked — as they tried to snatch innocent campers from their weekend getaways. The Boy teamed up with me and we launched a fearsome, dual-pronged attack that resulted in the kidnapping of both astronauts and campers. But alas, L and her space cadets were too clever for us and managed to free everyone just in time for bed.
What joy, I thought as I did my own examen this evening. And what a shame that I don’t do it more often. I let other things get in the way. I become selfish. I too often have different priorities. Not to say I neglect my children, but I think perhaps some days I don’t do enough. And so I resolve to do better the next day, and some days I do, and some days I don’t.
K, on the other hand, has always impressed me with her selflessness with the kids. That’s a mother’s gift, I suppose. No, it’s not a gift. That takes it out of my control. It’s a mother’s choice. And that is another simple experience — seeing such a wonderful mother in action — to be thankful for during my examen.
Food in the House
What a pleasant feeling to have so much food in the house after a day of cooking. I smoked ribs, tenderloin, sausages, and chicken, then cooked a pot of chili and a smaller pot of dal makhani. In addition to other work around the house. And now I have little desire to do anything other than go to sleep.
Games
Vehicles and Machines
The Boy likes things that move, things that work. Dump trucks, police cars, excavators, fire trucks, graders, ladder trucks, front-end loaders, ambulances, bulldozers, tanker trucks, forklifts (which he calls “pick it up put it down”). And then there’s trains — a world all their own.
He’s just as content playing with them as he is watching videos of them on YouTube.
Teaching
Before dinner, K and E sit in the middle of the kitchen floor, working a puzzle. It was the Boy’s idea, his initiative.
After dinner (more or less), K and L sit at the dinner table, doing Polish lessons. It was K’s idea, her initiative.
Perhaps if we could figure out some way to make Polish lessons as fun for L as puzzles are for E, we might have more success. And so that’s what I tried, putting on my jester’s hat and giving ridiculously wrong answers to L’s work, getting a giggle and correction.
Posing
Prawdziwy Polak
Traditional Polish cuisine has lots of pickled items in the menu. It makes sense: the winters are long and cold, and there’s no way to get fresh food (other than meat or dairy) in the dead of winter. If you want cabbage in February, you’d better turn it into sauerkraut in the autumn; if you want cukes in January, convert them to pickles in the fall. To love Polish food, then, means to love sour things.
To be really Polish — to be Polish at the bone — you have to love your sauerkraut. The Boy, for instance, ate three helpings of it today at dinner.
Before It Begins Again
It always goes in a flash, an absolutely yet tragically predictable flash. Two breaths, a party or two, and suddenly we’re eating lunch on the last Sunday of the break. And what a lunch to have, a classic of Polish country cooking: kotlet schabowy with the requisite sauerkraut and potatoes. The Girl loves the cutlet; the Boy loves it all.
After lunch, we decide it’s time for a walk: after almost three full days of rain, we’re all sick of being inside. The Boy takes his four-wheel coaster, and the Girl opts for a scooter, but putting the Boy on wheels is always tricky: “I’m Lightning McQueen!” he squeals and with each time, rides further and further out in front of us.
“E, if you’re not going to stop when I tell you to,” I explain after he ignores us a couple of times, “you won’t be able to ride this anymore.” It works for a while, but not long enough to get us home, so he finishes up the outing on foot and in tears.
We have to hurry home, though, because K has yeasty dough rising. “Pół godziny!” K insists as we start out, and sure enough, half and hour later, we’re back in the kitchen as K rolls out the dough for what she calls babeczki, which would be tempting to translate as “muffins” but in this case, it would be incorrect.
It’s one of those things I’m unable to translate, something like cinnamon rolls with a plum and apple jam — leftovers from the Christmas Eve compote — in the place of the sweet cinnamon mix.
With a day ending like that, L and I think we can head back to school tomorrow…
Curious George Game
Southern Beginnings
Black-eyed peas, cornbread, playing in the sink, being a gaming gadfly — thus starts 2015
First Day 2015
“Let’s go to the airplane park!” There’s a small airport near downtown Greenville which has an aviation-themed park next to it. The far end of the park abuts the runway, and it’s a favorite for the kids: you can play on a fantastic playground, ride your bike around the paved oval circling the whole playground, and watch small airplanes land and take-off.
At the far end of the track, next to the runway, there is a significantly steep slope — significantly steep for a toddler, that is — and it should be a heart-stopping moment every time the Boy roars down the slope. But he does it so carefully, first going down only half the slope, then a bit more, a bit more, until he’s going down the whole thing. He’s so cautious that it takes some of the worry from both K and me. But every time we’re there without a helmet for him, I think, “Drat — should have brought that helmet.”
After dinner, it’s play time. First some family play with E’s fishing game he got for Christmas. We try to teach the Boy how to let the swinging magnet slow so that he can lower it to the fish to “catch” it, but he has a more effective way: simply grab the magnet in one hand while holding the rod in the other. Simple. But eventually we convince him.
Afterward, we split up to have some more interest-specific play. The Boy and I head up to his room to play with his cars. Although we only have the sheriff character from Cars, we choose a car to be Lightning McQueen and another to be Mater and go tractor tipping, just like in the film.
The ladies, in the meantime, play Ticket to Ride, a train-based strategy game that enthralls the Boy — trains, so of course! — but is obviously too much for his young mind to comprehend.
