You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘kids’ tag.
Last night we had the pleasure of bearing witness to the daughter’s second rock performance. Her school has the fortune of having a teacher on staff so completely dedicated to steeping the lives of children in music and so completely insane to put together a rock band made up of 8-12 year olds. The music was 100% original, written and performed by the students. They even came up with a cheeky name for the band which played up on the insane teacher’s last name’s etymological proximity to the word ‘ass’. They done good.
The ramp up to it was a funny thing to bear witness to as well; the daughter getting up super early yesterday morning to prepare and look the part, hunting around for anything RED she could find. She needed RED! Some reds just weren’t red enough. Her brother busted her chops all morning with things like ‘you’re only wearing 5 red things. You’re clearly not red enough’ then ‘your reds are clashing’. Not being able to take a joke under the circumstances, these comments would throw her into another mad hunt for REDDER that RED things, muttering the lyrics to the songs all through it. Her brother is so supportive.
I felt excited and nervous for her all day. I suffer terrible stage fright and just can’t imagine what it takes for her to get up on stage, belt out some tunes and play an instrument she just learned 2 months ago. Luckily she escaped that gene somehow and, though she admits to being nervous, she gets up there and makes it all look effortless. She’s one of those kids who compensate for the the ones just going through the motions with her stamina & commitment to rockin’ out.
This means so many other things too. One of her fellow vocalists is very trained, very talented, and very competitive. She’s also one of the daughter’s best friends. That my kid could get up there and give her friend a run for her money kinda blows my mind.
And she wrote a song! This is something she kept to herself as a surprise for performance night. It was a really intelligent song about being imagined in this King Crimson-meets-The Flaming Lips kind of style. My kids writes my music. Crazy.
My thoughts since the show have been swamped with thoughts of holding her as a baby and wondering what she would grow up to be and that now, at almost 5’8″ and borrowing my clothes, she’s simply the best her she possibly could be. Which means I done good too.
This is not the Saturday I envisioned. I was going to get ambitious & grab some groceries, put together some casseroley things for the freezer, meet my self-imposed deadline of getting my website up & running & then indulge in some hardcore chilling out with the newly aquired Springsteen tunes for Guitar Hero. So far none of that seems to be on the cards. I received a call earlier from the baby daddy letting me know that he’s made a doctor’s appointment for the eldest sprog for first thing tomorrow morning as the chest thing he’s been battling has escalated.
On one hand I’m cheering on the inside as this is the first time in the 8 years the ex & I have been separated that he’s taken the initiative & made the appointment without my hand forcing it. It’s not a judgement call as such; his intentions have always been logical & empathetic & I do appreciate the spirit in which his actions (or lack thereof) are intended, but the hand-holding became tired quickly. On the other hand I really resent not being the parent doing the care giving & being in the position of fretting at arm’s length. I worry that his fever will spike as it’s wont to do. I worry that he’s not getting enough liquids. I worry that tomorrow morning isn’t soon enough. I worry about stupid shit even though I know that papa is well equipped with the skills to deal with this & my inability to let it go has thrown my day off completely.
I’ve been sort of good, though. I’ve only made one phone call to assess the whole fever thing & insist he be given something to keep it from spiking. The kid’s notorious for going from normal to 187 degrees in 2.2 seconds flat so I’m ok with nagging on that score. I still somehow feel like a horrid mum for not being there for him. I’m a bundle of nerves & distraction…so much so that I almost went across the street to purchase some paper towels after walking by the package of 678 rolls stood in the middle of the kitchen floor 4938 times. Parenthood is not fair.
In an (futile) effort to keep my mind off all of this I’ve been oggling Alexander McQueen’s fall line. Though I admit the emotional rawness I’m feeling at the moment may have something to do with me weeping at it’s brilliance, I think I’d still do it under different circumstances. Check this out:
Love those organic lines & tailored details.
She’s like some haute nomad ready to take her leave of the steppes.
And then there’s my favourite because it’s like McQueen took Fantômas…
…or Arsène Lupin…
…& reversed their gender then breathed Erté’s dying breath into the lot of it to produce this:
Fabulous & brilliant, non?
I don’t know about any of you but I’m still sat here in my pyjamas, sipping a manhattan and brimming with smugness for having done almost nothing productive today. I did do laundry, but I was still on auto-pilot so it hasn’t registered in the productivity scale.
The weekend was highlighted by a crash visit from my Megan who was going stir-crazy in her rural digs and so hitch-hiked in for some mindless entertainment chez nous. After a brief lecture directed at my loin fruits about the perils of hitch-hiking we most definitely came through on the mindless entertainment part & much wine, food, guitar hero and general joyful conviviality was had by all (except the wine bit for the sprogs – I made them chai and shiley temples).
Today the son indulged us with his waffle-making skills & I created a lovely apple stew to go with them. Perfect for a lazy Sunday 14:00h brunch.
I can’t share the buttermilk waffle recipe as that’s the son’s secret, but here’s how to make the stew:
What you need:
7 apples
1/2 stick of butter
2 cardamom pods lightly crushed
4 cloves
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/5 cups sweet vermouth
10 dashes of Angostura bitters
Peel and roughly chop the apples into bite-sized bits. In a medium sauce pan melt the butter then add the spices and the apples. Cook and stir until the apples become somewhat fork tender. Add the vermouth and cook and stir over low heat until it thickens. Try to time this with the finish time of the waffles. If you miss just add a little more vermouth to loosen it up again. Serve over hot waffles & vanilla ice cream and top the lot of it with loads of freshly ground pepper.
I hope you all had as lovely a weekend.
Why wouldn’t a girl want to spend the entirety of a gorgeous, sunny Wednesday afternoon putting lightly gathered pin tucks into fiddly satin fabric while waiting anxiously for a prognostic phone call from a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon? Nevermind that I could have been out helping to paint a mural with a mum-to-be for the room of her babe-to-be and interacting with actual adults. Nevermind that I’ve only just learned that said pediatric orthopaedic surgeon is not in the office until Friday (yet lead me to believe there was a sense of urgency on this score and would be calling me today.) Nevermind that I spent $30 to have copies of the xrays couriered to him after spending 3 and a half hours waiting at the hospital to get them done because the poor sprog requiring the surgeon was due to go on a camp trip with her class and Columbian pen pal and that was sort of, kind of hinging on the current state of the bolt in her hip. Nevermind all of that, I have pin tucks. Pretty sure they’re the only thing keeping me from going bat-shit crazy right now.
p.s. I sent the sprog to camp anyway…with her stepmum to keep her in line.
cushti 