Pianist

Jordan has been taking piano lessons for about six months now and is learning a ton. He loves to play, and is especially enamored of chords. "Chords are very empowering," agrees his cheerful and unflappable piano teacher, as Jordan bangs away at top volume on the grand piano in her living room. She held a recital for all her students last weekend, and Jordan played the following piece. The intro and out-tro are his own composition, which he improvised one day and remembers. The piece in the middle is a piece she assigned him called "I've Got Music," by Bastien.

Where does the soul go?

I got into another one of these theological conversations with the boys... I admit, I enjoy them. At dinner on Thursday, Jordan was talking about what he sang in choir that day, and Aaron hadn't heard the story of Away in a Manger so we had to tell it to him. He thought it was hilarious: asleep in the hay! Ha! However, I felt a little incomplete telling these stories without also explaining the significance that they have for people, so this time I said how the baby Jesus is so special to Christian people, that part of the story is that even the stars in the sky were happy to see him be born. Aaron was very touched by that. Then I went on to try and explain why Jesus is special to Christian people, and man, I was out of my depth. I felt like I needed to keep it simple (these are five- and eight-year-old Jews, after all) and I was thinking on my feet, so I thought I'd just say that the Christian story is that Jesus helps you get into heaven and not go to hell. But my kids don't know what heaven and hell are. So I started by asking:

Me: What do you think happens when people die?
Aaron: We say goodbye to them.
Jordan: I think their soul goes out.
Rachel: I agree, we say goodbye to them. What do you mean, their soul goes out?
Jordan: At the moment people die I think their soul goes out of them. [He made a wiggly motion away from his chest.]
Rachel: Does it go somewhere?
Jordan: I don't know.
Rachel: I don't know either.
Jordan: I think maybe it goes to us, so that we remember them. I think maybe that is how we remember them.
Rachel: Wow. I think that is pretty great. I don't know what happens after people die, but I like your idea a lot.

And then I launched into this other part:

Rachel: Another story about what happens when people die is that there is a wonderful place called heaven, and your soul goes there when you die. I don't believe this story myself, but it is a story that is special to Christian people. One story is that heaven is up in the clouds.
Jordan: I don't think your soul goes up in the clouds.
Aaron: I don't think anyone goes up in the clouds unless there is a rocket ship. And then you go to space.
Jordan: And your soul wouldn't go in a rocket ship.
Rachel: I don't believe this story either, but some people like this story. Another part of this story is that your soul only goes to heaven if you are good and you do good things. If you do bad things, you go to another place called hell.
Aaron: If you do bad things you go there?
Rachel: That's the story.
Aaron: What is it like there?
Rachel: Supposedly it's full of fire and monsters and devils.

I was trying to be casual, but I think Aaron's imagination took him somewhere awful very fast, because his eyes got big and he started to tremble and blink back tears. I instantly regretted the whole conversation - now my poor baby is worried about going to hell!? Scrambling to get out of it, I said,

Rachel: Aaron Aaron I forgot to tell you that there is an important rule about who can never go to hell. Do you want to hear it?
Aaron [little voice shaking]: Yes?
Rachel: Children. Children can never go to hell.
Aaron: They can't?
Rachel: Right. Because children are not bad. Children are learning.
[There was a collective puff of relief. Both Aaron and Jordan looked very grateful to be hearing this piece of news and got out of their chairs.]
Rachel: Like if a little kid broke something, they didn't do it on purpose, they are just learning.
Jordan [standing up to explain]: Kids make mistakes. Kids don't mean to hurt anyone.
Aaron [waving his arms]: Like if a kid broke his brother's toy he didn't mean to do it, it just broke.

I even think this is true, isn't it? Innocent youths? I guess it depends on your convictions. Well, I hereby refuse to educate my kids about any religion that threatens to send little kids to hell. And it was time to change the subject.

Rachel: Right. Now heaven, on the other hand, the story is that heaven is this wonderful place where everything is good.
Jordan: Is everything made of candy?
Rachel: Actually they say the streets are made of gold.
Jordan: Wow!
Aaron: And what else?
Rachel: All your friends will be there, and all the people you love.
Aaron [dancing around the kitchen]: Emanuel will be there, and Finn, and Sean and Henry! [All of whom are alive and well, and of a variety of religious persuasions. Never mind.]

There followed a very excited and imaginative babbling about what heaven would be like. Both kids got so into it they pushed the dinner dishes out of the way and started drawing heaven. Aaron drew himself sitting on a cloud and wanted to know how to spell "Whee!" because it would be so fun.

Jordan drew this fascinating image:



Those are the streets of gold, and green fields, and "a giant portable box of candy." A friend pointed out that it is a crossroads, as well, which struck her as auspicious.

The conversation was really out of my hands by now, but I tried to cram through to my point, which was that the baby Jesus grew up into the man Jesus, who had a lot of very good ideas and instructions for how to live a good life, and that the Christian story that if you live the way that Jesus said, you would go to heaven. And that Christmas is Jesus's birthday, so songs like Away in the Manger are for saying that when Jesus was born it was very special. Amen.

Observed

Another parent reported the following sweetness to us, which she observed while dropping her kids off at the before-school program:

Jordan and Aaron were making their plan for where to play together. Jordan was told that because of staffing today, they couldn't accommodate younger siblings in the "big kid" area in the lunchroom -- seems that's something the boys have done together in the past. 

Aaron looked up at Jordan with silent, big, tear-rimmed eyes.

Jordan paused, then said he'd changed his mind and would prefer to stay in the portable with his brother. Unfortunately the staff said that for the same staffing reasons, today Jordan needed to go to the lunchroom.

Jordan gave Aaron a big hug and a reassuring pep talk about how they'd see each other again later at recess. And of course, the staff quickly engaged Aaron in some activity to take his mind off it.

As our friend's daughter and Jordan walked together to the lunch room, they discussed the pros and cons of the likely rainy day recess. Jordan said the main thing was that if it's rainy day start and recess, he won't get to see Aaron.

Songs with stories

Jordan absolutely loves being in the Northwest Boychoir and is learning all kinds of great songs. The other day he was singing "Dem Bones" in the car, and I had fun singing it with him. He didn't know the story, so I told it to him. It's quite a story. The choir is singing it for Halloween, and it is rather ghoulish ("As I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them"). But it's also inspiring, because it's meant to convey that even when it seems like there is no hope at all, there can be life and strength again. I told Jordan how this was an African-American slave song, and that songs like this helped slaves keep their hopes alive in tough times. We agreed that it made the song more interesting to know the story behind it.

As in almost any choir in the western world, winter brings Christmas carols. (There is a Hanukkah song too.) I admit that I sometimes find Christmas carols tiresome, because it's not my holiday and they are so pervasive. Jordan, however, says he has no concern, that he isn't really paying attention to the words anyway, just enjoying the music. He has a good attitude.

Monday night, he asked  me to sing Away in a Manger for our bedtime song. I found that I wasn't comfortable with that.

Me: You know, I don't really feel right singing that song for bedtime. I'd be happy to sing it with you during the day, but not at bedtime. It's because it's a Jesus song.
Jordan: It is?
Me: Yeah, you know, 'the little Lord Jesus alseep in the hay.'
Jordan: Oh, I didn't know that. I don't sing the words, just the solfege.

Well, how about that! He didn't know Away in a Manger was a Jesus song. This, in my opinion, is in the category of cultural information an American child needs to have. And as with Dem Bones, it's enriching to know what you're singing about. Hopefully. So next time we were in the car alone, I told him the baby Jesus story. I told him that Jesus was a real person, a Jewish person actually, and a great teacher with many very good ideas. I said that Jesus is the number one most special person to Christians because they believe he is both a man and God at the same time. I said that honestly I don't really get that. (I hope this is not disrespectful; I think that even among believers it is a mystery.) I went on:

Me: The baby Jesus story starts when a special woman named Mary gets pregnant. You remember how a woman gets pregnant?
Jordan: Yeah. The man does so-and-so. [He said it just like that: so-and-so.]
Me: Right. [This was not the time to grill him on the specifics.] So what was special about this time, in the story, was that this woman got pregnant and no man did so-and-so with her. Just God made her pregnant, with God.
Jordan: Huh.
Me: And she was visiting a city from out of town, and when it was time for the baby to come, she needed somewhere to stay. So she tried to check into a hotel. But the hotel didn't have any rooms available. So they said she could stay in the barn. This was a hotel with a barn. And that's where the baby Jesus was born. So when it says "Away in a Manger," that means in the barn. A manger is a barn. [I remembered later that actually the manger is the feeding trough; I'll have to correct that.]
Jordan: So that's why he was asleep in the hay.
Me: Right.

I decided that was enough for one day.

Rosh Hashanah

Jordan said this was the best Rosh Hashanah ever, and pretty much I agree. We started the fun with a dinner party with friends: Jules and Jess with Ian and Adam, and new friends we met at Camp Kesher, Gregg and Anjali with Moses. The weather was stunningly beautiful; I don't think I've ever experienced such a summery Rosh Hashanah; we could have had a barbecue! But indoors was good too. The kids got along great, the adults got along great, and we had soup from Nana's extraordinary tureen.

Silly that I didn't take any other pictures of the dinner; I guess I was just having too good of a time. The menu included not only the soup (Silky Cauliflower), but also farmer's market apples and honey, pomegranate-molasses brisket, round challah with raisins, green beans, Rosh Hashanah sangria, and apple-honey galette. We dined early so that most of the adults could go to services at 8. Jules volunteered to stay home and put the kids to bed. Ian and Adam slept over. 

In the morning we had challah french toast for breakfast. Then they made a rock band and played baseball. No fights, no mischief, just fun in your underwear.

After an early lunch we got them all dressed up for temple. Adam doesn't care to be photographed, but here are Ian, Jordan, and Aaron ready to go. Don't they look terrific? Jordan requested the tie. If Aaron looks a little off it's because he had a nasty fall right before this... he recovered very well.

I think we all look pretty good!

Temple was excellent; Aaron was utterly delighted to be in childcare once his dear friend Emanuel showed up, and the eight-year-olds, who are expected to be in services with the grownups, were absolutely model citizens. In the middle, just as they were getting noticeably bored, they got to go off with the other 3rd-through-8th graders for special activities of their own. All ages got to enjoy themselves in their own way, and as a bonus, the medium-aged children didn't have to hear the story of Abraham almost killing his son. A good arrangement all around.

Instead of the madhouse children's service in the afternoon, which we have pretty much aged out of anyway, we took everyone to ice cream. The only documentation of this I can offer is empty dishes.

From there, we rejoined the Temple crowd at a nearby park for tashlich, a fun ceremony where we symbolically cast off last year's sins by tossing crumbs into a body of water (in this case Lake Washington). It was an incredibly beautiful day and there was a big crowd. We stayed a long time, letting the kids enjoy the weather and each other's company. Jess and I sat on the side and gossiped with other parents and took in the happy scene.

Dinnertime wound around, and we decided to have pizza at Jess and Jules's house. After dinner we picked plums from their tree. These are the ones I got to take home.

We could hardly ask for more from a holiday!

Exterior repairs

Beginnings of new railing next to back door.

 Ted, the contractor.

 Finished railing. Looks good!

Shim the carport where it had twisted free of the carport roof; caulk the big cracks in the post to protect against water entry.

 Molding replacement around the windows where it has rotted.

New shutters. Old shutter, pecked to death by birds, leaning against the house. It wasn't possible to exactly match the existing design, and you know what's funny about that? Turns out many of our shutters are mismatched, and we never noticed. So this is fine.

 New board to replace rotted one on the deck.

 Another new board.

Ted is continuing to work on the windows this afternoon. He'll be back tomorrow to hopefully seal the deck. It rained this morning, though, and if it rains again, we'll have to wait.

Painters are checking their calendar to figure out when they can come to pretty it all up.

Girl friendships and boy friendships

We hung out with friends yesterday whose children are girls. Their 8-year-old was in the process of repairing a friendship that had been on the rocks. She had been exchanging emails with the estranged friend, and the day that we were there, they spent some time on the phone working things out. By the end of the day they had decided to give their friendship another go, but to take it more slowly this time.

I was fascinated. Jordan is the same age, but he doesn't do anything remotely resembling what our friend's daughter was doing. He has friendships that I think matter to him very much, but he has never once talked to a friend on the phone that I know of. He has sent a couple emails (through me), but they were not chatty, more of the "let's have a playdate" or "look at this Lego thing I built" variety. I realize that Jordan is getting no practice having phone conversations. He's not interested. Does this explain why the boys I tried to talk to on the phone in middle school (and high school!) by and large had nothing to say?  Did they have no experience talking on the phone? Was telephone just not a medium of interest for them?

Meanwhile there go the girls, not only having a relationship (on the phone!) but explicitly working on their relationship. Talking about the kind of friendship they have and how they will conduct it. I have just never seen my kids anywhere near such a thing. When my kids have a friend over they start doing some physical task, or talking about the items they've collected, or acting out an imaginary battle or quest. And Jordan's friends are very much all boys. I would venture that Jordan hardly interacts with girls socially at all; he's in class with girls, but he doesn't hang out with them by choice. Yesterday, the only time Jordan interacted with our friends' daughter was when she got out her skateboard.  Is that what would have made sense to the male friends I was trying to cultivate in middle school?

Weekly chalkboard

I have this fantastic chalkboard in the kitchen. It's a decal, so it looks painted but was very easy. It's also removable, but I have zero interest in ever removing it. It's just too good. Every week I write up our family's events.

A week is just the right amount of information. Monthly calendars are so overwhelming I can't write anything on them at all or I choke. The computer one is crucial for long-term planning and for my daily business at work, but it's not accessible to the whole family. This is centrally located and large, so Jordan (and of course Dale) can read what's coming up this week, and Aaron recognizes the pictures. And isn't it fun? I get pretty into the little drawings. Here's a closeup including a sketch of our friends' house.

Here was a super busy week, with daily summer camp field trips (to which you were required to wear your yellow camp shirt), a farm box pickup, an orthodontist appointment, Grandpa flying in, a piano lesson, a Temple barbecue, and a trip to a float home in Vancouver.

The next week was significantly less crammed, but still, this is what summer was like! Whee!

This week, meanwhile, has some exciting events, and then a peaceful blackness on the weekend. Maybe something will fill in.

I got the idea from one of my favorite blogs, but I think I've taken her awesome concept a step further.

First day of school

Oh my goodness, the whole summer has gone by and I am still hoping to post about our various fun events – Ashland, Fort Casey, Vancouver, Camp Kesher – but I will just jump right in. The first day of school was yesterday and it went pretty smoothly. Aaron has the same kindergarten teacher that Jordan had, the wonderful Mrs. Murphy, and Jordan had a great time showing Aaron around the room on back-to-school night. It's a great room, full of aquariums and cactus gardens and carnivorous plant bogs.

Now that I look at the picture, Jordan seems to be showing Aaron how to pet the fish. Jordan was in fine form; he read Aaron a book, and spoke to the other kindergarten parents about Mrs. Murphy being a wonderful teacher.

I asked Aaron if he wanted to try out his seat, and he looked at me like the last thing he would want to in this fun room is sit down, but he complied for the duration of a photo.

I think if we could all say the following two things with conviction the world would be a pretty good place:

That was all from back-to-school night. Here they are on the first day. I like the sweet poses, they like the fierce ones.

At school, Aaron lined up in the lunch room with all the other kindergarteners, looking quite at home.

Jordan was outside with the third-graders, and went back to being fierce.

In the middle of the first day I got a call from the school nurse about Aaron. He had whacked his head on a metal bar, and they have to call home for any blow to the head. He was fine and went back to class. He reported having been upset because he thought the nurse was going to fill his head (maybe with water), when in fact she only said she wanted to feel his head. I think it's more likely that he was upset because the playground monitors told him he needed to chill out. In any case, both boys reported a good first day, and it seems like they are settling in very well.

Orthodontia

Jordan needs orthodontic work. This is not the least bit surprising; both Dale and I had braces and various other devices. Jordan's issues may be exacerbated by thumbsucking or may be just hereditary. Like I did, he has a very high, narrow palate, which is messing with how his top teeth line up with the bottom teeth. In my case the bottom teeth bent inwards to meet the top teeth. In his case, there is a crossbite: some of his back top teeth sit inside his back bottom teeth, instead of outside. This will not do.

We (now) have a terrific pediatric dentist, who recommended an orthodontist, who we saw for the first time this morning. We were impressed! The orthodontist was informative, convincing, a good communicator, and worked well with Jordan. Jordan seemed to enjoy the experience. He was not only very chatty about camp and birthdays and such, but was also completely honest and very articulate about his thumbsucking, not evasive at all. (He told me later that he thinks it's wrong to lie to a doctor. I agree with this.) The office is very organized and efficient, and it's conveniently located, which is helpful because we're going to be there a lot. Jordan likes the movies that play in the waiting room.

Jordan will need a palate expander. I had one of these. Back then they called it a palate "splitter," ouch. Thank god they appear to have improved the thing quite a lot in the past, um, thirty years. The concept is the same: the device sits below the roof of your mouth, and every day you turn a little key to make the device a bit wider, which gradually widens the palate. Mine involved a plastic plate like a retainer, but well below the roof of your mouth, so that it was hard to talk and eat, and food got stuck above it like you can't believe. It was miserable. Now it's just a wire and small screw thingy across the roof of your mouth. It still takes a few days to get used to, but it's significantly less horrible. Jordan will have that in for about six months. This may address the thumbsucking too (because there's a device in the way) or it may not. After the palate expander, he will have a device called a "crib," which is also on the roof of the mouth, and is built to get in the way of thumbsucking. After that, braces on just the front teeth, and after that, retainers. This will all take about 18 months and will line everything up very well. Most often, the adult teeth come in on the tracks established by the baby teeth, so there is a good chance that the corrections needed on his adult teeth will be minor. This is part of the rationale for starting orthodontic work now, rather than waiting until middle school: It's much easier and more stable to correct the shape of the palate now, while the bones are malleable.

I am oddly cheerful about the whole enterprise. It needs doing, we have a good orthodontist, and thank goodness we can afford it. But also it feels like a rite of passage. I must be a grown up, to have a kid that needs braces.

Dragon cake

Jordan draws a lot of dragons, and for his birthday he wanted a dragon cake. When I offered him the chance to draw his own dragon for his own cake, his jaw dropped and he got a faraway look. I cut him out a piece of paper the size of the cake, and had him use fat markers, so that he would draw something I could reproduce in frosting. Here is his selected design. 

Disturbing, isn't it? Dale says it looks a little like the monster in Prometheus. I skipped that movie; I think more of a lamprey-centipede with a mace for a tail.

As usual, I made the cake well in advance and froze it. I learned a new frosting technique from Jess: Instead of slathering frosting all over the thing, which requires a crumb coat, I pipe frosting on in big thick bands with a giant piping tip. I start with the sides.

And then all over the top, first in bands, and then smoothing it with a spreader. This is buttercream; some prefer the shortening kind of frosting because it's better behaved, but we all know it doesn't taste nearly as good. The buttercream behaved quite well for me.

I love to pipe frosting. I find it meditative. I did the white frosting on Saturday night, after Aaron's party, and when I started out I was exhausted, but when I was done, I was refreshed.

The next morning I traced Jordan's dragon with a frosting pen on wax paper. 

Then I pressed the design gently onto the cake, so that the outline stuck to the cake (in reverse). This is pattern transfer, and it's awesome! Went without a hitch.

I made up a batch of dragon-colored frosting. Jordan asked for "a very strong red," and that's hard to achieve with even the best food coloring. I added a little purple to the red, and it came out looking like ... meat. I think it's great. The piping technique is little stars, again learned from Jess.

Here's the final product. It involves one googly eye, many red hots (including the knees!), purchased black frosting for the accents, and fruit leather wings. The 8 is outlined with a gel frosting that I bought in a tube, and filled in with colored sprinkles. To make the yellow-orange flames, I put yellow and orange together in the same piping bag. The candles went into the flame part.

The whole thing was very popular. The kids vied for slices of flame, of 8, and of dragon head. And, most importantly, Jordan was delighted.

Cake pops

I had not planned to make cake pops. I thought about it, but decided it was too fussy. So I made a big chocolate half sheet cake. Then something funny happened while I was baking it; it was taking absolutely forever. After an hour and a half it was still not done. It's a bigger pan than I'm used to, which is perhaps why it took me a while to recognize that at some point instead of turning off the timer, I had turned off the oven. Whoops. I eventually got the cake baked, but of course it was a wreck. Tasty, but a total mess coming out of the pan. 

I couldn't bear to toss out a whole cake, mess though it was. Then I remembered that the first step in making cake pops is to crumble a whole cake into bits. It was meant to be.

The next step is to mix in a big blob of frosting, so that it turns into a thick chocolatey paste, the consistency of cookie dough.

Then you can roll it into small, dense balls of chocolate cake paste. Yum.

I froze the balls for several days. This is what made this whole process doable for me; it can be done in stages, with days or even weeks in between streaks of action. It's a good thing, because the next step turned out to be a doozy. You're supposed to just melt a bunch of white chocolate, dip a lollipop stick into it, poke the stick into a cake ball, and dip the ball in the chocolate to coat it. But the balls sometimes fell off the sticks or broke in two, and the chocolate was too thick, and how did the internet make it look so easy? Even with the diligent assistance of a visiting former pastry chef (thank you, Renee Michelle!) it was a big job. We used three pounds of white chocolate.

Maybe I had too many. But what else was I going to do with all that messed-up cake? Here they are in the freezer... beef above, chicken below.

When we ran out of floral bricks to stand them up in, we made cake-pop truffles instead, and decorated them with sprinkles.

I had my heart set on ninja cake pops because Aaron and his friends are obsessed with ninjas. The night before the party I melted yet more white chocolate (the fourth pound!) and dyed it a sort of a dark sage blue, as though the ninjas were stealing their masks from Eddie Bauer. The first few were a total failure; the blue chocolate didn't stick! It was because of the condensation that formed on the pops when I took them out of the freezer. I had to dry off each pop with a paper towel before dipping it. Then I was able to spoon blue chocolate over the four sides to form something like a ninja mask. (Or ... a small round television set?)

After a couple dozen ninja masks I tried rolling some pops in yellow sugar crystals. Nice, but too subtle.

On a whim I dipped just the very top of a pop into blue chocolate, then dipped the wet blob into brightly colored sprinkles. Love! It looks like funny clown hair!

The last bit was to draw faces with a food pen. Pretty great.

On the morning of the party, I took the pops out of the freezer to thaw. When I checked on them a while later... disaster! Condensation again. It had dripped down all their little faces, erasing their features and smearing their headgear. It looked like they had cried their faces off.

I patted off each sad little face with a paper towel again, and redrew it. It was a piece of stress I didn't relish on the morning of a big party. But it all worked out! Here is the final presentation: ninjas above, clowns below, and truffles to hold the candles.

Big thank you to Jess for the floral bricks and the checkered cloth. The presentation was a big hit! As was the eating.