It’s amazing how kids learn.  It’s so totally effortless.  There are always the examples of four-year-olds casually using curse words in polite company, much to their parents’ embarrassment, or course.  Yesterday, on the other hand, Lucy was walking around the house with her Fish do the Strangest Things book, standing on top of things, holding the book in front of her, and proclaiming, “A reading from Saint Paul.  Babies and sisters…”  I stopped in my tracks.  She is clearly paying much closer attention while she wiggles away through Mass than we have been giving her credit for.  (I asked about the “babies”, and she seemed to think that made more sense than “brothers”, which is understandable I guess since she has a severe lack of brothers at the moment.)  Anyway, we are redoubling efforts to have such good influences and Saint Paul and his letters around, so that her osmosis can do its thing.

Lucy: I can’t help pick up.  It really gives me a headache.

That’s right, she skipped a few years, and is now sixteen.  In case you hadn’t heard already.

Here are the first photos from the Great Christmas Card Photo Round-up.  Thanks, Veronica, Tom, and Clark!  If you want to send a cool family picture with your home-made card by Lucy (or if you have not received your card and want to remind me to hurry up!) send me an email.

And here’s the card with their lovely description:

“I think it looks like Winnie the poo walking towards the right while holding a stick with a beehive on it, and bees following him.”

This was one where Lucy got her hands on the glue with out supervision…but at least it is appreciated!  Keep the pics coming!

So I was thinking…we didn’t take any pictures of the Christmas cards that Lucy is making before we sent them out. But it would be really cool if she got to see who they went to, so…if/when you get yours (there are still a lot to go in the mail and if you think I forgot you or don’t have your address, just email me) if you could send a picture of you and your family with the card, I could post them on the blog (if you don’t mind, of course) and that would be really, really cool. Maybe we could put up a map too, and make this a regular geography thing. Anyway, I would enjoy seeing your beautiful faces with Lucy’s beautiful artwork. : )

Last week was black bean and sweet potato week here at the Baker house.  I know that probably sounds strange to you, because it did to me a couple of weeks ago.  But we (and by “we” I mean Craig) had purchased many, many pounds of sweet potatoes about a month ago, and they needed to be eaten.  And black beans are cheap (as were sweet potatoes, hence our abundance).  And I generally trust Moosewood cookbooks, so I thought I’d give the “black bean and sweet potato hash” a try.  Now, I’m not one to make hashes, as a general rule, so this involved a little bravery to start with.  Here’s the recipe, so you can see for yourself what I was getting into.

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Hash

Not complicated, just a bit of chopping.  Let me just say, it was amazing.  And there was nothing in it that Samantha can’t eat!  And it’s all baby-bite sized.  That is always a bonus.  And it’s loaded with nutrition.  And the leftovers were amazing – I added cheese and put it in a tortilla and went to that happy place where rich, sweet, delicious things take me.

In fact, it went so well that I decided it required a follow-up recipe.  Namely, “Caribbean sweet potato gratin”, which again pairs sweet potatoes and black beans, but adds…well, see for yourself.

Caribbean sweet potato gratin

That’s right, lime.  Lots of it.  Now, I won’t claim this is “quick and easy”, because it’s not complicated (as long as you remember to shake the coconut milk first) but it did take a while.  But then I sat back and waited for deliciousness to prepare itself for my tastebuds.  I’m pretty sure this is the most nutritious thing I’ve cooked ever.  Yes, it’s fatty, but it’s better fat than Oreos or any of the other things I could have eaten instead.  And everything in it is rainbow-colored “superfood”.  Choose your diet, all but the coconut milk should fit in.

Craig loved it.  Lucy and Samantha ate it.  I was a little overwhelmed by the lime and cornmeal, possibly because I had been grating/juicing lime for a while at that point and reeked of it.  But it was good.  Sweet potatoes and black beans.  Who knew!

And I was thinking, it’s strange really that I write so little on here about food, since food takes up so much of my time.  (Actually, maybe that is why I write about it so little!)  I really like cooking, provided no one is wrapped around my legs and screaming, and I like thinking about cooking, and talking about cooking.  And it doesn’t bother me to be “tied up” in the kitchen for an hour or two making dinner.  (The dishes are a different story, but I’m working on that.)

Anyway, if you like sweet potatoes, you owe it to yourself to try the hash at least.  If you like lime, too, try both!  Let me know what you think.

[evil laugh]  Craig and the girls are out, so I am free to eat ice cream before dinner, sew, and write on my blog!  Sweet freedom!

But ice cream aside, (or inside, as the case may be), I now have the problem of which of the hundred things I’ve thought about writing about in the last few weeks will actually make it on the page.  Well, enough stalling.

These days, Lucy is busy making Christmas cards.  Watch your mailbox, they are scheduled to arrive sometime before Epiphany.  In two days, I think we’ve completed about eight.  And I’m a slug about digging out addresses, so I can’t blame it all on Lucy, or on the fact that we can only work when Samantha is asleep.  She prefers scattering the stamps, glitter, etc. all around the room rather than putting them on the cards.  Maybe next year she will be more helpful.  If we attempt this again next year.

And to those of you who get the glitter cards, I apologize in advance about the mess.  You may want to display this artwork outside.

Craig has been busy saving the world.  He had his first official youth function last Wednesday (did I mention that he’s now a youth minister at a parish 1 1/2 hours away from us?  Well he is, at St. Jean, the parish he attended in high school, and where we ran confirmation retreats while we were at Tulane.  This means lots more time with the BR grandparents.)  It was a walloping success – I made 76 or so cupcakes, we ordered 6 extra-large pizzas (I didn’t know they made extra-large!) and had four youth and four adults show up.  That’s counting Craig and me.  We are still eating cupcakes.  But don’t be dismayed by the small numbers, they were a lively and interested group which is more than we usually expect from high schoolers, and way more than we should be allowed to expect, considering that there have been no non-mandatory youth events at this parish in two years.  At any rate, the eight of us are off to a good start.

Craig also had to speak at all five masses this weekend, which went well except for the exhaustion.  He’s feeling extra holy this week (between that and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), so he volunteered himself and several of the boys he teaches to help an elderly woman who was being evicted move out yesterday.  He got home at 10 pm.  Which is actually better than I was expecting.  They moved her whole house in under six hours, and the new place was about half an hour’s drive away, and they made two trips.  I think they did quite well.

And here’s the moral delimma:  if she was evicted because the house is condemned, and the house is condemned because the landlord refuses to make the repairs necessary to keep it in livable condition, shouldn’t the landlord at least have to pay for the moving truck?

Ah, well, that’s why we didn’t buy the piano the guys standing outside Guitar Center were trying to sell the other night.

But if you know of a free or nearly-free piano in our general area, let us know.  Craig has taken up violin (on my grandfather’s violin, which we brought home from Texas after Thanksgiving), and it’d be nice to be able to accompany him.

Oh yeah, and Lucy turned three last Thursday, so we had a party for both the girls in BR on Sunday.  (Which was amazing, since the annual family Christmas party had been at Craig’s parents the night before, and that involved weeks and weeks of planning, test cooking, decorating, cooking…our party involved one run to Party City and leftover cupcakes.)  But that was fun and the girls enjoyed it, and the new toys and clothes.  And I’ve added those thank you notes to the pile of Christmas cards and other things I need to get in the mail…sigh.  I guess I should get busy with some of that.

So when I say we’ve been busy, well, I guess we actually have.  If I’m forgetting something, Mom, or somebody, feel free to add it in the comments.  Hopefully, things will be settling down soon.  But I feel like I say that often.  At least we don’t spend much time being bored.

The CD player in our Honda has been out of order for a while now.  It will take a CD, but just make a disturbing flapping sound and sit there.  Which is a problem, because, especially on eight-to-ten-hour drives, being able to put on some appropriate mood music for the girlies can come in very handy.  So, yesterday, we took matters into our own hands.

There are instructions on the internet for disassembling your car.  With photos.  So Craig removed the top dashboard piece, the one with the air vents in it.  And the case around the gearshift, and the “not an ashtray”, and the pop-lid storage thingy, and finally, (finally!) the control console.

As we removed the the CD player, we heard the problem.  Rattle.  Rattle.  Jingle.  Hmmm.

Craig was able to get the two nickels out before leaving the car.  But one stubborn quarter wouldn’t fit through the hole it was able to reach.  So the CD player was transfered to the operating room (the kitchen table).

At which place Craig disassembled it further (we had quite a pile of screws by now) and finally got to that pesky quarter.  (Craig objects to the use of the plural subjective pronoun, but I did remove one of the screws, as well as fetch the various screwdrivers.)  After an hour of researching and an hour of tinkering, Craig started putting things back together.  And lo and behold, it worked!  I was very, very excited, which left Craig a little confused.  After all, it is just a CD player, right?

Oh no, it is my sanity.  Restored.

We had a talk with Lucy.  She was saving the thirty-five cents for later.

So Lucy likes to take down the spices (and extracts, and colored sugar) from the spice rack and smell them.  This is usually a harmless passtime, which possibly develops her sensory awareness, so usually I let her be.  There have been a couple of spills (sesame seeds come to mind), but, as I say, it’s all usually harmless.

So yesterday, I noticed Lucy pouring the orange sugar from the bottle into the bottle cap and eating it.  I questioned her, and she denied eating it.  I warned her that the things on the spice rack go in foods, but aren’t very tasty by themselves.  (Not true of colored sugar, but it was a general statement.)  I walked away.

I heard screaming.  I returned to Lucy, who had an empty bottle of peppermint extract in her hand.  She reeked of peppermint.  And she was screaming.  She claimed she had not drunken it all, (I’m not sure how much “all” was to start with) but it was gone.  So I hugged her, trying not to laugh but failing miserably, and poured her some water.  Thus ended Samantha’s nap, and Lucy and I had a discussion about listening to Mommy and the proper treatment of things in the spice rack.

When we told the story to Craig, I asked Lucy if she would be eating anything else from the spice rack.

Sheepish smile.  “No.”

Craig: “Lucy, why are you so intense?”

Lucy: “I’m not intense!”

Craig: “Yes, you are!”

Lucy: “I’m not in tents, I’m right here!”

Before I forget, (since I’m not keeping track of all this anywhere else!) Samantha has a new tooth, which we noticed a couple of days ago.  Bottom, left of the two front ones.  And she now loves to walk, and wants to start writing.  Sigh.