Add cornstarch to Easter egg dye, and you get a pretty good sidewalk paint.

Add cornstarch to kids and you get ghosts!

My back was turned - all right, I was inside, getting more supplies! - when they decided that since cornstarch felt so good on their hands (this I encouraged before going in), they should rub it all over their arms, and maybe a little on their faces wouldn’t hurt either (these two were not my ideas!). T-boy kept saying “corn starter” instead of cornstarch, and his friend is the one who decided they were ghosts. What you can’t see here is that the “cornstarter” bag had a hole in the corner, so much of it ended up on the porch.

(They’re wearing matching shirts because we went on a field trip in the morning.)

LEGO bricks turned 50 today. What a cause for celebration!

This Gizmodo post features a neat timeline, although I must disagree with their dismissal of Bionicles. C-boy especially is a giant fan of Bionicles. His 5th and 6th birthdays featured a Bionicle theme - he even dressed up as a Bionicle character for Halloween. Twice!

Although I should acknowledge that his interest did eventually wane on the 3rd or 4th revision of the main characters. (”Collect all 6!” Jonski Papa used to intone, maniacally. “And again! 6 more!”) On the other hand, he bought 2 of the new models with his own money just last week. T-boy has a burgeoning interest in Bionicles, although his interest is more about playing out scenarios with the characters (it’s all about the building for C-boy - and he combines the pieces in amazingly creative ways, although recently he remade all the original sets [from memory, of course!]).

This particular piece of LEGO trivia struck me:

There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants.

because I think our house contains the LEGO allotment for at least 1000 earthlings! 2000? 10,000? And that’s if you don’t count all the little gears and locking collars and pins and such for the Bionicle models!

I recently came across this picture of T-boy on his first birthday. He’s watching C-boy manipulate a new bath toy birthday present. It’s an otherwise unremarkable photo, except I realized that he makes that exact same expression now, 3 years later, when he’s concentrating or when he’s expressing displeasure with someone.

Now I need to go back and look at baby pictures of Z-boy and C-boy, to see if I can see similar expressions that have lasted through the years!

T-boy said to me this morning, “I need some chocolate to cheer me down.” I’m trying to figure out where that particular construction comes from - a combination of “cheer me up” and “calm me down” perhaps? Odd.

But anyway, one thing that has been cheering me (up and down) this week is that I can take my coat off the normal way without any help! It might seem like a small thing, but long-time readers (what is that, 3 people now? :^) will remember that I broke my arm back at the end of September. For the 6+ weeks I was in a cast, I relied on a thrift store poncho. Despite the jaunty fashion statement it made, I gladly switched to a coat once the sling came off on November 13th - but I quickly realized that getting it on and off would be tough. To put it on, I just had to make sure to put the left arm in first (instead of my ‘normal’ right arm lead). Taking it off was more difficult, and I often relied on an assistant, or my teeth, or some other trick.

So it was with much rejoicing this past Wednesday when I realized I could remove it “the normal way,” by shrugging my shoulders and slipping it off both arms at once! It took 5 weeks of physical therapy and home exercises to get to this point, and there are still many things I can’t do (especially using my arm behind my back). But I’d been particularly down the previous week, despairing at how long it might take to fully recover functionality, that this small thing was a welcome sign of progress! Quite enough to cheer me down, indeed.

In honor of eating seasonally, I made a special treat for back-to-school. What’s in season now? M&Ms, of course! In particular, the “Jack’s Gems” ones that are being discounted as the associated pirate movie wanes in popularity. :^)

I have an M&M cookie recipe but results were not stellar the last time I made it, so I turned elsewhere. Also, I wanted to make bar cookies since it would be quicker. I looked at the bar cookies chapter in one of my cookbooks, but didn’t find any chocolate chip bars recipes to adapt, so I turned to the back of the toll house morsels bag and adapted that.

M & M Bar Cookies

1 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
3 large eggs (mine were local! :^)
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all-purpose white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cup M&M candies

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 15×10 inch jelly-roll pan (or if you don’t have one, combine a 9×12 cake pan with a bread loaf pan).

Beat sugar and butter in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Gradually beat flour mixture into creamed mixture. Stir in the chocolate bits. Spread into prepared pan(s).

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until top is golden brown. Cool in pan or wire rack.

Changes I made:

1. The original recipe only calls for white flour, but I didn’t have quite enough so I topped it off with wheat flour. It adds a nice touch (although at such a low percentage, it probably doesn’t improve the nutritional value much!).

2. The recipe calls for 2 cups of chocolate chips. I only put in 1 3/4 cups of Ms, but that seemed like too much, so I would try 1 1/2 next time.

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Here’s a picture of the boys on the first day of school. C-boy is entering 3rd grade, Z-boy is entering 1st, and T-boy will start going to a co-op preschool next week. And yes, they got some of these cookies in their lunchboxes today!

When I go to the Farmer’s Market, I make my rounds of various vendors. I start at my CSA where I load up my big green tyvek bag with the ‘extras’ and then grab my box. I put these in the car or bike trailer and then make my rounds of the other vendors. The CSA covers most of our vegetable needs, so the rest of the trip focuses on fruits and sundries.

I have little nicknames I use when thinking of the vendors or when talking about them to T-boy. We have “the cookie lady” - she also sells eggs, and occasional produce, but T-boy insists we visit her for cookies (we usually get PB cookies with chocolate chips, or ginger snaps). There’s also the “Turkish cookie lady”, who sells a wider variety of baked goods with less sugar than is typical in the US, including a tahini ’sweet’ roll that’s delightful. C-boy and Z-boy vastly prefer the cider from one orchard, so I always buy that from my “apple lady” (although in the late spring she was my “rhubarb lady“!).

And then there’s the “plum man.” He wears a black cowboy hat and is unassuming, straightforward, and soft-spoken. Ask him how a certain variety of plum tastes, and he might give you some characteristics (sweet or tart or …) or he might just say “how do I describe a taste? I just can’t do it.” But he sells an amazing variety of plums (along with other things, but he’s got the biggest variety of plums of anyone, so “plum man” he is!). He starts with small red plums, then moved on to yellow plums. Now he has a different (larger) red variety, and the italian plums should be coming in soon.

Michigan cherries at top left, tiny plums at bottom right. Notice the similarity in size (if not color).

This summer I’ve added “the cherry people” to my rotation. As with the plum man, they sell lots of different things, but I stop there for cherries. Every week I buy 2 quarts. He puts them into a plastic sack, and I store it in my fruit crisper drawer at home, washing them as I need them. One day a few weeks ago, I reached into the drawer and grabbed a few cherries to finish off my breakfast. I stuck one in my mouth, took a bite, and thought “that’s a weird cherry. Maybe it went bad?” I popped the next one in, again thought “that texture is all wrong. How bizarre!” - and then realized that I’d grabbed some of those tiny plums. There was nothing wrong with the plums as plums, believe me, but it was a shock when I was expecting cherries. I got yellow plums the next week, to avoid suffering through a repeat, and by now the plums are bigger so I’m safe.

Last week Z-boy decided he liked cherries. He decided this at a friend’s house, where he somehow discovered the joy of spitting out the pits. (The previous day, he rejected cherries when offered at home, in part because of the pits!) Inspired by his big brother, T-boy now eats cherries, too (although I have to pit his). So now I have competition for my cherries - I might have to start buying 3 quarts! Cherry season has been going since early July or maybe late June, but I fear the season will end too soon (and I’m afraid to ask). But there’s still a few more varieties of plums to work through, and some more peach varieties (not to mention the nectarines that rival the ones I ate while working at Yellowstone) before we launch into apple season, so I think we’ll be in stone fruit heaven for a few more weeks. Now if we could just convince C-boy to join us…

A few weeks ago, Z-boy turned to me in the kitchen one night and said: “Tell me the truth. Do you put on heelys and skate around the house after I go to bed?” Where this came from, I have no idea, but after assuring him I did not, he proceeded to ask “Do you have any other secrets you’re hiding from me?”

Z-boy has been obsessed with skateboarding for months now, so Jonski Papa read him the biography of a current skateboard phenom, Andy Mac. Although they’ve been visiting various skateboard parks in this part of the state this summer (Z-boy on his skateboard, C-boy on inline skates), T-boy usually stays home. He’s too little for skate parks, plus he still needs someone to hold him up while skating. So I was surprised while planning a trip to the library the other day when T-boy insisted he get a book about Andy Mac. I dutifully found the book, and let him carry it on the way home. He showed it to his dad and proudly announced “We got a book about Andy Mac!” “Oh. What does Andy Mac do?” his dad asked (expecting to hear something along the lines of “ride a skateboard”. “He drops in!” T-boy replied. The title of the book, in case you didn’t follow the link, is Dropping In With Andy Mac (’dropping in’ is the name of a particular skateboard trick).

We also got 2 picture books about skateboarding on that same trip: Cosmo Zooms and Skateboard Mom. You can probably guess the plot of the latter book from the title (if you can’t, here it is: boy gets skateboard for his birthday, mom grabs it away and rushes out the door to show her stuff). But what got me was when we finished the book and I turned to the back cover and saw: “You better ask your mom what surprises she has up her sleeve…” Deja vu! Wasn’t Z-boy doing that just the week before? Eerie.

As it turns out, the author of this book used to be on an amateur skateboard team as a kid, and has founded The International Society of Skateboarding Moms which is “about making time for play, no matter your age.” I really wish I were better about making time for play, or had a more playful spirit, but I just don’t see myself stepping on a skateboard any time soon. A scooter is okay, but that’s about as extreme as I’m willing to go for the time being!

(And no, I’m not going to tell you what surprises I have up my sleeve - at least not today!)

More great back formations from toddler minds:

At one point when C-boy was little, we branched out and added Kix to his prepared cereal repertoire. (They are, after all, kid-tested and mother-approved!) He decided that each little ball should be called a “kick”, as in “can I have one more kick?” (”kik”, perhaps?)

Ideally in our family, you change into “day clothes” before going downstairs in the morning. You definitely wear “day clothes” to go outside (exceptions: pajama shirts are allowed, especially if they are dearly beloved space-themed or otherwise cool; fleece footie pajamas have been allowed at times in winter). T-boy has decided that the singular form of “clothes” is “clo”, as in “I need a day clo shirt” or (more likely, in recent weeks) “I don’t like that clo!”

Here are two stories that T-boy (3) told to Jonski Papa the other day, while I was at work and the big brothers were at camp.

There was a big old river and it goes “Kersplash!” and it was very large. There was exactly a dry place where they would roll over. There’s no crocodiles in there.

Once upon a time there was a baby dragon. And it was crying for its mama. The daddy was very large. The daddy dragon liked the baby dragon. And the baby was going toward his daddy. And the daddy dragon said “Where is my baby?” Oh he’s upstairs, and he was walking upstairs, and this lead to his room, but the baby wasn’t there.

He also has a tendency to get words all mixed up, which makes me think of spreading activation theories of memory and try to figure out how things are connected. For example, the other night he said “pickle” for “nipple” and today he said “it will cheerful me up.” In the not-quite-so-cute-at-the-time category, he was on the verge of a tantrum yesterday because he wanted his “david” swimsuit. I had no idea what a david swimsuit might be. (We have no hand-me-downs from Davids, so it can’t be that. I couldn’t figure out how the too-big-in-the-waist-with-no-drawstring shark swimsuit might be David. David the sculpture? That David doesn’t even wear a swimsuit and such behavior wouldn’t be allowed at the city pool! :^). Luckily, Jonski Papa eventually figured out that he meant the Harley Davidson swimsuit (which was a hand-me-down, and which Z-boy (the first recipient in the family) used to call “Harleyson David”). Another disaster averted, and another insight into the toddler brain.

T-boy’s favorite shirt is black, with a killer bee on it. His next round of favorite shirts are all dark navy - one with lizards, another with a zoo train, another plain navy. When given a choice, he chooses dark. Ask him his favorite color, he’ll reply “dark” or “black”. Do I have a future goth on my hands?

Either that or a skater dude. Big brother Z-boy is seriously focused on skateboarding right now (impressive for a not-quite-6 year old). So when I came across this cake at the Family Fun web site, I planned to remember it for his birthday. Then T-boy saw it, and insisted on having it for his own birthday party this past weekend.

When I asked him what color to make it, he said “black” (and red for the swirls). Although it’s not truly black, I figured chocolate icing would satisfy him, and it did. The red turned out a bit pink (just how much food coloring do you have to add to really get red??), and the swirl looks a bit too much like a 6 when viewed from above, but overall the cake was a big success - easy to make, and everyone was wildly enthusiastic in their praise. Believe me, wildly enthusiastic praise from 2 and 3 year olds warms the cockles of your heart, even more so than praise from 4s through 8s and adults! Seems like it should be otherwise, since the latter are more likely to understand the effort behind it, but there’s just something about seeming magical and invincible in the eyes of a child that really boosts your ego.