Happy Solstice!

The sun is coming back!  Here's Frances dancing for joy in front of our most reliable source of light these days.  Yes, I'm aware I'm mixing metaphors a bit.  Bear with me.

I tried singing, "Let the sun shine, let the sun shine in, the su-un shine i-in!" and I tried singing, "Here comes the sun, do-do-do-do, here comes the su-un, and I say, it's alright."  But I was corrected both times by Frances, who is up on these things.  According to Miss Frances Elliott, the appropriate song for the day was "Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me!"  I'll work with anything that keeps the sun around later than 4 p.m., even Raffi.

Frances's First Bread!

I have a favorite bread recipe that I will willingly whip up for any occasion.  I've made it a hundred times and it never gets old.  I decided that Frances's teachers each needed a loaf for Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/Diwali/insert-your-festival-of-light-here-because-I-don't-know-what-her-teachers-celebrate and that Frances was going to have her first bread making experience!  I could not have been happier.

We dusted our hands with flour...

...and started kneading.

My kid!  Smiling, making bread, and not watching TV!  Joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!

Pounding the bread was a big hit.  I will remember this activity the next time Frances seems to have some angst to work out.

After the dough rose, we divided it and rolled it into "snakes."

Then we braided it and repeated until we had four mini-loaves.

The next day, we baked it and delivered it to Frances's teachers.  

That's the bread wrapped up in parchment paper.  (Oh, and that's the belly at 32 weeks-ish.)

Big Success!  Frances has even asked to make bread again.  I like to tease Mark that Frances may end up being an artisanal baker; he's holding out for surgeon.  We shall see.

I've been asked for the recipe.  Here it is, with thanks to Paula Lee:

Egg Braid Bread

1/2 cup warm water

2 packages dry yeast

1 3/4 cup warm milk

2 T. sugar

1 T. salt

3 T. softened butter

3 eggs

6-7 cups flour

(I like to throw in a couple tablespoons of finely minced fresh sage or rosemary; it brightens up the flavor.)

Measure warm water into a large warm bowl.  Sprinkle in yeast; stir until dissolved.  Add warm milk, sugar, salt, butter, 3 egg yolks and 2 egg whites.  (Reserve remaining egg white for brushing loaves.)  Add 2 cups flour (and herbs, if using).  Beat with rotary beater until smooth.  Add 1 cup flour.  Beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until smooth.  Add enough additional flour to make a smooth dough.  Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth, about 10 minutes.  Cover lightly with a damp dish towel and let rest 20 minutes.

Divide dough in half.  Divide each half into thirds.  Roll each third into a rope.  On a greased baking sheet, braid 3 of the ropes together.  Pinch ends to seal and tuck under braid.  Repeat with remaining 3 ropes.  Brush dough with oil.  Cover with plastic wrap.  Refrigerate 2-24 hours.

When ready to bake, brush with beaten egg white.  Let stand 10 minutes at room temperature.  Puncture any gas bubbles.  Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.  Turn out on a wire rack and brush with butter.

Oh, Christmas Tree

In five(!) years of marriage, Mark and I have never had a Christmas or Christmas tree at our own home.  We've always traveled to family.  This year, between me being 32 weeks pregnant and Frances being born at 36 weeks, I wasn't interested in going anywhere. Our first tree is getting a lot of attention.

Frances and I have had several rounds of tree decorating.  Without planning it, most of the ornaments are a little earthy or homemade - salt clay ornaments, cinnamon applesauce ornaments, glittered pine cones, crystals, felt acorns and birds.  I'm really loving it.  

Frances was very taken with a tiny ornament that her Mimi sent and wanted to make sure we examined it together.  It is a tiny baby, wrapped in a tiny blanket, laid in a tiny nest.  Frances hung it with care.

A side note:  Frances seems a little confused about how this Christmas thing works.  At first, I think she was combining Halloween and Christmas because she would ask what we were going to dress up as for Christmas, and then make suggestions like "snow cloud" or snow man or snow flake.  She's eased up on that conversation, but the other day when I tried to relocate an ornament, she became very concerned that such a relocation would make Christmas never come to fruition.

Maybe next year the extended family will have to come to us so I can have my Christmas tree experience again?  Although that would require some dozen people to fly to Boston in December to hang out in a condo with nothing but a car park for kids to run around in.  What could possibly go wrong?

The Ornament Party That Almost Wasn't

Mark and I have all the social skills of krill, but I really enjoyed hosting Frances's birthday party, so I decided we were going to have an Ornament Party, good sense be damned, so the kiddos could paint ornaments and the parents could socialize.  That was the plan.  Then Frances, and most other kids in town, came down with a raging fever and the party needed to be postponed.

Luckily, most of our intended guests were still able to come the following weekend.  This is how the dining room looked before the festivities started.  

Frances and Sophia started with Cinnamon Applesauce ornaments.  I thought they would just cut the dough out with cookie cutters, but they also added some glitter paint for pizzazz.

After a little bit, our next guests arrived bearing their Christmas tree that wouldn't be of any use to them after they left town in a few short hours.  Hurrah for recycling!  Frances and Tyler were keen to help their dads put up the tree.

Hang in there, Tyler.  I'm not sure what those girls are up to either.

"Ornaments?  Why would we want to paint ornaments when there's this house here to play in?"

If the kids weren't interested, at least the mamas were.

We did manage to corral the kids in for one last bout of ornament painting.

In the end, we turned out a lot of ornaments and had fun all at the same time.  Maybe one ornament per kid next year instead of the 16 I had planned this year?  Maybe...Pictures of the final product ahead.

Thirty-Seven Months of Preschooler Frances

I said I was going to give this up, but there are just a few things I want to remember, so...

Thirty-Seven Month Fun Facts

• Frances-isms: I can't believe I haven't mentioned this before, but Frances names everything "Adah."  She's been doing it for months.  "Hey, Frances, what should we name this new doll?"  "Adah."  "Hey, Frances, what should we name our new baby?" "Adah."  "Hey, Frances, what should we name the dinosaur outside the Museum of Science?" "Adah."  You get the picture.
• Favorite reads: Anything Dora and Diego.  These two characters single-handedly make Mark and I wish we'd never been born, and yet Frances persists.
• Firsts: Frances sallied forth into a bouncy house for the first time ever!  Bouncy houses have always made her nervous up until now, but with (pregnant, clumsy) mom by her side, she gave it a try.  After about 10 minutes, we were both very done, but very happy regardless.  Way to try something new, kiddo!

Alright, enough of that.

Baby Update

I was sent in for another ultrasound at about 29 weeks.  No cause for alarm, the midwife just wanted to check for signs of abruption.  No such signs were found, just a healthy kid.

And here's a view from the outside at 30 weeks to appease my demanding sister.

Mark dear has called me Lady Bulges and made mooing noises at me.  Does he know how to sweet talk a pregnant lady or what?

Sleepers, awake!

Happy Advent everyone!  This is definitely my favorite liturgical season.  Episcopal churches get all decked out in purple (sometimes blue, which isn't so bad either)!  And such good hymns!  ("Sleepers, awake!" is an Advent hymn reference for the two or three of my blog readers who aren't Episcopalian blood relatives.)

Frances celebrated the first day of Advent by potty training naked (see the last post for explanation) and helping me make salt clay ornaments.  Good, traditional fun.

The Fairy Tale

A friend of mine (hi, Beka!) recently said that the Hayward-Uptons' lives looked like a fairy tale, as far as she could tell from this blog.  I laughed heartily.  I must need to put in some more reality.  Here's reality around these parts lately: 

That's Frances dear with her potty on her head because we've started potty training.

I had always planned to let Frances initiate potty training herself.  I'd been told over and over by all sorts of mothers that waiting until your kid was ready to potty train was vastly easier than imposing potty training on an unready kid.  I tried to wait, I really did.  But I was getting so tired of buying diapers.  And then Frances turned three.  And then Frances's friend, who was born the same day as Frances, potty trained apparently painlessly.  That's when my ever-guttering maternal instinct failed completely.

I honestly can't say how it's going.  Some days Frances seems to really get it.   She's even woken up in the morning with a dry diaper several times.  Some days I do a lot of laundry.  A lot of laundry.  Unfortunately, she does best when watching TV next to her potty while naked.  Don't for a minute think that I think this is a coincidence.  The kid loves watching TV, and she doesn't mind being naked either.

And sometimes, she uses the potty as a hat.

Thankful

Thanksgiving Day could not have been nicer, so we headed, yet again, to the Arnold Arboretum, for which I am very thankful.

A few things Frances is thankful for:

• helping hands,

• swishing,

• necklaces and watches, and the grandmothers who give them,

• running,

• and a daddy who runs with her (she's given up asking her slow mother)!

I'm thankful for friends who do most of the cooking for us!  A lovely Thanksgiving was had by all.

Veterans' Day Wanderings

Veterans' Day was just beautiful in these parts, so we headed out to the Minute Man National Park.  Seemed appropriate for Veterans' Day.  In case you start to forget that the Revolutionary War happened all over this area, about every 100 feet you'll find a rock with a plaque reading "Near here lies the body of a British soldier."  Sobering, to those of us who can read.

For those of us who can't read, it was a great place to frolic.  Here's Frances frolicking in front of the Jacob Whittemore House.

"Swishing," as she calls it, is still one of Frances's favorite things.  This is Frances and me preparing to swish:

This is Mark and Frances mid-swish.  Mark gets her a little higher than I do.

And here's Frances resting angelically on a rock, right before running all the way back to the car.

Hiding in a Fort!

Frances has moved on from hiding under a blanket.  Now she hides under a blanket suspended over chairs!

Mark secretly loves this game because he gets to play with Frances, keeping me happy, and lie down, keeping himself happy.

Thirty-Six Months of Preschooler Frances

And now, for the last monthly update of Frances Elliott Upton!  Almost three years of these things seems like plenty, no?  My plan (no derisive laughter, please) is to keep up with the monthly photos, but maybe not the monthly blow-by-blow.

So here she is, in all her glory at thirty-six months old! (And, yes, I forgot to take photos until moments before bedtime.)

Cheese ball.

Thirty-Six Months Fun Facts

• Firsts: Frances went to her first Lightning Show at the Museum of Science!  I remember going to these shows as a little kid when my sisters and I visited our grandparents.  The shows are very loud and I did not think Frances would enjoy it at all, but she was determined to go once she heard that there would be a "show."  She loved it.  I covered her ears and she covered her baby doll's ears.  Worked perfectly.
• Frances-isms: Frances switches "air port" and "tennis court" so sometimes she'll say "I want to go to the airport and play ball."  She's also latched on to "sounds like a plan" so she'll say things like "We go to store for pepperoni and then library.  Sounds like a plan?"
• Food: Pepperoni, pepperoni, pepperoni.  I wish I hadn't just heard that it gives you cancer.  Sometimes she'll eat rice.  When I try to introduce new foods, she cries and pushes the new food off her plate.  Excellent.
• New skill: Frances is very keen to write letters and numbers all of a sudden.  Her favorites are F, E and 4, but she's thrown in a 5, a v, and an r.  Complete surprise to us.  Her teacher wants her to be focusing more on big gestures than fine motor skills, but it's hard not to be excited.
• Favorite reads:  She's really been enjoying the No, David! series by David Shannon, but Thomas and George hold steady.  The other day, I let her pick a little item for herself from our local toy store for her birthday.  I thought she might choose a ballerina sticker book, but Happy Birthday, Thomas! won hands down.  All on her own, she got interested in The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, which was exciting but the book is really beyond her right now.
• Worst moment of the month:  It was more than a moment, really.  There was one night Frances could not fall asleep until 11 p.m.  And this wasn't happy not-falling-asleep-because-I'm-not-tired.  This was weeping, tantrumming not-falling-asleep-because-I'm-out-of-my-gourd.  She started the melt down about 8. Mark drove to a job site about 45 minutes from us, did his work and drove home.  She was still in melt down mode when he got home at about 10:45.  There was no joy in Whoville, let me tell you.
• Second worst moment of the month: Again, more than a moment.  Frances, dear, woke up at 3 a.m. and wasn't interested in going back to sleep until 4:30 a.m.  Unlike the previous episode, she was perfectly happy to be awake from 3 a.m. until 4:30 a.m.  I was not.  She ended up sleeping with us, first with her head next to ours, then with her head on my belly and her feet on Mark's hips and then with her head down by our feet.  Even weeks later, I don't know what to say.
• Best moment of the month:  This was right around one of the terrible nights when nerves were frayed pretty thin.  After dinner, I turned on Pandora's Family Folk radio station.  The first song to pop up: "Obvious Child" by Paul Simon.  Hallelujah!  All three of us danced around the kitchen and had a grand old time. Just what we needed. Thank you, thank you Paul Simon and the folks down at Pandora's Family Folk radio station!

Still with me?  I'm impressed!

And so ends three years with Frances Elliott.

Happy Birthday, Frances!

For Frances's third birthday, we wandered into the land of Birthday Parties and survived!  We kept it very small, just Frances's friends Sophia and Tyler and their entourages.  Here's most of the gang, everyone except me.

Here are the big kiddos gearing up for the cake. The cake really got their attention.  Frances was sure we were supposed to have birthday hats.

It took us a couple tries, but we did get the candles out.

After cake, we opened gifts.  This is Frances examining a new flashlight.  It has proved to be very popular.  We used it to go on a bear hunt later that day and now the flashlight sleeps with her.

Mark and Frances thought baby Cobi was pretty nifty.

Later that day, Mark said something along the lines of  "I think I could handle a boy baby after all."  Good thing, since there's a 50 per cent chance he'll be getting one.

More presents.  Frances and Sophia examine a floor puzzle which has been very popular.  Frances is really enjoying puzzles lately.

And then we did this for a couple hours.  I cannot explain why having a few friends over for the afternoon is so exhausting; it's got something to do with calling it a "Birthday Party."  You'll notice that Frances is still holding the flashlight.

This makes Frances officially Three!!  I think I'm supposed to say something here like "My, how the time has flown!" but I think I'll stick with "My, how much Frances has accomplished!"  We've come a long way - from a baby who couldn't be bothered to wake up to eat to a three year-old who runs her parents ragged.  We wouldn't trade her for the world.

The Weekend That Wouldn't End

I am painfully aware that I should not be glib, but for us, Hurricane Sandy boiled down to The Weekend That Wouldn't End.  Saturday was perfectly comfortable.  Sunday was too rainy to go outside.  Monday, Hurricane Sandy hit and school was cancelled.  The house shuddered, the lights flickered and we moved our car out from under a huge tree.  Other than that, we were left to entertain ourselves, like so:

Very hard to grasp that people were dying a mere five hour drive from here.  We were very, very lucky.

Zoo Howl

As part of our campaign to get Frances out of the house and run her ragged, Mark and I took her to the Franklin Park Zoo's Zoo Howl.  We thought it was trick-or-treating set at a zoo.  We were right in the letter but not in the spirit, but I'll get to that.

Here's Frances all dressed up for Halloween at the gorilla display.  What costume, you say?  She was supposed to be a runner, but was not interested in wearing her headband or running bib, so this is what we got.

Not sure what she's doing with her leg there.

One of the benefits of having Mark Upton for a dad: you get a bird's eye view of everything.

Frances pointing out the lion:

This is Frances's favorite activity at the zoo: sit in the big box while not looking at animals.  Frances's mom liked this activity a lot more before she grew a huge belly.

After several hours at the zoo, we headed for home.  See that pink and white dot at the top of the hill?  That's Frances dancing.  She did it for a good 10 minutes.  We, the parents, were amused enough to take the picture, then we were ready to go home.

What about the trick-or-treating, you ask?  That was a bit of a ruse.  The trick-or-treating turned out to be walking around six card tables and picking up these healthy snacks.  My sister Jocelyn might have been pleased.  Mark was not.

And that was the extent of Mark's candy haul for the year.  When Halloween finally rolled around, Frances wasn't interested in going out, so Mark couldn't raid her candy.  Poor Mark.