Dawnline

Christmas Shopping: Photo Albums + Dawn's Photo Shoot Tips

2011-10-29T21:42:00.003-06:00

Since we are still in October, there is still time to plan a cool photo shoot and use the photos to make photo albums for grandparents, godparents, and other families who would enjoy some pictures of your kids.

This year I am going to try mini-albums called Palbums. they are tiny photo books that look like they could be used as dollhouse gear. Might they be a little annoying to people who wear bifocals? Perhaps, but who's gonna complain about adorable pictures of your kids?

So here are my tips for a great photo shoot with your kids.

Choose a day when you will be unrushed. Put it on your calendar right now. Try your best to prevent your kids from getting scrapes, cuts, and bruises on their faces before this time.
Choose a time of the day when you will get plenty of natural light. No flash photography allowed.
Make this into a full-fledged superfun hyped activity with kids that you talk up, not something you have to check off your to-do list (even though it kind of is that). It's like a trip to the library, not the grocery store.
Choose a backdrop for the kids. A large piece of solid-color fabric works well. So well, in fact, that if you don't have one, you need to head to Hancock Fabrics, Joann's, or another fabric store where you can buy a big piece of felt, fleece, or faux velvet.
Figure out where your backdrop can go. I use big binder clips to attach it to some doors.
Get some simple seats that will photograph well (solid color chair) or that you can cover with a cloth. Also get a low stool for yourself so you can take your pictures of kids at their level instead of shooting down at them.
Decide if you want to use props. If you are, they need to be really, really good.
Give each kid 2-3 clothing choices so they don't feel completely powerless in the matter of wardrobe. Solid colors only, with no labels, brands, or princesses visible. (An exception: make I [heart] Grandma t-shirts with iron-on decals.)
Time for the shoot! Gather the troops. Play fun music. Shoot and shoot and shoot. The first 20-30 shots will probably be like the first pancake. Invite them to stand by each other and look at you, look at each other, look up, look down, look above your head. Plan to shoot at least 200 pictures. You will get keepers, I promise.

Christmas Shopping: Getting Started

2011-10-21T20:56:00.003-06:00

I have already started to think Christmas, mostly so I can spread out the shopping over a few months instead of doing the old ram-and-cram during December. (Since Jonathan is touring for the first three weekends of December, I won't exactly have a lot of time, either.)

So I am going to give you an unprecedented look into my master-shopper mind. Lucky you. Or, as Yoopers would say, lucky youse.

My recommendation today (and I cannot promise to recommend something every single day, but I'll try) is for the moms you know.

It is a five year journal, where every week has a spread and there is room for you to write just a sentence or two. I have already purchased one of these for myself (Merry Christmas, me), and some of the other ladies on my list may be receiving one as well.

(The only problem with this gift is that you end up thinking about how old your kids will be when you finish the journal in 5 years.)

Sibling Linguistics

2011-10-20T20:01:00.002-06:00

Paavo and Svea demonstrate the power of sibling language immersion in many ways, but here are a few of the most noticeable ones.

Aminal: Paavo has always reversed the n and m in this word. Svea now does the same.

Amn't: Paavo has always pronounced the contraction for I am not as I amn't instead of I'm not. Svea does too.

KGOY*: My children have both mastered the nuances of sayings previously in the realm of hackey-sack-playing college sophomore guys and valley girls. THe two most notable examples: Boo-yah! Suh-weet!

*Kids Getting Older Younger. This is an actual demographic trend often incorporated into the marketing and sales strategies for products sold to children. It describes the phenomenon of today's 3-year-olds playing with Barbies, when that is what Gen Xers like me did when were were 8. Today's 8-year-olds are dressed like teenagers and programming apps for their iPod touches.

Halloween bugs me. A lot. Okay, I've said it.

2011-10-08T21:24:00.008-06:00

So all the Halloween stuff is in the stores right now. And I'm giving myself permission to be disturbed, and, because I'm posting here, outspoken about this holiday.

It's the Economy, Spooky

Let's start with the numbers. When you google "How much did Americans spend on Halloween in 2010," you get a few different sources. I'm sticking with theweek.com, which reports that Americans spent $5.8 billion on Halloween last year. Now I could insert a bunch of stats here about hunger in America. (The most obscene of these stats to me is that almost 1 in every 4 kids in the US is living at the poverty level. These kids know hunger.) But you can research that yourselves. And I suppose we could go into how the 15,000+ Halloween pop-up shops do offer employment, but my guess is that it's minimum wage, temporary, and without a lot of room for advancement and growth of marketable skills. (Maybe they figure they can start working at the pop-up calendar shops starting in November.)

Candy City

We are a nation facing serious obesity issues, not to mention lesser-lamented issues related to tooth decay. Do we really need Americans spending an average of $20 per person on candy? (Really, folks, just buy a nice square of chocolate to enjoy and be done with it.) When I lived in Chicago, I remember waiting in line behind a mom in Dominick's on North Avenue. She was thrilled that she'd found a bunch of pixie-stick type things on superclearance, so her cart was loaded. I was so very tempted to tell her that it would be even cheaper to go to the baking aisle, buy a five pound bag of sugar and some food coloring, and just pour it down her kids' throats. (Alas, I did not say this. It was, after all, a Dominick's on North Avenue and you never know how those Melrose Park ladies are gonna react.) Why must this lapse of reason happen each year to parents at Halloween, soon to be followed by the complete collapse of sanity at Christmas? Haven't we read enough women's magazines about healthy foods and simple holidays?

The Dark Arts' Autumn Occupation of Suburbia

Halloween affirms a lot of concepts that are consistent with the occult. Ick. No, it's actually beyond ick. If someone who practiced the dark arts knocked on your door and said, "I see from the decorations on your lawn that you appear to be interested in casting spells and contacting people from the afterlife," well, don't you think you'd close your door on that person pretty quick? When we have skulls and tombstones and caskets and all sorts of other ephemera commercializing fear, violence, even murder...and that stuff is next to the Christmas wreaths at Michael's craft store? I think that's beyond ick. (Even if it's Martha Stewart's line.)

Death Portrayed Via Cheap Plastic Village Collectibles

(Michael's, you thought you were getting off easy? Think again.) If you have known someone whose loved one has been murdered (or if it is your loved one whose life has been taken), if you have someone close to you who has faced the ravages of cancer and other terminal illnesses, if you have looked in a casket during a visitation or wake ...what better way to honor this person than to keep a sense of reverence and dignity when it comes to viewing death. If Halloween is the only time of the year that kids get a chance to face scariness and death in a fun, approachable way...well, let's work on that so they don't have to use automatic weapons to off the figures in the Lemax Spookytown Shooting Range.

What will we do this Halloween?

Yes, we do observe Halloween in a minimal way by letting the kids trick or treat. The specifics:

No decor, other than a few minipumpkins.
Throughout the season, we will learn the names of many bones in the human body, as I consider all the skeleton decor a great teachable moment about human anatomy.
My kids will dress up in costumes, which they typically do most of the other 364 days of the year.
They will trick or treat.
I will sort through their candy to make sure anything with peanuts is removed. A number of other nonpeanut items will also mysteriously disappear. I will bring this candy to work, where it will vanish by the end of the day.
And, most importantly, we will talk about All Saints Day and talk about the loved ones in our life who have died and be thankful for them and share stories about their lives. Who knows, we might even light a candle.

Rant over.

Ikea Ice Cream Cones Facilitate Organ Donation Discussion

2011-09-17T19:19:00.004-06:00

For starters: Paavo found my power cord, so I did not have to pay $30 for a new one. I gave him the promised reward of $1. He was thrilled.

The kids and I went to Ikea today so we could buy a reading light. (It solves the low reading light problem in our living room. My Dad will be thrilled.)

We started our time there with lunch. (They have totally scrooged on the $2.49 kids' meal! You get one less thing now.)

At the end we enjoyed ice cream cones. Paavo started with the question "Mom, could a person ever become alive if they were made of parts from dead people?" Which led to talking about cadaver tendons and how Uncle Scott got one during his ACL knee surgery. Which led to questions about other body parts that people can donate. Which led to a discussion of heart transplants, kidney transplants, and cornea transplants.

I'm thinking this content is going to resurface at some point in the future.

And I hope the guy at the table right next to us didn't think we ruined his dining experience when all he was trying to do was eat a hot dog.

Lost (the bad kind, not the TV show)

2011-08-30T22:28:00.003-06:00

I have lost the power cord to my iPad. it is driving my batty that I cannot find it. Here is what I know:

I brought it home from my Orlando trip in a shiny green gift-with-purchase Clinique bag along with my phone charger cord on Saturday, August 20
I have not seen it since.
My iPad is down to 2%.
I cannot read books on it any more so I am tearing through paper books. Finished Shutter Island last week and am reading my first John Updike novel: Terrorist.

I will need to turn the house upside down to find it this weekend. Maybe I will find Paavo's missing school library book featuring Asajj Ventress. We had to pay $16 for that thing!

Back to Blogging

2011-08-22T20:41:00.002-06:00

Heavens! Has it really been March since I last blogged? Time to get back on the routine. I am finding myself in a Facebook rut, so it's time to turn back to my blog.

Here are some things that have been happening of late:

Jonathan had a touring summer, so I was home with the kids a lot. It is hard to be with them for 15 hours straight without the onset of bonkers. Wish me luck, as it happens again this Friday.
I have a new job description at work. I am now a resource developer for early childhood. Finally, I can focus on the babies!
Our household seems to be less bananas for bananas, as I have been able to make banana bread several times with brown spotty ones (the best kind).
My son is a reading machine.
My daughter insists on wearing something purple every day.
I am looking for the fall to hold some new things. I am not sure what that means yet, but I'm working on it...

Free Will

2011-03-22T21:32:00.003-06:00

Paavo's question tonight right before I'm gonna turn off the light: Mom, why doesn't God just control everybody so that they do the things that they should?

Sheesh.

I did my best to talk him through it (do you think God would rather have everyone obeying because they have to or choosing to love?) but I think I'm a few credits short of a thesis on this one. I told him that people ask that kind of question their whole lives.

I have a junior theologian on my hands (I couldn't find a baby picture of Dietrich).

FCN Reimagined

2011-03-19T19:52:00.009-06:00

Most of my readers know that we are a low-media family when it comes to DVDs, television programs, and video games. This means that the little tastes of media that my kids do receive leave them wanting more. Lots more. But we stick to our guidelines most of the time, reserving screen time for special occasions or as an incentive for positive behavior. No, I didn't say bribery, but sometimes it comes close...

Paavo is especially adept at bringing up possible reasons for viewing videos, making videos recommendations, and offering descriptions of what is in it for us. ("Lots of snuggling, Mama, lots of snuggling!")

Tonight during supper he said, "Let's have Family Cartoon Night!" He was thinking of the fact that we recently bought a PowerPuff Girls DVD at Half Price Books for 50 cents. They have seen about 8 of the episodes, but there are tons more. (Thank goodness the menu only shows 5 at a time.)

I decided to try a bold move, reinterpreting what he meant by cartoon. "Yes, Paavo, that would be great. We can stretch out a big piece of paper on the floor and everyone can draw their own cartoon characters." Then I went into great detail about the character SuperMama, who travels around the town with her giant purse and helps families solve problems. Jonathan looked at me, fully expecting that Paavo was going to see through this. But no. The idea took off like crazy. He started describing the characters who would be in SuperMama's family and kept bringing up Family Cartoon Night throughout bathtime.

And I'll be darned if we haven't been drawing together on the kitchen floor for the last half hour! I included some pictures. Bedtime is shot, butFamily Cartoon Night is a success. With genuine enthusiasm and your involved presence, you can convince them of lots of things.

Grandfather-Grandson Dialogue

2011-03-19T14:44:00.003-06:00

My parents visited recently. The main activity that my dad engages in with the kids is making and flying paper airplanes. Here is a transcript of one of their conversations. (Hats off to my mom for thinking to jot this down!)

Dean: Well, I'm taking Big Bird on my plane.
Paavo: Then, I'm taking Elmo.
D: Who's Elmer?
P: GRANDpa! (disgusted)

D: I'm going to fly the Beatles.
P: Are they still living?

P: I'm bringing Spiderman.
D: I'm taking Superman and he's going to push the plane from the inside and I'll save all my fuel.
P: He's going to push you out into the ocean and you'll get lost and can't come back.

D: I'm getting Bugs Bunny.
P: I'm bringing Clifford and Emily Elizabeth.
D: I'll bring Franklin the Turtle.
P: I'll bring Charlie Brown.

P: I'll get Martin Luther King.
D: Then I'll get Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
P: Who are they?
D: They are people in the Bible.
P: (pause) Then I'm bringing Jesus.

D: I'm getting Scooby-doo.
P: Ha. I'll bring Shaggy and Velma and the whole gang.

D: I'm getting Obama on my plane.
P: I'll get George Lucas and Harry Potter.

D: Then I'll bring Abraham Lincoln.
P: (walks to Grandma and whispers "Who was the first president again?" in her ear) I will get George Washington.

D: I'm taking Betty Crocker.
P: I'm taking the Dunderheads.

D: I have a special mission to bring the violin of a famous player named Paavo Rundman.
P: Then I'll bring Mr. Suzuki.

Reading Magic

2011-02-16T21:50:00.002-06:00

Paavo has reached a stage that I've been hoping/dreaming would happen - sustained silent reading! There were glimmers of it in the fall, Christmastime got interesting, he was sailing along in January, and it really kicked in this month! He has a reading chart that he fills out each day after reading for 31 or 41 minutes.

Fave reads include Charlie Brown books from Jonathan's youth, The Magic Treehouse series, Flat Stanley books from the school library, and a few other chapter books we happen to have. We will need to start making regular trips to the library to deal with this voracious boy.

This also means that more than once when I go in the basement at 9:30 or 10 his light is still on because he's reading...stinker.

How to Plan a Star Wars Birthday Party

2011-01-17T20:16:00.016-06:00

My 7-year-old son Paavo is an avid (but hopefully not rabid) Star Wars fan, so I planned his birthday party accordingly. Here are some tips in case you are planning to do the same for your Jedi. (Throughout the process of online research, please prepare to be floored by the enormity of the Star Wars culture!)

1. FONTS Since I knew I'd be using print materials for invites, the party, and thank-yous, I googled "Star Wars fonts" and ended up uploading a few fonts to my computer: Star Vader for featured text and Aurek Besh (at left) for borders.

2. INVITATIONS To make his invitation, I used the Photo Collage maker at Walgreens.com. I already had a bunch of pictures of my son wearing a Jedi robe and posing with his light saber. I imported about 12 of them into the collage making software, which randomly arranges the pictures onto a 4x6 photo. You have an option to add a title to your photo collage, so along the bottom I had the photo say "Join Master Paavo for a Birthday Celebration." I placed a self-adhesive piece of cardstock on the back of each picture. Then, using the downloaded fonts, I created a Word document that provided the party details and added a border of Aurek Besh characters. (I was clear on the invite that costumes were welcome but light sabers should stay at home.) Each of these invites took up about a 3x5 inches of space. I cut each one out using a deckle-edge scissors so it looked more galactic (is there scrapbooking in other star systems?) and then glued it to the colored cardstock so the picture was one side and the invite was the other.

3. JEDI CHALLENGES I knew that 10 first graders needed planned activities for much of the time, and I wanted to provide each of them with fun experiences where they could be successful! I created a Jedi Challenge sheet with 5 challenges listed. I taped all of their sheets in our hallway. Each one had their name at the top, a listing of the 5 Jedi Challenges, and an encouraging "May the Force Be With You" message along the bottom. Each challenge name had enough space for them to glue a piece of Star Wars confetti that I found at Party City.

Here is a description of the 5 challenges.
Teamwork Challenge: Jedis worked in teams of 2 or 3 to put together a Star Wars puzzle. I got overambitious and hand drew a Darth Vader puzzle that was 5 feet by 5 feet on 12 pieces of black matte board. That was ridiculous of me! There is an easier way to do this! Dollar stores often have Star Wars puzzles. Buy one for each team and challenge them to work together to assemble their puzzle.

Memory Challenge: I placed about 10 Star Wars related items on a tray (Luke action figure, Darth pen, Yoda pencil sharpener, etc.). The Jedis all examined them. Then one of them would leave the room while I chose another Jedi to pick an item, take it off the tray, and hide it behind his back. The Jedi who left the room was getting his picture taken with a light saber while another Jedi removed the item from the tray. Once the photo was taken, the Jedi reentered the room and had to use his powers of memory to figure out which item was gone. Each Jedi had a chance to test his memory in this way. Bonus: we got a picture of each Jedi for later use. (Photo Tip: Place a dark piece of fabric against a wall, bookcase, or other spot when you take pictures.)

Concentration Challenge: I bought a "Pin the Tail on the Donkey except it's Star Wars" game from Party City. In the game, Jedis are blindfolded one at a time and have to place stickers on a plastic mural taped on the wall. This was the least lively and interesting game to the kids, so it's not very high on my recommendation list.

After this third challenge, we split the kids into two groups of five so they were simultaneously doing the Physical and Light Saber Challenges.

Physical Challenge: I set up an obstacle course in our basement. Being a Gen-Xer, I made all the parts connected to the first trilogy. (Take that, Jar-Jar.) They jumped over the Sarlac Pit (a big piece of black fabric) while holding Lando Calrissian. They held Princess Leia (a giant Groovy Girl) while they leaped over an ottoman to mimic the scene where Luke and Leia swing across that big divide. They had to search for a Luke Skywalker action figure in the trash compactor (a bin full of plastic balls). They climbed through a tunnel while holding a Chewbacca action figure to mimic when the MF flew into the space creature's stomach during the asteroid storm. And finally, they knocked down 6 Darth Vader action figures with plastic balls. This activity came at a good time in the party as it gave kids time to expend energy. When each Jedi completed the Challenge, everyone else helped to "reset" the course by putting back all the action figures.

Light Saber Challenge: Each Jedi got a wrapping paper tube (word of advice: start collecting these really early to avoid a desperate situation at Target) and his choice of a blue, green, or purple "focusing crystal" (a plastic gem) to tape inside his saber. Then they chose a color of duct tape to wrap around the saber. The handle was silvery duct tape. We wrote their name inside each handle and then whisked them away so that the battles could occur in their homes and not in my living room.

After each of the Challenges, kids could choose one piece of confetti and glue it to their Challenge sheets that were taped in the hallway. I put all the confetti and 10 glue sticks on a tray so everyone had access to everything simultaneously. After everyone completed all 5 Challenges, they proceeded to the kitchen table where cake was ready. Then my awesome mother whisked away all 10 certificates and glued them onto black matte board alongside a Certificate of Completion that had the Jedi's name at the top, one of the Jedi symbols (again, google this and be amazed at how many there are!), and the Jedi code:
Jedi are the guardians of peace in the galaxy.
Jedi use their powers to defend and to protect.
Jedi respect all life, in any form.
Jedi serve others rather than ruling over them, for the good of the galaxy.
Jedi seek to improve themselves through knowledge and training.
Here is a photo of the certificates on the matte board. Because of a font-downloading snafu, the content is NOT written in any of the Star Wars fonts (although that was certainly my intent!) but it is on a parchment-type paper.

FOOD: I made cupcakes and frosted them gray, blue, and green. I made light sabers by putting a line-up of 3 gray and 6 green for one saber and 3 gray and 6 blue for the other. I used chocolate-covered sunflower seeds in bright colors to decorate the handles of the light sabers. (Better than Skittles, right?) Also, before frosting each cupcake, we used a chopstick to poke two of the seeds into the cupcake to be the focusing crystals. The boys had a fun time finding those as they munched their cupcakes. I was going to make Yoda Soda that I'd read about online by mixing lime sherbet and ginger ale. My plans were dashed when I learned the night before that our Super Target does NOT carry lime sherbet. The boys drank water instead. (Do 7-year-old boys even drink ginger ale?)

Because it took me a few minutes to set up the cupcakes and get everything ready while the boys were around the table, our awesome friend Michael used his iPhone to look up Star Wars trivia questions. The Jedis loved this (and it got me those precious extra few minutes), so I'd strongly recommend inviting a male Gen-X fan of Star Wars who is like a cool uncle figure to your party.

AWARDS: At the end of the party before parents arrived for pick-up, we had an awards ceremony. We blasted "The Throne Room/End Medley" (available on iTunes) on the stereo while I loudly and proudly announced each Jedi's name and gave him his mounted certificates as he stepped forward.

THANK-YOUs: We created a photo collage of pictures from the party, including the Jedi-in-action photo we took during the Memory Challenge. On the back of each photo, we used another piece of self-adhesive cardstock, and my son wrote his thank-you message on this. I think I'm going to use this photo collage features for all my invitations!

COSTUMES: The last bit I'll share on this way-too-lengthy blog posting is the costumes that my husband and I wore. I had coiled braids (once again, thanks to my awesome Mom), a knit poncho with belt, and brown boots to evoke a Leia-on-Endor feel. My husband Jonathan wore a black vest, cool trousers, big boots, and an authentic 1970s Han Solo blaster (again, thanks to my awesome Mom who has held onto it all these years) tied to his leg with a guitar strap.

Have fun planning your Star Wars party!

What's New in 2011?

2011-01-08T20:05:00.005-06:00

I'm cooking up a project for 2011. Here's the scoop.

There is one hallway in our whole house. It has six doors in it: closet, living room, kitchen, bathroom, Svea's room, our room.
I would like to wallpaper the hallway using this very cool Graham and Brown wallpaper called Frames. It is made for you to fill in the frames with whatever you fancy.

Then I will cut out pictures from a book by Olle Eksell, an amazingly cool Swedish graphic designer I had never heard of until my amazingly cool friend Kelly Newcomer showed me some of his work. (Thanks, Kelly!)

Your Christmas Shopping Dilemmas Solved: The Person Who Has the Christmastime Blues

2010-12-04T23:06:00.003-06:00

For the person who is a little glum around Christmastime, match his or her affective state with a genuine replica of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Nostalgic, universally-appealing to Gen-Xers, yet a little bit sad, this bit of decor says it all for folks who struggle with the holly jolly holidays.

This tree (along with many joyous gifts) is available at Fred Flare.

Your Christmas Shopping Dilemmas Solved: The Person Who Loves Time

2010-11-27T15:45:00.002-06:00

I bought this Stendig calendar from Crate and Barrel for a few years for my dad. One year I snagged one for myself. It is a fantastic calendar, in part because it is enormous - 3 feet by 4 feet. This is a perfect gift for anyone - especially someone who loves great design, who is teaching their kids numbers and months, or who is counting down to a big day in 2011.

Your Christmas Shopping Dilemmas Solved: The Friend Who Loves Cool Jewelry

2010-11-20T13:44:00.005-06:00

I first discovered the site of Nervous System after seeing their dendrite jewelry. They make lovely pieces based on coral configurations, algae, and other naturally-occurring phenomenon.

Your Christmas Shopping Dilemmas Solved: The Prankster

2010-11-17T22:15:00.006-06:00

Do you know a prankster? Someone who you just know was a rascal during his or her school years? Get nostalgic and give 'em something that no one else would dare give - fake gum, a whoopie cushion, bug in ice cube, handshake buzzer, and the old nail-through-the-finger. You'll find this gift and all sorts of cool other ones at Fred Flare's online store.

Your Christmas Shopping Dilemmas Solved: The Coworker Who Has Spilled Coffee on Her Keyboard

2010-11-15T22:06:00.006-06:00

Do you know someone who has spilled coffee on her keyboard at work? Delight and amaze her with this waterproof keyboard from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It comes in multiple colors (including pink), it rolls up, and it only costs $15! (Also suitable for teenage girls.)

Your Christmas Shopping Dilemmas Solved: The Grandparents

2010-11-14T21:01:00.004-06:00

This post begins a series on meaningful, affordable, and cool Christmas gifts for your loved ones.

I begin with a recommendation for parents of little kids. Use the feature on iPhoto that lets you import pictures into one of their books. It's supereasy to create a hardcover book that is bound to delight your parents.

You can import pictures of the kids from the whole year or do a specific photo shoot like my brothers and I did for my mom's 70th birthday. We used white t-shirts (found 'em at the dollar store!) with ironed-on I Love Grandma decals from Michael's. Then we all took pictures of our kids wearing their shirts. Those were the pictures that made up Grandma Elaine's book, which was a H U G E hit. She has showed it to her craft group, her circle, the coffee hour folks at church, the parsonage restoration committee, and, I suspect, some people in the grocery store line.

Off the Grid

2010-10-30T20:20:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted anything in almost two months - how'd that happen? Anyway, I was planning and scheming my anti-Halloween manifesto, but I don't have the mental energy to go there tonight, so it's going to have to be another year.

I thought that instead I'd report on Paavo and Svea's goings-on. In particular, I shall share their recent bordering-on-obsessions.

Paavo learned how to make paper airplanes in a new way at school. Since then he has probably made 40 of them at home. He gives each one a unique serial number and then records all the serial numbers on a master sheet. Today he made a plane from tinfoil and was quite pleased with himself.

Svea lays a baby blanket out flat and then create 4 or 6 stacks of books, all lined up. On the bigger blankets she's probably fit about 50 books on there. Then she chooses one or two and reads them to her baby, teacher style, but only if no one else is in the room with her. If I knock, she stops everything she's doing and looks at me like "Get this over with, Mom, so I can get back to business here."

Here ends the October report!

Chilling out on Labor Day

2010-09-03T18:52:00.004-06:00

We are looking ahead to a laid-back Labor Day Weekend. It is chilly out, so Jonathan and I will be taking a sauna tonight at 10:00. Please don't tell the kids.

I also dug up my (unopened) pudding steamer. I bought one for my parents at Christmas so they could try making my Grandma Nina's legendary steam pudding (which is actually a super-rich chocolate cake that is topped with a completely addictive topping of Cook Whip and melted margarine - I kid you not). I bought an extra steamer in case we figure out that this can work. I am debating whether I should attempt a steam pudding with this thing. It involves several hours on a stovetop, but the results could be spectacular. I'll keep you posted.

In other food news, Jonathan and I finally ate at Patrick's Bakery and Cafe, which we've noticed in an Edina strip mall for years. I had Bouchee a le Reine, which is a Flaky puff pastry filled with chicken, chives, mushrooms and dumplings in a creamy sauce. Holy moly. It was awesome, and I had some for my lunch today, too. I'm thinking we could go there and split a Rack of Lamb, Coq au Vin, or Beef Bourguignon. (I'm like Julie Powell meets Elizabeth Gilbert, but without the crappy marriages.)

If you have one of those restaurants in your neighborhood where you keep saying "We should go there," then go there!

Little House Strikes Again

2010-08-29T21:31:00.005-06:00

Last Sunday we worshipped at Christ the King in Bloomington because Paavo and Svea had just spent two weeks at their Awesome August program. Awesome for kids, and, because it provides 6 hours a day of programming for two weeks, awesome for Jonathan.

We attended the worship service so they could sing songs during part of the service. We did this earlier in the summer when they attended VBS so they could get in on the action with the other kids. After two weeks there, and a week at VBS in June, they were pretty comfortable there.

We sat in the second or third pew from the front so they could see what was going on. Here is what happened during the sermon:

The text was the gospel reading when Jesus heals the bent-over woman of her affliction on the Sabbath. About midway through the sermon, Pastor Kacey uses the illustration of Laura Ingalls having to stay absolutely still during worship services. Paavo, who has been coloring the entire time (and to an onlooker probably appears completely disengaged from the sermon), whips his head up. I think to myself, "That boy is going to say something right now." Which he does, but not before he politely raises his hand. The pastor, God love her, calls on him (knows his NAME even). They engage in a little dialogue that goes something like this:

Paavo: We're reading On the Banks of Plum Creek right now.

Pastor Kacey: (after affirming his answer) Do you remember when Laura had to sit so still in church?

Paavo: (nods, then pauses dramatically) Laura has an enemy!

Pastor Kacey: Yes, she does have an enemy.

And then she resumes with the sermon, and Paavo resumes with his coloring.

So for people who think that kids aren't listening, I say to you...bring up a book and characters they love and just watch 'em!

And thanks to pastors who welcome commentary and dialogue during a sermon!

Celebrating Summer...what happened?

2010-08-28T20:53:00.004-06:00

My intent was sincere to track the summer index of my day-by-day activities during the month of August. But how did it get to be the 28th of August?

Rather than lament this and try to catch up, I'll close out this series with the celebration of time that Paavo and Svea had with their cousins today. We hung out for 8 hours, including a few at the pool. The hit game was Animal Rescue. They would push the raft to one side of the pool, load up the pretend animals - a baby lion! a baby cheetah! a baby lamb! (good luck, lamb) - and safely deliver the raft to the other side, away from the flood, hot lava, or poachers.

Kids love cousins.

Kids love to be in water.

Kids love animals.

Kids love to rescue.

A perfect combination!

Celebrating Summer: Day 12

2010-08-12T21:51:00.001-06:00

August 12: Nervously monitor weather for tornado watches.

Hats Off to Farmers

2010-08-11T21:54:00.005-06:00

Paavo and I read the chapter tonight in "On the Banks of Plum Creek" where the grasshoppers come and completely decimate the wheat, oats, and vegetables growing in the garden.

He listened with wide eyes the whole time. I think we'll have to do more debriefing, and then talk about the amazingness of farmers.

Then he will probably ask when we'll get to another chapter about Nellie Oleson. He loves to dislike Nellie!

Celebrating Summer: Days 4-11

2010-08-11T21:48:00.002-06:00

August 4: The kids hung out with grandparents while Jonathan and I had date night at the History Theater. (His band Kaivama won the audience favorite vote!) Walking around the hot downtown seemed very summery to me.

August 5-8 We had a great time at a family reunion on scenic Lake Hubert...swimming, Paavo's first time tubing, wet swimsuits and towels on the line, and lots of great grilled food. My Aunt Barb and Uncle Gary were awesome hosts, in the fine tradition of my grandparents who welcomed us each year in Iowa during summer vacation.

August 9: Hamburgers for supper!

August 10: Driving home along the lakes in sticky-hot weather. Killer humidity with killer views.

August 11: Picnic with the Benson Bunch at Lake Harriet bandshell.

Celebrating Summer: Days 1, 2, 3

2010-08-03T20:43:00.002-06:00

We're trying to be deliberate about doing something really summery every day in August. Here's the scoop on the first 3 days:

August 1: Picnic and swimming at Lake Harriet beach

August 2: Corn on the cob

August 3: Block party and bike riding up and down the street

Stay tuned for more.

10 Ways to Support Your Pastor's Marriage

2010-06-19T20:56:00.003-06:00

Being a pastor can be challenging. Being a pastor's spouse can be challenging. Being married can be challenging. Throw all of these roles and relationships together and you've got, well, challenges. With that in mind, I give you some ways to support your pastor's marriage.

1. Pray for Pastor and Spouse (the way I'll refer to them throughout this list). This is something that anyone can do at any time. Ask God to strengthen their marriage, to give them good health, to be present in their communication, and to support them in any other way that happens to be on your heart/in your brain. Whether you tell them you're doing this or not, you are supporting their marriage. Actually, go ahead and tell them.

2. Find out Pastor and Spouse's favorite at-home meals, restaurants, and methods of self-care. (Massage? Pedicure? Gardening? 2 hours browsing in Borders? Listening to music?) Write this information down someplace. Then find ways to use this information.

3. Celebrate their anniversary. After you ask them for this date, mark that day on your calendar and then commemorate it each year. You could send a card, buy altar flowers in their honor, give them a gift card to their favorite restaurant (see #2), or coordinate something on a larger scale with other members. Don't let this day pass by without affirming the marriage covenant that Pastor and Spouse are upholding.

4. Provide a no-strings-attached meal. For families on the go who have Pastor attending lots of evening meetings, having a meal dropped off with no chitchat and no expectations to reciprocate...well, who's going to turn that down, right? Make sure you check on their favorites. If you feel weird about dropping off the meal, say something like, "Well, I made so much of this soup/homemade ravioli/rack of lamb that I had extra so I thought you'd like some and...oh, that's your favorite kind of soup/pasta/lamb? Oh, what a coincidence!" (I told you #2 would come in handy.)

5. Support the vocation of Spouse. You may have grown up in the days when Spouse was always known as Pastor's Wife, and she was inevitably involved in one/several/all of the following activities: choir, new member brunch, circle, Bible study, altar guild, potluck coordination, etc. etc. etc. Today, Spouse usually has a career. He or she probably needed to change jobs at least FOUR TIMES when Pastor was in seminary: first change happened when they move to seminary and Spouse gets job for 2 years, second change happens when they move to internship site, third change happens when they move back to seminary for final year, fourth change happens when they move to first call. So Spouse is glad to be in a place where stable employment for more than a year is at least a possibility. (Plus, Pastor and Spouse are probably paying off some wicked seminary debt.) Find out what Spouse does. Ask questions, but not too many questions. Explore how Spouse discerned a vocational call. Support Spouse's business if that is a possibility and if you feel comfortable with this.

6. Support the activities of the Pastor and Spouse's kids. Lots of people let Pastor know when their kids have games, concerts, and other extracurricular events. When Pastor shows up, it's a cool thing, right? Think of doing this the other way around, especially since most Pastors don't have immediate family in the place where they receive a call. Show their kids that you value Pastor's family and all the ways they are involved in the community.

7. Invite Pastor and Spouse to dinner and holiday activities. Pastor and Spouse face a tricky situation when it comes to them inviting others. If they invite one family to dinner, does that mean they need to invite every family from church or else they'll be viewed as playing favorites? Receiving an invitation to dinner from YOU eases the burden. Also, since Pastor and Spouse may not have immediate family in the area, don't assume they have plans for Memorial Day picnics, Thanksgiving Dinner, or other major holidays. Invite them. The worst thing that can happen is that someone else beat you to it, and multiple invitations would actually feel pretty good for Pastor and Spouse.

8. Give a generous gift to Pastor and Spouse at Christmas. Christmas is a busy time of year for everyone, but clergy families face some specific and especially draining challenges. Multiple worship services, special events, facilities logistics, and the very likely possibility of serious unplanned issues among members (like illness or even death!) means that Pastor doesn't really get to exhale and celebrate until getting home from the sparsely-attended Christmas Day service, taking off the clergy shirt, and collapsing on the couch. Oh, and remember that Spouse is watching this unfold every year and most likely having to coordinate the entire family Christmas single-handedly. Giving them a gift card to a favorite restaurant (again, #2) or some other form of self-care they can to together lets them know you want them to enjoy some time as a couple after the holiday rush passes.

9 and 10. Provide highly-skilled child care on a regular basis, and have an emergency plan, too. This one is so big that it warrants two numbers. The child care needs to be provided by someone that Pastor and Spouse feel comfortable entrusting their children to for 4-6 hours, including evening bedtimes. This recruitment of childcare providers may not be an easy task, but with one or a few people taking on this ministry, it can work. Giving Pastor and Spouse a Date Night on a regular basis is a tremendous way for a congregation to say that it values Pastor's marriage and wants to support it. This is a great example of putting your money (or at least your highly-trained high school youth group babysitting squad) where your mouth is. If this regular plan seems too much, at least start with an emergency plan so that if Pastor gets called to the hospital at 9pm and Spouse is traveling out of town, there is a system in place to get trusted caregivers to the Pastor's house immediately.

So those are my ideas, inspired by a lot of conversations recently with Pastors and Spouses.

All comments welcome!

Things Worth Fussing Over

2010-06-01T21:10:00.002-06:00

Paavo: Mom, do you know why I'm feeing a little mad right now?

Dawn: No, Paavo. Why?

Paavo: Because Svea always wants to be Wonder Woman and she's a real life character but sometimes I just want to play with my action figures.

At this, Svea bursts into the room. She is being talked about and wants to defend herself.

Svea: (in a furious tone of voice) I am Wonder Woman and you are Wonder Boy!

Paavo: (in an equally furious tone) Wonder Boy isn't even real!

Dawn: (tries not to burst out laughing, so can't really say anything)

Superheroes, Star Wars, army guys, Strawberry Shortcake, Disney Princesses, and other behemoth licensed characters permeate their play.

This is why the Little House books are so important. We are on Chapter 10 of Farmer Boy, and tonight Paavo put popcorn in his milk. Balance. Balance. Story. Story. Kids love story.

Enjoying Motherhood

2010-05-09T23:01:00.002-06:00

Mother's Day. My seventh.

Tonight I read the final three chapters of "Little House in the Big Woods" to Paavo. The last page ends with Pa playing "Auld Lang Syne" on his fiddle. When Laura asks what the phrase means, Pa replies, "the days of a long time ago." Then 5-year-old Laura thinks to herself, "This is now." All the good things that she is experiencing right now "could not be forgotten, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago."

How can mothering a 3- and a 6-year-old ever be a long time ago? That question is answered all too readily by my parents who have three kids firmly headed into middle adulthood, aunts and uncles who saw their kids get married last year, friends and colleagues whose kids are in college or embarking on college searches...

Not yet. Please, not yet!

Tonight was an easy night to be in the moment with my two precious ones. A half hour of Little House storytime with Paavo snuggled in my lap, and then uninterrupted discussion time with Svea while she methodically organized the 52 cards in Paavo's Star Wars deck and explained to us the rules for stacking them and placing them in the box. (One of them was "the oldest card in the world.")

Now is still now. For now.

I am sending my wish for many in-the-moment moments for all you Mamas out there.

Laura Ingalls to the Rescue

2010-05-02T17:22:00.003-06:00

I've been struggling lately with the fact that Paavo is so very interested in all the weapons and violence that are part of the vast stories of Star Wars and superheroes. (He attempts to persuade me things aren't so bad: "Mom, when Vader choked that guy, that meant that there was one less bad guy.")

For some reason we got on the topic of Laura Ingalls today. A few hours later he asked if we could read one of the books. Sure, I said, thinking that there was no way he was climbing aboard this story train. I began to read "Little House in the Big Woods" to him.

Spellbound. Completely spellbound. We read two chapters (each is about 25 pages!) and he still wanted more, so I promised him we could read this at bedtime.

What was so appealing? Well, maybe it was the way that Ma Ingalls prepared the salt pork, but more likely it was the rifle over the door, the panther chase, the pig butchering, the bear traps, the howling wolves, the fierce and loyal Ingalls dog named Jack who protected them from the wild beasts, and the Pa-led game of Mad Dog that completely freaked out Laura and Mary.

I figure that Paavo's ultimate (and years-long) interest in weapons and bad guys is because of his fascination in the struggle between good and evil. (You would not believe how many times Darth Vader has been redeemed in our basement.) I think I've stumbled upon really great stories that will illustrate this struggle without all the explosions...

As I read these books, I am faced with the stark knowledge that I have virtually no skills that would let me live through a long winter in the little house. I suppose I could gather hickory chips in my apron, but that's about it. Maybe reading these books will lead us to explore how we can develop some pioneer skills...

(Thanks to Aunt Connie who gave me these books 30+ years ago!)

Just Overheard: The Adventures of Tarzan

2010-04-24T17:51:00.001-06:00

Dawn: Why are your shirts off?

Paavo: We're playing Tarzan.

Dawn: Svea, who are you?

Svea: Targirl.

Dawn: Fair enough. (Resumes folding laundry)

Just Overheard: Star Wars + Swedish Preschool

2010-04-14T19:32:00.003-06:00

Paavo: C'mon! Let's play Luke and Leia.
Svea: No. I want to play Barndalen. I'm Teacher Ingela.
Paavo: Let's have Luke and Leia go to Barndalen.
Svea: Okay.

They proceeded to play for about 20 minutes in a mash-up of talking about her Swedish-named classmates, reading a book as Teacher Ingela, and conquering the Dark Side as Luke and Leia.

A New Era Begins

2010-03-19T20:11:00.003-06:00

Last night, Jonathan and I took the inaugural sauna in our basement. His dad has been laboring for days to create it - from scratch - in the corner of our basement. We had a glorious time...blistering heat, luscious steam, and mild weather outside so that we could cool off for several minutes before heading back in for another round. I cannot quite believe that we'll have this in our basement from now on...relaxation, heat, steamed pores, and a deep sleep afterwards...it's gonna be awesome!

First I'm trekking across town to see the former Finnish president, and now this. I guess I've been with my Finn Mann long enough to appreciate the fine points of being Finnish.

The Magic of Grandma Mary

2010-03-14T20:52:00.003-06:00

A few weeks ago we embarked on potty training with Svea, with dismal results. We abandoned the approach after 4 days of soaking undies and only two successfully outcomes on the potty (along with a few dozen attempts). Poor girl. Many Facebook friends provided much helpful feedback.

On Friday we realized that we were very VERY low on diapers and decided that we were going to try again. It is now Sunday night and Svea has had clean undies all weekend long.

What is the difference, you ask? Two words: Grandma Mary. Specifically, Grandma Mary's positive, low-stress presence and her brilliant idea to have Svea stay put for several minutes by giving her a Tic Tac to suck on while she sits on the potty chair.

Tomorrow will be Day 3 of dry pants. Let's hope the Tic Tacs keep working their magic!

A Prayer for Moms in March

2010-03-08T21:58:00.003-06:00

I caught myself being too sharp of tongue with Svea tonight after her protests about not being able to wear the same pair of pajamas two nights in a row. I found this gem on the bookshelf:

"Is Mom a lion today? Or lamb?"
Oh Lord, I don't know what I am.

It comes from a book in my Grandma Nina's collection: "Too Busy Not to Pray" by Jo Carr. There is a version published as recently as 2000, but I'm liking the 1966 version. I take a peek at this book whenever I find myself (foolishly) believing that pressures of family and household tasks and work are somehow unique to me and my generation.

Grandma Nina left two index cards in the book, probably as bookmarks so she could easily find these two spots. One of them is in the prayers for November and Thanksgiving. Maybe she was having an especially stressful holiday preparation time. The other bookmark is in the Ordinary Time part of the book. One prayer is about love. The other is about praying with humility.

It is humbling (and wonderful) to say prayers while holding a little book that my grandmother held while she said prayers. As you think about those who have returned to dust during this Lenten season, maybe you'll find yourself praying for the same things that this person did...

My Kids See a President

2010-03-07T21:33:00.006-06:00

Today we decided to skip the services at ECLC and instead attend worship at Christ Church Lutheran, an ELCA congregation in Minneapolis that was hosting past Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who was in town for the Nobel Conference. I figure that when you can have your kids be in the same room as a past head of state, you've got to make it happen, especially when there's really awesome coffee bread involved.

The great tragedy? Jonathan was not here to join us in this great gathering of Finns.

I send a great big thank-you to all who work for peace!

I've Got Wonder Kids!

2010-03-06T21:12:00.005-06:00

Lately Paavo and Svea have been WAY into Wonder Woman. They each have a coloring book (courtesy of Grandma Mary) and they often take on the roles of Wonder Woman and Wonder Boy (or sometimes he calls himself Wonder Woman Boy). There is lots of lassoing and deflecting bullets, and at least once during the play session I will indulge their request to hear the Wonder Woman Theme Song.

Nothing brings a smile to your face faster than hearing two kids singing with all their might:
Wonder Woman!
Wonder Woman!
All the world is waiting for you,
And the power you possess.
In your satin tights,
Fighting for your rights,
And the old red white and blue...

Sometimes Svea just sings "Wonder Woman" over and over an octave higher in a cute falsetto until Paavo asks her to stop because he can't concentrate...

At Ikea on Friday we saw this see-through plastic chair and started talking about how Wonder Woman could use it in her office.

(Linda Carter is unbelievably skinny, isn't she?)

Toddler Tuesday Report

2010-03-02T21:42:00.006-06:00

Today Jonathan and Svea attended the Mall of America's Toddler Tuesday. Usually these are pretty engaging events, with an appearance of some kind of animated character, coloring sheets, craft projects, snacks, and a performance (music, puppet show, dancing, etc.). Today it was the Pull-Ups Potty Dance Party. We were hoping it would be inspiring for Svea, who is not interested in the least in using the potty, especially after The Weekend of 12 Changes of Underwear last month. Here are some highlights of the event from what I can gather from Jonathan and Svea:

+ The music was by Ralph Covert who was a Chicagoland singer-songwriter Jonathan knew about when we lived there - he apparently has discovered that doing kids music is a lot more lucrative with better hours and a more appreciative audience. Rock on, Ralph!
+ She got a gift bag (a reusable tote with "Huggies Pull-Ups" on the side and a small tag that said "Say No to Plastic Bags," pretty hilarious given that plastic bags occupy a much smaller portion of a landfill than a big ole Pull-Up.
+ The gift bag was rather extravagant - a tutu, a wand, a package of pull-ups, a full-length CD by Ralph Covert, a CD single of Ralph singing The Huggies Pull-Ups Potty Dance, and a DVD on potty training. Quite a take! (Paavo asked right away, "Did the boys get the wand and tutu?" When I told him they probably got a diferent kind of gift, he had fun uessing what their bag might have inside.
+ Svea was not interested in the least in the potty theme.

I have to decide whether to try potty training again this weekend. I'll be home all day Friday so we'd have 3 full days to try. (We have a visit to Christ Church Lutheran planned for Sunday so we can see the former president of Finland. For real.)

Now this blog is sounding more like an email to my mom. I gotta get my edge back.

Just Overheard

2010-02-27T15:31:00.003-06:00

Svea: I'm sad because I did not skate very well.
Paavo: Did you get a medal?
Svea: Yes, but not the gold one.
Paavo: Did you get the brown one?
Svea: Yes.
Paavo: Oh.

Countdown to 40

2010-02-26T21:12:00.004-06:00

Today at work I attended a Social Media Boot Camp led by Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt. Here are some things I learned. In the business world they call them "takeaways."

+ Include more links in my blog posts. (See above.)
+ Craft posts in a way that draws out more comments from you, Readers. (Apparently my monkey popcorn-Thinker connection wasn't good enough for you, huh? But how could you not see the monkey?)
+ There are conference leaders who aren't freaked out, offended, or otherwise bothered by people checking their phones throughout a presentation. In fact, they expect and encourage it. If I were still in the classroom, I'm sure I would have crafted some kind of "You're paying $150 for this class today so turn off your bleeping phones" policy.
+ My social media awareness (or lack thereof) (or, rather, my lack of desire to engage in social media) is the one thing that makes me start having those feelings that women who are 39-almost-40 have that lead them to completely freak out over this divisible-by-10 birthday. Wrinkles, gray hair, prebifocal ocular changes? Bring 'em on. I can deal with that biological stuff with minimal panic. But the thought of having to figure out posting, texting, tweeting, chatting, tagging, blah blah blahing? Well, it's time to quote Jonathan's Grandpa Bernhardt: Too much plenty no good.

So as I start my Countdown to 40 (2 months from today), maybe I'll figure this out.

Is it just me, or does this piece of popcorn look like a monkey in "The Thinker" pose?

2010-02-21T22:09:00.003-06:00

No additonal words for you here, people. It's just a simple question I'd like to you answer.

Shutter Island: Now Just Shut 'er Up!

2010-02-19T22:37:00.006-06:00

Jonathan and I just got back from seeing Shutter Island, the latest Scorsese film. It was a great thriller, but my moviegoing experience was dampened slightly by the ongoing commentary of the woman sitting two seats to my left.

You know how you watch a kind of complicated movie with your parents and they are asking you the whole time, "Now who is this? What did they say? Why would she do that?" (Sorry, Dean and Elaine, but I speak the truth.) That was the nature of her ongoing dialogue. Since the person she sat with didn't know much more than she did, the questions multiplied and I don't think she ever quite got it. That's too bad, because it was a great whirlwind of a movie (that has an awful trailer).

I need to talk with Dr. Steve, my psychiatrist pal, to see what he thinks (about the movie, not the confused and chatty lady).

Lenten Practice

2010-02-15T21:49:00.004-06:00

I will be blogging more over the next several weeks because I've decided to give up Facebook for Lent. Good riddance I say.

Here are some things I may blog about:
+ This very long winter and how much I like my boots
+ Why the P&G Proud Sponsor of Moms commercial they play during the Olympics makes me tear up
+ Svea's enduring love of pink, purple, and princesses (and where the heck this came from)
+ Paavo's writer workshop papers

Farewell for now, Facebook. Hello blogspot.

Winter, Winter

2010-02-09T18:43:00.002-06:00

It has been quite a while since my last blog - and I was on another continent at the time. We have settled back into life in MN. I am thinking that it will be nice when I don't have to worry about sliding down the hill toward Xerxes as I walk to the bus. (Gravity finally won yesterday when I slipped. No harm done, fortunately.)

Here is what's on my horizon:
Continue purging after many things exited the house during January, The Month of 100 Things.
Continue not spending to keep up with Frugal February.
Figure out what to do for Lent: get 8 hours of sleep a night, stay off Facebook, or something else.
Plan a great 40th birthday celebration for April. (I need a concept, a hook, something that takes it above and beyond a potluck.)
Write more letters.

Tales from Finland

2010-01-11T15:15:00.003-06:00

Here are some highlights from our trip so far:
+ Connecting with the Helsinki Rundmans
+ Eating reindeer and elk (Who am I, Sarah Palin?)
+ Not having to get up 12 times during each meal to get something that I forgot to get for the kids
+ Snow-covered trees that look they were frosted with white icing
+ Uninterrupted conversation time with Jonathan
+ Sauna time
+ euro coins - I figure the 2€ coin is worth close to 4 bucks - it's like using play money to buy real stuff
+ Eating a lavish breakfast at the Sokos Hotel Pasila with Jonathan at a leisurely pace
+ Public trasnportation galore - trams, trolleys, trains, and more
+ Crazy computer keyboards that have characters like these å ä € ¨ that I keep typing by åccident
+ Everyday foods that taste worlds better than what we're used to - if it's a crime to go on and on about the ham and cheese sandwich I had for supper, then I'm guilty as charged
+ (Related to previous item) Chocolate that should make the Mars and Hershey companies hang their heads in shame
+ Parents who are pushing their bundled babies around town in winterized strollers - all you see is this rosy-cheeked face peeking out

We miss our Paavo and Svea, but we're getting the best kind of recharge time! Tomorrow the conference begins where Jonathan was booked to play. We'll take it as it comes.

You're Getting Sleepy...

2009-12-28T22:26:00.007-06:00

Now that Christmas has wound down, I have ceased my $9 gift ideas. But if you need any more, just holler. (I know that all of you raced to get a cincture for your pastors.)

In this blog post, I'd like to direct you to the Web site for the National Sleep Foundation. They are including a feature in their Just for Fun section (and really, when you're dealing with people who have sleep disorders, it's important to have some fun) that is called Top 100 Sleep Songs. Jonathan's song "I'm Alive and Sleep Deprived" is in the Top 10!

So I guess even though Svea had sleep problems (to put it lightly) that in turn led to Jonathan having sleep problems, something good did come of it. Take heart, parents of infants!

Dawn's $9 Blog: Knowing the Ropes

2009-12-22T23:01:00.003-06:00

For today's recommendation, I'd like to feature a gift that you can give to your clergyperson, because nothing says, "I value your ministry" like a new cincture! They are priced above my $9 amount, but at only $16, they are truly an unusual gift that will tie your pastor in knots. (Rim shot, please.)

Dawn's $9 Blog: Denominational Recall

2009-12-17T23:17:00.004-06:00

For my recommendation today, I'd like to offer up a book I have at home that I've used as a helpful reference many times. "Honoring Our Neighbor's Faith" highlights 32 denominations. It is an inexpensive book (only $9.99!) and will help you out in a pinch when, for example, you're trying to remember the three orders of ministry in the Moravian church (deacon, Presbyter, and bishop).

Dawn's $9 Blog: Hats off to Herb

2009-12-16T21:52:00.005-06:00

For my selection today, I'd like to recommend a book by the legendary Herbert Brokering. I never met him, but I certainly have been affected by the life's work of Herb and his wife Lois. If you're looking at some Big Questions about life, death, and what happens to the ones you leave behind, maybe this book would be of interest.

Dawn's $9 Blog: Here Comes Lent

2009-12-15T21:10:00.003-06:00

Now I know we're in the third week of Advent, but really, it's never to early to start planning for Lent. If you have a friend or family member who is interested in exercising some spiritual discipline during The Season Most Purple, try this as a Christmas gift. (Or, if you wanted to wait, you could give it as an Epiphany gift on January 6.)

Dawn's $9 Blog: Facets

2009-12-11T21:00:00.007-06:00

I'd like to recommend the Facets series for you readers. There is something for everyone indeed. Here's a quick list of titles from the 35 total:

+ The Stem Cell Debate

+ Darwin and Intelligent Design

+ The Wit of Martin Luther

+ The Care of the Earth

+ Why Jesus Died

+ On Christian LIberty

+ Who Is Christ for Us?

+ Spiritual Transformations: Science, Religion, and Human Becoming

+ Faith and Human Rights: Christianity and the Global Struggle for Human Dignity

+ Real Peace, Real Security: The Challenges of Global Citizenship

Each book is $9.99 and promises to stimulate the brain and heart!

Dawn's $9 Blog: Baptismal Gifts for All

2009-12-09T20:32:00.002-06:00

This gift is a book that I developed a few years ago as part of our Splash! line of resources. It's a memory book/scrapbook resource for a child's first 3 years from a Lutheran perspective. We developed it because most "Baby's First Years" scrapbooks don't have any kind of faith formation perspective (other than a perfunctory page on christening) and the Christian versions are usually on the evangelical side so that there wouldn't be any mention of baptism in sight.

i've had fun filling out Svea's over the last few years. When her third baptismal birthday rolls around in February, I'll make the last few entries and then probably put it in her memory box.

It is priced more than $9...it's $15, but I wanted to recommend this anyway!

Dawn's $9 Blog: I Am a Lutheran

2009-12-08T22:31:00.006-06:00

Here's the $9 gift that every ELCA Lutheran should have - a necklace with the Luther Rose proclaiming "I am a Lutheran." (That's what it says on the other side.) Jonathan and I both have one and we wear them now and then.

It's kinda funny that they are made in Italy. Seems like it should be more of a German or Scandinavian export.

This necklace reminds me of when I was in Italy during foreign quarter in college. I remember how many things in the little shops had the pope's image on them. I bought a photo album that had a lenticular cover so it looked like the pope was blessing people if you moved the cover back and forth. My friend Libby thought I was being sacrilegious for doing this, but I told her hey, who's being sacrilegious by putting the pope's picture on a photo album in the first place?

I think Martin would be just fine with us wearing our proclamation around our necks, although he may have thought there should be a companion "What does this mean?" bracelet.

Dawn's $9 Blog: ABCDEFGift

2009-12-06T23:27:00.003-06:00

For my next selection, I'll recommend Alphabet Adventure, an alphabet book for 3-year-olds that I authored. You may look through its pages and wonder, hmm, how does someone "write" an alphabet book that consists of words and phrases from A to Z. Well, good question. I chose the words and sketched every page to show what would be pictured on the page and indicated where where each word/phrase could go.

The pages are sturdy, the colors are bright, and the conversations about Bible time and current people are just waiting to bubble up between you and your favorite 3-year-old. At $9.99, I'm only 99 cents above my $9 goal for everyone in the ELCA.

Shirtless Wonder

2009-12-05T20:55:00.002-06:00

I need to interrupt my $9 flow because Paavo and Svea have been playing a game that is worth sharing.

She is Jasmine and wears her princess dress.

He is Aladdin and wears his button down oxford shirt (the only one in his closet). The hilarious part about it is that he wears it completely unbuttoned because, as he explained to me, Aladdin always has his chest showing.

They have adventures while flying around on my purple yoga mat.

I need to sneak down in the basement while they are playing to get some Flip camera coverage...

Okay...back to $ gifts...

Dawn's $9 Blog: 40-Day Journeys

2009-12-05T20:45:00.010-06:00

For my next recommendation, may I offer you some ideas for how to spend the next 40 days?

AF has a 40-day journey series with several well known authors/theologians/people you'd want to invite to dinner, including Kathleen Norris, Maya Angelou, Julian of Norwich, Madeleine L'Engle, Joan Chittester, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

We're all on a journey. Maybe one of these books is just the right companion for you or someone you know.

Dawn's $9 Blog: Good Grief

2009-12-03T22:28:00.003-06:00

For my next recommended AF product, I'm going to get a little serious, readers. AF has sold Granger Weestberg's book "Good Grief" for many years now. There are over 2 million copies in print! That's a lot of grief being helped, and it seems like this book may be especially helpful as people face difficult situations during the holidays.

(The price for the hardcover version is $8.99, just what you need to spend to hit my $9 figure.)

Dawn's $9 Blog: Cover Boy

2009-12-02T20:11:00.002-06:00

For my fourth gift suggestion, may I offer up some fine tuneage? The Splash Sleepy Time Tunes CD is full of lovely songs by Lutheran songwriter types who rose beautifully to the challenge of recording songs that babies AND their parents would want to listen to as they drift off to sleep. At $6.99 it's a steal for a full-length CD, and a few dollars under my $9 figure, so you could even throw in an Usher pin.

As a bonus, that's Baby Paavo on the cover grinning at you!

Dawn's $9 Blog: The Fall of the House of

2009-12-01T22:51:00.003-06:00

For my third Christmas list suggestion, I'll offer a more affordable option since I've exceeded my $9 figure. This Lutheran Usher pin is just the thing for that Lutheran usher in your life who has everything. Why wear a generic Usher pin (or worse, a stick-on disposable nametag) when you can have this beaut with Luther's rose? Or buy a few and gift them to your congregation. In any case, you can have this pin for only $2.50.

No word yet on whether Usher wears this Usher pin...

Dawn's $9 Blog: Orange and Brown

2009-11-30T21:13:00.006-06:00

Here's my pick for spending another $9. Okay, a little more than $9, but still so worth it, especially when you consider that you are supporting the publishing ministry of the ELCA (that also happens to be a publisher of choice for other mainliners).

I present to you...the Spark Bible! This is the Bible that I worked on for much of 2008-2009. (I have the gray hair to prove it.) Developing a Bible is an amazing project. There was a great team of writers, developers, editors, project managers, proofreaders, typesetters, designers, marketers, and purchasers who made it happen.

Here are my favorite things about this Bible:
There are cool stickers in the back that you can put wherever you have a question, an insight, a memory, or any other moment that you want to capture.
There is room in the margin to write notes, doodle, sketch, and otherwise take note of passages.
There are questions and suggestions all over the place to help connect to the stories.
The font is really cool.
The colors of the interior are orange and brown (instead of black).
The feature content that we added meets kids where they're at and doesn't have a bunch of tween jargon thrown at them.

I am using mine like crazy at work and love that the pages are already getting well-worn.

So again, I'm pushing folks past the $9 spend, but hey, it's a Bible! With stickers! That has brown type! If you have any third through sixth graders in your life and you're not sure if they have a Bible that is actually engaging to them, then you may want to order up one of these, wrap it, and put it under the tree.

You can take a peak at the interior here.

Dawn's $9 Blog: SSBs for All!

2009-11-29T20:47:00.007-06:00

Ever since I've worked at Augsburg Fortress, I've been struck by the fact that if only everyone in the ELCA bought $9 a year of AF merchandise, we'd be able to keep moving forward without the financial challenges that face denominational publishers these days. If only, if only. So in this season of Advent, I'll be recommending a new AF product each day to help you spend your $9 by purchasing great Christmas gifts. If you're not an ELCA Lutheran, you still may find some gems here, and then your financial contribution is just gravy, or icing on the cake, or something like that. (But not gravy and icing together.)

So here goes:
My first recommendation is the Spark Story Bible. Several of my colleagues worked on this resource last year and it was published in April. It is a "lap Bible" and is fantastic for introducing young kids to all kinds of key stories in the Bible. There are 150 stories, the illustrations are fantastic, and the stories are fun to tell and repeat with little ones.

If you're coming from an ELCA perspective, you will really appreciate that the stories are aligned with Lutheran theology. And best of all, each story is written for kids - age-appropriateness is key. For excerpts from the Spark Story Bible, go here.

Priced at $19.99, I know this is double the $9 I just talked about, but you're not going to find a better deal around for a 150-story children's Bible! (That's just 13 cents a story.) So this is just one of the many choices you'll have this Advent...stay tuned for more.

Weddings, schmeddings

2009-10-25T18:13:00.003-06:00

Here's an inexpensive art project for all you parents. Go to the Target clearance endcaps and buy the 75%-off DIY wedding invitations. (The two boxes I found were by Anna Griffin.) The set includes a lovely piece of high quality paper that you slide into a sleeve. Kiddos draw on the blank paper and you've got an unusual, unexpected way to present art to loved ones. There are also blank reply cards, so you get 50 cards for $5 - that's 10 cents each! The way we blaze through drawing paper, it's a bargain for sure.

Have fun!

I've Got the Power (not)

2009-10-22T21:14:00.003-06:00

I was recently reading a story in The Little Lutheran to Paavo and Svea. (Tip: If you need to give a Christmas gift to little ones this year and your budget is $25, I'd highly recommend a subscription.) It was the story of Jesus calming the storm. After I finished it, the following conversation occurred:
Paavo: How did he stop the storm?
Me: Jesus had the power to do it.
Paavo: How did he get the power?
Me: God gave Jesus the power.
Paavo: What else did he have power to do?
Me: Well, he could heal people and feed people and make amazing things happen.
Paavo: Why did he have the power?
Me: Jesus was God's son, so God gave Jesus power to do amazing things.
Paavo: (pause) Does anyone else have power?
Me: Well, some of Jesus' followers had amazing power after Jesus died and rose and went to heaven.
Paavo: What kind of power?
Me: Well, there was a man named Peter and he went to the house of a woman named Tabitha. She died, but Peter said, "Get up!" and she got up! She was alive again.
Paavo: Who else has power?
Me: Well, sometimes God gives us power to help people, and God gives power to heal people.
Paavo: But why don't other people have power?
This conversation continued for a while as Paavo continued to ask who else had power, what kind of power, and why more people didn't have power.

So on the one hand, it makes sense that he'd be really interested in power because the boy spends at least an hour a day drawing superheroes.

But on the other hand, I feel he's confirming, in the way that a 5-year-old uniquely can, our human desire to want to do what God does because we want to control and manage and have power.

I suspect this is not the end of the conversation about power...

What bothers me about children's books...

2009-10-10T19:56:00.002-06:00

Every day Paavo brings home a new book from Kindergarten. (They have Book Club and sign out a book each day and return it the next. His teacher is brilliant for this and many other reasons.) Anyway, we were reading his most recent one called "We Gather Together - Now Please Get Lost!" I realized that it bugs me when a children's book author uses animal characters without a really compelling reason to do so. In this particular case, the main character is some kind of hedgehog or muskrat or porcupine. (Jonathan and I couldn't figure out its exact nature.) His name is Gilbert and he is going on a class field trip with an assortment of animals - rabbits, skunks, raccoons, and a goose named Philip who is a tattling, spelling-test loving, checkers-winning student that no one wants to be partners with. (You can guess who Gilbert is paired with, right?) They proceed to take a school bus (with a turkey driver!) to Pilgrim Town where they learn all about the pilgrims, the hard winter, and other reasons behind the annual feast for giving thanks and celebrating.

The animals-as-characters logic breaks down in many places. Are we really to believe that all the ancestors of these forest animals have been giving thanks for the last few hundred years because the animals themselves were settlers and there were no humans? (And if that's the case, were they fleeing the animals of Britain for reasons of religious freedom? And if that's the case, are they Christian animals?) Are we to believe that the employees of Pilgrim Town built authentic pilgrim-era structures on their own (thatched-roof houses, windmills, wheelbarrows, fences)? And how have these animals of the forest evolved to using portapotties? (This is a key part of the plot - Gilbert is locked in one and Philip rescues him.)

I cannot suspend disbelief long enough to think that any of this would ever happen with animals, even in a child's imagination. If you're gonna use animal characters, let them use their animal powers - the foraging raccoon, the stinky skunk, the quill-ejecting porcupine. But instead they cower under the bossiness of their teacher Mrs. Byrd, a rather round bird who I cannot identify at all other than she looks like a penguin.

But Paavo has asked me to read it three times now, so I guess it's not all that bad...

Where did September go?

2009-10-08T19:56:00.002-06:00

So much for my efforts to organize, streamline, and check off stuff on the to-do list. But because negative self-talk gets me nowhere, I'm not gonna be too miffed at myself about it. INstead, I'll report to you on the following:
+ Kindergarten continues to go well for Paavo.
+ Svea turns 3 next week!
+ We do not know what Halloween costumes the kids will eventually select, but it's fun to talk about options.
+ It has become quite chilly and smells like fall.
+ I attended my cousin Britt's wedding in Seattle last weekend and it was fantastic.
+ Svea is No Nap Nancy almost every day.

GYST: Week 2

2009-09-16T07:48:00.002-06:00

I realized that I've abandoned the daily report of Get Your Stuff Together (GYST) month. Here's a recap of the week:
Sent in another medical benefits form
Drano'd the tub
Washed the tub (not on the same day I Drano'd it - that could be toxic!)
Gave a bunch of Svea's clothes (that had been sitting in a bag for weeks) to Elsa
Made an appointments for my annual physical

So I have two weeks to go, and hopefully many more things to check off the list.

Kindergarten Boy

2009-09-09T21:02:00.003-06:00

Pardon me while I put GYST on hold to talk a bit about kindergarten. Here's what happened today:
6:50 a.m. Paavo walks into our room wearing his daytime clothes. This has never happened before in the history of Paavo.
6:50-7:40 Paavo has breakfast, we read a book, and we talk about school. "How much longer, Mama?" "About an hour." So we set a timer.
8:00 Svea wakes up.
8:35ish We go outside. I have the Flip camera, ready to film the approach of the bus. We stand two driveways down where the bus will stop. A nice family from across the street is there too. They tell us great things about Paavo's school.
8:44 The bus approaches. I film its approach. Paavo runs to the bus once it has stopped, yelling "Bye Mom!" over his shoulder. No hug, no kiss, no tender words. Just "get me into this adventure already" movement, which was just what needed to happen!
8:52 I discover that I have not recorded the bus's arrival and Paavo's leaping steps onto it. Instead I have filmed the 6 minutes that elapsed between when I thought I turned the camera off and when I pulled the camera out of its case to show Jonathan the non-existent video of Paavo boarding the bus. Oops.
4:19ish Paavo comes home on the bus and runs to our yard, spilling over with stories about the day.
4:40 We all head to the Edina Family Center for Svea's ECFE open house. She proceeds to wear a pair of dress-up high heel shoes the entire time, along with one tutu around her waist and another on her head and a pair of pink sunglasses.
8:30 The kids are in bed and quiet. I could get used to this!

On the Eve of Paavo's First Day of Kindergarten

2009-09-08T20:34:00.003-06:00

Kids are tucked in but not sleeping. Svea has been super needy lately, asking for me to do EVERYthing for her and rejecting Jonathan's offers to help. (What happened to the girl from two months ago who insisted on doing everything herself, from dressing in daytime clothes to getting PJs on to donning her shoes?) Let's hope I don't get called by Svea for another visit to her room. (I was just in there to change a poopy diaper - it was ferociously dark, stinky, and wet, as if she'd willfully summoned her GI tract to cook up something that would let Mama know she was really, really needed.)

So on this night, the last one before Paavo begins his formal schooling, we have a pleasant evening with only a few scuffles. (They have been really testy lately, whining about every slight, real or perceived. We think they know it's because EVERYTHING AS THEY KNOW IT IS GOING TO CHANGE FOREVER.) After they play together in the basement, we have baths, snack, and some discussion about what will be in his lunch the next day. I promise him that we can read a few books in his room. What does he choose but an illustrated early reader book about Abraham Lincoln...and it's not until Abe is deep in the middle of the Lincoln-Douglas debate that I think to myself, "Oh dear. This book has gone into realistic detail about many parts of his life. They aren't going to skip the whole assassination thing." And they don't. The scene as depicted by the illustrator shows Abe and Mary serenely watching the play from their box seats and John Wilkes Booth wearing some kind of flowing costume and holding a gun inches from Abe's head. Now to Paavo's credit, he uses the term "blaster" instead of gun. "Why is he holding that blaster? Why did he do that? Why was he an actor? Where did he get that blaster? Why did he want him to die? Why did Abraham Lincoln stay alive for one day before dying?"

As early evidence that he is fascinated with this book, when I go into his room to give him his blanket (meh-meh) from the dryer, I assume that he'll be in the same state he was a few minutes ago - all tucked in with lights off. Instead he has turned on the light above his bed and is kneeling next to his bed with the book wide open.

Hello, Kindergarten Teacher? Yes, Paavo's my son. Oh, he talked about Abraham Lincoln on the first day of school? And asked you about John Wilkes Booth and whether you knew where he got the blaster? And tried to pronounce the word assassination? No, I have no idea why he would say those things...

GYST Day 5: Clear the Cabinet Clutter

2009-09-07T22:18:00.002-06:00

Oops - I'm late posting the latest GYST. While Paavo took a bath and Svea played with her babies I organized the hallway closet. Now the boxes of Band-Aids and the bottles of sunscreen will no longer fall on me while I look around for a clean towel.

GYST Day 4: Show Me the Money

2009-09-05T08:33:00.002-06:00

Today, GYST was quick but profitable. I completed the paperwork and mailed it in to receive reimbursement for the medical costs surrounding Paavo's pneumonia diagnosis in May. The people at Benefits Extra seem to process these claims in about 3 minutes. so I should get a check early next week.

On to Saturday GYST. I'm not sure what it will be yet other than something rather substantial.

We are headed to the Walker Art Center's First Free Saturday - the theme is superheroes, so Paavo will be delighted!

GYST Day 3: Clear the Decks

2009-09-03T21:05:00.004-06:00

Part of getting my stuff together tonight - organizing the bathroom cabinet while Svea took a bath. The piles of bathroomy items are now in bins and stacks. Much better.

As a bonus GYST, I cleared off the top of the card catalog, which is usually a haven for expired Target gift cards, eyeglasses, toy parts, sunscreen, and old batteries.

Tomorrow I may tackle the hallway closet. We'll see, we'll see.

GYST Day 2: What a Heel

2009-09-03T21:02:00.002-06:00

I enjoyed a few great hours of conversation on Wednesday night - Anne L. came over to visit after our meeting at church, and then Jonathan and I talked all about the challenges and delights of kindergarten and preschool that Paavo and Svea will soon encounter.

This did not leave much time to get my GYST, so I decided that I would smooth my heels which had become a bit rough with all the summer sandal-wearing. After some time with the foot tool that looks like a cheese grater on a stick, my heels were in much better shape. (Part of getting your stuff together is making sure your feet aren't scratchy enough to freak out your kids.)

GYST Day 1: Shiny Things

2009-09-01T21:02:00.002-06:00

Tonight I polished my silver jewelry instead of keeping it in a big tangled pile and lamenting that I couldn't wear it because it had tarnish.

Tomorrow I will wear the silver earrings from Tera that I haven't worn in over a year since I lost one of them in the couch.

Get My GYST?

2009-08-31T21:39:00.002-06:00

September begins tomorrow, and with it a new campaign for the month: GYSTS. This stands for Get Your Stuff (or other s-word of your choosing) Together September. Each day in September, I shall endeavor to do one specific act, whether large or small, to get my stuff together. Said stuff may include but is not limited to: cleaning my sterling silver jewelry instead of looking at it all tangled up in a box, filing the paperwork from our refinance in May, bringing stuff to the consignment store, and finding mates to the kids' socks that have been languishing in an orange canvas Kidgits bag.

Stay tunes here for GYSTS updates.

Unbridaled

2009-08-11T20:48:00.003-06:00

I have been doing some cleaning as of late. LOTS of cleaning. I'm also putting things back in their place, perhaps even more rewarding than cleaning. One item to move back: my wedding dress. I had it professionally cleaned in 2000. (I know this because I keep the receipt stapled to it - Tito's Cleaners. Ah, Chicago.) Since they hermetically seal it and tell you to keep it that way, it struck me that I don't really know if it's my dress inside. What if they gave me a bunch of beach towels or something? (Does that mean there's a family drying themselves off at the beach with my dress?)

So it's kind of funny that I'll leave the dress in there for who knows how much longer. Maybe there's a little surprise inside. Maybe Svea will look at it when she is engaged and then say to me in a polite voice, "Um, Mom, I think I might go with something a little more...modern."

Right now Svea isn't remotely interested in my wedding dress because she is OBSESSED by a purple shirt she's had for a while. It has a picture of a purple fairy on it. She calls it her Girl Shirt. When she was at camp last week, she wanted to wear it every single day even though it was filthy because of all the camp dust and dirt and grime. ("Where my Girl Shirt go? I want to wear my Girl Shirt!") Jonathan had to resort to many high-level persuasion tactics to prevent her from wearing her Girl Shirt each day. He has told me repeatedly that we need a Girl Shirt Plan once they return home so that she can be convinced with logic and reason (or possibly bribery) that she cannot wear this shirt every day. We may strategize a way to use the Girl Shirt as a reward for potty training. If you have any tips on this that do not include doing a load of purple laundry every day, please let me know.

A warning: If you're read this and then you happen to see Svea, do NOT bring up the Girl Shirt under any circumstance.

Tales of the Self-Cleaning Oven

2009-08-02T21:46:00.003-06:00

Today I used the self-cleaning feature on my oven for the first time. And not just for the first time on this oven - the first time for any oven I've owned ever. And I've owned 4 so far (5 if you count that I have a double oven now).

Anyway, it seemed easy enough. Choose which oven to clean, top or bottom. Press the self-clean button. Choose which duration. (I went with the recommended length.) Press Start. Wait.

Here is what went through my head at various time in the 3.5-hour cleaning cycle:
Why is this taking 3.5 hours?
Just how hot is it in there?
What's that smell?
Dang, that's hot.
Why does the manual spend so much time on how self-cleaning ovens can kill pet birds?
What if it emits a noxious gas that renders me unconscious?
Thank goodness the kids are not here. No one should ever self-clean the oven with people under the age of 21 nearby.
That is so hot that I'm feeling menopausal.
Isn't it done yet?
The whole house smells like self-cleaning oven.
Geez-o-Pete, that oven is hot.

Oh, the relief of the End message appearing and beeping at me. Now I have a fan blowing across the open oven door, blowing the warmth out the kitchen door.

Tomorrow I will wipe up the powdery ash with relish.

International Reach into Your Couch Cushions Day

2009-08-01T12:52:00.004-06:00

Last night I was retrieving a toy that slipped into the couch. I proceeded to grab a handful of change and decided to keep spelunking. I found more change, a game piece, a baby comb, and an earring that I had been missing for YEARS.

So my challenge to you is to look between all your couch cushions and post a comment with your discoveries.

Linguistic Quirks

2009-07-26T20:44:00.004-06:00

Paavo is an articulate little guy (and has been since he was about 1), but there are still a few things he does that are so idiosyncratic that I hope he doesn't grow out of any time soon:

He uses the contraction he created - I am't - instead of I'm not.

He double plurals some words.

He says toot instead of fart. How I hope his innocence sticks around a little bit longer. (He possesses encyclopedic knowledge of not just Star Wars and Fantastic Four but also Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears.)

There are many others that of course I can't recall now. Perhaps I'll add them to this post when I remember them.

Svea is holding her own on the language front. Today she told me "Not quite yet" when I asked if she was ready to have me rinse her hair. She has also picked up a super-whiny reluctant-sounding "Okay" from her brother.

My Great Idea

2009-07-19T13:41:00.002-06:00

While on vacation I came up with a great idea for an online dating service:

Interested parties submit a video of themselves eating an ear of corn.

The site would be called cupidonthecob.com.

Just an idea.

I Caved at WalMart

2009-07-13T20:32:00.007-06:00

My mother-in-law did a really nice thing back in April when Jonathan was there with the kids for Spring Break. She had their photos taken at the WalMart photo studio, and the result was that we had supercute Easter photos of the kids in their springtime finery. (Well actually only Svea was wearing finery - a floral dress - while Paavo wore a green t-shirt.)

I was on vacation last week, and I decided that I would embark on this responsible parenting behavior on my own. I would take my kids to get their portraits (for the second time in 3 months) since I had NEVER done this before.

The woman at WalMart had all kinds of tricks for getting them to smile. And when I saw the 24 pictures she took...well, I couldn't say no. A $7.99 portrait sheet offer turned into a much greater investment into photography of my children. But gosh darn it if they aren't cuties.

I can't post the WalMart photos without infringing on copyright law. And being married to a musician and working for a publisher means I'm all about upholding copyright laws. But I can post a few of my own cute pictures of the kids as I wait for my photos.

I'm in Lutheran Partners

2009-07-13T20:28:00.003-06:00

Hi Readers. Sorry I've been light on summer blogging. If you want to read something I wrote, take a peak at my article that appears in Lutheran Partners magazine.

Please write a gushing letter to the editor so he'll ask me to write something else!

Hooray for sippy cups!

I Hate the Digital TV Conversion

2009-06-26T22:08:00.002-06:00

The conversion stinks for us since we don't get cable. Here is what happens:

We cannot watch any channels on the basement TV unless one person is willing to constantly tinker with the antennae. Even when we do get some kind of reception, the pixellation is maddening and the audio skips all the time.

The upstairs TV is better. It gets stations, but I have to scroll through multiple weather channels (who knew?) to get to the network stations. Also, there are about 6 stations that have no audio. They are all foreign language or religious stations, but still, it doesn't seem quite right.

Is it wrong to want to watch TV on the big set we bought 10+ years ago and the little set that Grandpa Pete used before he died? They are perfectly good TVs. Well, except for the fact that you can't really watch TV on them anymore.

It's enough to make me want to stop watching TV if I hadn't already sort of done that already.

I remain too thrifty to pay for cable. (With our 17-year anniversary coming up, I figure we've saved $10,000 so far by not getting cable in our marriage. That's two trips to Sweden and Finland.)

This concludes my Dawn-is-mildly-hostile-about-television post.

How Great Thou Art

2009-06-04T20:49:00.005-06:00

Jonathan and I are in purging mode right now. I'm trying to get the kitchen in shape tonight and am facing the age-old parental dilemma: what do I do with the kids' art? The facts:

Paavo has been making a piece or two each day that he goes to preschool. That's a few hundred pieces a year for the last 3 years.
He is a coloring book enthusiast. And prolific. As in, we have about 10 400-page coloring books (including 3 of the 400-page Star Wars books) and he has colored every page. (My favorite: when he decided that for one of the Star Wars books, every character should be smoking a pipe.)
He loves to draw freehand on sketch pads, construction paper, notebook paper, brown craft paper - you name it, he'll draw on it.
Lately I've been tracing him onto giant sheets of paper from my calendar from last year. I think the sheets are close to 3 x 4 feet. He then creates superheroes and villains who have elaborate costumes, facial features, and powers.
And Svea has come into her own with coloring too, and loves to color her coloring books and on sketchpads.

I'm pretty sure we're not just figuring out how to get rid of 100 pieces of art. I think it numbers well in the thousands when you consider the major coloring books along with a few dozen slimmer volumes that only have 50 or so pages plus about 6 sketchpads.

What's a mom to do?

If any of you have a philosophy about (gasp!) throwing away reams of kids' artwork, I'd much appreciate it. (Plus a strategy for carrying out said philosophy.)

But I draw the line at getting rid of the Star Wars book where they're smoking pipes.

Here's hoping for a boring week

2009-05-17T22:00:00.003-06:00

Last week:
Monday: After I get home from work, Svea is running around, doing her Svea thing. Then I hear a horrible, bloodcurdling cry from the kitchen. I run in to find her wailing with blood all over her face. She has bitten her tongue. I have to instantly enter the "Be calm, Mama, so you don't freak out your child" mode. I pick her up, get a wet paper towel for her tongue, and start wiping off the blood.

Jonathan is on the phone to the nurse. Because she hasn't bitten all the way through (horrors!) and because there isn't a flap of skin (yikes!), we are instructed to wrap a wet paper towel around ice cubes for her to touch her tongue to. We are also instructed not to have her eat anything salty or citrus.

After she sits in my lap for 45 minutes with her tongue gingerly on the paper towel, I pass her off to Jonathan so I can make supper. She falls asleep in about 5 minutes (Daddy Arms!) and he gently places her in her crib. It is 6:45 p.m.

Three amazing things:
She sleeps until the next morning.
Her tongue is practically healed after a day.
I got no blood on the white shirt I was wearing.

But this trauma was just a warm-up for what was to come.
Paavo wakes up with a 103 fever on Wednesday. He sleeps all day and takes Tylenol every 4 hours. Jonathan keeps him drinking fluids. His fever stays in the low 100s. He is sweaty, pale, weak, and shaky. He has a terrible night, waking up every three hours in pain.

The next day they go to the doc in the afternoon and are there for almost 3 hours. He has a finger prick blood test, the lengthy blood draw, urine test, strep test, and chest X-ray. Because of his elevated white blood cell count, they give him an antibiotic shot.

By the time I get home, he is still weak and he takes a nap on the couch. (For a boy who quit napping at age 2, this is UNHEARD OF.) By 8:00 that night, old Paavo starts coming back, laughing, eating, drinking, and doing his normal Paavo stuff. He sleeps through the whole night.

When we go to the doc on Friday to get the results of the bloodwork, we learn that he has pneumonia. How did that happen? We may never know, but thank the Good Lord for antibiotics. And for fast-healing tongues.

Happy Birthday to Me

2009-04-30T20:54:00.002-06:00

Two days ago on April 28, I celebrated my first and only 39th birthday.
I love my birthday and plan to celebrate for the next month. (Thanks to my parents' gift cards, that will be even more fun. Thanks Dean and Elaine!)

So I'm thinking of what I want to do that is kind of different this year, and here's what I've come up with. I want to do these 5 things every month:

Read a novel.
Bake bread.
Write a letter.
Take a cool and memorable photo of my kids.
Enjoy a Date Night with Jonathan.

I'll keep you posted.

And if you want to make your own list of 5 monthly things to do before my next birthday, you're welcome to do so.

The Dreadful Children

2009-04-24T21:34:00.003-06:00

We have finally introduced story time at night to Svea after Jonathan's repeated pleas for me to do this so she doesn't feel cheated out of yet another thing that her brother got months before her. (Paavo had a nightly story from the time he was about 21 months old. Svea is 2 and a half.)

Now she hears two stories every night. She starts with a request for the story of the Lion and the Mouse. (Disclosure: this is actually not the traditional Aesop's fable of the Lion and the Mouse because I didn't remember that one when I told her the story the first time. So now the mouse gets a thorn out of the lion's paw rather than chewing the ropes that trap the lion.)

Then she hears the story of some new characters I've created: Tou the elf, Rosie the Doll, and 3 squirrels named Snowflake (white tip of the tail), Coal (black shiny eyes), and Bump (clumsy). I tell her the story with Paavo listening and he cracks up every time there is a detail about Bump falling, tripping, or dropping something. I guess kids like clumsy squirrels. There is also a dog named Misty who visits with these 5 characters whenever she can. Misty's owners are two parents and a daughter Betsy and a son Clyde.

The most fascinating part of this new story for him: Betsy and Clyde. I call them the two dreadful children. They are rudeness personified. They whine, complain, bicker, fight, push, shove, lie, sneak, cry, and make their parents' lives borderline intolerable. He always gets wide eyes when the story gives some details about them. He often asks about them afterwards. "Why did Betsy shove Clyde? Why didn't Clyde share his present?"

In tonight's story, Betsy kept getting dangerously close to the pinata even though her dad kept telling her to stay away or she'd get hit with the stick. Then she tried to cut in line ahead of small Freddie, who eventually delivered the winning blow to the pinata that sent the candy flying.

Who knows what Betsy and Clyde will do tomorrow, but it won't be good.

Parent Tip

2009-04-17T21:41:00.002-06:00

Okay, parents. here's a tip for shopping with your preschooler. Maybe it just worked this one time for us, but even if that's the case, it was SO worth it.

We end our grocery trips to SuperTarget in the toy aisle - Paavo will pore over every Star Wars figure, every battle set, every light saber. Then he moves on to the other toys in the action figure aisle - Batman, Indiana Jones, Ironman, Transformers, some weird pop-open plastic ball called Bakugan that has complex point systems. You know what I'm talking about here, right?

Well today we were in the aisle, Svea was showing precursors of a Target Freakout, and I was itching to get out of there. And here's the brilliant strategy I stumbled upon:
"Paavo, we'd better finish up here or else the Pudding Pops will melt before we get home."
He stops in his tracks and looks at me with HUGE eyes. Instantly he stops what he's looking at and starts walking with Svea and me to the diaper aisle.
"Mom, are they going to melt? Will we be able to eat them?"
"Yes, Paavo, they should be okay, but we'd better get going."

He walks at a brisk pace, we toss the diapers in, and once we get to the front of the store, he is actually helping me find the shortest line.
"Mom, what if they melt?"
"Paavo, I think we'll make it home in time."
He reaches into the cart to feel them.
"Mom, I can feel the box. They feel warm!"
"Paavo, I'll put them under the frozen pizzas to keep them colder."
"Mom, they feel warm too!"

No dawdling, no trying to hang off the cart where he's sure to get his toes run over, no throwing fits about wanting some candy from the check-out aisle. He is ALL business, and he's going to get us home in time for those pudding pops.

Box of Jello Pudding Pops: $2.79
Getting home from Target without coercion, tears, or sass: Priceless

Recipe for Easter Day Dig

2009-04-02T18:56:00.003-06:00

In case you want to do something extra fun with kids this Easter and an egg hunt seems tired...

Mix 4 cups sand with 1/2 cup plaster.
Pour 1 cup water into the mix and stir.
Pour into muffin cups so they are half full.
Add a few treasures - plastic toys, seashells, whatever.
Cover with the rest of the mix.
make sure part of one of the treasures is exposed to give kids a head start.
Let dry 24 hours.
Makes 10.

Kids can excavate their treasures using chopsticks, spoons, or any other kid-safe tools you have around. If they are really struggling to chip away, spray with a mist of water to loosen things up.

Insomniablog

2009-03-21T01:20:00.003-06:00

It is 2:20 a.m. and I have been up since 1 trying to talk myself into relaxing enough to go back to sleep. You can see how well THAT worked.

So I'll update you on the state of things in the Rundman household...Paavo now has 19 teeth in his little mouth. Bottom right fell out yesterday at McDonald's after he bit into his hamburger and loosened it so much that he had a bleeding spell. Jonathan talked him down from his freaked-out state and informed him that now that it was so loose (we're talking 180-degree flexibility here, people), he could just reach in there and pluck it out.

That is exactly what he did. And a few bloody napkins later, he began to get all proud and tell the other people in the play area, and then everyone else he saw the rest of the day.

Part 2 of this saga: the Tooth Fairy. Or maybe a better title would be: Paavo's complete lack of interest in the Tooth Fairy. My dad told Paavo that HE wanted the tooth so he could tape it to a mug and write "Paavo's Tooth" and put it on his shelf. Paavo refused to have that tooth placed under his pillow. After all, that would mean that the Tooth Fairy would have it instead of Grandpa Dean. And he's kind of leery about the Tooth Fairy's identity. "Mom," he asked me, "is it the same Tooth Fairy for ALL kids?" I think our lack of enthusiasm for endorsing Santa's existence has rubbed off onto the world of the Tooth Fairy. (The Easter Bunny is probably not even an issue for him.)

2009-03-10T21:12:00.002-06:00

Last Sunday was a day I had feared as a parent for over a year. I was dreading it. Convinced I would erupt into fits of weeping. Unreasonably hoping it would never occur.

But it happened.

Paavo has a loose tooth.

He discovered this while biting into his sandwich during supper. He shrieked, howled, and melted into tears when he realized the state of things. Refused to eat any more food that night. Sat in my lap crying for 30 minutes.

So of course I could not have a major meltdown about this because I've got to be Strong Mama. I make it sound like it's the best thing that could happen to him. The pillow, the fairy, the reward, the gap! By the end of the evening, I've put such positive spin on it that when Jonathan gets home from his meeting, Paavo bounds up to him and says "Guess what, Dad? I've got a loose tooth!" as he's wiggling it.

My planned crisis was not allowed to happen. Instead, I am right there with him in the excitement and the anticipation of the unknown. And of course it's crystal clear to me why I had resisted this moment...it is such a concrete and permanent reminder of how change is absolutely inevitable, how his very DNA barrels along a path of growth, shedding the old, welcoming in what is new and different and absolutely expected.

Baby Paavo is no more, Toddler Paavo is of the past, and Preschooler Paavo is making his final rounds before early childhood leaves us forever and he has 5 more years as a kid and then the preteen stuff starts and then he's in middle school high school graduation party dropping him off for college stop stop stop! Not yet.

I'm going to go hug my boy now.

Book Ideas

2009-02-24T21:22:00.003-06:00

I have had a few moments of weakness during Frugal February, but overall things have gone well during my spendfree month. Diapers, groceries, some kids' coats, and a family meal at Famous Dave's last Thursday before Jonathan flew to the Pacific Northwest.

One thing I did buy (it was only $2!) was a book called Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth. Tucker Shaw photographed everything he ate for an entire year. It's a really great concept, and the book design is very clever. I've enjoyed paging through it, but I'm even more interested in the fact that his book joins a growing list of "A year of..."-type books where people do something clever, interesting, unheard-of, mundane, and/or creative for an entire year, then writes a book, and then, if they're lucky, visit talk shows and do a book tour and get a blogging gig and quit the day job that led them to think that they needed to do something so they could quit their day job. (Judith Levine's book "Not Buying It" about not buying anything other than necessities for a whole year is one of my main inspirations for Frugal February.)

So not that I'm looking to quit my day job, but I did start thinking about what I could do for a year that would be bookworthy. Or is that putting the cart before the horse? Or counting chickens before they've been published?

Anyway, stay tuned to see if I get any brilliant ideas.

Tonight, a Focus on Bad Guys

2009-02-10T21:05:00.000-06:00

Two questions Paavo asked about bad guys tonight:
Mom, why are bad guys happy when good guys die?
Mom, bad guys don't give valentines to good guys. THey only give valentines to bad guys, right?

This boy is focused on good and evil. And George Lucas has a lot to do with it.

You Say Tuxedo, I Say Taquito

2009-02-09T21:07:00.003-06:00

Paavo has been asked to be the ringbearer at my cousin Drew's wedding. (This has a nice symmetry to it, as Drew was the ringbearer at my wedding.) I have mentioned the June event now and then to get him used to and excited about the idea. Tonight as he was combing his hair (and giggling at how his cowlick sent a shock of hair straight up each time - what he calls "the crow"), I told him that he could wear his hair in this slicked-back style at the wedding. Then I mentioned that he would be wearing a tuxedo, to which he replied, "Mom, that's the name of a food."

"What?" I asked. "What food?"

"That brown wrapper with the chicken inside."

It took all my might to stifle the laughter begging to burst out.

The Red Droid

2009-02-07T20:58:00.003-06:00

This morning Paavo, Svea, and I headed out at 10:45 to the Walker Art Center for their First Free Saturday for Families. We participated in The Smooch Project, an awesome photographer and her assistants taking pictures of people giving each other kisses. That was fun, especially when the kids got all shy and wouldn't give me a kiss until I tickled them into it.

After Svea made a cool woodblock print of a pig in the Art Lab, we finished up our time at the Dolphin Oracle II. It is the projection of a computer-generated dolphin on a screen with a wireless computer keyboard nearby. You enter a question, any question, and after a few moments as the dolphin looks like it is thinking about it, the dolphin will provide a response. (The brilliant programmers figured out a way to craft responses to unique questions.) So this was our exchange:

Us: Do you like Star Wars?

Dolphin: Yes, I love Star Wars! Especially the robots.

Then we give the keyboard to a young teenage boy who has been waiting for his turn. (He types in "Do you want a piece of gum?" to which the dolphin responds "Where would I put it?")

Paavo says, "Mom, we have to ask which robot the dolphin likes."

So I type in, "What kind of robot do you like?"

The dolphin answers, "The red one."

To which Paavo responds (in a tone of voice similar to Sherlock Holmes finding a satisfying clue), "So he likes R5D4..."

And we headed back to the car.

Another post about Paavo and Star Wars

2009-02-02T21:36:00.002-06:00

Paavo has two Anakin Skywalker action figures in his possession: the normal one and the "Spirit" one that has a gauzy robe that slips off an annoying number of times.

Paavo has figured out that you can't really have two of the same guy. It's just not logical. So to resolve this cognitive dissonance, there is now Anakin Skywalker and...Jack Skywalker. (It's hard not to laugh each time he says the name.)

TMO100T Ends, Frugal Feburary Begins

2009-02-01T23:26:00.002-06:00

It is now the first day of February.
Last month's The Month of 100 Things purge went well, as several hundred items left our home to Value Village, recycling, or the garbage. Farewell hairbrush from 7th grade!
Today begins Frugal February, a month where I spend nothing, except on necessities: groceries, diapers, medical bills (you get it, right?).
This will be the third year I've tried this. It's a very helpful experience that helps tune me in to retail expectations and habits.
Join me if you dare, readers!

We Love Mo Willems!

2009-01-23T22:20:00.002-06:00

On Thursday, the kids and I and Grandma Mary all went to Wild Rumpus, a most fantastical bookstore in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis.

Mo Willems was there, reading his latest book called "Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed." He also treated the crowd to an Elephant & Piggie story, although it's not the one I've pictured, which may be our favorite in the series.

This man is the Real Deal.
Hilarious.
Charming.
Warm.
Quick on his feet.
Loves kids.
And writes and illustrates fabulous books.

If you need a present for a kid, or a present for an adult who needs to laugh out loud, go to your local independent bookstore and try to pick just one! You will get one for your gift recipient and then my guess is that you'll get one for yourself, because really, who doesn't need to laugh out loud these days?

I'm gonna check for Mo Willems flair next time I'm on Facebook.

I've resorted to bribery

2009-01-19T21:56:00.004-06:00

Our church is having a variety show and art exhibit soon, and I'd like Paavo and Svea to show their art. So I set up the easel and some real art supplies, figuring that Paavo will embrace this opportunity like he usually does.

But Paavo, realizing this is something meaningful to me, decides to play me. "Mom, I don't WANT to show my art at church. I want all my art to stay here."

I point out that Svea has made a lovely drawing with pastel crayons on a canvas. He proceeds to lamely swipe at his canvas, creating a piece of art that is kind of phoning it in compared to Svea's joyful efforts.

I get quiet and serious. "Paavo, if you create a piece of new piece of art for the art show, we will go to Target and you may choose a new action figure."

The tables have turned. He is now VERY interested in creating new art. But he wants the action figure now, not after he's created it. And I know that there's no way to wait this one out because over the last 2 days he gives me reminders about going to Target every 20-30 minutes.

So I cave and we go there tonight because I have a prescription to pick up. He has already chosen the figure: the Count Dooku who has interchangeable hands so that he can shoot out lightning from his fingers.

Tonight we go to Target. He approaches the aisle with great excitement. And then...no Count Dooku. Not even the one without the lightning fingertips. Realizing that a potential meltdown is possible within milliseconds, I propose that we look through each and every figure to find one he does not have.

And then...the Tri Droid suddenly appeals to him and life is good again!

(And then it takes his mother 20 minutes when they get home to figure out how to attach the three legs to the sphere.)

Paavo Speaks Huttese

2009-01-16T22:34:00.002-06:00

Paavo received a book about The Clone Wars for his birthday on January 2. Ever since then, we have read half the book each night as a bedtime story. This means I've read the book 7 times, but it feels like at least 25 by now.

The book is kind of scattershot because of how it keeps jumping around from planet to planet and duel to duel. I'm not sure if that's because it's too hard to write a 48-page book for young readers about a complex plot or if the film itself was scattershot. My favorite part of reading it is when the action is focused on Rotta the Huttlet, Jabba the Hutt's son. Mostly that's because I like to say Huttlet, but also because the Huttlet proves a point in developmental psychology that baby animals (or, I'd propose, Star Wars creatures) have cute features that help ensure they'll be cared for. Jabba is a big old slug. His little Huttlet, on the other hand, is darling.

Anyway, a highlight for Paavo from this book is to quote when Jabba speaks. "Janaga ziro keez!" is his favorite line. It's kind of funny to be in the middle of Target and hear your son speaking Huttese. Imagine if there were language immersion preschools based on the languages of Star Wars...