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Cooking Conversations
“Mommy, will you sit with me in the kitchen while I make the scones?” It’s after ten p.m. on a Friday night. She is eleven, but only for about three more months. Scout’s Scones has an order and we have a crowded schedule tomorrow so it’s baking time tonight for this young entrepreneur. I gather my supplies – blue ink pen, blank notebook, listening ears, sympathetic face. “Yes. I’ll sit in the kitchen with you.” And she mixes. Flour. Milk. Chocolate chips. She kneads. She talks. About cartoons. Tattoos. She hums. Tells me she cut her finger making her last batch of scones. I hadn’t known. She grins. Long hair…
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Sidekick
London and I were sitting side by side on the sofa. “Momma. With Riley married now I’m the oldest. I like being the oldest,” she announced to me. “You are. And I love that for you. But I don’t want you to think you have to be a grown up yet. I want you to still be the eleven year old girl you are.” She smiled. (That kid is so pretty in her smile.) “I know, Mom. I want to be a little girl still.” She reached for my hand. “But I just like being your sidekick.” Be still my heart. I will take that title any day.
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The Interview: London Eli Scout
London – I used to do these interviews when you were tiny. They were hilarious. I still think you’re a pretty funny kid. Do you think you are funny? A little bit. What kinds of things make you laugh now? Friend jokes. Jokes that friends make – or our family. Just jokes. How do you like to spend your free time? Drawing. And playing Calico Critters and Legos. You haven’t had a hair cut in more than a year I think. What’s your plan there? To grow it very very very very long. Why is that? Because I really like long hair. I’d like to look like an elf. Is…
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The Tale of Two Siblings
These two Keiglets have a special little bond. Many is the morning that I find them reclining on the sofa together, London reading books out loud to her little brother. London keeps a list of daily activities and ideas on a dry erase board she has in her bedroom. (She’s a natural-born planner, apparently those genes are strong.) One day I noticed her list went something like this: Play Legos. Water my garden. Bake scones. Bathe Otto. When I asked her why she felt the need to add a cleansing routine for her young brother to her list, she responded, “When we were cuddling last night – I noticed he smells bad.”…
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about cooking and serving.
London received a stand alone dry erase easel/chalkboard do-dad from her grandparents for Christmas this year. She loves that thing. Frequent to-do lists appear there. Stuffed animals’ names get put on long lists and directions for games the kids are playing show up frequently. Every night there are messages on the board for me or for Kevin. They usually involve questions about the food being served the next day at our home or requests for screen time or money making opportunities. One day last week the request was, “Can I prepare all the meals one day next week?” That wasn’t a request I really wanted to deny. Can you blame…
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My Girls – Differences Defined.
So much about the differences between two of our daughters is explained in this simple conversation: London – Remember when I was younger and I had dreads? I didn’t like them. Do you remember why? Me – I do. You didn’t care for the dreads because you didn’t care for all of the attention and the comments from strangers. London – I just don’t care for so much attention. I don’t care for a lot of people admiring me at once. Piper – I do!
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how can I not share this stuff?
When I ask London Scout to write about a field trip we just took, she’ll give me a sentence or two. A drawing. Doodles around the corner of the page. After handing her the black notebook we use for our writing schoolwork and assigning her a written narration of a story we just read, she sighs a little and sometimes offers a compromise to try to avoid the task of rewriting a story from memory. But last night, when I was tucking her into bed, I saw a little notebook I had given her a while ago. It contained a plethora of short stories and cute drawings. I loved them…
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in the gallery
On her own, all the time, London draws. She holds her pencil contrary to the way in which I showed her in kindergarten. But like so often in her eight years, she has discovered her own way to approach a task and she has mastered it in that unique manner. This time, her pencil captured Otto Fox Wilder and all the treasures that matter to him. And I could not have done better. This I know.
Keep Reading . . .
try this at home
that magic moment
notes from the burrow. not in any particular order.
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a magic number
I am so enjoying eight at our house. I love the way London is a deep thinker, a kind leader and an amazing artist. She is such a good protector of her baby brother and she is so capable of real, helpful tasks. She can ride a bike, catch lizards, read stories and a few weeks ago she made a red velvet cake – plus cream cheese icing – entirely from scratch, completely by herself following the directions in an old family cookbook. It tasted delicious. It was like eating a miracle. That she was once a dependent little thumb-sucking infant and now she is all of this. That’s astounding.…
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art.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. ~Pablo Picasso I adore the works of her not-quite-so-small-any-longer hands. I hope she never stops creating. Never stops imagining. Never stops putting pencil to paper. I want her to remember that she is always an artist.
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8.
Is a birthday all about the presents? Is it all about the family meal? The one where you get to choose any of your favorites, regardless of the combination, and have them served to you on the special birthday plate? Of course not! A birthday is about celebrating the life of someone you love, someone you know, someone you are so glad was born on this earth and you get to go about your days hanging out. Even better – you get to be family. Forever. A birthday is entirely about celebrating that person. And this weekend we celebrated our brand-new-eight-year-old . . . London Eli Scout. There are not…
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a little late night change
Sometimes it is only in retrospect that you recognize a moment that signifies a shift in your story. But sometimes, when you are right smack dab in the middle of the moment, you know something noteworthy is happening. It’s not necessarily a life changing moment, so much as it is a moment that will define a time period. You know, like the summer my family moved to the dairy farm when I turned 11 or the time I wore hot pink glasses for an entire year. That kind of moment. Last night, Kevin and I stayed up veryveryvery late helping London create just such a moment. We took our little…
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a prayer. sort of.
“I think I just love God more than anyone else in the world.” That’s what Cece said my seven-year-old daughter told her one night in their cabins at camp this week. And after the campfire, Cece said London also shared some more thoughts as they discussed the week of camp and the teachings they had heard. “You know, if I was God, I wouldn’t want to save a sinner like me,” London told her. And part of me feels my heart swell to near-implosion at the tender image of my little one thinking such deep and pure God thoughts. And part of me reels in terror at the thought of…
