MamaPie

What's Being Loved - Summer 2009

Ezra:

• "Thieves!"
• Sea Shells
• Ice Cream
• Climbing Trees
• Swimming

Reuben:

• Climbing
• Ice Cream
• Drinking Water
• Throwing Things into The Toilet
• Music and Songs

Hometown Tourism

I remember the first time I did the "act like a tourist in the place you live" thing. It was when I was living in Manhattan in 1995 and my high-school friend, Lisa, and her roommate and I were all in the city over Memorial Day weekend. It was hot and lots of people in the city had cleared out for various beach locales. We decided to do some things we wouldn't usually do; to go some places besides our usual hangouts. So, we had dinner at what I think was called The Model Cafe. It was a restaurant in Rockefeller Center that had a catwalk down the middle of it, where models, and maybe some diners, would strut while you ate. We also laid out on Lisa's roommate's sister's roof, with various magazines and snacks. I can't remember what else we did, but I do remember the fun of planning to do things that we'd heard about, but had never gotten around to doing.

We've been doing a bunch of that kind of thing this summer here in Portland. We went for lunch to the Grilled Cheese Grill, which was great. I got to sit and eat a leisurely lunch while Ezra and Reuben had a ball exploring the driver's seat area of the bus. Ezra especially liked pulling the handle to open the bus door.

We met some friends at Peninsula Park the other morning and we totally fell in love with the elaborate play structures shaded by beautiful old trees and the splash pad with all sorts of sprayers and fountains. Afterwards, we went to another of our "places we would totally seek out if we were tourists in Portland, but tourists who knew the good places to go (i.e. not The Model Cafe)" - di Prima Bakery: an amazingly authentic Italian bakery, where we got pizza and cannolis. We took Andrew back a few days later to see the park and the bakery:

Some other places I want to be sure to check out on our "vacation" in Portland this summer:

Fubon

,

Saint Johns Park

and the surrounding neighborhood, the

Lake Oswego library

(I heard they have a fantastic children's section),

Ping

and I want to get a chai from the

Spella Cafe

. Where are you going on your hometown vacation?

 

.

Good Fence

Summer Project 2009: Andrew and Ezra are building a fence.

When we moved into our house almost six years ago, there was a white picket fence in the front and a white picket fence in the back. When I was pregnant with Ezra, we finished our basement, tore down our back fence, tore up our backyard, put stones in the yard and had a new fence built. A very tall (so Baloo couldn't jump over it) and very ugly (as we came to discover) fence. The visual unpleasantness of the fence belied the amount of talk and thought that went into building it. To say that Andrew was obsessed with that fence would maybe be just a little bit of an overstatement...but not much. In any case, we lived with that *&%$# fence for almost five years and then decided it had to go.

So, two weeks ago, Andrew, Ezra, my dad and Zeke tore down the fence. And ever since then Andrew, with Ezra's help (Ezra is nothing if not a hard worker, forever living up to the meaning of his name, "helper"), has been working day and night on constructing a white picket fence for us. So far, this has involved pick-axes, a jack hammer, a table saw, a delivery of lots of wood and much sweat.

 

 

 

Like Summertime Clouds

I've been feeling a lack of focus when I think about blog writing these days, but rather than abandon ship totally for the summertime life, I will update today in that floaty summertime spirit:

• We had a (relatively, with my parents it's always relative) really nice visit from my parents over 4th of July weekend, My nephew, Zeke, who I can't believe is almost seventeen (I watched this boy be born and it doesn't seem like that was seventeen years ago) came with them. It was Zeke's 8th annual Portland summertime visit. His visits started the summer after I gave him a "Golden Ticket" (ala Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) for Hanukah that was redeemable for unlimited trips to Portland. Dear Zeke is going through some rough times right now, and I've been really worried about him. It was very good to see him and see that, rough times or not, he's still the sweet, super smart, amazingly articulate boy Andrew and I adore. And, he seemed okay, which was a big relief. One of my favorite moments from the weekend was when Ezra, who had just come back up from the kitchen at 6:30am after going down to get a snack, said to me and Andrew, "Zeke's awake. He said, 'let's hang out.' Can I hang out?" Of course he could and, apparently, they listened to Ode to Joy off Zeke's itunes and Zeke explained the 4th of July to Ezra ("Zeke told me they wrote a paper - do you know what it's called?" "The Declaration of Independence?" "Right"). Also, Andrew, with some help from Zeke and my dad, took down our much maligned fence. We now have a fenceless yard, but Andrew, with help from Ezra, will build us a new one this summer.

• The donuts and donut holes from Staccato Gelato are completely delicious. If you live here and haven't yet tried them, go do it.
• I made this bok-choy carrot salad to use up the enormous head of bok-choy I got from our CSA. It was delicious and I had never realized that bok-choy tastes good raw.
• This kale salad recipe by my friend Andrea, an awesome raw food cook (raw food cook? that sounds strange, what do you call yourself, A.?) is unbelievably good.

Alright, random enough for you?

And, no, the irony of gourmet local donuts and raw kale and bok-choy salads loved side-by-side is not lost on me. It does, however, sum up my eating style pretty beautifully.

More Photojournalism

Then, even more cousins came - for a total of 8 little cousins:

 

Then, we took a day trip to Montauk to see the lighthouse. It was nice to be with just our little family of 4. We looked for "treasure" (shells and rocks) on the beach:

My boys, three in a row (if only Baloo could have been there...):

We walked up 137 steps on a very curvy staircase to the top of the lighthouse. It was very windy up there:

Family snuggles:

The trip was very tiring:

We're so glad to be home.

Home sweet home.

We're back. We made it just barely, between completely wrecked sleep for a week, many many relatives and all the fun family dynamics that go along with that, Reuben freaking out on the flight there and Ezra freaking out (which is a mild way of describing the naked from the waist down - due to spilled water - hysterically screaming, flailing, deliriously tired boy we had on the flight last night) on the way home.

We did manage to have some fun, too, and we definitely had fun using Grandpa Joel's fancy-pants camera. See:

The boys enjoyed some time au naturel in the backyard and pool:


This is Ruby saying "pool" - he says it out of the side of his mouth, as he also says "balloon":


One afternoon, we went to town and got ice cream:




Andrew took the boys for an early morning walk on the beach to look for shells and horseshoe crabs:






There were lots of cousins.
Chess was played:



...to be continued, once I've gotten more than 5 hours of sleep...

(typepad is acting up and won't let me un-underline!)

What is this?

Pirates booty, dried apricots, almonds, raisins, Staccato Gelato donut holes, peanut butter crackers, plums, watermelon, cantaloupe, cereal bars, peanut butter bars, pasta with tomatoes and cheese, bagels with peanut butter and jelly, Annie's snack mix, pretzels, carrots, cucumbers, fruit leather, Newman's own chocolate sandwich cookies, jack cheese sticks, sliced turkey...

a) a weeks worth of groceries from New Seasons
b) a care package for a unit of soldiers serving in Iraq
c) the food Mama packed for a 5-hour plane ride

If you answered c., you were correct.

And even with all that, the flight was very very long.

Summer - Day One

The first day of Summer(maybe not according to the official calendar, but according to our family calendar, as the day before both Ezra and Andrew finished the school year) was marked by a boy's hike in The Gorge.

And for dinner, we had an awesome black bean salad with spinach from our first CSA box. I am so looking forward to the long sweet summer ahead.