Monday, October 22, 2012

Finish with a Flourish

   Every once in awhile, as a parent, you have a moment of clarity so bright and so clear that all those around you can see... that you're totally insane.  But fear not!  It is clarity nonetheless, and you shouldn't shrink from it simply because, as Jonathan Swift put so succinctly, "When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."  By this token at least, Rachel and I should be hailed as such for orchestrating one of the great martial arts performances of our era.




Here are the little madmen training for it in secret!!


    The scene was somewhat unremarkable: We were sitting in church at the very end of the service, battling it out with Knight #1  and trying to find Knight #2, who has a nasty habit of disappearing when you look away at Knight #1.  The final processional hymn was sounding and the officiants (priests and such) had just finished walking out of the sanctuary, which meant that it was time for the organ postlude.  No church that I have ever attended before had an organ postlude;  it actually reminds me of 1700s Germany when Bach would compose a new one every week for his congregation in Hamburg.  It's amazing.  The swells of the deep pipes resonate all around and the glory of God is nearly palpable as the music of heaven seems to draw near... or would if we could hear much more than Elijah yammering, "I'm hungry; I'm so very very hungry..." and Judah crawling into someone's leg two pews ahead of us.


                                          
                              More secret training videos released!!! Watch out for 'crazy eyes Duj'!



      And then... divine clarity!  I grabbed Judah, who was closest to me, and started his little limbs punching and kicking to the crescendo of Vivaldi.  Elijah looked up just as Judah flipped over his head Matrix-style and took a little kick himself as Rachel flew him into the sky.  They chopped; they blocked; they back-flipped with sheer giggly delight as the organist's fingers flew faster and faster.  By the time Crouching Elijah had laid out Hidden Judah with one final double-spin roundhouse, it seemed fire was coming from the organ.  And still they danced, hovering with limber motions as they flew over and under and through one another.  It was a truly transcendent moment-- it was untainted delight, probably more for me than for them.  I go to church often hoping for the presence and touch of God, but I will admit that I did not expect to find it in a spontaneous karate match set to a backdrop of pipe organ-induced splendor. Mysterious ways indeed!


           




   

Thursday, October 18, 2012

B(re)aking Bread... or The Knights Learn a New Trade, Part 2


So one of the new joys in my life (previously alluded to) is baking with the boys.  It's one of the few things that we can all do together and then enjoy the fruits of our labor before Elijah and Judah have forgotten that we even made it.

     What makes it so uniquely delightful is just HOW into it they are.  Almost every recipe we make begins with that wonderful line "Grease a (9 inch round, Bundt, 9x13, apoplectic, etc.) pan lightly and flour it."  This takes ten minutes, mainly because the boys have to a) sprint to their respective chairs, b) hammer on each other for a couple minutes until one of them gets control of the shortening can, c) put about 1000 calories worth of pure lard down in the pan before yours truly realizes that there may a little more grease than necessary, d) giggle their tiny heads off at my ineptitude, and e) take five minutes of scrubbing down to rid their hands of all the slime.


                                 

    Another thing that I have to gauge before we start is Elijah's mood-- if he's well-rested and helpful, than I can generally recruit him to help with the more mundane tasks while I do some of the more difficult ones.  However, if he only seems rested and is instead latently aggressive, then things like this can happen:

          Micah:  Hey LJ, would you help me put some of the cocoa powder (in what is not a Freudian slip, I typed 'coca powder' the first draft and just now noticed it... thank God for editors) into the cake batter?

          Elijah:  Sure thing, Dad.  (takes a massive pile of cocoa powder on his little tablespoon scoop)

          Micah:  Not quite so much, please.  (reaches for the scoop)

         Elijah:  NO!  Don't take it!  (flings cocoa powder high in the air)


    By the time it settled, we all three (including a confused-looking Judah) looked like old-school vaudevillians.

                           
      (Here's the boys checking out the new possibilities for baking -- "Judah, so you think we can make a chicken pot pie?"
)
      After a few weeks, though, we had really become a well-greased machine (sorry, couldn't resist), turning out spectacular cakes, cookies and pastries of all kinds.  I knew we had arrived when we made a little something for our friends who came over on a weeknight, just to show you how cool they are.  Anyone who visits small children on a weeknight deseves kudos in my book.  As we unveiled the cake, our friend looked at the cake.  "Is that ganache?"  she said.

      "Yup," I said.  "The boys and I just threw it together.  You know."  Proudest moment of my life... well. almost.


        Considering that pride generally cometh before the really big falls, I shouldn't have been surprised that the next time, making a very similar cake, Elijah asked if we could all crack the eggs.  He's really good at this, so I said, "Sure. I'll help Judah do the first two, and then you can finish."  Two eggs down, and Elijah stepped to the plate.  He made a neat crack on the side, and the egg was ready to be dropped into the bowl with its brethren.  Except he squeezed the shell instead of pulling it away, which meant that the yolk shot free and slid halfway down the table, where Judah grabbed for it, while crumbly pieces of the shell shattered and slid into the batter.  Mission accomplished, Elijah looked at me in a slight panic.  "Daddy," he said in his breathless voice that generally means he's about to freak out, "don't let Judah ruin the egg!"





       And that's why if we made the same cake fifty times, it would taste different every time.  But we have more fun... or at least less sanity.  Pick your poison, right?    

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Knights Learn a New Trade (Part 1)

-- or, why I've only lost five pounds in spite of taking three months off from blogging to train intensely for a half marathon :)


        So, to try and update you on three months of life in three sentences:  1)  I trained feverishly for a half-marathon and got within seven seconds of my goal at 1:45:07, which was 11 minutes faster than I had ever ran one before, but simultaneously got hooked on Glee, because apparently you run faster listening to pop music; 2) Elijah and Judah grew up (a lot! especially Judah, who is well on his way to being a young sportsman-- ball is one of two words he says really well... the other! "COOKIEEEE!");  and 3)  Rachel started watching a little boy who lives down the street here and there and picked up a third night at the office.

         The third is actually the most significant, at least to our way of life.  At first I blamed Rachel for taking it until she gently reminded me that I had encouraged her to do it (true) and that it might be that I just don't handle change very well (TRUE), so I dropped that argument.  But while two hours on a solitary night really isn't bad at all, for some reason it sparked a mentality change in me.  No longer were these three knights biding time on Monday and Wednesday evenings waiting for our Queen to come back and dazzle us with her presence; no, now we were on our own.  We ARE the night crew.  And with that mentality, we became scary-- or scary good.  I can't tell.




         At first, we started jousting training.  It didn't really work; I was always the dragon, and I ALWAYS ended up dead with two boys jumping on my (ahem) lower abdomen, giggling their heads off.  As I wouldn't mind the possibility of having more children in the future, we decided to try something else.      


      We tried running, which led to Elijah competing in his first real race (and some of the cutest pictures of him ever)...

   



 This was right near the finish of his little 1k -- he got up the big hill, looked down at the finish line and saw the people, and, in what is so typically LJ, got a huge grin and started sprinting...
               

                                 

....  but the crummy thing is that (at least here in New England) you can't really run in the dark with two cranky young knights/ ninjas in the winter.  Little dogs everywhere would have to flee in terror with these two   around.




     So, we were down to our last resort: something that could be done inside, with no real time commitments,  and something to show for our efforts at the end.  Baking!  (We decided against lobsters because these two were far too enthusiastic about playing with 'Larry the Lobster' before his demise, and there was some speculation that Elijah might try and hide him somewhere...)

       In our next installment (within a couple days), you'll get to see why (in our house, at least) baking is still a full-contact sport...