Christmas Cookies

Today L and I baked some Christmas cookies. The last couple of years I have baked a sweet that is traditionally Christmas to me once a week leading up to Christmas. We then enjoy the baking all week and put some away to have at Christmas. We eats sweets all the time anyway so why bake something else earlier and expect to eat all of the “Christmas baking” in the few days that we are around here over Christmas itself. The cookies although tasty do not have a Martha Stewart appearance, though they might be good enough for the “Family Fun” magazine. We definitely had fun making them.


At the beginning L had fun with the sprinkles and seeing happy faces take shape, but in the end it was more immediately satisfying just to eat the candy and the little bits of cookie dough that mom let him have.

Puddles, Curious George and Sewing

I am so glad that Lowell has handed his starred paper in, not just because he is around a little more, but for now the stress level has decreased. Lowell’s paper was due Friday but I had to work Thursday and Friday nights, so Lowell had to babysit as well. Desperate times call for desperate measures so L got to watch alot of TV. Friday morning after I woke up L and I went for a walk in the rain to burn some energy (I needed him to nap in the afternoon). We had a great time.

Curious George came to Barnes n’ Noble on Saturday. He is one of L’s favourite characters so we made a trip there Saturday. L seemed quite thrilled to see George, as long as he was free to observe from ontop of Dad’s shoulders.

Today I did some sewing. L was quite content to sit beside me and work on his own projects, today he was fascinated with the scissors. Since he is the only kid around and I do have a blunt pair of scissors L got to practise opening and closing and cutting paper. Once he got over the fact that cut paper can’t go back together he had fun.


I was actually working on a little backpack for L. I wear a backpack often and L has started tucking a rectangular piece of wood into his waistband and calling it his backpack. Well I thought I could do better than that; I recycled a pair of ripped jeans and found some Thomas the Tank Engine fabric from Helen in my fabric drawer. Many thanks to Helen for passing along your “scraps”, one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.

He was very excited! The plan is to put it away until Christmas, hopefully he doesn’t look around for it tomorrow morning.

Observation From Last Night’s Election

No matter what your political views are, you have to appreciate the significance of what happened last night. In a country where African Americans have experienced at least two centuries of varying degrees of mistreatment, having an African American attain America’s highest political office is a hugely significant event. What brought this home for me were two scenes that were shown after Obama had finished his post-election speech. One was a shot of Oprah and one was a shot of Jesse Jackson; both had tears streaming down their cheeks. I found myself getting all choked-up. Not because I’m particularly fond of either of them or have an emotional connection to them, but because their tears seemed to be tangible evidence that something big was going on behind the scenes, namely, healing. I had the same reaction this summer when I was working in the backyard and overheard Harper’s public apology to the First Nations Peoples for the whole Residential Schools affair. Neither Harper’s apology nor Obama’s win signaled an end to First Nations or African American issues, but I do think that they accomplished something of nearly seismic proportions: they made it possible for the respective issues to move to the next stage in the resolution and healing process. Perhaps they signaled the beginning of the end of these issues.

Too Biggy!

L was looking through the photo album this morning and came across the photo of baby L sleeping in the laundry basket. I am doing laundry so the basket is out and L putting two and two together climbed into the laundry basket, requested his blanket and declared that he was too biggy.


It doesn’t seem like he could have ever been that small.

One Step Closer

I’m one step closer to being ABD–‘ABD’ stands for ‘All But Dissertation’, which refers to one’s status as a graduate student when one has completed all the requirements for one’s PhD except the dissertation. On Monday I passed my Area Exam, a 1.5-hour grilling, conducted by three faculty members, on about twenty books or papers relevant to my anticipated thesis topic. My Area Exam Committee worked me pretty hard, but I said enough of the right things for them to give me a passing grade. Woot!

19,747 steps

I fear that we may have been a little hard on poor Gam’ma. If I am correct, on her arrival here, she was happy to say that she had once walked 10,000 steps in one day. Well we then made her walk 11,000 steps and then the next day 12,000 steps. Yesterday she was a really good sport and managed 19,000+ steps. Most of those should have counted double since they were up hill and down hill.

So three cheers for Gam’ma!

The Keystone Arches

Last year, at about this time, Aunt Ivy came to visit. While she was out, we went to see some old railway bridges in western Massachusetts. Today, we decided to show the same bridges to Grandma and Grandpa.

Hmmm. How far is the drop on the other side of this rock wall?

If Grandma needs to poke the ground with sticks when she walks, then I should try it too.


Visitors From Home

On Saturday, nearly a week ago, we went to the airport to pick up Grandma and Grandpa. Since then, we’ve been playing tour guide. We’ve taken lots of pictures, but, unfortunately, we haven’t been blogging to keep up with the pictures we’ve taken. Here’s a sampling.

The fall foliage at Old Sturbridge Village.

The New England Aquarium. If you look closely, you’ll see L doing his best imitation of the penguin swim.

A lighthouse on Cape Ann.


A beach near Ipswich, MA.

When I have bad dreams…

How’s this for some personal information. When Pam has bad dreams, they usually involve a bull. It chases her around and she can never run fast enough. When I have bad dreams, they usually involve great big grizzly bears. I am planting trees by myself in some far corner of the block or I’m camping alone in the woods or I’m hiking with Pam and L and a bear shows up. You can imagine the rest of the dream: running…running…nooooo…running…etc. (I’d be interested to hear a dream expert’s take on these dreams.)

Given the nature of my bad dreams, this guy is now my hero. I will try to emulate him the next time I have a bad dream. Wow!