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Anecdotes

Sleep Laughing

July 28, 2015 by Sue Campbell

In the hammockYesterday around two in the afternoon, when the shade fell on the hammock, I told Nora it was reading time. She’d been wanting to read George Brown, Class Clown with me.

Baby Alma was cradled into my left arm and Nora gave us a push. The swinging of the hammock almost always puts Alma to sleep.

Nora’s seventy pound body was wedged into Alma’s stroller. (Partly because she thinks it’s funny and partly because I broke her lawn chair a few weeks ago when she made it part of an obstacle course and was timing me to run it.)

Nora was giggling, I can’t remember if it was from the book, or sitting in the stroller or what. But suddenly there was a baby laugh in my left ear.

The first baby laugh.

Alma smiles all the time. She smiles more easily and joyfully than Nora did. But so far, her giggle has not quite been there.

I looked down. Her eyes were closed.

She was giggling in her half-sleep state.

“Nora, do you hear that?” I said, “She’s sleep-laughing!”

This made Nora laugh more, which made Alma laugh more, and now she was awake. It was obvious: her big sister’s laugh delighted her.

Nora crawled in the hammock, licking my arm to make me shriek, which made her laugh, which made Alma giggle.

It was one of those moments — right when it’s happening, you know it will evaporate at any second.

I wanted it to last forever. Like when I was a kid and my mom would tickle me with her long fingernails and I could barely stand it — but would beg for more if she stopped.

Finally, the giggling subsided, with Nora and I lying back, happy drunk on the baby’s laughter.

Filed Under: Anecdotes Tagged With: babies, hammock, milestones

Pancake Fight

July 26, 2015 by Sue Campbell

It’s just before 8 a.m. and Nora and I are fighting about pancakes.

My offer to make bacon and eggs was politely declined by Ben and Nora. They are sick of bacon and eggs.

“What else can we make?” Ben asked.

“I can make almond butter and banana pancakes,” I said. We have a nice, ripe banana.

“They’re not almond butter pancakes,” Nora said, making a face. “I use almond flour.”

And thus begins the bickering. I want to use a solid recipe: banana, eggs and almond butter in known ratios. Nora wants to use the recipe she invented, almond flour, banana, eggs — and feel her way through the measurements.

Left to myself, I could knock out these pancakes in less then 15 minutes. Allowing Nora to do it herself means I don’t know how long it will take and I can’t be sure of the results. I just want a fucking pancake.

I’ve been up since 5 a.m. I couldn’t get back to sleep after nursing the baby and peeing, so the baby and I got up.

I drank the last of yesterday’s afternoon pot of coffee, changed Alma’s diaper and made faces at her for a while. I worked on my article for Prevention magazine that’s due soon.

I’m not in bad shape, or so I thought. The rims of my eyelids are not burning. I am not nauseous.

I start looking up recipes and Nora looks over my shoulder.

“That recipe only has four and a half stars. Mine has five and a half,” she says.

I relent. She can make the pancakes. I don’t have the energy to negotiate a compromise. I interfere just enough to get a quarter teaspoon of baking soda in there.

I signal to Ben, who is rocking the baby, that I need to speak to him in the other room.

“I must be either more tired than I realize or not getting enough time to do my work, because this pancake thing is making me crazy.” After an abbreviated work/life integration discussion, he agrees to take the girls somewhere for a full hour and half later today. Even though it’s Sunday and I’ve agreed not to work on Sundays.

Walking back to the kitchen I hear Nora saying to no one in particular, “I love to watch the butter melt.”

How could my petulance not subside after hearing that?

Ten minutes later I am eating one of the best pancakes I’ve ever had. It’s nutty and sweet and firm.

 

Nora + PancakesNora’s Banana Almond Pancakes (as dictated to me after breakfast)

2 large eggs

1 ripe banana

1 big pinch salt

1-1/2 cups almond flour (or almond meal)

1/4 tsp. baking soda

Butter for the pan

Take out two medium mixing bowls. Put 1-1/2 cups almond flour in a bowl. Add a large pinch of salt. Into the other bowl, crack two large eggs. Then mush up a banana in a separate bowl. Then whisk the mushed banana and the eggs together. Put a quarter teaspoon of baking soda in the dry bowl. Then whisk up the dry bowl so someone doesn’t get a big hunk of baking soda or salt in their pancake. Put an eighth of the flour mixture into the egg bowl and whisk until combined. Sprinkle in more flour until it feels the right consistency, whisking in between each addition. You might not use all the flour. It will be a little thicker than a normal pancake batter.

Heat the stovetop to medium and drop in a pat of butter. Put a half cup of the batter in the pan. Stay by the stove and peek under sometimes to see if golden brown. When crispy and browned, flip. When other side crispy and brown, put on a  plate and eat with syrup, butter or anything you’d like. Continue this process. You’ll probably get about four pancakes out of it. It’s not hard to double the recipe.

Filed Under: Anecdotes, Recipe

A Lesson in Economics

July 1, 2013 by Sue Campbell

Nora pulls down one of her pink piggy banks and shakes it mercilessly, the coins clanking against the ceramic in a way that makes parents question their decision to have children with arms.

“Hey,” I interrupt, “I’m going to Freddie’s. Do you want to come?”

She nods with raised eyebrows. “I like to look at the art supplies there.”

Trying to head off the inevitable requests for me to buy glitter, I say, “Why don’t you bring some of the money from your piggy bank and you can buy something for yourself?”

“Okay!”

We talk about how much money to bring. Two dollars may not be enough to get something good, but twenty dollars would be spending too much of her savings at once. We settle on ten dollars.

Over ninety degrees outside, we are sitting in pools of sweat by the time we get to the store. I try to dawdle in the garden section, but she grabs me by the hand saying, “Can I lead you to the water section?”

I think she’s hot and wants to buy a bottle of water.

Oh no.

We go straight to the water toy aisle.

Nora is obsessed with water balloons. They bring together so many of her favorite things: rainbow colors, bathing suits and shrieking.

Fred Meyer sells a blue plastic bucket of water balloons and two fillers that connect to a garden hose. She spotted it one day while we were shopping for floaties and goggles. She’s talked about it for a solid month.

She points to the bucket. Six hundred water balloons in a gallon bucket. Six hundred.

“It’s 12.99 and you only brought $10.00.”

She gives my hand a squeeze and says quietly, “I could use all my money and you could help me a little.”

I have flash back to every time I mercilessly manipulated my mother into buying me plastic shit. It takes several moments.

“Let me see this thing,” I say, picking it up; pretending to inspect it for value.

Six hundred water balloons.

Once popped, this means the potential for 1200 little schnitzels of colored plastic littering my backyard.

I look into her expectant little face. “Okay,” I said. “But you have to carry the bucket through the store yourself.”

“I want to carry it,” she beams.

Examining her treasure on the ride home, she blurts, “Hey, they are trying to trick kids! There’s a big hunk of cardboard board in here with pictures of water balloons that aren’t really water balloons.”

“Yeah, but it tells you right on the package that there are six hundred. They just want to make the container look full and un-inflated balloons don’t take up much space in a big bucket.”

“Well, they’re trying to trick kids.”

“They’ll do that,” I say. In my head, I am beginning to formulate an economics slash marketing-to-kids-lecture to keep at the ready.

Later, as I weed the flower beds, she fills water balloons and loads them into her hammock. As she does, she explains that this hammock is her water balloon shop and if I want to participate in a water fight, I’ll need to pay a dollar per balloon, “And it has to be real dollars, mom.”

Six hundred water balloons.

There’s also a class I can take to learn how to fill water balloons, and then a next level course where I learn how to make the balloons themselves. With those skills, there could be job opportunities for me in her water balloon shop.

I wonder if she offers an employee discount, so I don’t have to pay a dollar per balloon.

 

Filed Under: Anecdotes

Three Legged Dog Sleeping Arrangments

February 17, 2012 by sue campbell

First night after surgery: the living room floor.
Second night after surgery: the 4-year-old's mattress on the floor.
Sleep deprivation.
Third night after surgery.

Filed Under: Anecdotes Tagged With: osteosarcoma, sometime you just need to draw it, tripod dog

Weird Like Me

January 23, 2012 by sue campbell

When I was a kid, I’d stare down the stop light from the back seat of the car and will it to turn from red to green. And it always did. I also made cats run away from me and dogs bark. Basically, I controlled my surroundings with my mind.

Nora did several things this weekend that reminded me of other weird stuff I did as a kid — or thought I was doing.

She put a cup over her mouth and then sucked hard enough to keep it there. Classic.

She stuck the straw from her apple juice on her one of her teeth like a fang. Love that.

Best of all was the Target parking lot. We used the main cross walk to approach the store. A car approached us, then took a right rather than wait for us to cross. Nora said, “That car was coming too close to us, so I made it turn.”

“I know you did, honey,” I said. “I know you did.”

Filed Under: Anecdotes

Let it Snow

January 18, 2012 by sue campbell

We went to Minnesota for Christmas this year. There was not enough slow for sledding. There was not even enough snow for a snowball. We were hoping to make some memories by sledding and ice skating, but it was not to be.

So, imagine Nora’s joy when big fat flakes began to fall in Portland on Monday. It didn’t last long, but it was long enough to catch a few flakes on her tongue and scrape all the hard surfaces to collect enough for a snowball.

A snowball which now safely resides in our freezer.

 

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Filed Under: Anecdotes

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What kind of blog is this?

This is a blog for PARENTS. True, the writer, Sue Campbell, writes books for kids. But this blog is for grown-ups. It has some swearing and would be super boring for kids. Except for the swearing.

The PODCAST is for KIDS and PARENTS. In fact, my twelve-year-old daughter is my co-host.

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MORE ABOUT SUE: She makes an ACTUAL LIVING from writing words and marketing books and lives with her husband, two daughters, six chickens and one messy house rabbit in Portland, Oregon. And yes, Portland IS that weird. She really couldn't be any luckier.

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