Fourteen years

This week at Inside Higher Ed I am reflecting on a few of the changes I've seen in the last fourteen years. Why fourteen years? Because it was Nick's birthday yesterday!

Eleven

So Nick is now, I guess, a tween. He starts middle school in the fall, and was recently heard to announce that he's "practically a teenager." Since it is one of my great happinesses in life that I will not be parenting two teenagers at once, I have quashed this notion thoroughly. Nonetheless it's true that he's a tween.

This summer he has:

1. been to France
2. eaten an oyster
3. learned stop-motion animation
4. lost a tooth (another one is hanging on by a thread...)
5. learned to unload the dishwasher
6. gotten used to having his sister as a chauffeur
7. swum in the Mediterranean
8. made pancakes for the family without a "tedium monkey"
9. gotten well into the second guitar book
10. grown from below my shoulder-height to well above it
11. turned eleven.

Happy Birthday, Nick!

Birthday Girl

laughing at us for thinking a book would help...


playing dress-up (still a favorite occupation)



sleeping (not a favorite occupation for many years, but she's good at it now)



first school picture

Almost

Mariah was almost born in 1990. We thought she would be; everyone said so. Her due date was January 8, then it was January 5 (I never understood why it changed, but it did), and everyone said first babies were late, and we were heartily sick of the 80s (the ME Decade, right?), so we thought that was fine. (Later we realized about the tax deduction, but that was later.)

So 18 years ago today, I went to the doctor for my 38th-week of pregnancy checkup. I'd had my appendix out at about 29 weeks and had been briefly reclassified as a "high risk" pregnancy, but I'd healed nicely and was back with my regular doctor at the regular time. He checked me out and all was well. He left the room at one point--maybe the checkup was over and I was supposed to be getting dressed? I don't remember--and when I stood up my water broke.

And that was that. Someone got some towels, someone else got a wheelchair, and I was headed to the OB ward to have a baby. Never mind that I wasn't in labor; this was a big fancy teaching hospital and they didn't let people break their water on their premises and then just leave. (The doctor was a resident who saw me in the family clinic in the basement of the hospital--and yes, it was just as nice as that implies. Still, for grad student health care, it was pretty plush.) I was whisked through the emergency room and up to OB...to wait. We made a few phone calls, noted that OB was a nicer place when you weren't there for an emergency appendectomy, and waited some more.

And about 15 hours, plenty of drugs, and one blown-up surgical glove later (Mark drew a face on it to amuse me), Mariah arrived. And tomorrow she'll register to vote.

Happy (Almost) Birthday, Mariah! Welcome to adulthood!

Update

Mark and I will have been married twenty years in early September. A month or so ago we realized there was no way to get a vacation in together then, as he'll be just starting the new semester in a new job. And the kids will be back in school. So we decided to take a long weekend together alone, and that was last weekend. We went to Asheville, NC (and we'll go back--it was great!), we went whitewater rafting, we ate fabulous food, and we generally had a great time. We hadn't been away alone together in fifteen years (not counting a conference or two, since those aren't vacations). We've decided not to wait another fifteen years.

Mariah is away for a week at her annual songfest with PII (People International, Inc.). She will live in a hotel with a group of kids and adults who come together annually to sing, dance, talk, laugh, eat, and put on a show for charity. So far the text messages suggest that all is well.

Nick's birthday party was yesterday. He did, as promised, bake his own cake--a crazy cake with buttercream frosting (I made the frosting). He frosted the cake and sketched in the designs, which I then (rather inexpertly) applied. As far as we could tell, everyone liked it.

And now Nick is off to camp for five days, leaving tomorrow morning. The house will feel very empty. But Mark starts work this week as well so it's a good time for a little peace and quiet.

Ten for Ten

1. Nick turns ten today.

2. Ten years ago I missed two weddings because I was pregnant with (or giving birth to!) him. This summer, he's been to two weddings.

3. In the last year he's earned a black belt in tae kwon do, a spot on a dance team, and a pretty good chunk of change at his lemonade stand. (Currently on hiatus.)

4. He's going to his first sleep-away camp next week, after recently making it through his first "weekend with a friend so your parents can leave town."

5. His birthday party will be Saturday, and he insists on baking his own cake for it.

6. When he was only a year old he came in second in a "most photogenic baby" contest. (Yes, that's the picture.) I'm not sure he knows this.

7. He's got a great smile, a bit of a temper, a terrific hug, and an insistent eye for mistakes, misspellings, typos, contradictions…

8. He's read all seven Harry Potter books. Today he said he didn't think he'd read them again, but I'm betting he will. He's a big reader and re-reader. At one point he was known to sleep with Bullfinch's Mythology under his pillow.

9. He hates mushy stuff in movies and walked out on Ratatouille for what he called "a weird romance." But Friends was his favorite TV show for years.

10. He's a youngest child with certain first-born characteristics, no doubt because his older sister has until recently seemed more like one of the grownups than an ally. Right now they're off on a kids-only lunchdate.

Happy Birthday, Nick!

one great cake

Here's the cake I baked for Caroline's birthday. It's a very rich, very delicious chocolate layer cake with ganache instead of frosting (and then candied flowers, just because). I got it from a cookbook I picked up at the library: Dave's Dinners, by Dave Lieberman. (I live under a rock, so I haven't seen his show on the Food Network, but the book had pretty pictures so I checked it out.)

Here's how you make the cake:

Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 cup whole-milk yogurt (I used 3/4 cup non-fat and 1/4 cup full fat Greek yogurt)
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 350.

Beat the eggs, yogurt, and melted butter together in a large bowl. Add the vanilla, then gradually beat in the sugar.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then mix them into the wet in two steps, alternating with the hot water.

Divide the batter between two greased and floured (or just sprayed with cooking spray) 8 or 9-inch round pans. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes, or until set. (This took about 27 minutes in my oven.) Allow to cool fully.

For the ganache:
Bring one cup heavy cream to a boil in a saucepan. Remove from stove and whisk in 12 oz chopped bittersweet chocolate (Dave used semi-sweet; I had lovely bittersweet callebaut). Whisk until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is thick and creamy. Allow it to cool.

Put one layer on a large plate and pour ganache over it, spreading with a spatula and smoothing to cover sides. Set the other layer on top and repeat. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour before serving.

17 things...

...about Mariah:

1. She laughs when I try to be cool. (She rocks!)

2. She looks great, no matter what color her hair is.

3. She's brave enough to try different hair colors.

4. She gets amazing grades.

5. She's modest about that.

6. She can sing. Like an angel.

7. She finds books for me to read.

8. She reads the books I find for her.

9. She's patient with her brother. Mostly.

10. She's terrific with other people's kids.

11. She's the best babysitter on the block.

12. She loves chocolate almost as much as I do.

13. Nonetheless she can be restrained about it.

14. She has great friends--ones I'm happy to have over as often as they want to come.

15. She seems to be willing to hang out with her parents.

16. She can drive a stick shift.

17. She's seventeen today, and this hardly scratches the surface. Happy Birthday, again!