Rhythm and Canoes

Earlier this week we set out on a little adventure to meet up with some friends at the Eiteljorg. We went straight to the interactive section of the museum to play store and stagecoach.


We also found something new that struck my little ones' fancies this time. Instruments. Each took their turn striking a chord on their instrument of choice. After a lunch break, our friends left and Audrey asked to stay. We had a little time, so I asked if she wanted to head back downstairs to play. "No. I want to see the exhibits," she said.


Since we had to pass a totem pole on our way to the exhibits, we began there. I explained that every totem pole tells a story and read her the story of this one about a young man who saves his starving village by killing a sea monster and wearing the monster's magical skin to catch fish. Then, to my surprise, when I asked which section of the museum she wanted to walk through she chose the contemporary art.


We began with this installation, Wach-Nee (Canoe Form) by Truman Lowe. The piece is supposed to create the feeling of being underwater as a canoe passes overhead. As Audrey led me from exhibit to exhibit, we wove our own story of walking underwater and the things we would see and feel beneath our toes.


She stopped at each exhibit, asking me to read about each one until I told her we had to go, and promised to bring her back. Once home, I handed her a piece of paper and asked her to draw her story. Like all stories, it changed from the original telling, and the retelling in the car, and by the time it found its way to paper and crayon, it had been reborn into something new - the only detail that remained being that the bottom of the body of water was a layer of rocks rather than sand or mud. Story recorded, we moved on to the adventures that lay in wait, as all of us with a story do.



(Audrey and I are the two figures with the crazy hair standing at the side of the water. Yes, in this version of the story we are no longer in the water. Why? Well, that little figure outlined in blue on the right-hand side of the paper would be a shark. I'm not really sure how we transitioned from walking barefoot in a freshwater creek with minnows to standing at the side of some water scared of a shark, but there you have it. As for all the blue ovals? Those would be the rocks. Stories change. Rocks are forever.)

Preparing for the Storm

An ice storm is underway. The compost bin was already coated with a slick glaze when I took a bowl of vegetable scraps and egg shells out to it at five o' clock. The fire place is roaring and dinner was topped off with cups of hot chocolate. Grocery store parking lots masqueraded as the day before Thanksgiving with customers packing their carts with bread, eggs, and milk en lieu of turkey and stuffing. We spent our afternoon preparing for the storm in a different way (don't worry Mom, I grabbed my bread, eggs, and milk yesterday). We piled in the car and drove to a new (to us) museum. We wandered about the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, checking out a wigwam and teepee (which Audrey was very disappointed to find stowed safely behind a security rail) and running about the interactive lower level between sod house, Chinese general store, and stage coach. Somewhere among the museum's dress up gear, Audrey ran across a carpet bag, which she filled with all the available food in the general store before boarding the stage coach with the one other family in that section of the museum (with three little boys, one sharing Nate's exact birthday). As they "traveled" to California, she pulled out snacks for everyone to eat along the way. It seems that food preparations were on everyone's minds. We took our time, playing and lingering, getting in one last out-and-about adventure before the storm drew us in.

Audrey has finally shed her apron from helping me make risotto for dinner. Nathan is pulling himself up, knees first, into Audrey's rocking chair near the fire as Jason and Audrey snuggle at the hearth. In the background, Christmas music plays (yes, Christmas) from a cd we just received in the mail of our dear and talented friend, Katie Ott. Somehow, with the sleet pricking the windows and each of us tired from a day of adventures behind us, the harp strings and cozy winter ballads feel just right.

Flowers for Audrey...and Ducks

I'm still catching up on a bit of computer time this week, which means it's Wednesday and I'm still posting about the weekend. But it would be a bit remiss of me to not include a few pictures of a little stroll we took on Saturday, because, well just look at those flowers, would you? Saturday we found ourselves downtown returning some ill-fitting shoes. Like any parents of an outdoorsy almost-four-year-old (sheesh!) we decided to take advantage of our surroundings (and the ridiculous summery weather) and dawdle along the very oddly-hued Kool-Aid red canal. Audrey soon made friends with a stoic woolly mammoth and some much more expressive (or at least mobile) goldfish. But her real attachment came when she found a row of black-eyed susans. Faster than a mama can say, those flowers don't belong to us, a sprig was plucked and popped into her hair Daisy-Head Mayzie style. Where they stayed. Until some ducks came along and she tore her sprig in half and tried to share (you can just make out the head of the flower cupped in her hand in the last photo). I thought I'd pass them along to you, just in case you're having a flowers-in-your-hair sort of Wednesday.

(As for the shirt she's wearing, I remember seeing my little sister wearing it in photos taken some twenty-something years ago).

Among the Boats

Wednesday, I made like luggage and accompanied Jason in the car on his trip to Chicago. He had a presentation to give Thursday morning in a hotel downtown. Audrey was craving some time with her Grammy. Nate took his big sister's lead. I took a night off. I spent part of my night with the sailboats hovering along the bank of Lake Michigan, just beyond Lakeshore Drive where I walked hand-in-hand with my handsome husband. Sailboats pull me in like gusts of wind eager to propel them onward, as do window seats like the one I found myself cozying into in our hotel room to gaze upon the city lights, an evening of Mexican food and margaritas, and a walk downtown with one hand in my husband's and the other wrapped around a waffle cone. But no sail is quite as reaching or wind quite as strong as the one that leads us home to the little blond squealing as she opens the door to greet us and her little brother, a bundle of smiles just waiting inside. No fleet of sailboats could keep us away.

Fair Days

Fair days take me back to the age of nine, seeing my first project as a mini 4-Her hanging in the exhibit hall. To gravel roads, striped tents, and pocket change. To straw beneath my feet and a sugary lemon shake-up sweating in my hand. To the one week of summer when my mother didn't cook, but spent the week walking among the exhibits, the animals, friends, and cuisine fried any way you like it. Hot afternoons working the fountains at the Junior Leaders stand, the air dense with natural perfumes: cow pies and damp sawdust. Men's voices quick and loud like auctioneers. Girls in sashes handing out blue ribbons. Midway lights and brightly painted rides, one shaped like a saucer with a steering wheel inside that one high school summer Jason spun so fast, I thought the world (and my stomach) might never go straight again. Our evening last call as the family gathered each night at the Jaycee tent (no need to be told) for one last fresh waffle cone (mine always mint chocolate chip, make it a double) before finding the car, and our pillows, and doing it all over again.

I Heart Masa

I ate tamales for the first time in Carbondale, Illinois, in a little place ironically called The Corner Diner. I'm guessing their cuisine didn't always lean toward border. But the chef had lived briefly in Mexico and (in an exquisite use of his time) learned how to cook authentic Mexican dishes, tamales included. I became in instant fan. We moved to Virginia. Then we moved to Indiana. I never ate a real tamale again. Until last night.

Last week, one of Jason's coworkers introduced him to The Tamale Place. Yesterday, Jason payed the tamale goodness forward and introduced them to me. Husband and wife team, Vladimir Ronces and Angela Green met in Mexico while Angela was backpacking in Acapulco. Together with her mother, they make authentic Mexican dishes, using mostly his mother's recipes. The masa is fresh, made daily in the restaurant and turned into tamales, taco shells, and tortilla chips. They open at 6:30 am and close at 6 pm or whenever they run out of tamales, because when the masa runs out, the masa runs out.

I love a backpacking love story, especially when it leads to a so-good-you-want-to-stuff-yourself-til-it-hurts dinner for me. Come on, who doesn't love a dinner that comes wrapped like a present? If you're local to the Indy area, you'll have to give them a try. Tell them I sent you. It won't do anything for you, but maybe they'll start giving free tamales to me. Just kidding. Sort of.

Scavenger Hunt

Since Audrey is off playing with a friend, Nate and I decided to check out a little antique shop we often pass, hoping to find that perfect birthday dress-up trunk.


I can't help but stop when I see a pile of quilts and think about the hours - planning, sewing, snuggling, fort-constructing - stacked within that cupboard. And marvel at the beauty built into each stitch, each well-crafted moment.




If the price tag hadn't made me set this impressive red engine back down ever so carefully, I might think that this truck belongs under our Christmas tree.




My favorite find in the entire store was this very round-handled rolling pin. Such a good weight in my hands and soft against my palms. Had I been shopping for me, this would have found a home in our kitchen.

And finally, tucked into the last corner of the store, we found this - purchased by the owner just last week. It's fancy. Mighty, mighty fancy. Maybe a little too fancy for a trunk that I'm hoping gets approached and used with wreckless abandon. But you never know...

Colors of the Season?

This is not our typical December. By now, my world is usually a blur of white, the clang of Salvation Army bells ringing in my ears as I rush from aisles to lines to cars to a house of wrapping paper, desperately trying to remember what I've forgotten (because surely, I've forgotten something). As much as I love the details of December: the reason for celebration; family coming together; the stillness of a first snow, the child-like flurry of activity it elicits, and appreciation of a warm house that follows; neighbors making the ordinary extraordinary with a sprinkling of well-placed lights and garland; and the perfect excuse to guzzle gallons of hot chocolate, something about the season always feels a bit too rushed. I will tell you a secret. Christmas is not my favorite holiday. I get a little too distracted by it all. In the past few years, I've tried to simplify things a bit: make more gifts and avoid more lines, limit the travel.

But this year, simplifying Christmas has taken on a whole new bent. Travel has become very limited (due to a concerned doctor and family members who don't want me too stray too far from the hospital); some handmade gifts were made in advance and the other gifts were handled with a "striving for the best we could manage" rather than a "stressing to find the best possible" attitude. The Christmas cards may or may not get finished in time. The frequent strong kicks to my abdomen remind me that this little one is so near, and he's brought our focus home in a way it hasn't been in Decembers past. And so, Christmas is coming along like it does every year: the tree is decorated, the lights are out, the gifts are wrapped, but, this year, it is coming on a softer current as we prioritize a bit differently.

Yesterday, those priorities led us to the zoo. Audrey had mentioned wanting to go that morning. After a couple errands and a check-up with my doctor, I steered the car away from the other items on my to-do list and downtown toward the zoo. Although overcast, the day had pulled off a balmy 46 degrees. The zoo belonged to us, and maybe a dozen others. As we walked, the absence of winter white was clear. Christmas decorations poked out of dry leaves, the pavement covered by the yet to be evaporated rain. And at every turn, we were greeted with pops of yellow. Which somehow, in this unusual December on what could be one of my last single dates with my favorite gal, seemed just about right.

*Oh, and for those of you wondering - that favorite holiday of mine? It's the Fourth of July. Strawberries, blueberries, an evening that ends in fireworks, and the good fortune to spend most of mine near the water - what's not to like?

Walk With Heart

This weekend we laced up our tennis shoes to participate in the 2009 Indianapolis Start! Heart Walk as a family. The event supports the American Heart Association, with a goal of saving lives that would be cut short by heart disease or stroke. (This is Audrey post-walk, performing a celebratory walk-completion dance - I wish the picture showed her wiggling - armed with her Heart Walk bag and half-eaten banana).

The Heart Walk is a low-key charity event that the three of us can do together. And, it gets us downtown.

So after a little morning exercise/fund-raising, we lazed around the canal,

taking in the sites,

each in our own way.

Have Water? Will Dance.

(sprinklers courtesy of Indianapolis Zoo; dance moves all her own)

If Audrey's second year had a subtitle, it would read "Just add water." Pools, bathtubs, sprinklers, hoses for watering, kitchen sinks, a simple bucket - you name it - add water and she's jubilant as only a toddler knows how to be. It might start with the tapping of a toe or extension of her arms, but soon it leads to a running leap or full-blown dance, Elaine Benis-style. The kind you do when no one is watching. The kind that makes you laugh at yourself and others laugh with you. I keep waiting for this water thing to be a phase that she tires of, like so many things introduced in year two. But it's stuck, and I'm glad. As I've gotten older there are a few precious activities that I have never outgrown. That make me smile. That make me dance, if only on the inside. And maybe, just maybe she's found one of her own.

Things That Made Me Smile Today

:: Her adventuresome spirit.



:: Time spent with dear friends and the unexpected learning environments they introduce.

:: This one's inextinguishable curiosity.

:: Full-blown magnolia blossoms in a bed of green waxy leaves.

:: A perfect breeze,

:: And someone to share it with.