Interview with What Will Hatch? Illustrator and All-Around Awesome Lady Susie Ghahremani

So, Susie Ghahremani.  Ridiculously talented and prolific artist (as she has been since the AP art class we took together in high school!), proprietress of boygirlparty.com, an adorability emporium offering art, books, jewelry, clothing, prints, and to-do lists that will change your life with their inviting cuteness, among many other things, somehow also a member of the San Diego indie rock band The Bulletins. Ever since I first met her circa 1993 (fact check, Susie?), she’s been the person who knows about all the cool stuff before anyone else. She had a zine before I was totally sure what a zine was, and was chatting online with band members of That Dog like 2 minutes after chatrooms were invented. So it  comes as no surprise to me that everything she makes is beautiful and super cool, and that her first picture book, What Will Hatch? is a total delight.

Written by nature writer Jennifer Ward, this gorgeous book introduces 2-5 year olds to the wonderful world of the oviparous animal. I recently used the book in a little storytelling workshop at Harper’s playschool — after reading the kids the book I gave them each little stacks of cards with illustrations of frog life cycle steps and had them put them in order, color, and title them (Harper’s was “Using Science”). All of which is to say, parents and teachers and people who love art, buy this book!

Thanks to What Will Hatch? we now use the word “oviparous” daily.

Harper loved What Will Hatch? so much that she wanted to learn more, so she asked some questions that I passed along to Susie, who graciously answered!

Why are there holes in the pages? Why do the holes become other things? How did you make those holes that shape?

The holes in the pages are called “die cuts” and they’re there to represent the shape of the egg for each type of animal throughout the book! The holes represent the egg on one page, but when you turn the page, the egg has already hatched, so I made the hole become something else in the next picture!

(I made the holes by obsessively drawing vector curves in InDesign that were output by the printer who fit a metal die to that exact shape…but are you really asking about that, Harper?)

What are those little lines across the pictures?

That is called woodgrain! It is the texture of wood, which is what I painted on for this book.

[Pre-emptive answer to the potential follow-up question: I painted on wood because I liked the idea of using natural materials to represent nature in this book!]

Why is each animal pictured in their habitat? How did you know what the habitats look like?

Each animal is pictured in their habitat because lots of people don’t know what their habitats look like and I thought it would be cool to show them! I didn’t know what the habitats looked like until I researched it!

How did you get the ideas for this book? How did you not change your mind and do something else? What does “else” mean?

The idea for the book came from the author, Jennifer Ward, who wrote it! From there, I just drew what came to my imagination after researching each of the animals. Many times, I did change my mind Else has a few meaning. In the context of “something else”, it would mean something like “something other”, except “something other” sounds weird. Hey, you should ask your mom the writer about this one!

And here’s a question from me, Amy, the grownup: What are you working on next?

I’m on the board for ICON the Illustration Conference which launches July ’14 in Portland, and am beginning to teach. I’m always working on new illustrations and art shows! I have an art show on May 11th in Los Angeles at Leanna Lin’s Wonderland showing my collaboration with my friend Irene on a series of cross-stitch portraits of extinct animals. I’ll be at the opening signing copies of What Will Hatch as well! Then, a Little Golden Books-inspired art show June 28th in Florida curated by my friend Heidi Kenney of My Paper Crane.

[Harper clapped and squealed at the idea of a Little Golden Book art show and I am only slightly worried she will try to run away to see it.]

And here is Harper’s review of the book:

“Kids will like this book. But wait, we still get to keep it right?”

Me:” Yes, but do you think they should get their own copy?”

Harper:” Yes, because I want to keep this one.”

Pretty AND smart.

Be sure to check out Susie’s site boygirlparty.com! Just be prepared to find yourself inventing reasons to buy tons of lovely notepaper and necklaces and also feeling a strange twitch to draw…

Related: Read Harper’s interview with illustrator Jennifer Bell here!
Read my neighbor Lena’s interview with YA novelist Carley Moore here!
Read my interview with YA novelist M. Beth Bloom here!

Household Words Elsewhere

A word girl, by Sophie Blackall

As so often happens around here, I’ve been writing so many things all over the place that the end result is I have no time to write. (?!)

But just in case you were curious, these are sort of relevant:

There is this thing, Notable Mothers in Literature, from Marmee to Corinne Dollanganger, for Redbook. (PS: You can enter to win a free copy of my book here! Or, you know, like, have your library order it. Either way.)

And this thing, What You Should Never Stay to Say-At-Home Moms, on The Huffington Post (older, but people seem to like it!).

Also are these things, on Fit Pregnancy:

Writing Motherhood: What Goes in the Baby Book, On Facebook, On Your Mom-Blog and In Your Novel

The 10 Most Practical Pieces of Parenting Advice No One Tells You

Getting Back Into Shape After Baby. Or Not.

The Agony and The Ecstasy of the Two-Year Age Gap

And some interviews: about writing mermaids, for Carolyn Turgeon’s beautiful I am a Mermaid blog,  about working as a writer, for the 365 Bold Blog, about Brooklyn life for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, about what I’ve been reading, for Writers Read, and about writing my novel for BookSparks. And those are all the things I know about, so now I have to go learn about some more things in case anyone else wants to interview me.

And I’ve gotten to review some wonderful new novels for Oprah.com! Jennifer Cody Epstein’s The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, Fiona Maazel’s Woke Up Lonely, and Hilary Reyl’s Lessons in French -- more on their way. I love when I get paid to read. The only other time this happened was when I worked in a library and would hide in the stacks and read when I was supposed to be shelving.

I can’t imagine anyone would need to read all of these things at once, so know that I am posting this mostly to prove I’m been doing something.

Here are my plans for the foreseeable future:

-Finish revising the short story I’ve been working on for too many months now.
-Write another short story that’s been rambling around in my head for too many months now.
-Plant our container garden.
-Read some of the 90,000 books in my TBR pile.
-Chase after the kids, who both have scooters now, all summer.
-Stop googling my book.

How about you? Summer reading/writing plans?

What’s Missing, What’s Here: On The Eve of My Book’s Birth Day

I seem to be living in a spiral-shaped sea shell these days. Harper turned four on Monday. Ollie will be two in a few weeks. And this Tuesday, April 2nd, a few days after the kids’ birthday party with all its balloons and frosting, my book officially comes out. The Mermaid of Brooklyn is about a mother with two kids, two years apart, like mine, but I started writing it when Harper was just a few months old, one day after a visit to the swingset, with her asleep in the carrier on my chest. I was thinking about my great-grandmother and rusalkis and the weird culture of Brooklyn parenting more than my actual parenting experiences, although of course it all gets mixed in together. And on Tuesday, my book launch will be at Powerhouse on 8th, the new bookstore in the building I lived in when I wrote the book. 2 kids, 4 years, and a move later: the book.

Of course I’m so excited and thankful. But also: confused.

Thanks to Jenna Blum for my very own milk carton!

Due to ongoing contract disputes between my publishers and Barnes & Noble, it’s very unlikely anyone will be able to find my book at a B&N store. In many parts of the country, that’s the only place to go and stroll about and discover a new book. I know my suburban Chicago B&N outlet was where I went on weeknights as a teenager to drink cinnamon-plum tea and read philosophy texts and women’s magazines (yes, at the same time) with my best friend and browse around in the quiet store at 8 pm and happen upon some book on a table I never would have heard of otherwise — and I feel like B&N should remember this, and care. I guess what I’m saying is, I really love B&N. I love my indies, and always support them, but when I was growing up in the suburbs, B&N was a sanctuary of sorts for me. And I have been so happy with Simon & Schuster and everyone at my division, Touchstone, and all their support of my book, and I get that both sides have their reasons. I know. It’s not personal.

What replaced my neighborhood Barnes & Noble.

But then, also, an unexpectedly nice thing has happened, because of all this B&N business: S&S authors, all (coincidence?) female novelists, have banded together to try to get our books on the radar.  M.J. Rose, Jenna Blum, Randy Susan Meyers – these are authors I have only known from afar, who are doing what I aspire to — writing smart books about women’s lives that readers obsessively love — and yet suddenly we’re all tweeting each other all the time. I feel this solidarity with other writers whose books are coming out into this mess, like we are all book-sisters (and not just competing for the seven spots for reviews left in the country). And there’s something really, really nice about that. I would post all their book covers here but I still have a lot of laundry to fold. So go here, and check out these wonderful books!

I once read an interview with an author whose debut novel had been largely ignored. When asked how he felt about the book’s reception he said something like, “You know, my wife and I just had our first baby, and that is a very good distraction, and puts everything else into perspective.” I loved this. I’ve found balancing writerhood and mothership to be challenging. It’s hard to find the time and focus and energy to write, even if, maybe especially if, you’re writing ABOUT motherhood. But I’ve also the combination to be a nourishing one.

Take today: I could have spent the day obsessing about my book and what will or won’t happen with it, but I was too busy having an adventure on the subway and a raucous playdate and making Charlie & Lola decorations for the birthday party. Ollie played in an afternoon sunbeam, swiping his hand at the glowing dust motes, laughing hysterically. Harper told me she was having a hard time deciding whether to be a doctor or a teacher. At bedtime, the kids cuddled up and Harper read Ollie his favorite books, and he propped his fat little cheek in his fat little hand to listen intently, and I almost cried, and that was all that really mattered about today. I’m lucky, lucky, lucky and I know it. I would of course like to be a lucky, lucky, lucky author with books in B&N but whatever, I’ll take what I can get.

And so:

If you live in New York City, please join me at one of my readings! Wine and bunny crackers, obviously, will be served.

If you don’t, please go into your local Barnes & Noble and with a very puzzled look on your face, ask where oh where is that great Mermaid of Brooklyn book you’ve been hearing so much about could be.

And finally, if you can identify the provenance of the bookstore pictured above, feel a moment of in-on-the-joke pride. Go on, really enjoy it. Then, tell me in the comments (but don’t Google it, you dirty cheater)and if you’re the first one to do so (and you are not my husband) I’ll send you a book!

The Black Apple, always awesome.

The Handwriting on the Wall. Er, Ceiling. Well, In the Ceiling. Oh, Just Read It.

The Note in the Ceiling

In honor of National Handwriting Day, I share the above note. Adam wrote it, in his adorable chicken-scratchy handwriting, after our first summer stay at a sweet little beach house in New Jersey. He tucked it into a ceiling tile (all right, it’s a humble place) and promptly forgot all about it. A few months ago, we got this email:

Hi Amy and Adam

When we started on the work to repair the inside of the house after the hurricane, your note tucked in the ceiling floated down. I want you to know that it lifted my spirits that day. To know that our little house brought you and your family a little bit of happiness helped me get through the initial shock of what has to be done.

We are so lucky that only material things are ruined. My daughters and their husbands went down with my husband the first day to help with the clean out as I watched the grandkids. Thank God for family.

I was down with my sister and daughter to finish cleaning when your note floated down. I hope your attached note brings back some good memories. We are all very emotionally attached to our beach house and are now on the road to getting it back together for next summer.

Chris

Everything about the exchange floods me with warm, happy nostalgia: remembering that lovely summer; knowing that we accidentally cheered someone’s Sandy recovery; and most viscerally, seeing Adam’s handwriting, which I very rarely see. Let’s all spend the day writing notes — by hand! on paper! — and tucking them away places, shall we?

The Next Big Thing Book Blog Meme!

Write like a motherfucker.

I have dropped so many balls lately, that with every step I take I’m essentially wading through one of those ball pits that children like to contract smallpox in at overachieving birthday parties. But here was a fun thing I was supposed to do that got lost in the wild week of kids, more work than usual, a freelance article, book business, playschool drama, and even a co-op building meeting: THE NEXT BIG THING MEME, yay! Thanks to the lovely Kate Hopper for tagging me!

What is the title of your book?

The Mermaid of Brooklyn

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A stressed-out Park Slope mother recovers her sense of purpose in life with the help of a mermaid.

What genre does your book fall under?

Fiction. (I almost wrote Women’s Fiction, but then I was like, nah, fuck that.)

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The inspiration was threefold: 1) a bit of family lore about how a pair of shoes saved my great-grandmother’s life, which I heard at a time when 2) I was reading about the powerful, seductive, mysterious rusalkas (aka mermaids)of Slavic folklore. The connection between these aspects marinated for a bit and then 3) I found myself becoming a stay-at-home mother to a baby, in the ever-fascinating parenting culture of Park Slope, Brooklyn. And voila: The Mermaid of Brooklyn was born.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

About two years.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

A mother at the playground had read some books pitched toward young urban mothers that she found annoying, and she said, “I just want someone to write a book for moms like me.”

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I have a literary agent who did the businessy magic of selling the book to Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (US) and Pan Macmillan (UK).

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?

It’s possible that comparisons with Amy Sohn, the grand mistress of Park Slope parent fiction, are forthcoming, but I’ve actually never read her books so I’m not sure how alike we really are. Our names sure are similar though! But I’d say readers who liked Peter Hedges’ Brooklyn-y The Heights, Lorrie Moore’s funny-sad mediation on motherhood The Gate at the Top of the Stairs, Maria Semple’s funny-sad mediation on motherhood Where’d You Go, Bernadette?  and/or stories with a hint of the surreal in them, like The Time-Traveler’s Wife, or Alice Hoffman’s novels, will, I’d hope, like my book too.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Oh man. I hate to boss around my readers, who should cast their own MofB movie however they like. But since you asked, my main character, Jenny, I see as a 2010 Zooey Deschanel. (She’s gotten a little too glamorous lately, but you get what I mean.) And my husband will definitely give me shit for this, but I always thought of Cute Dad as being played by Paul Schneider, on whom I have an undignified crush.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Reading it will make you instantly happier, richer, ambidextrous, and able to do 20 sit-ups.

Just in case it doesn’t, an acquaintance of mine read the book and wrote me, unbidden: “Basically: your book made me forget my own troubles while simultaneously soothing them; it made me feel better about life.” Isn’t that so nice?

AND The next thing I was supposed to do was to tag five authors who have exciting projects coming out now or soon or eventually. But I just wrote them today. (Doing!) (That was a ball dropping.) (And then bouncing again.) (Like how I carried that image through? Professional writer here!) So I will repost if they are able to participate. But just know that you should be very excited about new works forthcoming from Siobhan Adcock, Julia Fierro, Leigh Newman, Shana Youngdahl, and Sara Barron!

Happy Sibling Propaganda

The Adventures of Harper and Ollie in Prospect Park

A dear friend of mine just had her second child, and, as is already family lore, her older son gazed upon his new brother and welcomed him with a “No. No. No. No.” The mysteries of sibling relationships have been of particular interest to me, obviously, for the past, ohhhh almost 2 years I’d say. I recently met a grown brother and sister who were hanging out together, as they do every weekend, and I asked them their secret. They shrugged and said that their parents always told them it was important for them to be friends. Could it be that simple? Can you make your kids get along with each other?

Now, my children could not be more different in temperament. Every morning Ollie grabs his shoes and stands by the door and points and pleads, “Down!” The great loves of his life are going places, running, yelling, smashing things, kicking things, and trains and also trains. Harper’s favorite thing is to stay in her nightgown all day and to cry, when anyone goes near the door “I’m not going outside!” Left to her own devices, she prefers: sitting quietly and looking at books, sitting quietly and playing with paper dolls, sitting quietly and doing art projects. They do have some common ground in their shared love of jumping up and down, which I’m sure our downstairs neighbors find incredibly charming.

Just in case we have some say in the matter, ever since Ollie was born nary a fortnight after Harper’s second birthday, we have been waging a full-on assault of sibling-relationship information warfare. The thought is, if kids become what they are told, or even if any of it rubs off a tiny bit, might as well tell them over and over: “You are best friends. Brothers and sisters stick together. You are a team. Not only that, you are psyched to share a room. GO FAMILY!”

In this vein, we bombard them with the ruthlessness of communist USSR propogandists. I’m not talking about “there’s a new baby in the house” type books, most of which take a “and that’s a bummer” tack. I mean just nice models of nice siblings.

Books:

Harper still loves everything Charlie and Lola. (Saw the cartoon once, wasn’t terribly interested. But the books! Oh the books!) Siblings who share a room and are nice to each other. Check.  Big sibling looks after little sibling. Check check. So we assign Charlie and Lola studies at least once a day.

The Magic Treehouse books, which I mentioned in my roundup of chapter books, features a non-squabbling brother/sister pair who goes on great adventures together. Perfect. I like to throw a little notebook in a backpack and tell Harper she and Ollie are Jack and Annie and goodbye, have fun with the dinosaurs.

Runners-up: Max and Ruby, though Ruby is a bit bossy if you ask me. But Max, with his non-verbal, grinning mischeviousness, is a pretty good stand in for our own baby brother character.

Multi-media:

We’ve just discovered the Olive Us video series and are all pretty obsessed. These lovely, under-5-minute videos show an adorable family of 6 (!) siblings having sweet, wholesome fun together while wearing really cute clothes. Mountain picnics. Making cookies. Washing the car. The best.

Learning by Rote:

Adam brilliantly instituted a program called “The Adventures of Harper and Ollie on Earth.” This started off as a simple homemade binder to hold drawings we collaborate on, of adventures Harper and Ollie had, have, or may someday have, and has really taken off. Harper always wants to draw Harper and Ollie stories (sample quote: “Ollie! Get away! I want to draw a Harper and Ollie story!”), about, say, when they are grownups and live together in Manhattan, where it is fancy, and ride their scooters together to the café. Or else, when they go skydiving together, holding on to a rope that is taped to the sky. Now that she is starting to draw figures and faces herself this is even less work for us, and the result is a cuter-than-cute scrapbook of hypothetical sibling adventures dreamed up while one sibling was napping.

Any other happy sibling propaganda we should check out? We’re committed to making this life-long psychological experiment work. I’m pretty excited to meet them in Manhattan for lunch circa 2033.

 

3 Chapter Books for 3 Year-Olds

I wrote here a while back about how Harper and I fell hopelessly in love with the Winnie-the-Pooh gang.  What I haven’t mentioned is that this sent us on a wormhole-ish hunt for toddler-friendly chapter books. It is really so fun to read chapter books together – the curling up, the flicker in her eyes as she pictures a scene, or asks me to repeat a detail so she can really really picture it — and it is also, I’ve found, really hard to find just the right books that she can follow, aren’t too dark or complicated, and have enough pictures but not too many. And that don’t involve dying parents. Or dying anyone. We’re just not there yet (thankfully!). I mean, Harper thought the Heffalump was terrifying.

Here are our findings so far:

1. Jenny and the Cat Club, by Esther Averill

“Time is nothing to a cat when he is dancing.”

This is, next to the Winnie-the-Pooh books, our biggest hit so far. Harper has been playing Jenny Linsky, drawing Jenny Linsky, telling stories about Jenny Linsky, ever since she recovered from the shock of receiving this (deceivingly!) boring-looking chapter book as a Hanukkah present. Esther Averill’s stories about Jenny Linsky, a shy yet brave little black cat who lives with her master, Captain Tinker, in Greenwich Village, are just nonstop charming. There is nothing scarier than a mean dog who steals Jenny’s signature red scarf – this episode made Harper hyperventilate with anxiety, both at the meanness of the dog, and the great crime of a theft of an accessory. Throughout these sweet stories, Jenny deals with issues like her shyness, smallness, and learning to be generous, all big issues in a preschooler’s life.

For here is the rub – I find that other chapter books, probably naturally, address questions Harper hasn’t even started to consider yet, like getting teased by mean kids. I am so thankful, particularly in the face of horrifying recent events, that this is so – that Harper still lives in a sweet little bubble where her biggest issues are her brother, Hair Puller Extraordinaire, and that sometimes her annoying mama wants her to brush her teeth, and that the meanest person she knows is her imaginary friend Murray. So in that vein, I find that older books, somehow, are the only ones that can manage to be innocent enough for this highly sensitive kiddo. Isn’t that a little weird and sad?

Anyway, good thing this book has been reprinted by the excellent New York Review Children’s Collection, and is just such a lovely object, full of charming drawings, that I find myself looking through it again and again (and unable to choose illustrations to share because they are all the best one). Best of all, this is part of series, so we can read even more about our dear little J. Linsky, as Harper likes to call her.

2. The Magic Treehouse: Dinosaurs Before Dark

I heard about Mary Pope Osbourne’s insanely popular series on, who knows, probably Pinterest. Apparently all kids everywhere love it, though I, elderly ignoramous!, had never heard of it. Harper and I had a very lovely afternoon at a local coffeeshop having hot chocolate and tearing through chapter after chapter of this first book in the series, Dinosaurs Before Dark. She liked studying the pictures, and most of all she liked the idea (as did I!) of this magic treehouse full of magic books (!!!!!!!), and the brother and sister who have adventures together. She was carrying around a notebook and backpack for a few days, just like Jack and Annie in the book. I thought we were really on to something. But somehow the next books in the series have not held her interest. I think they’re a bit too complicated – there’s all this business with magicians and Merlin and legends. But that first one, wow, what a page-turner it was! And we love happy-sibling-propaganda. So this was a good one too.

3. A Bear Called Paddington

I’m cheating a bit here, because we’ve only read one chapter of this book, which Harper’s grandmother gave her for Christmas – Harper’s daddy’s childhood copy! This has been fun for me to discover too, though, since somehow I missed the whole Paddington phenomenon as a kid. Were you aware Paddington is a real bear? From Peru? (Excuse me, darkest Peru?)Who comes to live with a family in London? There aren’t quite enough pictures for Harper’s tastes, and there is that problem familiar to us from our painstaking attempts at Stuart Little of the humor being largely pitched to witty adults, but one chapter in, so far so good. I even heard some stories being muttered about darkest Peru in one of Harper’s marathon story-telling-sessions. Chapter two happens tonight. Wish us luck!

Any other good chapter books for the very wee we’re missing? I have been remiss, by the way, in not thanking lovely commenter Genevieve who this summer led us to many awesome wordless picture books, including our favorite, You Can’t Bring a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum. Genevieve, are you out there? Do you know about chapter books too??

Fun for Shut-Ins: Entertaining Toddlers Indoors With A Minimum of TV. And Tears (Yours, Theirs, Whatever)

Given the recent hurricane, Nor’easter, and then weeks of lingering colds, we’ve really gotten back into touch with our playing-indoors-skills. Now,if she could help it, Harper would always be inside, walking in a circle and telling herself a story. No, she is not insane, she’s creative and that is totally different. But Ollie wants to be outside, bouncing a ball and screaming “WHOA!” every moment of his life. So the inside thing is a bit of a challenge. But sometimes you just have to, and in case this should happen to you, here are some things that have helped me to avoid the “holy crap there’s still 9 hours until bedtime” terror-shakes.

4:30am: Up and attem, early birds! Just because daylight saving’s ended doesn’t mean we have to squander those delicious mornings of freezing pitch black when there is no one to play with and nothing to do! On an inside day, the savvy mom makes everything way more difficult for herself than usual, so breakfast should be Fun, like waffle faces, or green scrambled eggs. Drink as much coffee as possible as you eat the kids’ leftovers- you’re going to need it!

The rest of the day, think of yourself as an adhoc preschool. I like to alternate periods of freeplay (until someone is injured or a significant amount of Harper’s hair has been yanked out of her head), arts and crafts, manipulatives, and frequent snack times. The challenge for me is to find things that both the 3 year old girl with the fine motor skills and enormous attention span AND the 1.5 year old boy with the wild thing mentality and tendency toward flinging can do together.

Here’s what works for us:

Edible Crafts. Because let’s face it, the crafts get eaten whether they are edible or not. Peanut Butter Playdough is a favorite around here and about 40% of Harper’s total nutritional intake. Finger painting with jello and/or dyed yogurt are also big hits. ( I never imagined food dye would be such a crucial ingredient in the rearing of human young. ) Same for colored spaghetti, with, which a selection of cups, entertained Ollie for almost 20 minutes- a record! Painting with water on the chalkboard is also always a winner. Yes this is filed under edible. Yes, chalky water is apparently quite refreshing. And this one is – bonus – not messy!

Playing in the Sink. A classic around here. As a bonus, the floor gets a thorough soaking which I think counts as mopping, right?

Dolly Birthdays. We got lucky and it just so happened that Special Baby’s birthday coincided with a day of freakish snowstorming. We printed out dolly invitations (from MrPrintables.com, just scaled them smaller) and made decorations and goodie bags during baby-nap. Tiny cupcakes are a crucial part of this.

Movie Night. As a very special treat (because a random birthday party isn't enough), we had an unprecedented afternoon movie night, complete with popcorn (which a friend later told me is a huge choking hazard so really it's amazing we survived!!), cuddling up, and an episode of Wonder Pets. I try to do as little tv as possible, especially for Ollie, but I figure every once in a while it's ok, and by that I mean Mama was starting to twitch.

Dance Party. Always. Our favorite is Jackie Wilson. Though I have been told I am a better singer than Jackie Wilson! I can't say by whom.

What didn't work: I won't go into details because it's too traumatic to relive, but regular finger paints were a disaster. And as many times as I've tried to convince Harper that sorting dried beans is fun, she does not believe me. Trying an obstacle course for burning off energy didn't work either, devolving immediately into a scene reminiscent of The Hunger Games, with couch-jumping.

End the day with smiley-face monster pizzas, shaving-cream-painting and/or colored ice cubes in the bathtub, and by the time your spouse comes home there will be no food in the house, a huge mess in every room, and you will be asleep in your child's bed unable to even form sentences! Charming.

But just imagine the relief when the weather lets up and your pale blinking shut-ins can leave, and you get to take them to an indoor playspace where they can bounce off padded walls while you ignore them and write a blog post on your phone!

Good luck this winter. We're all going to need it.

PS: Sorry for the random placement of photos. Like I said, on the phone. Modern, I know.

Guest Post: The Perfect Mommy Steps In

Hi all! So, Amy has been totally neglecting this blog, and today she’s all distracted by the HUGE SCARY FRANKENSTORM that she thinks she’s prepared for because she bought some water and snack bars – she’s so funny! Anyway, so she asked me (hi! It’s me, of The Perfect Mommy Blog!) to step in. Don’t let my blog’s silly name fool you, though. I’m soooo not perfect! Oh that reminds me, I wanted to show you the cutest picture:

Lunchtime! We do a different classical composer everyday. So silly, I know, but it’s just fun! Man, do my kids love their veggies — and their Mozart. Those goofs!

Poor Amy has been so overwhelmed lately. Every night I text her to see why she hasn’t posted anything – I just think those Brooklyn moms are a hoot – and she’s like, “So tired. Stop texting me.” I get it – I update my blog every day, so I know it’s no joke time-wise, plus I have 9 children under the age of 10 (4 sets of twins, what are the chances?? Lol) who I homeschool in a carefully researched Waldorf-inspired style. Amy’s always like, “You seem so productive and super-happy, Perfect Mom, what’s your secret?” I tell her, there’s no secret, silly, just good graphic design, dreamy photo filters, and some careful planning.

Just a candid shot of us lazing around the house. Excuse the mess! So embarrassing!

For one thing, as my husband, my best friend who I am madly in love with, will tell you, I’m a little bit of a neat freak. But I stay organized with a simple chore chart — the little ones LOVE pitching in! I don’t know what it is, but my kids just adore chores.

I make mealtime super-duper easy by growing all my own organic fruits and vegetables in our garden – the kids love to help, and outdo each other by eating the most vegetables. Whatever works, you know? This allows me to keep my monthly grocery shopping budget under $150. Really, all it takes is some planning – here’s my PDF of all the essentials you need for a month of feeding 11 hungry people on a budget – so easy!  Then one weekend a month my girlfriends and I get together and cook 90 meals – breakfast, lunch, and dinner – from scratch to freeze. It’s so easy and fun! Here’s one of our favorites – my kids all love it. 

Homeschooling is really such a snap, too – I keep the younger ones busy with a cardboard box and some lids, which they will play with quietly for hours and hours, I promise you. I keep costs down by making all our books out of handmade paper from our own mulched logs. You see what I mean? Easy! I’m just lucky that my older girls teach the younger kids Latin while I make everyone’s clothes from scratch every morning. And they are so not perfect! Just look at this messy little romper I threw together in two seconds — sorry for the bad cellphone pic!

The suitcase is full of toys she insists she’s ready to donate to poor children in Africa. Where does she get these ideas? Haha

Sure, with so many little ones it’s hard to stay sane. We keep things simple by naming all the girls Kendra and all the boys Wyatt. Then we can reuse the letterpressed birthday party invites and personalized bunting. And you can’t forget about “me” time, so one night a week I make my hubby’s favorite dinner, set the table with fresh flowers and candles, get all dressed up, and put the kids to bed early, so that I can focus on my sweet guy. I know what you’re thinking – look out, or soon we’ll be seeing numbers 10 and 11! Lol! Really, those kids hardly even let me create a downloadable PDF of my favorite recipes or jam jar labels or paper dolls. Maybe I’ll get a TV one of these days.

I made this fully-functioning space ship in like two seconds with some old boxes and tin foil. Seriously, so easy!

Anyway, I’m just saying, moms out there, I totally get it. I don’t judge moms like Amy for their love of yoga pants, frozen chicken nuggets, and toddler iPad apps. It’s not easy being a Perfect Mommy Blogger ™! Just ask, well, me! Lol!

OMG, so embarrassing – my hubby snapped these candid pics of me just shlubbing around on a Saturday morning on the way home from the farmer’s market. Eek! Sorry about that. Ok, time to go make some Eggs Benedict for the little monsters!

Kitchen Table Math Drop-Outs

Another rigorous day of G&T test-prep!

In the process of creating and maintaining our amazing, spectacular, splendiferous playschool co-op, the mothers of Greenwood Playschool (nee Tomb Tots) and I have had the good fortune to have several meetings with Peggy Reimann, an education consultant with a passel of brilliant ideas about nurturing a love of reading and even encouraging an understanding and sense of friendliness with – gasp – math. She urged us to quit cold turkey anything like flash cards, and the strange but common process of quizzing little kids about books, i.e.: “DO YOU SEE THE COW? WHERE IS THE COW? WHAT DOES A COW SAY? GOOOOOOD A COW SAYS MOO!” Rather, she urged us in her gentle and wise manner to look at pictures with our kids, to move our fingers across the page, to talk about what we see together — and this process seriously changed completely the way Harper and I experience books and images and was utterly amazing.
So, now that Harper is a sage 3.5, I figured it was time to dive into Peggy’s math curriculum.

All summer I tried to introduce pattern sorting. I’d put Ollie down for a nap, make us some milky tea, and set the scene for something VERY SPECIAL. There – the paper with the circles on it. There – the colored pieces, in our case buttons. The idea is that you make it a kind of a game to make patterns together, to sort out the colors, and eventually start talking about quantities. “So!” I’d say brightly, like Peggy instructed, “I’m going to put the blue button here.” “Okay,” Harper would respond. And then, having found the thimble among the buttons, she’d switch into a high-pitched fairy-voice and offer a button some tea out of the thimble, and then the button would squeak, “Oh, yes please!”

And so on.  Pasta-shape-sorting turned into an elaborate story-play of Jack and the Magic Pasta-Seeds-Beanstalk. Absolutely everything becomes a game of pretend with this kid, even bath time turns into a 3-hour-long sessions of making bath-rice-pudding for bath-Foofa’s birthday. Of course I find this to be wonderful, and in my sick writer’s mind can’t think of anything better than an almost-absolute break with reality. But still, I really like the idea of appealing to some other corners of her busy, buzzing mind. And in classic parenting “it’s actually my issue not yours” fashion, I am eager for her to avoid the gut-wrenching math anxiety that to this day has me reacting to the words “fraction” and “division” with an outbreak of hives.

So today I tried an activity that looked so cute on Pinterest (I could probably just copy-and-paste this every night “It looked so cute on Pinterest but didn’t quite work out as well for me…”) : writing numbers (or I also tried dots) on craft sticks, and then sticking the numbers in order into a big snake of playdough.

First: excitement. “What’s this? A project?” My explanation was met with a “talk-to-the-hand” type gesture. “Nah, let’s make these sticks into people!”

“But, it’s a cool project!” I tried changing my tactics. “It’s a really fun big-girl activity. Um, it’s a game. It’s a puzzle.” Nothing. “You know what this is? It’s math!”

“I DON’T LIKE MATH! I ONLY LIKE DRAWING PEOPLE!”

And that, folks, is genetics at work. So much for instilling an early love of numbers. One thing I really feel that I have succeeded at, though, is encouraging an early love of tea parties, fairies,and flitting around singing little nonsense songs, all of which are sure to be very helpful in really any field Harper chooses to pursue.