My babies are growing up; today Abigail started first grade and Gracie started fourth. Sometimes, my heart skips a beat when I realized how quickly the years are passing. But, I love seeing the amazing people they are becoming. Their first day went well – they were both excited when I picked them up. We met a friend at McDonalds for ice cream and they chatted non-stop about their day. I hope their enthusiasm lasts, at least for the first week!
Next week, the girls head back to school. We’re almost ready – their school supplies are packed in their new backpacks, their first day outfits are hanging in the bathroom and we spent yesterday completely organizing their bedroom. There are piles of bags headed to the trash and piles of toys headed to our local donation store where, hopefully, some little boy or little girl will find the same joy from playing with them that Gracie and Abigail did. That kind of radical cleaning is hard for me – I don’t mind going through their clothes and getting rid of things they’ve outgrown. Possibly, this is a result of my total aversion to doing laundry, but I think it might have more to do with the definitiveness of growing out of clothes – once the clothes no longer fit, they no longer fit (the same is, of course, not true for my clothes). Their toys, though? That’s a whole other ball game – what if they want to play with them again? What if I’m pushing them to grow up too quickly by giving away the pre-schooler computer game that Abigail got for Christmas three years ago (that admittedly she never really played with)? What if we give away that stuffed animal that Gracie bought in Savannah last summer? If we give away the toy, are we also giving away the memory of the time we spent there swimming and touring Juliette Gordon Low’s house? I know that’s silly. Sometimes, I feel like holding onto things is the only way to keep a tenuous grasp on their fleeting childhood days. But then, I am reminded, almost daily, that it is not the “stuff” of their childhood that makes it memorable, it is the time they spend with friends, with family, with Steve and me that makes these years so magical.
Time with friends building hotels out of seaweed for Greek and Roman gods…
And, of course, we can’t forget a seaweed hotel for pony princesses
Time spent realizing that the greatest treasures come, not from the toy store, but from nature..
These last few weeks of summer we’ve been blessed to see friends that we haven’t seen for months, to soak up the sun at the beach and the pool, to sleep late and lay in the front yard and watch shooting stars. I’m not ready for school to start; I never am. That first day of school seems to mark time more officially than any other day, but I know new adventures are headed this way for all of us and I have the sweet memories of this summer tucked safely in my heart to pull out whenever I need them.
July is National Ice Cream month – what more excuse do you need to break out the ice cream maker and make your own, homemade deliciousness? Trivia moment – Ronald Reagan designated July as ice cream month and the third Sunday in July as as National Ice Cream Day way back in 1984.
I figure I’m going to use July to make out of my ice cream rut. I always seem to make vanilla ice cream – I always have plans to make more exotic flavors but for some reason I always fall back to vanilla. Once or twice I’ve made something different – a double chocolate chip cookie dough and I think I made strawberry once, too. I have a couple of really cool ice cream recipe books that I want to pull out and try and I’ve got several other recipes pinned. Things like Salted Caramel and Rosemary with Pine Nut Pralines and Double Dutch Chocolate. Yum, yum, and yum some more!
Do you have a favorite ice cream recipe? If you do, share it with me in the comments to I can try it too!
This ice cream is my tried and true vanilla ice cream recipe. It comes together so quickly and easily. Honestly, my biggest problem is waiting for the bowl of my ice cream make to chill completely. It is from Annie’s Eats, although I modified it slightly because a lot of times I can’t find Vanilla Bean at the grocery store. Yes, you guessed it, I definitely don’t live in a a food mecca!
This recipe is a Philadelphia style instead of a French style. (Philadelphia style doesn’t use eggs, so you get a less creamier result, but this one is so ridiculously creamy that I don’t know how you could get creamier). The eggs make more of a custard so that’s a bit more effort but I’ll definitely be trying my hand at those this month!
Here’s the recipe modified slightly from Annie’s:
What you need:
2 cups of whipping cream (split – one cup to be heated and one cup added afterwards)
1 cup milk (I’ve used whole and 2%)
3/4 cup of sugar
Pinch of salt
1 Tablespoon of pure vanilla extract
Combine 1 cup of the whipping cream, the sugar and the salt in a medium sauce pan. Heat over medium heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved in the cream. Remove the mixture from the heat. and stir in the last cup of the whipping cream, the milk, and the vanilla. Cover the entire thing and stick it in the fridge (I’ve stuck it in the freezer, too, for about an hour when I’ve been really impatient!)
Freeze in your ice cream maker, following its directions. Enjoy plain or with cake or brownies or hot fudge or Reeses add-ins or really anything your heart can dream up!
At 10:00 p.m., Gracie glued the final strip on her timeline project for school and then asked if she could take a bath. I sat with her in the bathroom and about two minutes after the warmer than warm water poured over her, she burst into tears. “Mommy! I ruined your Mother’s Day. I am so sorry – all the other mothers were out having fancy lunches and doing fun things and you were stuck with me doing homework.” And the tears that immediately filled my eyes promised to spill down my face, but I held them back, afraid that she would misinterpret their meaning, that she would think that I was crying over missing out on eggs with hollandaise sauce, champagne mimosas, and a relaxing day reading a novel at the beach.
Yesterday started out badly. I was trying to put the roast in the crockpot for dinner (yes, such a plebian meal for Mother’s Day, but it worked with our plans for the day) and ended up flooding the kitchen. And, it really seemed to head downhill from there. Our original Mother’s Day plans were to go to church, take Abigail to riding lessons, head to the beach for an afternoon of paddleboarding (or paddle falling oh so gracefully as I like to call it), have my mom over for dinner and finish off the evening with a Harry Potter movie. That was a pretty full day but I thought it would work. On Wednesday, we realized the girls were singing at both the 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.church services. A little more of a scheduling juggling act, but still, I thought, doable. Then, on Thursday Gracie came down with the awful stomach bug that’s plagued my little family for the last couple of weeks. She was better by Friday, but missing school doesn’t mean you get to miss out on the work. She wasn’t really feeling up to doing any kind of work on Thursday or Friday and Saturday was filled with Girl Scout outings and making presents for her grandmother and really just being a kid. So, that left Sunday. And, as I am completely wont to do, I vastly underestimated the time it would take for her to finish everything. I also apparently vastly overestimated the numbers of hours in a day.
By noon, I was a little flustered wondering why Mother’s Days were easier and more relaxing when the girls were babies. Well, hello! When they were babies, there was no school work and reading deadlines and scout meetings to plan and dentist appointments to reschedule and chorus performances to attend and streaming piano recitals to share and do we have snacks for the horses at riding lessons and can we fit the paddleboard in the back of the van with the girls’ boogie boards and if I spend fifteen minutes with my grandmother will it be enough time or will the girls wear her out. Life has changed a lot since the girls were babies, some of it difficult and heart-wrenching (let’s just say that watching people you love deteriorate before your eyes is hard) but most of it is vastly rewarding and heart-bursting. The baby years are very, very difficult and exhausting and the toddler years are trying and frustratingly head-knocking, but this season of parenting, where the girls are gaining some independence but still so desperately need us for guidance is difficult in its own unique way. I love it. There is no doubt it is hard juggling the commitments and the schedules and the paperwork (although, this may just be me. I think there needs to be an intervention program for parents with ADHD who have school-aged children) but, really, sitting on the couch with Gracie talking about the voice that the house elves use in Harry Potter and if the use of third person is a way demonstrate they have no identity of their own? Priceless.
There were beautiful moments throughout the day. The heartfelt card from Steve. A neighbor delivering a Girl Scout silver dollar to Gracie from a stranger who only knew my little girl from selling Girl Scout cookies. Sitting with Abigail, reading One Fish, Two Fish, in my new swing that Steve and the girls gave me. My grandmother smiling over her little homemade presents and telling me in a voice that still holds the melody I remember from my childhood, “I love you more than you know.” A text from a friend just when I needed it most. Steve ordering me a new kindle late last night, an unexpected expense for something that I don’t need, simply because he saw how crushed I was that I couldn’t use my mother’s any more and because he knows that reading to me is like breathing.
Still, by 9:00 p.m. I was completely frustrated with the day. Gracie had reached the point in her day where the smallest thing sends her into a tailspin. After a mini meltdown from both of us, we sucked it up and an hour later her timeline was finished and awesome and as she sat there in the tub, tears of regret pouring down her face, I scooped her up and hugged her tightly and told her that she did not ruin my Mother’s Day. I explained to her that helping her with her homework is not a burden; it’s a joy (even if at times I don’t feel joyful about it). I tried as gently as I could to let her know that there was nothing we could have done on Mother’s Day that would have given me more happiness than simply being her mother.
She didn’t ruin my Mother’s Day. She (and her sister and her daddy) made my life complete.
Abigail’s best boy friend in kindergarten has a nurse who comes to school with him four days a week. She stopped me in the classroom the other day and said, “Mrs. Madison (Abigail’s teacher) and I have come up with the perfect word to describe Abigail. It is EXUBERANT!” I laughed – that is the perfect word for her. She is joy-filled and energetic. All the time! Later in the week, her teacher stopped me and told me the same thing. I guess exuberant is going to be her word for this year. But, I was thinking about some other words that describe her. She is:
EXHILIRATING
EXASPERATING
EXCEPTIONAL
EXCITING
and
EXHUASTING
She is my little ex. My world would be far less colorful without her in it!
