Scary Potter

In one of our library books, A Babysitter for Billy Bear, Mama heads out to a pottery class for the evening. Eliot was much more curious about the sculpture she brought home than about the babysitter she left behind. A weeklong investigation has followed. We pulled some of our planters out of storage, found a DVD featuring a Pueblo potmaker, and have been casting about for ways to practice before apprenticing Eliot to a master craftsman.

Baker's clay was our first experiment with homemade pottery. Because gluten is verboten in Eliot's diet, he spent more time tasting the salty dough than forming it. Eventually, we got around to attempting the Pueblo potter's method of shaping a pot by stacking and smoothing clay "snakes" on top of a small base.

Yesterday, I found a recipe for cornstarch clay in a magazine. The Family Fun test kitchen may have failed to check its measurements, because the glop in our pan had no hope of becoming the snowmen and reindeer on the page. We're talking low-budget sci-fi here. If I moved quickly, I could pick up a blob of it and form it into a ball. As soon as I set it into Eliot's hand, it would instantly melt into a thick liquid and drip through his fingers.

No Venus de Milo this week. But we're on our way.

This Week's Etiquette Lesson

With Toby out doing Wa Wa promotions this evening and the thermometer registering about 12 degrees, Eliot and I had to find some way to keep both busy and warm.

Baking!

We scrounged up a couple of brown banans, a spoonful of leftover canned pumpkin, and a blob almond butter. Eliot was eager to help. He loves to measure because he gets to sneak a wide variety of kitchen utensils into the baking powder can. Eggs are fun, too, because he just recently learned how to crack them properly. He does not, however, like the creepy feeling of albumen on his fingers. After smacking the shell on the counter, he hands the dripping orb to his mommy to open it into the bowl, leaving a trail of bacteria-laced slime over the prep area.

Tonight, I discovered Eliot is also quite gifted at separating out muffin cups and putting them into the pan. This is probably the most unsatisfying culinary task imaginable, but it's also the least likely to cause Mommy to curse and ban all three-year-olds from the kitchen.

The treats baked while we ate dinner. They cooled while we boogied around the living room with MIA and the Blackeyed Peas. Once our feet were all rocked out, we settled in for rice milk and muffins. I finished mine first.

"Mommy, you need to have another one."

"I do?"

"Yes. And this time, you need to eat it the right way."

"I didn't realize I was eating it wrong. What's the right way?"

"Like this."

New Year's Welcome

The past two mornings, we have woken up to fresh snowfall. This is the greatest part of living in the woods in winter. New powder, snowshoeing on the forest trails, sledding down Camp Chingachgook's wowie-zowie tubing hill.

We're kicking off 2010 in outdoor style. On New Year's morning, friends from town tekked up to camp to tromp and slide around outside with us. In the afternoon, a neighbor and her boyfriend dropped by to borrow Fenway so they could have a little canine company on their winter hike. In the evening, Gramma Lolly and Baba Mike arrived, and we all slept well enough to go out into it again this morning. More tubing today and major snowball volleys, followed by a staff reunion in which a handful of hardy souls jumped into the frigid waters of Lake George. We camp folks know how to jump-start a decade!

Another storm is moving in tonight with another 6-10 inches predicted. We can't wait to see what the rest of winter has in store for us.