Magical Monday

Sewing Room

Laoye has finished the “storage wall” in the sewing room. For those of you who haven’t been to our house, the sewing room is a “secret room.” When I bought the house (from plans) I could see that there was a good-sized (about 7.5’ by 13’) space on the second floor that was unused, unfinished, hidden behind a bathroom wall. I asked for access to it somehow, but was told that the dividing wall between it and the bathroom was a “pre-fab truss beam” or some such – but as the house went up I could see clearly that it was nothing more than a n ordinary stud wall. So once the house came into my possession, Laoye broke through the wall and put in a ceiling (since it was open to the attic) and one electrical outlet, as well as basic gyproc on the walls and an old rug on the floor. There was also one wall – the wall at the far end of the room from the door, which (if open) would overlook the master bedroom, that was a “double” wall – the weight-bearing studs formed an inner wall, but a second set of studs made an outer wall at the edge of the floor, some 16 inches from the inner wall. This extension had come about from my redesign of the main floor to give space for a study, which involved making the master bedroom, master bedroom closet, and ensuite all a bit smaller.

Now, six years later, the room is getting really finished. It is th “dead” space formed by the double wall that has become the “storage wall” – Laoye very carefully finished the sides between the studs, inserted shelves, and finished the exposed faces. Laolao bought some baskets that will just fit and now we have a nice space that will provide lots of storage for fabric, notions, and other things, as well as a small space in which to hang things and one to store the ironing board (though it mostly stays down when we’re working in there!).

That finicky bit of work took a full two weeks; the remainder of the finishing work should go much faster. Laoye has now cut an opening in the wall between the sewing room and the stairs, giving us some natural light and a feeling of a bit more spaciousness in there. He will frame that up nicely and then proceed to finish the walls and put in a suspended ceiling with lots of fluorescent light fixtures to give us really good lighting in there, which has been sorely missing. Then he’ll reinstall the work table (made from a sturdy, solid wood 9’ door salvaged from a nearby business that was undergoing renovations!) and we can move the sewing machine back in.

Most of the materials used in this project, apart from the suspended ceiling and lights, are odds and sods of wood that Laoye salvaged from either the dumpsters on site as the houses in the neighbourhood were being built, or from the nearby office building that underwent renovations a few years back. So it has been both environmentally friendly and economical!

My long-term “vision” for the room includes access to it from the loft, by way of a walkway over the stairs leading to the space where the cut-out window has now been pout in the sewing room wall (and then creation of two more cut-out windows) – so that you won’t have to walk through the bathroom to get at it. But that would/ will involve a lot more work, so it will wait for a future day, if ever.

The project almost claimed three of Laoye’s fingers… the table saw decided it was hungry for flesh Saturday-before-last and took a bite. But while the flesh wounds were deep, it didn’t get down to the bone, so he kept his fingers for himself. Initially he just bandaged it up and went right back to work (gotta show who’s boss, after all…) but an hour or two later Laolao took him to emergency to get it looked at, and the doctors put in 14 stitches to close the wounds. Since then he’s been sporting three custom-made bright pink finger-covers to keep the fingers clean while he works.

Laoye has done carpentry work as a hobby for most of his life but this is the first time he’s ever had a serious accident. Thankfully it wasn’t horribly serious and he still has his fingers.

Magical Monday

Mustang's fourth Family Day

Can it be four years already? It was a cloudy Monday in Taiyuan, China, when the active and spunky little girl known here as Mustang was brought to a plain bureaucratic room to be introduced to her new Mommy, Laolao and Laoye. She was curious, uncertain, wary – and pleased with the little pink bunny Laolao brought for her. (Her love of stuffies continues to this day!) She cried, twice, but not for long. She would often run and hide, but never where we couldn’t find her – it was a game. She was wearing a bright red, satiny padded jacket and pants (now stored for safekeeping, along with bunny, in a bin in the basement) which we promptly traded for “western” wear when we got back to our hotel. (She didn’t mind the trade.)

Since then:

• She has had palate surgery to close her cleft palate, and in the coming months will begin to be prepared for the next surgery on her jawline, beginning with some dental work and wearing a space to straighten and space out some of the adult teeth.
• She has learned English well – including proper articulation of the consonant sounds – and now boasts a very good vocabulary.
• She has completed almost four years of schooling, learning to read and do basic math.
• She has learned to skate, ski, ride bicycle, swim, roller blade, draw, colour, and more!!
• She has entered my heart and made herself a place there, never to go away.

Happy Family Day, Mustang!

Food Friday: Jiaozi

Jiaozi, or Chinese dumplings, come in many varieties. This recipe calls for a pork filling, which is very traditional. You can also use chopped shrimp, ground chicken, ground beef, or a vegetable mixture. Jiaozi is one of Mustang’s favourite dishes – next to Chinese rice noodle soups!

The way the jiaozi are made is a lot like the Mennonite Warenicki, but the filling is different and you’d never serve these with Schmauntfett!

Ingredients

Wrappers

• 750ml all-purpose flour (3 cups)
• 250 to 300ml cold water
• 5ml salt (1 teaspoon)

Filling

• 350ml Chinese cabbage, shredded
• cm fresh ginger, finely chopped
• 2 green onions, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 500g ground pork
• 15ml soy sauce (1 tablespoon)
• 15ml rice cooking wine (1 tablespoon)
• 15ml sesame oil (1 tablespoon)

Directions

1. Mix the flour and salt.
2. Slowly add the cold water, mixing well, until it forms a smooth dough. Don’t add too much water or it will get sticky and hard to handle. Knead well and let stand for 30 minutes.
3. Prepare cabbage, green onion, ginger and garlic and add to ground pork.
4. Add soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil. Mix well and set aside.
5. Take the dough. Cut off a small piece and roll out into a circle about 8cm in diameter (3 inches). Repeat until you have about a dozen pices.
6. Place about 5ml (1 teaspoon) of filling in the middle of each circle of dough.
7. Fold in half and pinch outsides together. (you may need to moisten the edges with a bit of water to get them to stick together.)
8. Repeat with more dough circles until all the dough is used up. (You should have about 50-60 jiaozi.)
9. To cook, place in salted boiling water and boil for about 5 minutes.
10. Once boiled, if you wish you can fry them in some peanut or other cooking oil until golden brown on both sides.
11. Serve with a small dish of soy sauce or hot sauce for dipping. A stir-fried vegetable dish is a good accompaniment to the jiaozi.

If you’re not going to eat all the jiaozi right away (about 5 per person is usually enough), set aside the ones you will eat and lay the rest out on a cookie sheet (not touching each other) and put in the freezer. Once frozen, take off the cookie sheet and place in a plastic bag in the freezer until you’re ready to eat them.

Instead of making the wrappers, you can also buy jiaozi wrappers in most Chinese grocery stores. Any unused wrappers can also be frozen for up to about two months. (And, frankly, you can also buy pre-packaged frozen jiaozi at a lot of Chinese grocery stores. But the homemade ones are even better!)

Varia

Spring is on its way, though it is not quite “here” yet. We have had several very nice days, mixed with some cold and windy ones. Not much new snow, which is heartening, but the old stuff lingers on, though diminishing bit by bit.

Laolao and Button finished off the 1000-piece puzzle on Monday – all but two pieces, which were lost. Button found one by searching through the baskets under the table, but the other remains lost. That evening I took a 500-piece puzzle that was sitting in Nanny’s room and dumped it out on the table. So yesterday he started in on that one, putting together a small section.

Skating and skiing lessons are done for the year. Mustang has started a new round of horse riding lessons and I’m trying to find some good art classes for her to take starting in late March. Though my philosophy is generally one art and one sport (at a time) for extracurricular activities, since last fall the sports have dominated. But it’s high time to get Mustang back into art, as she really enjoys it and I do think it can help to enhance cognitive development! Button will have a bit of a break until late April, when they’ll both start swimming lessons again, and then in late May he’ll start soccer twice a week on a team that plays through the summer.

I’ve started reading a very interesting book entitled The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge (MD). I’m not far into it, but the bit I’ve read so far is fascinating. It’s all about neuroplasticity – the capacity of the brain to change, form new circuits, repair itself, and develop new functions and capacities.

In one appendix he talks about how culture affects the brain and perception, citing (among other things) the Sea Gypsies, a tribe of people in the south Pacific who live as much on the water as on land and who have developed the extraordinary capacity to see under water with great clarity at great depths, and to hold their breath under water far longer than most people.

The first chapter tells the story of a woman affected by the loss of the sense of balance (leading to the perpetual and debilitating sensation of falling) who was cured by the use of a device that transmitted the messages that the vestibular system (responsible for balance) normally does via stimulus to the tongue. The brain was capable to taking those messages, which would normally be classified as touch (a sensation like champagne bubbles bursting on the tongue) and recognize them to be related to balance, and re-learn the sense of balance.

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book and highly recommend it for anyone interested in the brain and how it works.

Next week is March break. I’m developing a list of various activities for the kids. Only thing is, I keep thinking of it as things “we” can do – until I remember that I’ll be at work!! I’ve promised each child one evening out with Mommy all on their own, for a bit of dedicated Mommy time. I think I need to do a bit more of this, for their good and for mine.

And on Tuesday I got a bit of Mommy time all to myself – while Laolao took Mustang to horse riding and Laoye put Button to bed, I went to a movie. Saw Slumdog Millionaire, which I really enjoyed. A very interesting premise, and a fascinating method of telling the frequently disturbing story. Well worth seeing (though NOT for children under the age of at least 14 – as it is rated).

Magical Monday

Food Friday: Ginger Shrimp

In just over one week, we celebrate Mustang’s fourth Family Day – the fourth anniversary of her joining the family. In honour of this, Food Fridays in March will feature Chinese dishes.

This recipe, Ginger Shrimp, is one of our favourites. It's very quick and easy, and super tasty. You can buy packages of shrimp when they're on sale at the supermarket and keep some on hand in the freezer for a day when you're in a hurry or just have a craving for shrimp.

Ingredients

• 2cm fresh ginger, peeled and chopped fine
• 2 green onions, chopped fine
• 5ml salt (1 teaspoon)
• 1 kg large raw shrimp, shelled and deveined
• 30ml peanut or other cooking oil (2 tablespoons)
• 30ml rice cooking wine (2 tablespoons)

Directions

1. Sprinkle about half the ginger, green onions and salt over the shrimp and mix well. Let marinate for about 30 minutes. (You can shorten the marinading time, or skip this step altogether, if you're in a hurry.)
2. Pour cooking oil into wok or frying pan and heat until lightly smoking. Add remaining ginger and green onions and stur-fry about 30 seconds.
3. Add shrimp mixture and stir-fry 1-2 minutes.
4. Add rice wine and cook until liquid is absorbed.
5. Serve with rice and stir-fried vegetables. (You can also add some vegetables to the shrimp if you wish. Green beans, red or yellow peppers, carrots, or broccoli all work well.)
   
   

Puzzling behaviour

About ten days ago, the Monday evening after the weekend Mustang had flu, I took out the 1000-piece ocean life puzzle I’ve had lurking around for the past six years or so and dumped it out onto a table in my bedroom. The kids helped me spread out the pieces and then started to pick out some of the coloured pieces and fit a few together with great gusto, while I continued turning over the pieces and spreading them out so there would be no overlap.

I told them then, and repeated it several times, that this was a hard puzzle with lots of pieces and they shouldn’t expect to get it done in one evening – in fact, it would probably take a couple of weeks to put together. I also said not to let themselves get frustrated if it wasn’t going quickly and they couldn’t find pieces to fit together – just take a break, go away for a few minutes or hours, and come back later to do a bit more work on it. I said this was the kind of puzzle that takes a long time even for grown-ups to do, and if they found it too difficult, well not to worry. They could work on it or not, whatever they wanted. But both of them were keen.

One evening later that week, after they were asleep, I searched out all the edge pieces I could find and worked on the border, getting almost all of it put together (on a little card table next to the table containing the spread-out pieces, as it wasn’t big enough for everything!). The kids noticed this first thing the next morning and were keen to do some more work themselves. They picked out some more of the pieces of brightly coloured fish and got a few more bits put together.

Bit by bit over the last ten days we’ve all worked on it and slowly it has come together. All that remains now are the shades of blue – bluish fish, bluish dolphins with some white streaks across their backs, and plain water. Laolao and Laoye have chipped in with bits and pieces, but most of it has been done by me and the kids, particularly Button (who has more time in the day to work on it).

I’m quite impressed by Button’s persistence and patience, and his improved puzzle skills. Even just a month or two back, he would frequently pick up totally inappropriate pieces (wrong colour, wrong shape) and try to fit them in somewhat randomly. But with all the puzzles we’ve done recently, he’s starting to pay more attention to colour and shape – picking out the pieces with three or four “outies” or “innies” where that’s what is needed, noticing the slight variations in shading that make a piece appropriate or not, searching for (and finding!) the right piece based on which part of it should be a given colour and what markings it ought to show as judged by the picture – and popping them into place!

Mustang, too, is showing improved puzzle skills along the same lines, though she was already better at puzzles than Button if for no other reason than being older (and further along developmentally). Recently, her greatest areas of improvement have been her patience with puzzles and interest in them – important factors in and of themselves not just for puzzle work but for many areas of endeavour, including academics.

I think one of our next puzzle purchases might include a 500-piecer – not quite as big and challenging as the one we’ve almost finished, but still enough to keep us going for a few days.