Ingredients- 2-3 large potatoes
- 1 egg
- salt and pepper to taste
- a bit of flour
- (optional) cheddar or mozzarella cheese, grated
Directions- Peel potatoes and grate with a fairly fine grater.Drain off excess moisture.
- Add egg, salt, pepper, a bit of flour and (if desired) grated cheese.
- Heat a bit of oil in a heavy skillet. Drop in a heaping tablespoonful and flatten with the back of the spoon. Fry until golden on both sides.
Back at the beginning of the second week of February, the kids and I discovered that there were
– four days of school
– then four days of long weekend
– then four days of school
– then four days until Laolao and Laoye would arrive
– and then four days until March.
The fourth four has now been accomplished. Laolao and Laoye flew into town late yesterday afternoon.
Now just the four days until March remain.
If only I could be sure that meant that spring was, like, just around the corner. But last year we had almost one metre of snow in the first eight days of March. Let’s hope history does not repeat itself. Still, it’s a step closer!
Mother’s instincts triumph again…
This morning I saw the psychologist who has been doing Mustang’s psycho-educational assessment, to review his findings. They show that, indeed, Mustang has a learning disability. She assesses very high (high average to significantly above average) in three areas of intellectual capacity, and very significantly below average in “working memory.” This type of inconsistency, coupled with lower-than-expected achievement in terms of school performance (and the lack of any other explanation, such as illness, depression, home environment factors, etc), is the hallmark of a learning disability.
Thankfully, the school has been proactive and has already started to take measures to address her learning issues. The psychologist will be making several recommendations that should have the effect, if followed, of reinforcing and extending the type of services available to Mustang through the school system. It may take until the end of this school year to get everything in place, but this will lay the foundation for continuing support and instructional modifications for future years.
I’ve known since early Grade 1 that things just weren’t clicking like they should. Now it’s official.
This past weekend, it was Mustang’s turn to be sick again, this time with flu. High fever, chills, fatigue (thankfully no vomiting). We had a quiet Saturday at home.
Button stayed home from skiing lesson as he developed a sore foot, the cure for which would have been for me to stay at the ski chalet as usual to “watch” him and our companion skier friend instead of dropping them off and coming back home to be with Mustang. As I wasn’t willing to leave Mustang with Nanny all day (on Nanny’s regular day off), his sore foot remained incurable and prevented him from having an active and fun outdoor day.
We listened to books on CD, read stories, watched a short movie, and did lots of puzzles. The latter were mostly done by Button and me as Mustang didn’t even have energy for much puzzling. She mostly lay on the sofa and listened to the stories on CD. We finished off Magic Tree House book #16, Hour of the Olympics, then listened to CS Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, and even started on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I called various church people to trade off Sunday School teaching duties and to apologize in advance for Mustang missing her choir’s performance of a song in the church service.
As it turned out, by Sunday morning the fever had broken and Mustang had a lot more energy, but we still stayed home to have a restful day to stave off a relapse and gather energy for school. Finished listening to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, watched another movie, did more puzzles… In the afternoon we made a short excursion to Scholar’s Choice to buy a few more puzzles – we’d done every single one in the house, save one, and the kids wanted more. I happened to know the store had a buy-2-get-1-free sale on Ravensburger puzzles, and with the kids’ saved allowance money they’d have enough to each make a purchase (and I snuck in the free one for a later occasion). So we nipped over and they each chose, not the unicorn puzzles they’d started out saying they wanted, but some other lovely pictures from the 300-piece puzzle selection.
Got home, dumped them out on the table, and set to work.
As the 300-piece puzzles are labelled as for age 9+, I’d steered Button (age almost-6) towards one that I figured would among the easier of the lot (dolphins jumping out of ocean against sunset sky), with lots of colour in distinct bands and a nice, clear picture with easy-to-distinguish detail. He set to with gusto, refusing all offers of help, and in about two hours managed to complete about half the puzzle all on his own. The picture chosen by Mustang (age almost-9), while very cute (Mommy giraffe “kissing” baby giraffe, with several other giraffes, against a savannah background), was harder as there were really only three distinct colour groups (sky, trees/grass, giraffes), each of which occurred in three or four different places. She grew somewhat discouraged as the pieces didn’t just “pop” into place – though largely, I think, owing to it being already late in the afternoon and she was growing tired.
After the kids went to bed I continued working on the puzzles, almost completing Button’s (with his blessing!) and doing almost half of Mustang’s. Monday morning, they hopped out of bed and raced downstairs to work on the puzzles. Button easily fitted the final 17 pieces into place (he’d told me I should almost finish it, but leave some for him to do), and Mustang made progress with the giraffes and trees. She wanted to finish it before school but, alas, there wasn’t quite time, though between the two of them they’d gotten all but about 30 pieces done.
Conclusion: I think it’s about time to take the 24- and 48-piece puzzles in our collection to Value Village (or pass them on to someone with younger kids) as the kids can whip them up in no time already. They’re at the stage where 100 pieces is about the minimum that holds any challenge, even for Button.
Last weekend Button had a bad cold and was quite wiped out most of the weekend. It was a long long weekend for the kids – PD Day on Friday, Family Day on Monday. Though I don’t get the Family Day holiday as I work for the feds, I took the day off anyhow.
Had planned to get groceries on that Monday, but on Sunday realized that since Monday was a holiday the grocery store likely wouldn’t be open. Called over to confirm and yes, they would be closed Monday. We really needed groceries, so I decided to go Sunday afternoon. Stalled a bit, as Button not feeling energetic, had supper … then really needed to get to the store. Tried calling one or two neighbours to see if they could take the kids for an hour, but no one was available. Button really really didn’t want to go hang around in the grocery store, even though we said he could just sit in the cart. So I called a couple of friends from church and finally found our good friends Alleycat and Bigger D who were home – parents were out of town, but both teenagers old enough to take responsibility. So dropped the kids off at their place (not too far from grocery store) while I went and stocked up.
When we got home it was around 7:30 and Button was fading fast, but I needed to get groceries put away. I told Mustang I had a special job for her – could she take little brother upstairs and help him get to sleep while I put away the groceries? She thought that was cool (and Button didn’t insist on Mommy) so off they went. About 15 minutes later she was back downstairs, Button fast asleep (in Mommy’s bed!).
The two of us had a good time reading together, drawing pictures, and enjoying ourselves before she needed to get to sleep too.
(Later last week she picked up Button’s cold and on Thursday was running a fever so stayed home from school – to her great chagrin, as it was a field-trip day to a neighbouring school to see a play. Poor Mustang!)
