Words of Wisdom

Last night we were cleaning up baseballs from the front yard.  Jacob had two of a set of four plastic balls.  He said "two is better than none, right mom?...(pause)....unless you're talking about consequences."

Next: El Bulli

This will mostly be pictures with a little bit of text about our dinner at Next Restaurant in Chicago.  If you want a little back-story on what Next is and how we ended up there - I'll refer you to Brian's blog.

So - I don't remember everything, but I might remember some things.  I do know it was May 6th, and we traveled down to Chicago for the dinner.  The kids stayed with Grandma and Grandpa downtown and Brian and I changed (what do you wear to a dinner like this??) and headed to meet Megan and Jamie at Next.

The restaurant itself was smaller than I thought it would be.  There were roses suspended from the ceiling, which was pretty cool.  Then the food started to arrive, which was even cooler - literally -140 degrees F:

 

This was "nitro caipirinha with tarragon concentrate" (on the spoon).  The only thing that threw me was that I thought the cold white stuff around the bottom of the lime was the same at the cold white stuff that was in the frozen lime.  I was wrong.  Under the lime was salt.  This was a big disappointment, since I'd finished the slushie part and was hoping for more - only to be rudely assaulted with a mouthful of really cold salt.

There were 29 courses in all - so now onto the collages:

Display #1 - Appetizers - named clockwise...  hot/cold trout roe tempura; iberico sandwich; spherical olives; coca of avocado pear, anchovies, and green onion.  The tempura was my favorite and introduced me to the important "closed mouth bite" which is that you have to get the whole thing in your mouth before you bite down - or else whatever totally liquid thing is in there will dribble all down your front.  I followed this advice without question.  I was dribble free.

#2 - More Appetizers - these all came together.  It was a Golden Egg (raw egg in carmelized crunchy outer yumminess); chicken liquid croquettes; and a black sesame spongecake and miso (eating cake that tasted like sesame was wild).

#3 - Weird Stuff - next came the foams - in the center "smoke foam" yes - it tasted like eating campfire.  Not yummy.  Then carrot air (the orange one on the left) - loved it.  After the foams, we transitioned into "meal" like things.  There was a ravioli made out of cuttlefish (left bottom).  The fish was the "pasta."  This was followed by "tomato water" (right).  Not my favorite.  Then crab aspic with mini-corn couscous (left top). 

#4 - Cauliflower cous-cous with solid aromatic herb sauce.  This deserves it's own picture because it was so pretty.  Each bite you took cous-cous and mixed in some herbs from the outside.  Each bite was different and it was pretty awesome.

#5 - More main courses - suquet of prawns (top right), potato tortilla (left) this tasted like mashed potatoes in a odd fluff, and trumpet carpaccio (bottom right) - which included rabbit kidney, which I actually ate.  Rabbit kidney.  Yeah, it tasted good, but it was kidney and I had a hard time getting past that.

#6 - More mains - top right - red mullet gaudi.  This was cool because it came with a bag of heated seashells.  At El Bulli - this would have been served on the beach; a trio of nasturtium flower (bone marrow and eel, the flower, and cucumber) bottom right.  Left - more rabbit.  Rabbit saddle.  Apple jelly.  Really good.

#7 - The cheese course.  We were defeated.  That's a lot of gorgonzola.

#8 - Fun stuff.  Top left - foie gras caramel custard.  I ate mine.  I ate Megan's.  I could eat that on a regular basis.  My favorite of the night.  Top right - spice plate.  It was a game - spices in apple gel - you had to guess and you only got one chance.   I did pretty good - ignorance wins over those with real tasting taste-buds.  Bottom - mint pond.  A plate that they sprinkled mint, sugar, and something else on and you were like - huh?  Brian even rubbed his finger across it.  Then you tapped it and viola!  it was ice. 

#9 - Desserty stuff - chocolate in textures (top left); chocolate donuts / creme flute / puff pastry web (bottom left), passionfruit marshmallow (bottom right), coffee (top right). 

#10 - Drinky stuff - there was a drink with each course - though some courses you got a vial of things to add to your current drink to make it taste different.  Wine, beer, sake, bubbly - but over the course of 4 hours with a lot of food - you didn't notice (too much).

There is probably a lot more to say about El Bulli.  I'm glad Brian got to experience the restaurant, even if it was in Chicago and not Spain.  Also - I ate rabbit kidney and foie gras! 

We sported

 Today was opening day for Little League - a.k.a. Jacob's first official baseball game.  He got a base hit in the 2nd inning - there he is looking very cold because he doesn't own a long-sleeved white t-shirt and it was approximately 10 degrees out (OK, 50 degrees) and his parents didn't have the forethought to go buy a white t-shirt for him.  Now, I think if we buy a t-shirt it'll be 80 for every game from here on out.  Also - please note the lovely "beige/tan/toasted almond" colored uniform sponsored appropriately by a cosmetic surgeon's office.  Undeniably the ugliest uniforms in the league......

 He played outfield, third base, and catcher - which was pretty cute.

 

They ended up winning, 10-6 (or 10-7; 10 -something).

 Because we're somewhat insane (and Jacob has been begging to play football now for a year), we went straight from baseball to the third (or fourth, maybe, where has this spring gone to?) NFL flag football game at the Y.  It was somewhat sloppy from the storms earlier in the week.   But.... it's football right?

Jacob as center - of course, no 1st grader is going to put their hands anywhere close to another 1st grader's tushie - so, note the unique form of handing off the ball to the QB.

 This morning of sport was followed by an entire afternoon of playing with the neighbors - so exciting that Jacob wholly forgot about lunch.  I expect him to sleep well tonight.

In other news...

Allison has declared she's no longer going to eat animals.  Then she checked to see if macaroni and cheese and hot dogs were animals.  I'm not sure if she's revising her intentions now or not.

The Road to Delinquency is Paved with Suspensions

Jacob was suspended from school yesterday.  Yes, suspended.

I've had an abundance of feelings since 10am yesterday - they ranged from mortified, to sad, to angry at Jacob, to angry at the Principal, to resigned, back to angry at the principal.  So, realize I might ramble somewhat because the story isn't fully formed yet in my mind.  Also, I'll say from the get-go that we do believe that Jacob did all that they said he did.  They're not making it up, and it's not acceptable.  However, I think there might have been a more positive outcome, and his suspension seems out-of-proportion to the 'crime.'

It started last week with writing.  The writing assignment went from "more than one sentence" to "five sentences."  Jacob has had trouble coming up with ideas to write about all year - which is odd given that he can talk non-stop about anything that comes to mind.  So last Thursday he refused to write in his journal, so he had to stay in at recess, when he continued to refuse to write in his journal.  Something also happened at lunch, he didn't want to go into the cafeteria, and he ended up eating in the principal's office, but then he didn't want to go back to class.  This was all in one particularly bad day.  But his teacher stopped me after school to explain, and he wrote in his journal at home.

Fast forward a week to today, when I dropped him off at school and stayed to do the word cards in his classroom.  He came up to me and said he didn't know what to write about in his journal.  I gave him many suggestions (write about how awesome your mom is!), but he rejected them all.  I left around 9am.

10am, I get a call from the principal.  He explained that Jacob was not doing his schoolwork, he was not listening to adults, he was "shutting down" that this was now a "pattern of behavior" they have seen with him the last two weeks (but notably not prior to that), and he was going to be suspended for the rest of the day - I needed to come pick him up. 

I'm thinking - OMG Suspended! - what did he do?!  Seriously, who ever got suspended in first grade!  'Suspended' is for fights and stuff.

So, I go retrieve a tearful Jacob from the principal's office with a rundown of the morning's events (refused to write - but the official slip said "disobedience/insubordination" cause "unknown"), a slip about an incident on the playground Thursday (which was never communicated home), a message that Jacob could not be this disrespectful of adults at school, and instructions to make sure this didn't turn into a fun day.  Seriously?  Sure - you got suspended from school - let's go play video games!!

We went and got his backpack and homework, from his teacher, who seemed genuinely surprised and apologized repeatedly.  I took a still tearful Jacob to work with me (he cried for about 20 minutes because he didn't want to miss school, he really wanted to go to music, and they were planting seeds today in science).  If I had any previous plans to "come down hard" on him based on the "seriousness of his crimes" they dissipated quite a bit with how upset he was by the whole thing.  It seemed mean to pile it on - so I took the "well, actions have consequences" stance and these are your consequences.

So, Jacob did his work in my office.  We talked a little about how serious it was to get suspended.  How he needed to listen to adults even if it wasn't what he wanted.  And he was the model of good behavior the rest of the day.  Will this translate to Tuesday?  Who knows?

I've thought about an alternative to the principal's theory of "insubordination and oppositional defiance."  Because I can also picture a boy in class with nothing to write about.  He's being asked but the longer it takes him to come up with something the more he worries about getting into trouble.  The more he worries about getting into trouble, and not being able to go to his friend's house after school, the less he can think of something to write about.  The less he can think of something to write about, the more he realizes time is ticking away and the closer he is to getting in trouble.  Suddenly, the feedback cycle implodes and he's stuck.  He's "shut-down" to use their terms. 

For this boy, the boy anxious about writing - is he "refusing"?  Is he being "insubordinate" and "oppositional."  Is suspending that boy the right call?  Because I'm a little worried that suspending that boy will make him even more anxious about his writing topics, and even less willing to communicate with adults.  There just seems to be a better way to have handled this.

Sprouts

One of my birthday presents was a sprouting kit and several types of seeds to sprout.  So, I've been having fun growing sprouts in the kitchen.  I've decided that I like your standard alfalfa sprouts, and broccoli might be my favorite (who knew those little things would TASTE like broccoli??).  The recent two were radish and fenugreek (both a little too bitter).  So next up is peas.  Perhaps later this summer, I'll get to make a whole salad with the lettuce and spinach that Jacob and I just planted in the little greenhouse starter home.

Yummy! 

Things I don't "get"

In the paper this morning was a story about a group of parents who have lobbied for alternative freshman com arts curriculum because they feel the books selected contain obscenity, references to sex, or talk of suicide.

This story has bothered me since they first reported about the parents group last year and the uproar over one of the books. 

First off, I have faith that the school district is not assigning "Shades of Grey" to incoming freshman.  I'm sure that the school tries to balance literary complexity with up-to-date and relevant material.  They mix the old "Catcher in the Rye" with some new book about a Christopher Creed.  (Plus more books that don't warrant deeper inspection - perhaps "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," but who knows, those don't make headlines.)

Given my base assumption that the high school is not trying to make the kids into sex-crazed despots, I don't understand the concern coming from the parents.  First, they have the opportunity to opt out of individual objectionable books.  I'll stand by this option as a viable one, given that I myself once opted out of a book in 7th or 8th grade because it was about a brain tumor and I could barely read it without feeling like I was going to vomit.

But say you don't want to opt out of one particular book.  There are other things you can do.  The parents could read the books before the kids did and have the opportunity to discuss distressing themes with them.  My kids and I are reading 'Little House in the Big Woods' and do you know how many questions I got in the first chapter about slaughtering animals?  Definitely not farm hands, those two.

But the real thing that I don't "get" is that at some point kids are exposed to these things.  I'm guessing that it's way before 9th grade.  A middle-school student in Oshkosh committed suicide.  Seventh and eight-graders get pregnant.  Kids are bullied so much that they do terrible things to themselves, to others.  Kids are introduced to drugs by their parents.  This is sad, unfortunate, and I desperately wish we lived in a world where these things weren't so.

Last time I checked, however, there wasn't a cave system under Appleton where we could hide our children. An alterna-world without sex on TV, violent video-games, wars, or cruelty.  A world without stories of kids locked in basements, gay teen suicide, and school shootings. 

Since that alterna-world is not hidden secretly below the city of Appleton, maybe it's our job to instead put the world in context.  Keep the lines of communication open so that kids can talk about what troubles them.  Because while You (Citizens and Concerned Parents.org) may have done a wonderful job of raising your kids in a bubble - the kid with the locker next door might be the homeless teen getting beat up every day.  Do you really want  your youngster to pretend it's not happening because "he's just not ready to deal with that yet?"  Too bad - he needs to be ready - whether you are or not.