This month, in honor of Literary Mama’s special focus on stepmothers, I tried to get Ben to watch The Sound of Music with me.
He wasn’t so interested, but still, I wound up seeing the film in a whole new way.

Here’s an excerpt:

Hollywood movies from Cinderella to Stepmom typically represent stepmothers as problems, or much worse, but The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) is the only film I’ve seen that solves the “problem” of a woman by turning her into a stepmother.

We first meet Maria dancing in green mountain fields high above the city of Salzburg; she’s dwarfed by her landscape (as she will be dwarfed by buildings, institutions, and situations throughout the film), but carefree as she sings. She doesn’t look like a problem, just a joyful young woman reveling in the beautiful countryside.

Tolling bells call her to attention and she races down the mountain only to arrive at her convent home late for Mass, again. The nuns have already been singing, “How do you solve a problem like Maria,” and before long the wise Reverend Mother, one of the film’s several childless mothers, arrives at her answer: send Maria away from the abbey to serve as governess to seven unruly, motherless children.

“Really?” asked my son Ben, when I told him the story of Maria and the von Trapp children. Despite my best efforts to entice him into watching the film with me, he kept wandering out of the room, more interested in his new Lego set than the singing and dancing on screen. But the idea of the pretty young Maria in charge of seven kids stopped him in his tracks.

He stared at the screen as Maria, a victim of the children’s prank, bounced up from the pinecone left on her seat. He turned to me slowly and asked, “Is she a grown-up?”

Read the rest of the column here, and let me know what you think!

So, the San Francisco Unified School District mails out its school assignments today, and everyone I know is on pins and needles about this.

I am interested to hear, of course, but I’ve also been quite usefully distracted by my other projects. Still, that’s not to say it’s not on my mind, and so when I went out for a run today, I made a point of circling past school choice #3, just to see what might be happening out on the playground at 10 am on a sunny day.

I saw the usual assortment of ball playing and structure climbing and running around, and then, off in the corner, I saw a group of four or five girls, gathered in a circle. One of them was holding a plastic baseball bat, and she was smacking something in the center of the circle, over and over. The other girls, they looked to be in 1st or 2nd grade, were cheering her on.

I ran around the corner to get a closer look, and there, in the center of the circle, being beaten silly by the girl with the plastic bat, was a large plastic fish.

OK.

It could have been so much worse.

Ben went on his first field trip today, with a small group of kids from his preschool: a walk to a mailbox (not even the post office!) less than ten minutes away, to mail letters to their parents. He’s been plenty of places without us, of course, but this was his first organized school outing. I’m just a little verklempt.

And Eli, at almost twenty-two months, uttered his first sentences! Leaving the duckpond today, he waved and said, “Buh-bye duhk. Buh-bye coot. Buh-bye guhl.” And he continued on, saying goodbye to the rest of the birds, the flowers, the grass, the dirt… It’s a whole new world of communication.

It’s March in San Francisco. The skies are clear, the sun is shining, and Eli has rediscovered his Halloween costume (with the extra, and quite fetching, addition of his UConn Huskies hat).

He alternated between the tiger suit and, when he got too warm, just a diaper, all day long.

I’m not used to having a boy who expresses an opinion about his clothes, let alone likes changing them occasionally . Ben would keep the same clothes on for a week if I’d let him..

Deborah Bacharach is your average doting mother. Of her baby girl, she writes, “Rose is gorgeous, courageous, and clever, and she can say “uh oh” with great aplomb…”

As a writer, Bacharach not only finds material in her darling daughter, but she finds a way to harness her sleep deprivation, the bane of every new parent: “Sleep deprivation makes me miserable, but it’s had two unforeseen advantages for my writing life: aphasia and visions.”

Read more about the inspirational power of sleep deprivation in this month’s Literary Reflections essay, “Fire, Aphasia and the Spirit World.”

OK, technically only my parents were on vacation, but what with Ben’s birthday and all, it began to feel like we were all on break. Which is really not so bad (except that I need to be writing my next column right now…)

So this is what we did:

Read many different books, including The Gypsy Madonna; Special Topics in Calamity Physics; What is the What; Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq; slave narratives; and Cold Mountain (all of us, though mostly my parents);

Read one book, The Bunnies Are Not in Their Beds, over and over (Eli, with his patient granddad);

Read one other book, The Daylight Limited, over and over (Ben, with Tony and me);

Bake (me! Cooks Illustrated’s Best Chocolate Layer Cake, which is more complicated and less delicious than Chocolate Carrot Cake and therefore won’t be made around here again; the fabulous and easy Apricot Crumbles; my new favorite lemon dessert, Meyer Lemon Cake; and brownies);

Add words to our vocabulary (Eli: “cake” and “dessert”);

Add lines to our epic poem, even at the playground (Dad, who is working on a paraquel to Beyond Beowulf);

Learn to play catch (Eli, with his granddad);

Build with his new lego sets (Ben);

Look at old family photos;

Take more family photos;

Make plans for the next visit.

“Ben, what do you think Eli will learn when he’s two?”

“I think Eli will learn how to say ‘placemat.'”

“Oh. And what do you think you’ll learn, now that you’re five?”

“I think I’ll learn how to drink wine!”

Alright then.

Five Things Ben Likes To Do
Read
Draw
Build with Lincoln logs, tinker toys, and blocks
Play with his friends
Pretend to be Dan Zanes and play a concert

Five Favorite Things
Trains
Musical instruments
Books
Tinker Toys
His brother

Five Favorite Foods
Pasta puttanesca
Chard with lemon and garlic
Penne pesto
Dried mango
Chocolate anything

Five Foods He Doesn’t Much Care For
A glass of milk
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Beans
Butter (acceptable only as an invisible ingredient)

Five Reasons I Love Ben
He says “actually”
He’s (mostly) kind to his brother
He always asks to be excused from the table (even when he happens to be the only one sitting there)
At bedtime, he wants me to cuddle and tell him the story of the day he was born

And extra bonus reason: this morning, he said to me, “At night, I decided I should sneak into your room and gently put this picture on your pillow!” The picture, of a house with some flowers growing in front of it, and a bright sun in the corner, is captioned “Picture of the World, for Mama, from Ben!”

Happy birthday, sweet Ben!!

It’s always a good day when you get to visit two bookstores and eat a nice dinner out.

My parents have visited San Francisco often enough that they don’t need to travel the tourist circuit at all. Instead, there are a couple bookstores that always require a stop, and since we are celebrating a big birthday soon, we even had a legitimate excuse to spend money.

In the evening, the boys’ beloved caregiver came over and the adults went out for a fine meal at the lovely Woodward’s Garden. This restaurant has been on my radar since I first moved to San Francisco, and I’d never eaten there before! It was worth the wait. Nothing fancy, nothing stacked or foamed (and thank goodness, really), but all of it — from the seared scallops with celery and jerusalem artichoke puree, to the truffled mushroom risotto, to the chocolate ganache-bosc pear tart–was creative and delicious.

Today, we’re off to the farmer’s market to find today’s dinner, and then, tonight, the birthday feast cooking begins in earnest!

After dinner (mushroom ravioli with brown butter; chard from the yard; and ice cream for the boys who figured that since we had dessert last night we should have it again tonight. No point in trying to break this habit before Ben’s birthday, really), Ben asked for some alone time in his bedroom. Dad offered to accompany him, and Ben realized that Granddad time would be way better than alone time. Up they went.

It took Eli half a second to realize that the fun was going upstairs, and to insist on following them, so I escorted him up. Then I closed the gate and headed back down, leaving Dad to relive long-past days with young children.

Mom and I puttered around the kitchen, cleaning up and visiting. I kept an ear tuned to the upstairs. I could hear happy boy voices and the clatter of tinker toys. Then it got pretty quiet. Then it got LOUD! Crazy, giggling and running loud. I took my time finishing up, then went to check out the scene.

I found my Dad at the door of Ben’s bedroom, simply opening and closing the door while the boys ran down the hallway and back. Occasionally he would say “Boo!” Then the tickling began, both boys flushed, their hair curling with sweat, laughing so hard they couldn’t stand up.

Dad headed back downstairs, his work done, and the boys were asleep within half an hour.

And they didn’t even stir, an hour later, when the house was rocked by an earthquake.