Maya Catching Butterflies

Hello, friends. Good Monday afternoon to you all!

I don't know where the time has gone for all of a sudden the start of the 2011-2012 school year is drawing near. I can't say that I'm sad about this because I'm actually excited for the girls to begin anew. This summer has had its ups and downs and mostly I attribute the 'downs' to my lack of planning. I over scheduled the girls in the late afternoons and had absolutely nothing for them to do during the mornings and early afternoons.

I've worked during the morning and afternoons leaving my girls to fend for themselves, only emerging briefly to prepare snacks and meals, otherwise I was involved in daily conference calls and working feverishly to meet deadlines. Did I tell you that in Direct Mail, the mail never stops. NEVER. While I was pounding away on the computer writing and reviewing direct mail materials, my girls were off cranking up the Phinneas and Ferb music and jumping on the sofa in the family room, which by the way, is strictly verboten. But it's hard to enforce the rules when my face is buried in my work.

Additionally, Alex continues to be a rascal. I get so darned angry with her until I have time to sit quietly and truly reflect on where I believe her hostility is coming from. I think I've found the answer. Alex will be starting kindergarten soon and I'm positive that the approaching school year has caused her much anxiety. I can't say that I don't feel for her to some extent, but mostly I want her to come to terms with the fact that school will be fun, exciting, full of surprises and new friendships and new teachers and new playground and a new routine and all that good stuff. I want her to understand that listening to Phinneas and Ferb all day while jumping on the sofa isn't as much fun as kindergarten. HA! Try telling this to a five year old right?

Meanwhile, my first born, Sammy, is turning eight tomorrow. She is beyond giddy and for days now she's been screeching, "Can you believe it, mom? I'm going to be eight!" I can believe it alright and this occasion tugs at my heart a wee little bit. I still remember when I brought this baby... this baby, this Samantha baby home for the first time. I had no idea what I was going to do with her. She was snugly and wiggly and pink and scary. She made foreign noises. Her face contorted into what could not be described as any facial expression I was familiar with. I didn't know if she was, mad, or glad or sad or afraid or anything. When I asked other parents, more experienced parents, what she was trying to convey with a puckered O shaped mouth, they'd say, "She's hungry," or they'd say, "She's constipated." It took me days to figure out the difference between a hungry face and a constipated face, but soon I got it.

Now this tiny baby is a moderate sized eight year old, and I'm still learning what some of her facial expressions mean. Sometimes, there's the ubiquitous rolling of the eyes which totally means the same thing in all languages, Whatever. And then there's the blank stares out into nothingness that I think means, she's bored, or she's got something on her mind, or she's reflecting. I don't know which, but every day I'm learning.

Now summer is coming to an end and I'm closing the book on this chapter of my life. I'm now parent to, a kindergartner and a third grader. Oh what challenges are in store for me, only time will tell.

Last week when Alex was in gymnastics, her coach came and sat down beside me and said the following, "Alex is a hard worker when she wants to be. Mostly she's off in her own little world doing her own thing... she's catching butterflies. Now this isn't a bad thing, she just needs to focus sometimes." This news was unsettling for me to hear. I don't want coaches or teachers for that matter, telling me that my child isn't focused. I took the information with calm and just chewed on it a bit. In the end, I had to admit something that I've known all along about myself, and that is, I too am unfocused... catching butterflies. Could it be that my girls have inherited this trait? Be that as it may, I don't think of it as a negative, only a small opportunity for improvement. We all sometimes need to make adjustments, large and small, in order to move forward in life a better person. I guess this is something me and my girls will have to work at, focusing.

Friends, you have been so incredibly kind coming to this blog to read about my rascals and all the silly things we do as a family. I'm moving on now to a different space that I think might be better suited for my personality. I hope you'll join me there: Maya Catching Butterflies. Maybe this new blog will help me along my journey toward becoming a better, more focused person. I hope to see you there.

Obsessive Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies

The other night I had a bothersome sweet tooth. This sweet tooth was a real nuisance. I'm talking nuisance like a house fly endlessly buzzing against the window while the back door is wide open nuisance. I'm not sure how you would handle an overly aggressive sweet tooth, but I'll tell you how I handled mine.

I decided to bake chocolate chip cookies, but I was down to my last stick of butter when most chocolate chip cookie recipes call for two sticks of butter.

I thumbed through cookie books and blogs, searching for a recipe that required only one stick of butter, and in a short amount of time, I found one. Hot damn! I could already envision that pesky sweet tooth in my rear view mirror. So long sweet tooth!

Though my 'Hurray!' would be short lived because right smack dab in the middle of the page were the words, Hazelnut Butter. Hazelnut Butter? I didn't have Hazelnut Butter, nor would I ever have had Hazelnut Butter. My excitement waned. If I had had an empty tin can, I would have kicked it I was so bummed. And then it came to me. Nutella! In place of the Hazelnut Butter I could use Nutella. Hurray again!  {These cookies were starting to look less like the recipe in front of me and more like an exercise in substitutions: First the Nutella in place of Hazelnut Butter, then considering the sweetness of the Nutella, I reduced the amount of sugar. In place of a whole vanilla bean, I used vanilla extract.}

While the cookies baked I sat in my kitchen listening to a man on the radio talk about crop circles. It was late in the evening, the rascals were sleeping, and my husband was downstairs watching Mad Men by way of Netflix. Don't you just love Netflix, especially now that it's streaming through XBox? Anyways, back to the sweet tooth/cookie fiasco.

While the rascals were in bed, and husband was downstairs, devouring episode upon episode of Mad Men, I was in chocolate, hazelnut heaven. There's something calming about the smell of butter and sugar, AND Nutella. Don't you agree? I kid you not, my house smelled like what I think the Keebler hollow tree would smell like.

When the oven timer went off, I opened the over door to thick, almost perfectly round chocolate chip cookies. I didn't even wait for them to cool before I bit down on one. Almost immediately my annoying sweet tooth was gone. Can I get another, Hurray! These cookies stayed chewy in the middle even after they cooled.

That night I went to bed dreaming of hazelnuts, chocolate and crop circles. Crazy.

Here's the recipe:

 

Obsessive Mom’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

From Mom’s Big Book of Cookies by Lauren Chattman

Ingredients

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup hazelnut butter or Nutella

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

¾ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

¾ cup granulated sugar (I used ¼ cup)

2 large eggs

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise (I used a teaspoon vanilla extract)

2 cups semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

¾ cup finely chopped skinned hazelnuts (optional)

1.       Preheat the oven to 375⁰F

2.       Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in medium-sized mixing bowl.

3.       Cream the cooled melted butter, hazelnut butter (or Nutella), and sugars together in a large mixing bowl with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add the eggs and beat until smooth. Scrape the seeds of the vanilla bean into the bowl (or add the vanilla extract) and stir until well distributed. Stir in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips and the nuts, if you are using them. Place bowl in the refrigerator for 10 minutes (or up to 6 hours) to let the dough firm up.

4.       Drop the dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each cookie.

5.       Bake the cookies until golden around the edges but still soft on top, 9 to 11 minutes. Let the cookies stand on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then remove them with a metal spatula to a wire rack to cool completely. Cookies will keep at room temperature in an airtight container for 2 to 3 days.