I've been meaning to post about the fondue party playgroup we hosted in honor of Anouk's birthday since it happened, all the way back in March. But somewhere along the way I misplaced my SD card with the party pictures on it and didn't find it again until this past weekend (in the bottom of my camera bag...like, who would ever look there?)

Fondue might just be one of the best kids' party foods out there. It keeps little hands occupied. It encourages children to see food in a fresh way, to try new things in different combinations. It's fun, it's novel, and it's yummy. I think you could even make an argument that it builds motor skills, using those pointy little fondue forks.

A few weeks ago, one of our readers wrote on our Facebook page that Chic's Beach is her favorite local beach and J., A., and I visited the following weekend to check it out. Lately, we've been going for a walk on the beach every evening that the weather's been nice, and Chic's has become one of our favorite places to sit and watch the sun go down.

Chic's is very much a neighborhood beach, bordered by houses in shades of pink and yellow and green, with people sitting out on the verandahs and waving as we go by. There's no hotels, no boardwalk. The vibe is quieter, and sportier, than any other beach I've visited in the area. Instead of rows of sunbathers, there are people out walking their dogs, playing soccer, fishing, and kayaking, all in the shadow of the mighty Chesapeake Bay Bridge that stretches out to the horizon. Once or twice we saw a few brave souls heading into the waves with their boogie boards -- a true feat of valor, because in April, even the bay is cold enough to make us squeal when it touches our toes.

Brunswick stew is -- or might be, there's some confusion -- a Virginia original. There are variants up and down the southern US seaboard and I have had many of them. It's interesting, the different twists that each locality puts on this classic. In Georgia, the broth is thin and very spicy.  in North Carolina, pulled pork is used in place of chicken or beef, and the stew tends to be so thick that you can stand your spoon in it. Virginia-style Brunswick stew falls somewhere in between and therefore is juuuuust right, like Goldilock's porridge.

Brunswick stew is one of my favorites for pulling dinner together in a hurry out of the odds and ends left in your freezer at the end of a busy week. Once you have the base, which is smoky, spicy, and tangy, you can add almost any protein, veggies and legumes you want and it still comes out delicious. I know some purists say there must be okra. Some say there have to be butter beans or peas. This week, we made our Brunswick stew with corn and lima beans that I excavated from the bottom of the freezer, some spicy pork sausage (from Crabill's, by way of Greenway Beef), and the leftover rotisserie chicken we had earlier in the week. We're looking forward to trying a version with venison during hunting season. And my friend's mom assures me that when she was growing up in Virginia, squirrel was a necessary staple of Brunswick stew.

You can find the recipe that we use most frequently below. I promise there is no squirrel in it.

Brunswick Stew

-2-2.5 lbs chicken
-1 onion
-4 cups chicken broth
-2-3 russet potatoes
-1 can (28 oz) stewed tomatoes
-3 tbsp barbecue sauce
-1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
-1 cup corn
-1 cup butterbeans
-2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Cut chicken into pieces and saute in cast iron pot with onion in butter or oil until just barely cooked through. Add chicken broth, stewed tomatoes, diced potatoes, barbecue sauce, Worcestershire and one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. Bring to a boil. Add corn and butterbeans, then reduce heat to a simmer. Cook until meat and potatoes are tender to the point of falling apart (stew should be on the thick side). If you've pre-cooked the chicken, this should take 1.5 to 2 hours or so. About 15 minutes before taking the stew off the heat, stir in the second tablespoon of vinegar, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve piping hot.

My little cooking buddy was lured in by the smell of onions frying and watched the whole process with great interest.

We're big fans of Zoo Tales at the Virginia Zoo, so we gave a big cheer when they brought back their summertime sister program, Garden Tales, at the beginning of April. Like Zoo Tales, the Garden Tales program consists of a few themed stories suitable for toddlers and younger kids, but instead of meeting new animal friends each week, participants are introduced to a different kind of plant that grows around the zoo, with an activity to follow.

This year's inaugural Garden Tales focused on vegetables, and how they can be either "tops" or "bottoms." The kids were invited to examine some vegetables up close, and to guess whether they grew above or below the ground by putting the relevant veggie cutout above or below the soil line on a felt board. Some of them were familiar, like carrots, but a few, like radishes with their leafy tops, required more thought. The funniest part, I think, was seeing the storytime leader hold out a round green head of lettuce and ask the group what it was. "It's a salad!" one toddler piped up, and the others scrambled to voice their agreement: yes, yes, this is definitely a salad.

Baby A. and I have been frequent Zoo Tales-goers, but to tell the truth, she's become a little bored with animals lately (after having been asked over and over again for the past 18 months what this one or that one "says," I'm not sure I blame her).  With all of the plants in our yard bursting into bloom, and because of our renewed visits to the farm, she's become really interested in plants over the past few weeks -- how they grow, what they eat, what makes them happy -- so Garden Tales is right up her alley. She's asked every morning this week whether we're going to see the "baby plants" today and seems bummed when I tell her she'll have to content herself with the pallets of seedlings in our backyard. It's just not as exciting when there's not a lion or two nearby, I guess. (Or a tiger -- the VA Zoo's new zoo tigers arrived in their habitats in last week!)

The Virginia Zoo has some gorgeous gardens and trained horticulturalists to recreate animal habitats from all over the world (many of the treats the animals enjoy are grown right on the zoo grounds). The gardens and the plants are so pretty and well-kept that it's almost a reason in itself to visit. (You can read more about the zoo's different gardens and the plants in them here).

Garden Tales is held every Thursday morning at 11 in the zoo's Eco-Garden, just off of the main plaza. It's free with admission (and always free to zoo members).

I can't get over how much older Baby A. looks in this picture compared to our first visit to the zoo last summer. Next year she'll probably be as tall as that turtle, right?

It could be I am possibly too excited about this craft that Baby A. and I did last week. I'm a very crafty person -- but Anouk isn't, which means that most of our art sessions end up with a toddler crying because her hands are covered in goop. But I still keep pressing on because I want my child to grow creatively... and because, come on, getting to do art projects as an adult is about 40% of the reason
to have a kid in the first place.

These wooden bracelets, made out of popsicle sticks, were a big hit with both mama and baby. Luckily, my girl loves a good accessory more than she hates getting her hands dirty.

The bracelets are a little tricky to make -- here's how to do it.


First, the craft sticks have to be soaked in water overnight, then they have to be bent into shape and let dry for another 24-48 hours. When ours were waterlogged to the point of flexibility, we very, very slowly bent them and fitted them into the opening of a glass and mason jar, for adult-sized bracelets. To make ones that would fit little toddler wrists, we bent the wet sticks around a paper towel roll and secured them in place with rubber bands. (Some of them will break in this process, so I suggest prepping a few extras, just in case.)

We left the sticks outside all day and night on one of the warm days last week and by the next morning, they were dry and ready to paint. We carefully took them out of the glasses and sanded the rough splintery bits with sandpaper. Then we painted them, using acrylic paints and some paint pens.

For the finishing touch, we added foam sticker "jewels" to a select few.


I think our bracelets turned out very nicely and I found myself admiring mine as I worked around the house over the weekend. Anouk loves her new bling and has barely taken her bracelets off since we first put them on her wrists. (She lost her sticker jewels pretty quickly, so if you want added durability, I suggest a few drops of glue to hold it more firmly in place.)

Even James got one. He says he likes it -- in a manly way.


Please excuse the mess in that picture. After a very long week, the last thing we wanted to do was laundry, etc. Here's to a better week than the last one. Happy Monday!

Anne and I spent three days at the beach last week -- in April! Tuesday, we went for a beautiful walk at East Beach, Wednesday we met up with friends at the Community Beach Park for a bracing swim, and on Thursday, we hit Willoughby Spit with our Auntie C. for a stroll along the Ocean View Fishing Pier.

The pier used to be known as Harrison's Pier, an iconic Norfolk landmark until it was swept away in Hurricane Isabel in 2003. I remembered crabbing from Harrison's Pier as a kid, but hadn't been back since the new pier was built. The new pier looked flashy and bright and swell, with the double-decker restaurant on top, but it just wasn't the same as the old pier I knew and loved. So I didn't even bother getting to know the new one. As you might have realized by now, I am not the biggest fan of change.

But on this 90-degree day, we were in search of some sun and sand and bright blue water and the pier is where we found it. We took our time walking out, pausing to peer down between the rails at the waves, turning back to wave at the sunbathers scattered along the shore of the Sarah Constant Beach. By the time we'd reached the building smack dab in the middle of the pier that houses the restaurant and tackle shop, the sea air had given us an appetite, so we decided to stop for lunch, and climbed the stairs to the rooftop level restaurant.

The rooftop deck of the pier restaurant is a wonderful place to be on a hot day. Even when it's stifling on the ground, there is sure to be a breeze ruffling around up top. There are also giant table/bench gliders to rock on while you enjoy it. And the view! We could see for miles, to the bridge-tunnel and to Point Comfort, all the way out to the Thimble Shoal light, which seemed a lot closer than you think it can be when you're looking for it from the shore.

(And the food wasn't bad either. We shared the steamer basket of clams and mussels, Aunt C. and A. and I. Two of our party of three had Bloody Marys that were just fantastic -- I'll let you guess which two! They don't skimp on olives at the OV Pier restaurant, no sir. Keep that in mind.)


For a fee, we could have gone through the tackle shop to the far side of the pier but we were content to stay up top and watch the fishermen there go about their business. The pier seemed to stretch for a long, long way out -- the same way it did when I was a kid. Some things don't change.


(What? Don't you wear galoshes and a tutu to the beach??)

Happy weekend!

Sometime around Anouk's second birthday it happened. It was triggered by her first viewing of Shrek, maybe, or the tiny set of Weeble-esque Disney heroines given to her by my Aunt Liz. She added a new word to her vocabulary: "pin-theth," said in a little piping voice. She became aware that there are princesses in the world.

I hadn't exactly been hiding this fact from her, in kind of the way I hadn't exactly been hiding the existence of Barbies. There are a few raggedy-haired leftovers from my childhood in her bunch of toys (so solid and thick-waisted compared to the Barbies of today!) and when she unearths them from the jumble, we play with them. But we don't go digging for them. It was the same with the princesses -- I wasn't consciously trying to steer her away from them, I just wasn't pushing the pink, the gilt, the glitz, the crowns.

But now that A. does know about princesses, there is no going back. She uses the word a dozen times a day at least. "This pree-tee pin-theth dress, mama," and I will agree, it is a pretty dress fit for a queen. But then I will root around in the dress-up box for her stethoscope and lay it next to the iridescent ruffled plastic skirt just in case not doing this sends a message that somehow it's better to be ornamental than useful. Just to remind her that there are options.


I played with princesses growing up but as an adult, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of them. I fully realize that they are innocuous characters but I think that's what bothers me about them, along with the fact that people become princesses simply by the virtue of being born to the ruling class. That's not the lesson I want to teach my daughter about the world. I want her to know that people can change their situations by work, and knowledge, and by looking out for one another. I'm not sure how much a two-year-old can conceive of things like class and wealth and power and beauty and how they all hang together but I do know that at one point as a child I owned the doll that said "math is hard" when you pulled a string in its back. And I grew up thinking math was hard. And boring. And when I had to try to do it, I let myself give up much more quickly than I did with other things. I'm not sure how much the doll (and things like her) contributed to this mindset but just in case it did, I want to be careful about things like this.

So whenever Anouk started talking about princess this or that, I found myself shutting off whatever  other jabbering was going on in my mind and paying attention to the context. And what I found surprised me. "Princess," she would say, pointing to a drawing of Belle in full regalia on the DVD cover of Beauty and the Beast. "Princess," she would say, looking at a drawing of Anne of Green Gables in her puffed-sleeve dress in an illustrated version of the book I keep by my bed. "Princess" -- when seeing a paper doll in a ballerina leotard, Melissa McCarthy standing in tall shoes on SNL, a portrait of my grandma at age 14 hanging over our dining table.

I started to realize that to my daughter, right now, princess just means "woman." Any woman, all women, of all shapes and sizes and colors.  Her understanding doesn't go beyond that. The mailcarrier with beads in her hair, who delivers us packages sometimes, is a princess; the woman with the colorful tattoos who bags our groceries at Trader Joe's is one too. Right now, Anouk's favorite princesses to see in the whole world are Alice in Wonderland, with her frilly white pinafore, and Caillou's mommy, with her soft paunchy stomach. In her mind, every woman is a princess -- simply by virtue of being born.

It's something I hope she'll remember forever.

There's really only one time of year to visit the Great Dismal Swamp, and the time is now. In summer, the swamp tends to live up to its name: it's hot, dark, smelly, and the bugs. Oh, the bugs! By mid-May, the mosquitoes are out in swarms and they don't go away until October or November, and by then, things are pretty gray and flat and all of the singing frogs and birds have buried themselves in the mud or flown south for the winter.

But for a few weeks in early spring, the Dismal Swamp is like Goldilocks' porridge: juuuust right. Last Saturday just happened to fall in the right window and so that's when we visited. The trees were beginning to leaf out, but the branches were still bare enough to let in a little sun and warmth. The swamp seemed to be coming to life under our eyes. Everything was still and quiet, but with branches rustling and birds calling from the tree tops, it was one of the loudest silences I've ever heard.

The Great Dismal Swamp is huge, one of the last true wildernesses in the United States, and entrances for it scattered throughout Chesapeake, Suffolk, and northeastern North Carolina. After doing a little research, we settled on the Washington Ditch entrance in Suffolk. For a few reasons: first, the raised boardwalk trail seemed best for our little hiker. At a manageable 3/4-mile, it was a reasonable distance for Baby A. -- we knew that there was a good possibility that she'd be able to walk it without us having to carry her all the way back. Second, Washington Ditch is one of the only swamp entrances with bathrooms in the parking area, a boon that should not be discounted. Third, there have been very few black bear sightings (!) there recently. 

Anne enjoyed herself immensely. Who knew that toddlers were so keen on swamps? She listened hard for the bird and frog calls and mimicked each one; she found a stick and poked around in the murky water; she noticed every vine and leaf and amassed quite a collection of bright red maple seed pods. I enjoyed watching her watch everything -- there were honestly a lot of things I would have missed if I hadn't seen them through her eyes.


Sometime in the future, James and I would like to take Anne to hike the 4.5-mile Washington Ditch trail to Lake Drummond, one of the only two natural lakes in Virginia. The trail was surveyed by George Washington himself in 1775, and the placid ditch alongside was dug entirely by slave labor, a truly mind-boggling task once you see how long and wide it is and think about what that must have meant in the age before heavy-duty digging equipment was invented. We walked a little of the trail today, but it's going to be a long time before A. can manage the 9-mile trek in and out. Still, tween and teen hikers might be able to manage it, or younger kids, if there are bikes involved.


A word to the wise: any time you go into the Great Dismal Swamp, bring sunscreen and bug spray just in case, and be sure to plan for any eventuality -- cell phone service is spotty (at best) in the swamp. And remind your kids what poison ivy looks like. It's everywhere, all over the trees and creeping up the wood railings on the path in places. As the poet Thomas Moore reminds us his ballad, "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," written in 1806, it really should be avoided at all costs:

Some of the things we've accomplished over the past seven days: finally organizing our pantry (which was a jumbled up mess), giving a few pieces of old furniture some much-needed TLC, cleaning and disinfecting hordes of A.'s toys, and rearranging the garage to fit all of James's hunting gear, Anouk's outdoor stuff, and my gardening tools and still have room to walk. I would pick the garage as our proudest achievement so far -- in fact, I find myself going and standing in the doorway several times a day just to admire our handiwork. This weekend, we're tackling the yard. And James and I are currently drawing up plans for a potting bench we'd like to build for the backyard -- neither of us are woodworkers, though. So we'll see how it goes.

While I was scouring the internet for a natural tub spray I'd seen but forgotten to pin, I came across this post at Playful Learning about encouraging toddlers to clean up after themselves and was so inspired by it that I decided to try to involve Anne as much as possible in our deep clean from there on out. I've started breaking down each big task whenever I can into at least one small kid-sized project -- A. wipes the bottom windows, I do the top; she holds the dustpan while I sweep, etc. When we can, we make cleaning into a game, and we're sure to take frequent breaks to reward ourselves for a job well done and to admire our efforts.  And after reading this article, I've also made an effort to start assigning A. small daily chores -- helping to fill the cat bowls and to put away her clean clothes in her dresser. We're still working on the latter, because handing her a pile of clothes usually means she has to stop and try them all on, right there, right now, but she's doing pretty well on the former. In my opinion, there is basically nothing cuter than watching Anouk toddle across the kitchen  with a cup of cat kibble and place it, piece by tiny piece, in the food bowl. So determined, so careful, so thoughtful about it!

Are you spring cleaning this year? If so, here are a links to help you out:

• Apartment Therapy's step-by-step for spring cleaning (don't miss these places!) 
• How to organize your garage so it's summer ready.
• Once-a-year checklist for getting your household paperwork in order.
• Cleaning and disinfecting all kinds of kids toys.

How do you encourage your kids to help out around the house?

A few Saturdays ago, Anne and I took a trip to the Weyanoke Bird and Wildflower Sanctuary in Norfolk for the first time and loved it. You can click over to My Active Child to read more about our visit.

Happy Wednesday!

Last week I posted Part I of our trip to Colonial Williamsburg with friends. Today I want to post Part II:  namely, the two can't-miss places to eat (with kids or even without them) when you're in town.

My little sis went to William and Mary, and so our family got to sample many of Williamsburg's great restaurants when we visited her. But in my opinion, the only place to get lunch when you're there is The Cheese Shop, a little gourmet market/sandwichery on Duke of Gloucester Street. It has everything: the food is fantastic and it's just a short walk to the main attractions and sights across Henry St. Plus, there is heaps of cheese, and also wine. By the time we'd finished outletting on Thursday, we were all starving and so I suggested The Cheese Shop as our lunch destination -- and by "suggested" I mean that I basically told the others in the group they would regret it for the rest of their lives if we went anywhere else.

The only drawback of The Cheese Shop is that wait times can be upwards of 15-20 minutes for your food to be prepared and also, seating is limited, and most of it is outdoors. Because we hit it just at the lunch rush, our option was basically one of the benches that line DoG Street. We parked ourselves and our strollers, and tucked in. I think the verdict across the board was YUM and well-worth waiting for.

Try: the super-sized grilled cheese sandwich, with a locally made Chowning's Tavern root beer -- and don't forget to pick up a bag of bread ends for $1, to dip in the wonderful, mustardy house spread.


And then, for dessert! After Molly and I said goodbye to our friends B. and J. and Baby T., we drove by Sno-to-Go on our way out of town. The tiny, walk-up frozen-treat place is open only part of the year, and the last time I was in town, it was closed for the season. It opened back up in March, and I've been dreaming of it ever since. I raved about it so much that Molly had no choice but to join me in my pilgrimage.


Sno-to-Go's specialty is shaved ice snow-cones in literally hundreds of flavor combinations, which can then be "stuffed" with soft-serve ice cream. The combination at first sounds strange but you'll have to believe me when I tell you that the end result is one of those perfect "why didn't I think of it?" pairings. Even if you're not a shaved ice fan, the soft serve by itself is worth the drive -- it's thick and creamy and custardy delicious.

We ordered treats for ourselves and the kids even though it wasn't really the day for it -- 46 degrees and sleeting (!). We sat in the car with the heat blaring and shivered while we ate. But sometimes you just have to go for it -- Sno-to-Go is amazing, any time of year.


Try: Tiger's Blood (mixed berry and coconut) shaved ice stuffed with vanilla soft serve.

I think this face says it all: