Sweet Yet Sour

Orange Ginger Cheesecakes

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 | Cooking | 5 Comments

I’m always on the hunt for desserts that I can serve to my sister who has a wheat allergy.  I found this recipe in my new favorite book, “Short and Sweet”, by Melanie Barnard.  I made these for the first time for Anna’s birthday and then again on Sunday when my bookclub came over.

Mini Cheesecake

It was easy enough to make these wheat free for my sister by using gluten free ginger snaps.  I doubled them both times I made them to make 12 little cheesecakes.  I’ve modified the instructions for the recipe to my own specifications, but not much.  The best part is, these are “no bake” – two of the most beautiful words in cooking!

Orange Ginger Cheesecakes

3 oz ginger snaps

1 tablespoon butter – room temperature

1 large orange

1 8 oz package cream cheese – cut into eight pieces

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup heavy cream

Place 6 cupcake liners in a muffin pan.  Put the ginger snaps in a food processor with the metal blade and crumble.  Add the butter and mix again briefly until well blended.  Place about one tablespoon of the crumbs into each muffin tin and press into a crust. Put the muffin tin into the freezer for at least 5 minutes.

Meanwhile grate about 2 tablespoons of orange peel into the food processor and then juice the orange, which should result into about 1/2 cup of juice into the processor.  Then add the cream cheese, sugar, and cream into the processor.  Mix until well blended, stopping a few times to scrape down the sides with a spatula.

Divide the cheesecake even between the cupcake liners – the mixture will be thick and will probably require you to use a spatula.  Sprinkle a few crumbs of the leftover gingersnap mixture on top.  These can be refrigerated if you’ve made them a day ahead or can be placed in the freezer if you will be serving them that day.  They should be in the freezer for at least 30 minutes before you serve them, but allowed to thaw for a few minutes so that they are edible.

Anna’s Latest Activities – In Pictures

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | Anna | 2 Comments

Our little 1 year old has been pretty busy lately and I’ve been trying to take pictures of it all. Unfortunately, Anna moves pretty fast these days so it’s hard to catch her and get a photo.

As part of Anna’s new fattening diet we’ve been giving her peanut butter.  So far, she’s not a huge fan and it generally turns out to be a mess, as shown here:

Peanut butter mess

Most meals are messy though, so this is not new.  Sometimes Mike makes it home during Anna’s dinner and then he gets to clean her up afterwards.  For some reason he thought it would be amusing to do this to Anna recently (and let me take a picture of it):

Weirdos

Anna is at a stage where she is mimicking a lot of our behavior.  Two Sundays ago she decided she wanted to read the Sunday paper just like daddy:

Anna, Mike and the Newspaper

Then she tried looking all serious with the paper, but failed miserablely since it was upside down:

Anna reads the paper

Eventually Anna gave up and just did what she normally does with her food. She rubbed it on her head:

Anna wears the paper

I have found another food that Anna simply adores, yet another not fattening food (I can’t get her to eat french fries!).  Watermelon is her new favorite and even though it’s messy it’s obvious that Anna loves the stuff:

Happy Anna with watermelon

Speaking of meal messes, I had to get a picture the other day of when Anna played with some cream cheese and then rubbed her eyes because she was tired:

Anna's cream cheese mask

When my mom was here a few weeks ago she could not resist getting a cup from Walgreen’s that says “Anna” on it.  Anna is not really at the cup stage but I tried it anyway and sometimes she was successful:

Anna holds her cup

And sometimes she wasn’t:

Anna fails at the cup

Last Friday Anna and I ventured out to the zoo with our neighbors.  It was a lovely day for the zoo, except that almost all of the other parents in the metro area thought so too, so I parked 1/2 mile away.  The zoo is not that exciting for Anna at this point and she spent most of the trip looking like this:

Anna at the zoo

We did see some cool things, including the Lorikeets, which you can get right up close to:

Lorikeet

It’s just too bad that Anna can’t really see most things at the zoo.  Once our neighbor Hana held Anna and tried to get her to check out some gibbons:

Anna and the gibbons

As you can see, Anna was not looking at the gibbons and was probably looking at the crowds of people at the zoo.  I left soon after this and because it was hot I drove home with the windows down.  I turned around on the highway to see Anna, arms straight up in the air, her hands waving in the wind singing along to the radio.  I think that was the best part of her day!

This weekend Mike took Anna with him to get the mail and apparently Anna preferred to travel like this:

Anna, Mike and the mail

Once Mike got her upright I got a great picture of the two of them though:

Cute Anna and Mike

After months of Anna only knowing how to take things out (out of drawers, boxes, etc.) she has finally starting putting things “in”.  I’m not sure that I’ll be able to get her to clean up her room anytime soon, but it is a milestone.  Yesterday I got a picture of her putting some chips back into a bowl at lunch:

Chips in the bowl

Problem is, she nows thinks that everything should go “in”.  We’ll have to work on the details of what goes “in” later:

Cup in bowl

And finally, yesterday I tried to show Anna how my camera works and how to take pictures with my camera.  I tried taking pictures of different things and then showing her the results on the camera screen.  She’s not ready to use it yet, but I did get a good picture of her while I was holding her during the lesson:

Anna and the camera

Yep, she’s still cute!

Sour Cream Cookie Bars

Saturday, April 25th, 2009 | Cooking | 1 Comment

As most of you have probably not noticed, I had Mike take the Denver Restaurant Review Club website down a while ago.  No one visited it, I got a lot of spam on it and well, there isn’t any more RRC meetings.

But, I don’t want to deprive anyone of the recipes that were on there, so let me know if you need one that I posted there.  Just in case you’re like Rena and bought a tub of sour cream for yourself, here’s a good way to put that stuff to good use.

Sour Cream Cookie Bars

1 cup sour scream

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup melted butter

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 and 1/4 cups flour

Mix together all ingredients until well blended and spread in greased 9 x 13 pan.  Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes until golden brown on top.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar after baking.

Lemon Mousse

Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | Cooking | 4 Comments

The other day when Mike and Nate were brewing the latest batch of beer Mike added some lemon zest to the brew.  When he asked what he should do with the lemon, I told him to keep it and I would make him some lemon mousse.  Mike’s eyes seemed to brighten at that proposal..

This is a recipe that I got from my “How to Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman.  It’s easy and a lovely light dessert.  I usually put blueberries or raspberries on top and a little whipped cream as well.

Lemon Mousse

1 package unflavored gelatin

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

4 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

1 cup heavy whipping cream

Put the lemon juice in a saucepan and sprinkle the gelatin evenly over the juice.  (Don’t turn the heat on under the pan at this point. )

Beat the eggs, zest and sugar in a bowl with a mixer on medium until light lemon and slightly thickened.

Turn the heat under the saucepan and stir occasionally until the gelatin is dissolved – only one or two minutes.  Take the pan off the heat and let cool for 1 minute.  Add to the egg mixture and stir thoroughly.

(Saturday when I made this, I totally flubbed this step and it still turned out just fine.  This is why I burn toast – I’m just too busy doing other things. I left the pan on longer than 2 minutes and forgot the “cool” step.  I took the pan off the heat after realizing I had left it on there too long, and then immediately added it to the egg mixture.  Duh! But it still set up just fine!)

Whip the cream until soft peaks form and stir into the egg mixture.  Once well mixed, pour into ramekins and refrigerate. The recipe makes 6 small ramekins.

The recipe asks that you refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours “stirring occasionally”. I ignore this and just leave it in the fridge – I just don’t have time to tend to a needy mousse.

A tip for whipping cream that I learned from my mom – it whips more quickly (which is key with this recipe so that the gelatin doesn’t set) if whipped in a cold metal bowl with cold beaters.  I generally put the bowl and the beaters in the fridge for at least 10 minutes before I need them.

Snow Day

Saturday, April 18th, 2009 | Anna | 1 Comment

It’s been snowing here since Thursday night and as of the writing of this post, it’s still going.  I love snow, especially on weekends when we can just hang out in the house and don’t have to worry about going anywhere. It’s been a pretty dry winter here – we spent most of it under high fire danger – so this is welcome moisture.

This is what it looks like on our back deck right now:

Snowy Deck

Anna kept pointing outside and saying, “Doe” (I’m biased so I’m going to interpret this as my very smart child saying “snow”).  So after Anna’s morning nap I bundled her up for the trip.

Bundled

I think if Anna could say anything about this it would go something like, “I can’t put my arms down!” (I hope other people have seen “Christmas Story”.)

When I got Anna outside we went down the street to where Mike was snow blowing our neighbor’s driveway.  Just to illustrate how much snow we have we stood her in the path where Mike had cleared the snow.

Anna and Mike in the snow

Pretty soon Anna’s eyes started to run and she looked pretty cold so I brought her inside.  This is the kind of hat hair you get when you don’t have a lot of hair in the first place:

Hat Hair

Next winter when she can walk by herself I’m pretty sure it’s going to be hard to get Anna inside on days like this; as it is I took all of her warm stuff off and Anna pointed at the door and said, “dat” wanting to go right back out.

The Great Fattening Up

Friday, April 17th, 2009 | Anna | 4 Comments

One of the many new words that you learn when you become a parent is “percentile”.  I’ve heard this a lot lately and I’ve really started to hate that word…

Every time your child goes to the doctor for a “wellness” visit – which are generally every few months in the first year – they get weighed, measured from head to toe and their head circumference is measured.  These numbers are then placed on a chart for their growth.  This chart is then explained by the doctor using percentiles.  The chart and percentiles are averages of other kids.  For example, at Anna’s 6 month appointment her weight put her at the 10th percentile.  This means that 90 percent of the kids (whenever the chart was made) weighed more than Anna.  At Anna’s 9 month appointment her weight had dropped her down to the 3rd percentile.  According to our doctor it’s important for Anna to stay on her “weight curve”, i.e., stay at the 10th percentile instead of dropping down to the 3rd.  We were told to feed her more and try to get her to gain more weight.

When we arrived for Anna’s 12 month appointment the nurse weighed Anna 3 times on two different scales.  She mumbled something about “she’s dropped off her curve again” and then left.  The doctor came in and we spent 80% of the time talking about how Anna had only gained a pound since her 9 month appointment.  Apparently, in order to stay on the 3rd percentile weight curve she needed to have gained 3 pounds.  While Anna was climbing all over Mike and I and making lots of noise I tried to explain that Anna is a very busy girl and she’s just not willing to sit and eat for very long. Anna would much rather be playing than eating and most mealtimes disintegrate into her playing with her food pretty rapidly.

But inwardly I felt ashamed and worried that somehow this is an indication that I am a bad mom.  I feed Anna three meals a day, with snacks in between, try to make sure that she eats fruits, veggies, carbs and protein and try to make sure that she has plenty of water or milk.  And yet still she isn’t putting on the weight that our doctor wants her to have.  Contrary to how I look now, I was a lot like Anna when I was little and Mike’s mother also reported that Mike was slender too – so we do have a family history of small kids.  But still, I felt like the doctor was accusing me of neglecting my child and not feeding her.  It was enough to make me want to cry in the doctor’s office and honestly, I almost did.

The doctor told us that she wants us to feed Anna more fatty foods.  Apparently babies need fat for development. We were told to slather everything with butter, olive oil, ranch dressing or chocolate syrup.  If only my doctor would tell me that same thing!  We were also told to stop giving Anna liquids during meals and start giving her a lot more whole milk.  We were scheduled for a weight check in a month.

So now we are in the middle of what I am calling “The Great Fattening Up”.  If it’s possible to put cheese or butter on a food that I’m feeding Anna – then I pack it on.  Wednesday for breakfast I gave Anna bits of butter croissant with butter on it and yesterday she had a waffle with butter in every possible crevice.  I tried this morning to spray whipping cream on her tray and have her eat it and she just played with it until it all melted.

“The Great Fattening Up” has had two bad consequences.  First, I have a tendency to eat whatever Anna is eating, in part because she seems to want to eat whatever I’m having and partly because if she’s not eating it I don’t want to waste food.  I’m pretty sure if they weighed me in a month I will have gone above and beyond my weight curve…

Secondly, because I am so stressed about Anna gaining weight it makes mealtimes difficult.  One of the things I learned early on with Anna is that for babies and kids your energy makes a huge difference in their behavior.  When I would go to nurse her if I was stressed or upset, she would not nurse and would fuss instead.  If I’m angry about something it will affect her and make her grumpy too.  Since I’m feeling the pressure to have her put on the pounds when she refuses to eat something (which is often) I get stressed and angry.  This makes her get upset and mealtime doesn’t go well after that.  I want her to eat, not play with her food and when she does I get so mad I have to leave the room in order to calm down.  Sometimes Anna throws food and I think it’s partially because she’s figured out how to push my buttons.

I’m struggling to find foods that Anna will eat consistently and that will help her to gain weight.   Of late Anna loves fresh pear slices and canned apricots, not really fattening foods.  She’ll eat mac and cheese and buttered toast, but if I try to feed it to her two days in a row it will be refused.  We’ve started calling her the “Pez dispenser” because Anna will take a food in her mouth and then immediately spit it back out.  This is what she did today with the quesadilla and avocado I offered her for lunch.  And then she pointed at the pear slices and did her “dat” (which we are interpreting as “that”). This has also turned mealtime into me running around in the kitchen desperately trying to find things that Anna might (and can) eat since she’s refused whatever it was that I offered her in the first place.  If it sounds frustrating, it is.

On the bright side, now that Anna is a year old, she can have lots of things she couldn’t have before.  Peanut butter, honey, chocolate and ice cream are all fair game.  As soon as I can get her to eat these things, I think Anna might like them.   But I tried the other day to give Anna vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and she gave me this look as if to say, “Why the heck would I eat that? It’s cold and it tastes weird!”

Anna’s Birthday

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | Anna | 1 Comment

I’ve finally tonight had time to off load the pictures from Anna’s birthday (I know – 10 days later – sorry!)

For her birthday we decided to have a small gathering.  There was a snow storm the day before so Mike’s dad did not arrive for Anna’s birthday and my Aunt Diane and Uncle Ted were stuck in Wyoming.  My mom and dad, my sister, brother-in-law, our nephew Brendan and our friend Jen were all present to celebrate Anna’s 1st.

When we presented her with her birthday cupcake I think Anna was a little overwhelmed by the large group of people standing around staring at her…

Anna and her candle

I made strawberry cupcakes with whipping cream for frosting for the kids and mini ginger orange cheesecakes for the adults.  Although, with 22 cupcakes and 12 cheesecakes everyone was able to have at least one cupcake and my sister seems to have had 3 cheesecakes…  Brendan seemed to really enjoy his cupcake.

Brendan and his cupcake

Anna on the other hand seemed more excited about her birthday balloon than her cupcake.

Anna and her balloon

No really, she was excited about it.  She was just so overwhelmed!

But then we gave her some cheese and crackers and she made the traditional mealtime mess.

Birthday Mess

Next year I am sure that she will be more excited about the presents and the cake.  For now, after everyone left Anna was able to get down on the floor and play with her toys and that was the best part of her birthday for Anna.

I’m not ready for the minivan yet

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | Mom Stuff | 4 Comments

A long time ago my sister and I made a deal with each other that if we ever even considered buying a minivan, the other sister would make every attempt, including maiming, to dissuade the insane minivan buying sister. The minivan seemed like such a horrid expression of motherhood that it made us cringe.

I’ve been a mother for a year now and thankfully, I’m not ready for the minivan yet.

When I was around seven I filled out a “My Book About Me” that included some very important information.  Among other things, I apparently took a count and decided I had “about 100″ freckles (a VAST underestimate in reality), loved the color green (still do) and that I wanted to be a “gold miner” when I grew up.  I have no recollection of what drove me to say “gold miner”.

I do remember wanting to be a marine biologist or a zoologist.  I was never a little girl who played much with dolls and don’t ever remember wanting to be a mom.  It’s not that I didn’t like kids, I babysat often and generally liked babies, it just never was a particular goal of mine to be a mom.  I had other things I wanted to do like go to Africa and see elephants.  But as time went on it seemed to be more of a natural thing that I would get married, have kids and do that wife/mom thing.

I am in awe of women who seem to be excited to be mothers from the time they are little girls.  Those are the women who are so giddy and excited to get pregnant and have kids.  These are the women who say things like, “I fell in love from the first moment I looked at the ultrasound picture.”

I am not one of those women and I can’t change that even if I try.  I was excited to be pregnant, but not the giddy kind of excited.  I was also worried about what lay ahead of me.  Friends would say that I didn’t seem excited or that I wasn’t smiling as much as they expected a pregnant woman to smile.  All I could do was shrug and say that I was excited, but in my own, worry wart way.

When Anna was born I was excited to see her, but I don’t remember thinking that I was in love with her from the first moment I saw her.  It was a few weeks before I really felt like I loved her and thought she was a neat little girl.  For the first few weeks she just cried, slept, ate and pooped and frankly, if I had a boyfriend like that I would dump him…

Around 2 months Anna became more interactive, would look in my direction, even try to smile and began to develop into an actual personality.  It was then that I began to really love her.  Today as write this I absolutely adore Anna and I love being her mom.

It’s been hard though, this mom thing.  For me it meant giving up (for the moment) a career that I loved and felt I was good at and staying at home.  It meant at times being lonely, angry, frustrated and depressed.  But it was a choice that I made because I did not want to miss Anna developing into a little girl.  I have been here for a lot of firsts and I’m glad of that.

Let me go briefly onto a tangent here.  It really makes me angry that the most rich, powerful country in the world, full of people who say that they have “family values” makes it so hard to be working mom.  Out of all of the developed nations we offer the least amount of time off for parents and none of that is required to be paid. Most other countries offer 1 year (at least) – in contrast to the stupid 12 weeks the U.S. offers, and in most countries that is paid.  We also breastfeed for a shorter time, breastfeed less and bottle feed more and use the breast pump more.  In order not to miss Anna’s 1st year I had to quit my job and I don’t think that’s fair.  This doesn’t say “family values” to me as much as it says, “the dollar is king – get back to work ladies.”

A year into motherhood I do feel better and calmer about being a mom.  I’ve learned a lot and frankly, I did not heed a whole bunch of advice that I should have, but I think I’m better for having learned it the hard way.  I still make mistakes and still have a lot to learn, but if and when we have another child I’ll be a little more excited and a little less worried about what lies ahead.

Every day I get to do silly things with Anna, like tickle her, make faces at her and practice making silly sounds. I spend a lot of time on my hands and knees saying things like, “Mama’s going to get you Anna!” while she screams with delight and crawls away as fast as she can.  When I take her places, even to the store or the backyard I get to experience her learning about things for the first time.  No one bats an eye when I point and say, “See the tree Anna? or “See the pretty yellow mustard bottle Anna?” And teaching someone about the world is intoxicating – it makes you realize what an awesome world it really is.

There are a few things I learned the hard way this year and that I need to keep in mind for the next time:

1. After childbirth, take the stool softener that they offer you in the hospital.  Enough said.

2. Nap when the baby naps.  Do not do laundry or clean the kitchen you OCD freak. Get some sleep!

3. Baby clothes sizes are not the same across all manufacturers, nor are they logical… When Anna was born I thought she would fit into the “0-3″ size.  This is wrong.  She was “newborn” size and didn’t fit into the “0-3″ until she was 3 months old. Now that she’s 12 months old she only fits into certain 12 months sizes, while others she’s still wearing 9 months and others she’s wearing the next size up after 12 months.  Insanity!

4. DO repeat these words and practice them often, “Will you be bringing food or helping with the dishes/laundry?”  These are words that must be said to each and every visitor that comes to see the new baby. I had two friends who helped with dishes and laundry, and my sister and another friend brought food and this was all very helpful.  However, there were plenty of visitors who came and did nothing but hold the baby, even some who would ask, “Can I have a glass of water? I’m holding the baby.”  For these people I will be practicing, “Kiss my overtired, unshowered, up four times a night ass and get your own damn water.”

5. Ask for help.  I have never been good at asking for help – I think I learned this from parents who for some reason think asking for help is shameful.  I can’t even answer when people come over for dinner and ask, “What can we bring?”  I did not ask for help in those first few really trying months, even when I was out of my mind with need for it, even from Mike.  Instead, I took everything on myself and was in general pretty pissy about the whole thing.  There is a reason that “mother” and “martyr” sound so similar; it wouldn’t surprise me if they were originally the same word.

6. Find your self worth somewhere other than motherhood.  This one has been particularly hard for me and I’m still working on this issue.  Before Anna was born I gained a lot of my self worth from my job, doing well at work and the compliments I received from my superiors.  When I became a full time mom I had no way of feeling good about myself – no one compliments you about how well you are doing and the baby certainly never says, “Nice job on that diaper!” And honestly, most people ignore parents entirely when there’s a baby around – you start to feel like back drop at the baby play. I’m sure this is why I took everything on myself and never asked for help – because I wanted to at least feel like I was doing it all; I felt better if I could say to myself that I had done it all without help.

7. Spend time with other mothers. I’m doing much better at this now that I did at the beginning. All moms have different things that they do that you can learn from and it’s really nice to have some one that you can talk to about whatever is going on.  I tried joining “Mothers and More” for a playgroup – only to have that flop – but I have successfully formed a playgroup with other parents/mothers from our childbirth class and the friendships I have made with them are invaluable.

8. Let go and let the dad take the kid.  Poor Mike – he has offered help and told me to get out of the house so much and I never take him up on it.  I am getting better about this though – a few weeks ago I took off and spent two heavenly hours at a local bookstore reading and sipping an almond steamer.  And I’ve started (thrice) going out for “mommies night” with my sister.  Other than that and leaving for the cupcake tour with Laura I haven’t really gotten out of the house by myself for more than an hour this whole year and that’s just wrong.  I promise to do better about this from now on!

Motherhood is an awesome learning experience – you learn something, then you need to roll with the next change and learn something new.  This first year at least every two weeks Anna was doing something new and different.  This week she started to hold the phone (both the real phone and her play phones) up to her head and babble.  Last week she started to try to go down the stairs by standing and scooching her little butt of the stairs.  The week before that she decided that the laundry basket was best used as a walking toy…

My point is, I’ve learned to roll with the changes, be calm about what’s ahead and watch with wonder because there is always something new and interesting about to happen…

12 Months of Anna

Monday, April 6th, 2009 | Anna | 4 Comments

Yesterday was Anna’s 1st birthday.  We celebrated with a small gathering of my family at our house.  The star was a little overwhelmed and mostly stared at us all while we waited for her to dig into her strawberry cupcake and whipped cream frosting.  Next year I think she’ll be a little more excited…

I’m working on a post reflecting on a year of motherhood, but for now I wanted to post some pictures to reflect on Anna’s year.  I printed out these photos and put them out for everyone to see at the party how much Anna has changed over the past year.  It’s pretty amazing!

Anna’s 1st day of life was captured by her dad (I was barely able to hold the camera), but even then she was pretty cute:

Day 1

By May she had grown a little and I captured her yawning on her playmat:

Anna in May

In June we stuffed her into a laundry basket full of sheets and she smiled nonetheless:

Anna in June

July brought the ability to be on her tummy and not scream for a few minutes (very small babies hate being on their tummies):

Anna in July

In August I put her in a sweet little dress and propped her up on the futon with the help of her blocks:

Anna in August

September was nice and cool and so gave me the opportunity to try out a new coat and the hat we got from Rena (the hat doesn’t fit anymore sadly…):

Anna in September

October brought us to trying out solid food, which turned out to be pretty messy:

Messy in October

For Anna’s first Halloween I couldn’t resist stuffing her into a pink caterpillar costume:

Halloween Caterpillar

By November Anna could sit up by herself pretty well and did so very nicely for this picture:

Sitting up in November

December brought multiple Christmas outfits; my favorite being this red corduroy dress with the fake fur trim:

Christmas Anna

At 9 months most doctors will tell you that you can give the baby finger foods and of course Anna did this with great gusto, but sometimes she missed her mouth:

Anna in January

In February I took Anna for her first pool swim and she got really excited about it before we even left the locker room:

Swimmer Anna

March had a lot of warm days and very little snow, so we spent a lot of time at the park swinging, which is one of Anna’s favorite things:

Anna in March

Since she loves swinging so much we took her to the park last Thursday and she was again overjoyed:

Anna in April

When she’s at home, Anna’s favorite activity is climbing into and on top of anything and everything.  This includes into the ottoman that we use to store her toys in:

Into the Box

Don’t worry, after I laughed for a while I put down the camera and helped her out, but really, she didn’t seem to mind.

What an amazing transition from the small sleepy baby who could do nothing but cry, sleep, eat and poop to the little girl we have now.  What a difference a year makes!

Sarah’s Key

Saturday, April 4th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 1 Comment

I have finished another book! Impressive, no?

For our book club this month, my friend Andrea picked “Sarah’s Key” by Tatiana De Rosnay. I finished it quickly, in about a week, which is pretty good considering how little time I have to read these days.  It was really engrossing, so I sped right through it.

The book is written in two voices, one of a little girl in France in 1942 and one of an American woman in Paris in 2002.  The subject is mostly about the “Vel d’Hiv“, a roundup of Jews by French police that took place in Paris in 1942.  I had never heard of the Vel d’Hiv and I can see why, since the French are rightfully ashamed of the role of the French police and government.

The book is truly enlightening and at the same time heart-wrenching.  The holocaust is never easy to read about, but from the perspective of a child it’s even worse.  The facts of the Vel d’Hiv in the book are true, as far as my research shows, and as usual the treatment of Jews during this time is truly disgusting.  It never ceases to amaze me the depths that people will go to when they have even a sniff of power over another human being.

The link between the girl in 1942 and the modern woman was a little predictable, but that did not diminish the book’s subject.  I read it knowing mostly how it would end, but that was okay.  For such a serious subject though, the author went a little “romantic” at the story’s end but it was a nice way to end such a depressing book.

I do recommend the book, mostly because I had never heard of the Vel d’Hiv and even if it is hard to read about.   The holocaust is one of those things that you must know about so that we never forget and hopefully never repeat.