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Icey the Snowman

We had a white Christmas this year. The last white Christmas in Atlanta was in 1882. It was son wonderful to see the light dusting of snow everywhere, just enough to be white. It was also enough to cancel church. Then it disappeared. Last Sunday night it snowed again. This time it was six inches of snow, which was soon covered with a thick glaze of ice. School was closed the entire week. Susanna seemed to know what was going on immediately, because the first thing I heard from her was a happy call from her bedroom announcing “there’s too much snow to go anywhere!” We quickly got outside to build a snowman, which was good because once the snow turned to ice that would have been impossible. His eyes, nose, mouth, and finally his hat have all fallen off, but he’s still standing sentinel on our front lawn. And because of him Andrew can now say snowman (man-man).

One of the other words Andrew seemed to pick up this week is beater (bee-bee). I noticed it when we made pumpkin bread on Thursday. He woke up halfway through the production, and as soon as he saw the bosch going, he called “bee-bee, bee-bee” over and over again (with the occasional and very loud yell of “Ma!”) until he got one. We’ve been doing a lot of cooking and baking on sunny days around here too. As part of my efforts to find ways to be frugal I’m trying not to buy any food I can make myself. This is obviously extra work, but it is very rewarding work, and Susanna and I have had a lot of fun baking breads, rolling out tortillas on the table, and washing and chopping apples to make applesauce on the stove. This week I also made cranberry grapefruit marmalade—Susanna loved seeing me dump all that sugar in the pot—but so far I think I’m the only one who likes it. Maybe I’ll add less rind next time. Meanwhile, we’ll keep making other things and Andrew will keep licking the beaters.