STL Free For All

As soon as you read the keywords on this post — the Indie Valentine craft show, sponsored by STL Craft Mafia, with the slogan “Death to Hallmark” — you are going to be either for it or against it. And that’s cool with me. The only thing I find scary about it is the fact that I recognize many of the 40 vendors (including Beqi clothing, Senora Muertos and Squasht by Les), either because I’ve purchased things from their homepages or I’ve seen their very memorable products at other craft shows. I often schlep the kids along, but this time the show runs from 7 to 11 p.m., making bedtime a perfect excuse to leave them home.

If you avoid craft shows because you’re uncomfortable browsing products with their creators hovering a few feet away, you’ll like this one’s department-store setup. All the clothes are together, all the jewelry, all the photos, all the Dia de los Muertos trinkets … And if that’s not enough to melt your inhibitions, maybe the drinks and music will.

The event’s location is CooperElla, a children’s cafe in Maplewood at Sutton and Hazel. You have perhaps fought the lunch or playgroup crowds there and vowed never to return. But go around 4 p.m. and you’ll have the place to yourself. Your kids won’t know which of the dozens of toys to play with first. Around the holidays the cafe was closing at 5 p.m. on weekdays, but as of Monday, Jan. 28, it had expanded its hours to: Mon. to Fri. — 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sat. — 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sun. — 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Even if you’re a regular, like we are, you may not know that CooperElla has had a liquor license almost since it opened … because it still doesn’t offer alcohol on the menu. (The only reason I know is that I did a fact-check for an article about it back then, and the ownership promised that wine would be coming soon.) Now that the cafe has expanded into the former shop location and the shop has moved next door, I thought for sure wine would be on the menu for the late-afternoon and evening patrons. “Maybe next month” was the answer to my inquiry. Mmmhmm.

So you’re not coming down to Mardi Gras, and your kids are just not into artsy-fartsy stuff. I have still more ideas for you to do this Saturday. (Which leads me to the rhetorical question: Why does all the fun stuff seem to clump together on the same weekends?????)

The first idea is the Fox2 Children’s Garden Club free event at 9 a.m. at the Sappington Garden Center, 11530 Gravois Road. As a native North Dakotan, I have a hard time believing that February is planting time around here (at least for hardy cold-weather crops like spinach, peas, lettuce, radishes, etc.), but it’s true. This workshop doesn’t take kids outdoors, but it does get them back into the playing-with-dirt mode. They’ll be making terrariums, which I have found fascinating ever since my grandma had one back in the mid-70s. I also like the idea of the garden club (much as I hate to give credit for anything good to a TV station, being the hard-core print journalist that I am!) It’s a collaboration between St. Louis County’s Department of Parks and Recreation and several local garden centers (where the events take place). The age range, according to the Fox homepage, tends to be 2 to 12, heavy on the Boy and Girl Scouts. For details, call 314.965.6813.

The second idea also sounds great: a kickoff for a youth reading group composed of boys over 7 who liked “The Dangerous Book For Boys.” It’s from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, at the Barnes and Noble in Chesterfield (at 1600 Clarkson Road). In keeping with the book’s premise, the featured speaker will be a Missouri National Guard major on the topic of artillery; there will also be representatives from a fire department and the science center. For details, call 314.220.8332.

This is a nationwide effort by Barnes and Noble, perhaps because they felt they had to do something to drive sales among boys without a new Harry Potter installment in the offing. No word on whether “The Daring Book for Girls,” published in October, will launch a similar effort on behalf of girls.

Although The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis is a performance troupe, its Kids ArtStart isn’t limited to drama.  The free Saturday-morning series has three dates left this season:  This coming weekend, Feb. 2, is “Get Your Hands Into Sculpture,” presented by Krueger Pottery.  Then there’s “Music Is In the Air” (Mar. 1), presented by Kirkwood Children’s Chorale and Xylomania!, and “Play Your Part” (Apr. 5), presented by Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis.

There’s no age limit or registration requirement — just show up at The Rep in the Loretto-Hilton Center, 130 Edgar Road in Webster Groves, at 10 a.m.  For information, call 314.968.7340.   However, this isn’t a drop-the-kids-and-run-errands kind of program.  Families are encouraged to stay and learn with the kids.  And anyway, how long has it been since you tried to make something out of clay?  Aren’t you a wee bit curious if your bowls would turn out more symmetrical than they did back in elementary school?   It’s also a nice chance to introduce kids to arts organizations they may want to explore more in the future; many of the presenters offer summer and evening classes for kids.

Now that S. is old enough to stand at the counter and “help” in the kitchen, I’ve discovered that forcing the two boys to take turns on the mini chopper doesn’t work very well. Ditto for stirring, sifting, dumping … unless each one has his own territory, I spend half my time playing referee. Fortunately, we have a lot of kid-friendly, small choppers and grinders and mixing bowls. I used to flip right past recipes that called for more than one bowl, but now the more kitchen implements we can get dirty, the more smoothly the project seems to go.

Lately we’ve been making a lot of quick breads (the kind that are leavened with baking powder rather than yeast so they don’t have to rise before baking). And a couple of weeks ago I came across a recipe in Eating Well that’s perfect for the boys. It’s called Cranberry-Nut Mini Loaves With Flaxseeds. (Yes, I’m the kind of health-fanatic mom who keeps that sort of stuff on hand.) We needed the manual hand chopper (for the cranberries) AND the coffee grinder (for the flaxseeds) AND the electric mini choper (for the nuts) AND the orange juicer AND the orange zester AND a couple of bowls.

If that’s your idea of a clean-up nightmare too, and you don’t have to worry about keeping two active boys happy while they work side by side, let me suggest a much simpler recipe that’s also a kid-pleaser: Nini’s Banana Nut Bread. Nini is a good friend of our family who made this for M. once when we came to visit, and when I heard how easy the recipe was I had to have it. One bowl, one chopper (and it’s optional!). My kind of recipe, back in the day.

Nini’s Banana Bread

Yield: 1 loaf

2 large bananas

1/3 c. canola oil

1/2 tsp. vanilla

3 eggs

2 1/3 c. Bisquick

1 c. sugar

1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease or spray a regular-size loaf pan. In a mixing bowl, mash the bananas well. (You should end up with about 1 1/2 cups.) Add the oil, vanilla and eggs and whisk to combine them, then add the Bisquick and sugar and stir just until the batter is moistened. Gently fold in the nuts. Pour the batter into the pan and bake 55 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes, then remove the loaf from the pan and cool thoroughly on a rack.

Every time the weather forecast comes on the radio, people in this neighborhood shush the kids and hold their breath. Will it warm up? For all that people love Soulard’s Mardi Gras, no one wants to freeze their t— off (toes, that is, toes!) celebrating it. Now that the forecast for Sunday, Jan. 27, is a balmy 50, dog owners are breathing out in relief that their precious pooches won’t freeze their t— off either at the Barkus Pet Parade. It starts at 1 p.m., but plan to arrive early and stay late (after the crowning of the king and queen at 2 p.m. near Soulard Market); pet-watching is just as much fun as people-watching — more fun, actually, because if you get caught staring you simply strike up a conversation with the pet’s owner. The costumes can get so creative and elaborate, it almost makes me wish we had a pet … almost. Don’t tell the kids!

After Sunday, the breath-holding starts again for Saturday’s Grand Parade. Last year’s chill put a damper on our party — only half the RSVPers showed up, and we were eating leftover food for weeks — but it didn’t seem to matter once we got to the parade route and the beads started flying.

We always situate ourselves right near the end of the route (at Sidney Street and 7th Street). There’s ample stroller parking at the rear of the crowd (strollers are great for storing plastic bottles of beverages — cans, glass and coolers will be confiscated — as well as seating kids who need a break from the action and holding surplus beads). The lewdness lessens the further south the parade gets, and there’s a relatively small chance that kids will see much flesh, regardless of the weather. (And I know from experience that if fellow parade-watchers ARE flashing, kids notice it way less than their adult male chaperones.) The final reason we like that area is that the floats are looking to offload beads in a big way.

If you come, be prepared to park on the west side of I-55 (Benton Park) or downtown and ride a free shuttle. The drop-off points are near the north end of Soulard, so if you ride the shuttle you’ll probably want to stick near the parade’s starting point (at Chouteau and Broadway), which I’ve heard is pretty kid-friendly too. Definitely bring plenty of food and drinks for the kids — it’s fine as long as it’s not in coolers, glass or cans. Plenty of wipes too, because if the ground is muddy and kids are scrambling for beads that have fallen there, things get messy fast.

This year the free live-music stages are both in the heart of the party, so we’ll content ourselves with the DJs in parking lots along the route. We’ll also skip the Fat Tuesday parade downtown. The route is straight along Broadway this year, from Lumiere Place to Kiener Plaza, and I can’t imagine a more unattractive place for it (going under I-70, for example). The buildings are close to the street for pretty much the whole route, so the sidewalks will be jammed … Too bad, because I love the atmosphere of nighttime parades. The world needs more of them.

Heck, the world needs more Mardi Gras parades in general! I got hooked back in ‘95, when my husband and I lived in Biloxi, Mississippi, for a winter. We Mardi Grased like locals — no parade was too small for us — and we’ll never forget the people we met and the sights we saw. (Oddly, I don’t remember much lewdness there either. As in St. Louis, there are sections where it’s de rigeur and others where it’s not, and I guess I’ve just always been attracted to the tame stuff!) Then we moved to Germany, where the weather’s just as cold as St. Louis but the Fasching season is longer and more elaborate. Now I’m not sure if I could live in a place that didn’t do Mardi Gras.

And here’s a picture from 2008!

When I blogged about school open houses earlier this week, I intended to follow it up with something on the Savvy Family Summer Expo on Sunday, Jan. 27, from noon to 4 p.m. at West County Center. But now I’m less enthusiastic — not because I don’t think the expo will be worthwhile.* My feeling about summer camps is that they seem to be such an industry.

I love to focus on free or low-cost activities, and summer camp definitely is not. On the other hand, I understand the need they fill — and next year when M. graduates from his year-round preschool into a traditional kindergarten schedule, I’ll be scrambling to fill those three months too! All week I’ve been getting e-mails from COCA and other local institutions announcing their summer programs (now is definitely the time to think about what your kids will be doing this summer!). As I scan the e-brochures, I see lots of great ideas and fun-sounding topics. But for this year, I’m sticking with just one camp, a Spanish-immersion week at Casa de Ninos Montessori Bilingual Academy.

I’m hoping the boys build some good memories there, like I did at my favorite summer camp. We called it Bible camp, but because of its location near Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, North Dakota, the camp seemed to be less about religion and more about hiking and swimming and capture the flag and campfires — the kinds of outdoorsy things I picture when I think of a summer getaway for kids. I don’t know how many camps still do that; I know the one I went to is gone, although I’ve heard it was replaced by a similar venture in the same area. Maybe when the kids are older I’ll have to check it out.

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* I just don’t know much about the expo other than it’ll have info from schools, camps (day and away) and other family centers. There was no phone or homepage listed, and when I called the magazine’s publisher, Suburban Journals, to follow up (314.822.0823) I had to leave a voicemail in the promotions department.

After M. saw a bowling ball on a cartoon and asked what it was, we decided we needed to supplement his education with a field trip. We never quite got around to it until last week, when a letter arrived, inviting M. to a bowling birthday party in two weeks’ time. It was all the prompting we needed to head out to the nearest lanes, which happens to be the Flamingo Bowl, the new bowling alley/nightclub downtown.

Had I not called ahead and had a very warm conversation with a staff member about the fun of bowling with kids, I might have given too much credence to the “nightclub” part. And on weekend nights, it is definitely a lounge scene. But having been forewarned to avoid Fridays and Saturdays (when reservations are a must), we showed up at noon on a Sunday and found the red carpet rolled out for families. The 11s, the smallest shoes they have, were a little big for M., but he forgot about that soon enough in the excitement of hauling his bright blue 6-pound ball over to lane 7. S. had no idea what was going on, but as soon as we took his shoes off, he made himself at home on the couches and pretty much went with the flow for the next couple of hours.

Aside from the food, bowling with kids is much cheaper than bowling with adults because it takes FOREVER for the game to finish. In 90 minutes we bowled two games, at a cost of $3 per game, plus $3 shoe rental for two adults and $1.50 for the kid. Not bad at all.

By the time we left, most of the lanes were full. Still, most of the bowlers were family groups, and no one seemed to mind that toddlers (ours and others) were “visiting” other lanes occasionally, or that the workers got a little mixed up and programmed bumpers to pop up for some of the adults.

When our family was shopping around for a preschool, it was exhausting.  OK, that might be because I was four months pregnant at the time, but even under the best of circumstances, remembering all the details and personalities and comparing all the offerings takes a lot of mental oomph.  For the parents, that is — for the kids it’s like a progressive indoor playtime.  M. LOVED checking out schools.  Still does, in fact, although we plan to keep him at The Soulard School, where he’s been in the program for a year and a half now.  It’s a relatively new, Montessori-based school with only about 80 students in pre-K through sixth grade (with a combined classroom for the upper grades).  He’s the type who wants everyone to know who he is and what his thoughts are, so its size suits him perfectly.  And if you come to the open house this Saturday, Jan. 26, from 1 to 4 p.m., he will tell you ALL ABOUT his classroom, the Subjunctive Room. As one of the student ambassadors, he has the job of talking your leg off.  And that he can, I promise!  The address is 1110 Victor; for details, call 314.865.2799.

The following day is the open house of The Soulard School’s partner for sports programs, St. Frances Cabrini Academy.   Also located just south of downtown, it’s a Catholic school where religion is taught but is not a factor in who attends.  I like its emphasis on arts, music and Spanish for all grades; I also like that it’s a multicultural environment thanks to a diverse student body.  It’s a relatively new school too; a few years ago Notre Dame Elementary merged with another Catholic school, St. Pius V.  That’s where my next-door neighbors sent their kids to school, and my favorable impression of Cabrini stems partly from the good things I heard about St. Pius V.  It’s at 3022 Oregon Ave.; the phone is 314.776.0883.

If you aren’t looking for a school but have preschoolers who like to bounce, check out Cabrini’s Little Scholar Athletes Day on Saturday, Feb. 2.  (A caveat:  It’s advertised as being for South Side families, although I’m not sure they’ll be checking residency.)   From 10 a.m. to noon, kids age 2 to 5 can bounce, play sports, work on crafts, and chill out with a storyteller.

This weekend, many ceremonies and lectures will reflect on Martin Luther King Jr. and on the history of African-Americans in general. But it’s hard to bring those alive for kids — youngsters who don’t recognize what to do with a rotary-dial phone are not going to easily connect to someone whose death was a loooong time ago, no matter how worthy he was. In addition, most children need to be introduced to the concepts of fairness and equality in many different ways before they start to sink in.

A very visual way to do that is to visit the Black World History Museum. It’s pretty vivid — a scale-model slave ship that kids can go inside starts things off — but the exhibits also focus a lot on wax figures of people who made a difference by persevering through hardship. Some, like Martin Luther King Jr., are easily recognized. Others are not, including the most recent addition from November of last year, local activity Percy Green II. The private museum continues to grow — another local person, housing advocate Macler Shepard, will be added next year — but slowly, as money for the $15,000 wax characters doesn’t grow on trees.

Still, admission is very reasonable: $3.50 for elders; $5, adults; $4, teens; $2.50 for those under 14. The museum is located at 2505 St. Louis Ave. and hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call 314.241.7057.

And it’s not far from Crown Candy Kitchen, 1401 St. Louise Ave., where S. was just introduced to milkshakes by his dad and grandpa. The throwback diner is a good way to get kids in the mood to look at history. For hours, call 314.621.9650.

The bald eagle is all over the news these days thanks to its wintertime presence across Missouri. Whenever I hear about the eagle-watching events, like the one this coming weekend at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, I feel like I should go — after all, good friends of ours travel the country each spring on massive bird-watching expeditions. We, on the other hand, have special birds here for most of the winter, and I can’t even drive across town?

I wish I were more of a bird person. However, I am a man-made-wonder person, and I can really appreciate the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. My family’s been going there since M. was a toddler, and the recent upgrades (potties, yay!) have only made the experience better. Do your best to ignore the hassles you might get in the Missouri-side parking lot, pay the fee (or park on the Illinois side for free, or, during the Eagle Days events Jan. 19, 20 and 21, take the free shuttle from North Riverfront Park) and climb aboard. It really feels as if you’re taking a voyage just by walking onto the span; within minutes you’re above the treetops and over the rolling water.

Don’t worry about kids falling off, but do keep them off the chain link fence for your own peace of mind. We’ve never encountered anyone who was scared of the height — and I say that as someone who hates driving over bridges across water. I think the freedom of walking on the bridge actually helps keep me calm. And the structure itself is more like a building than a walkway; it’s been on the National Register of Historic Places for more than a year now.

S o there are two good excuses to visit the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge during the next five weekends: the eagles and the bridge. Eagle Days’ educational programs run 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Jan. 19 and 20, but the bridge is open longer. For complete hours, see the homepage of Trailnet, an organization that promotes active living (although you may know it best as a bicycling advocacy group). It manages the bridge and has been working with a host of partners to upgrade it into a true visitors’ destination.

And now, a photo from our first visit back in 2004 …