Erica's Updates

Ending the sewing hiatus

2011-07-15T22:19:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I got my sewing machine back from its I-Hope-the-Mississippi-River-Doesn't-Flood vacation at a friend's house, along with our instruments, photos, and other valuable or irreplaceable things. (We live very close to the levee, at a much lower elevation than we previously realized. It was an interesting couple of weeks. You'll be happy to know that the actuary and his family now have flood insurance.) The confluence of my sewing machine's merry return, my finally making time to catch up on favorite parenting and craft blogs for the first time in months, and my rereading of Amanda Soule's Handmade Home have led to a flurry of creative sewing activity in the last week.

I made a family set of reusable sandwich wraps lined with vinyl tablecloth material. Simple squares, two fabrics, fun contrasting thread, zigzag stitching, velcro closures. It took a couple of hours to make four of them, and that includes time to get snacks for my children, arbitrate disputes, change diapers, drink coffee, and start dinner. I was firing on all cylinders. It's totally invigorating. Kent helped by manning the pincushion, which was hilarious. He was very particular about putting the pins back when I handed them to him, and he ended up making my pincushion look sort of like the lunar module.

Detail for those of you who would like to make your own: I cut 14" squares of the outside cotton fabric and 12" squares of the lining fabric, then folded the outside fabric in on itself twice with a 1/2" seam allowance and tucked the lining fabric inside the folds. I zigzag stitched all the way around, then did simple topstitching diagonally across the square to hold the fabrics together. I used the iron-on kind of velcro, which was tricky because I had to get it hot enough to fuse it to the fabric but not so hot that I would melt the vinyl. I failed on the first one, so the first one has a nice little patch on the inside covering the spot where the vinyl melted completely onto the scrap fabric I had thankfully put between the vinyl and my iron. I got the hang of the ironing after that, and I definitely prefer the iron-on kind to the kind you have to pin in place and sew, or the sticky kind that's not really for fabric. Or you could do snaps, but that's less adjustable than velcro if your sandwiches turn out to be different sizes on different days.

A few people have already bought some, which thrills me for a lot of reasons. (1) I'm actually selling something I've made. (2) People are using fewer plastic baggies. (3) I get to keep making more. If you count yourself among the people who might like to own one or more of these, check out my new little Etsy shop. Please email me, leave a comment here, or send me a message through Etsy if there's a different fabric or color combo you'd like to see. I can definitely make custom orders.

Kent is amusing me by falling into the same trap I'm falling into; they are ALL our favorite, and we want to keep all of them. He was very upset when I told him that his best girl friend from school was getting the orange one he had designed, until I told him I could also make one for him and then they could have matching sandwich wraps. He's been so interested in sewing, and the particulars of the machine, that I'm really itching for him to be old enough to learn to sew (and for his feet to reach the floor so he can use the pedal).

This colorful little stack makes me incredibly happy. I am completely re-energized after my long time away from my sewing machine, so glad that our daytime dynamic around here finally allows for some crafting time again.

P.S. I have a new banner. My uncle suggested that many months ago, and I finally got around to it. It looks kind of wonky on the page, but it was fun to make a collage this time. The skill spilled over into making a banner for my Etsy shop as well. Ah, Photoshop. Your many mysteries will slowly be revealed to me. Someday.

Fruit tartlets

2011-07-04T20:58:00.004-04:00

I got some great tartlet pans last year for Christmas, and I kept thinking that when spring and summer fruit season rolled around, I'd be all over making fruit tartlets. I finally got around to it this morning, totally on a whim, since I noticed a confluence of fresh strawberries, peaches, and blueberries in my house.

I still remember the first time I saw a fruit tartlet, at a bakery in France. Bright, beautiful sliced fruit, under a shiny orange glaze, tucked into a perfect little circular pastry. I thought it was magical. I've had some that also have a thin layer of vanilla pastry cream under the fruit, and those are amazingly good, but I thought that for my first attempt, I'd try one that had just fruit and glaze.

I found this recipe and quartered it, because I didn't want to have fruit tartlets for the next week, but I noticed that the shells can be frozen, so next time, I may make a whole batch of shells and then freeze most of them. The pastry got just a tad bit overcooked in the 15 minutes it was in the oven, so next time I'll probably check it after about 13. Also, the glaze was very thick. Like, bordering on Jell-O thick. I'll definitely try less cornstarch next time. I thinned it out considerably with some water after it had cooled, but it still went on very gloppily, as you can see in the closeup photo. It tasted wonderful, though. The whole thing was delicious. I made one for Kent with just strawberries, thinking he would prefer that to one with fruits he didn't like, but he still looked at it skeptically and refused to try it, so Jack and I just ate all of them. One for each of us for second breakfast, one for each of us for dessert after dinner. Perfectly delightful.

My mom is in France this week, and I find myself wanting to make all kinds of foods that remind me of France. This was super fun to try, and it'll be even more fun if I can just pull a few shells out of the freezer and make a few of these when the mood strikes and the fruit is in season.

Lifestyle Gardening

2011-05-17T21:56:00.007-04:00

Tonight's dinner was, I think, my favorite kind. It was brought to us largely from our garden. Green beans from the garden. Couscous with zucchini and basil from the garden, plus chick peas and feta. Homemade crusty wheat bread with basil butter (again, basil from the garden). This is how I want to eat all the time. Good protein, clean flavor, herbs, freshness, and stuff I grew or made myself. I'd need about three times the garden space I currently have, or more, if we were going to make a real go of growing most of our own vegetables... and wouldn't it rock to have some blueberry bushes like Jack's parents have, and/or a couple of citrus trees? I'm dying for more space to grow greens, and I want to try winter squash this year after some of the summer stuff is out of the way. Lumber and dirt would cost a lot upfront to make a super-expanded garden, not to mention the carpentry hours to build more raised beds. At least my husband does carpentry for free. Sometimes I feel like I'm always planning the next season. Though I love the sprouts and flowers and vegetables I'm seeing, I'm always itching for the chance to try new things the next time.

Anyway, this is all to say that I really enjoy deliberate growing and cooking when they're this closely tied together. I enjoy growing for its own sake, and cooking for its own sake, but it reaches a wonderful new level when they're intertwined, when I've planted the seeds and nurtured the plants that sprouted the vegetables we're enjoying for dinner. I'd imagine it would feel much the same way to raise a calf, then make butter or cheese from her milk. Don't worry. I'm not looking into livestock just yet. However, I know too many chicken people, and they have definitely tempted me with the promise of quirky pets and fresh eggs. (Z and Lauren, meet Jon and Emily.) I already have names picked out for our someday chickens...

Also, can I just say how amazing it is to watch my children take up this cause of mine? Kent is a wonderful helper, going on green bean treasure hunts with me, and turning on the sprinkler, and getting so excited about the growth of vegetables and herbs even though he cares nothing for eating them. This summer's corn crop will be a little present from me to him, since our carrots fizzled out last year, and corn on the cob and raw carrots are basically the only vegetables he enjoys. I want to reward his hard work and excitement with something he really loves eating. Dean is too young to harvest much, but is an avid leaf grabber, and he eats herbs straight from the garden. He'll just walk around the back yard with a sage leaf in his mouth. He also loves my cooking, at least for now. Today, when I harvested our very first okra pod and then sliced and fried it, he got his first taste of that amazing snacky thing and couldn't get enough. And I noticed that our watermelon plants have three teeny-tiny bumps already, so all of us shall watch those grow with much anticipation of the sticky summer days to come.

Even though Kent doesn't do the eating part of our vegetables, he still loves to help in the kitchen, so today I gave him my old job from when I was a kid: snapping the beans. I showed him how to snap them in half so the two halves are almost the same size, because his first few were about 1/5 and 4/5. He was so darn proud of himself once he got the hang of it. It reminded me so much (and I told him this) of the day not so many years ago when he sat with my grandmother in her living room and watched her snap beans.

This afternoon (don't you love his determined expression?)

Kent and my Granny, September 2008

So I'm calling this whole thing Lifestyle Gardening. Gardening for the kind of life you want to have. Last week, we picked and immediately took some green beans to our very good friends who live about ten minutes away, just because we were thinking of them and wanted to bring them some of our harvest. And I had so many green beans yesterday that I shared some with our neighbor, and she returned with a finished dish about an hour later for me to sample. I barely know her, but my garden brought us together. That's just awesome. Flowers are beautiful, but I feel like I have to concentrate my efforts. I want to grow things that mean something and that nourish my family, and that I can share to nourish other people. So each year, I ask my husband for a new raised bed, and I continue the dreaming that, over time, works its way into magic on my plate.

Dean's arm

2011-05-11T21:02:00.000-04:00

Here's Dean's big news of the day.

And now, the back story.

Last Thursday, Kent and Dean were both at the top of our slide in the back yard. Kent had mentioned that he wanted to slide down with Dean on his lap, something I've helped them do in the past, but I told him he just needed to wait his turn this time. Kent was mad at me for that, and then he got frustrated that Dean wasn't sliding down right away, so he started to nudge him. I was sitting several feet away, watching what was happening, and I called out to Kent not to push Dean because he might fall. Kent looked right at me, nudged Dean again, and Dean lost his balance, toppled over the side of the slide, and fell flat on the ground below.

Maybe the back story should start earlier. 15 months ago, Kent got a baby brother. He didn't know what to do with him, or with us when we weren't paying attention to him. When Dean started to sit up, Kent started getting aggressive, pushing him over, hitting him on the head with things... he never seems to want to hurt Dean, at least not in a "I hate this baby" kind of way, but maybe in a "I want Mom and Dad to notice me" kind of way. He's had a lot of trouble controlling his impulses to hurt him. A lot of trouble. My reactions probably don't help, because I'm really inconsistent: some days, I can handle it calmly and try to give Kent the benefit of the doubt and teach him, whereas other days, I totally lose it and scream at him because I'm just so sick of him hurting his brother. I went through a period of several months when I felt like I couldn't even leave the two of them alone together, because if I even went to the bathroom while Kent was watching TV and Dean was in the room with him, Dean would suddenly be on his back crying and Kent would be telling me very calmly that he had just pushed Dean over. If last Thursday had been the first, or one of only a few, times that Kent had hurt Dean, I'm sure I would have handled it differently, but after I watched Dean fall three feet to the ground, I immediately leapt up and screamed at Kent to get in the house while I scooped up Dean and tried to figure out what might have happened to him or what he fell on (his head, his back, his arm... it was all a blur).

I worried first that he might have a concussion, but he didn't have any of the traditional symptoms and woke up about every hour that night, so I stopped worrying about that pretty quickly. The next morning, while I was in a near stupor from lack of sleep, Jack noticed that Dean was very reluctant to use his right arm, not wanting to put any weight on it when he was sitting, even though he was still using his hand to grab things. I was flying to North Carolina that morning for a wedding on Saturday, so in the twenty minutes before I was going to leave for the airport, I was trying to figure out whether I should even go, or whether I just needed to skip the whole trip and take Dean to the doctor. Jack tried to reassure me that Dean's injury didn't seem too bad, and that I could take him to the ER once I got to North Carolina if he still seemed to need it, so I got on the plane with Dean. Jack and Kent were staying home for the weekend, and I was honestly relieved to have some time away from Kent so that I could cool down and get some perspective on him.

Dean and I had our merry little jaunt to Winston-Salem for my cousin Beth's wedding, and the trip would have been marvelous if Dean hadn't been so fussy and sad. I thought it was mostly the travel and all the new people, though I kept thinking something must be wrong with his joints or something. I thought if he had a broken bone, it would have been much more obvious, so that couldn't have been it. He was also feverish on Saturday and Sunday, so I was giving him Tylenol and praying he wasn't getting yet another ear infection.

Babies and pre-verbal toddlers are such a mystery, really. There's so much I know about Dean, so much I can tell from his moods, gestures, signs, and syllables, but there's so much I don't know that I'm really yearning to find out. I felt like I was getting to know Kent in a totally different way when his language exploded and he was suddenly labeling everything, and I want that with Dean. It would have been particularly helpful this weekend, but that's not who he is yet, so we deal with who he is in this moment.

Dean and I got home late Sunday night, and his fever seemed much better. I stopped giving him Tylenol. I was still wondering about his arm, but I wanted to wait another day to get acclimated to being back home. Monday and Tuesday passed with him acting okay, but not great. He didn't want to use that arm very much, but again, I was mostly thinking that he'd be in a lot more pain, and I'd be able to see something obviously wrong with his body, if it were broken. This morning, though, he was very upset and was pulling at his ears a lot, so I figured if I was going to take him to the doctor, I might as well do it today and get his ears and arm looked at all at once.

Our appointment was at 11:30, right after I picked up Kent from school, so I had brought some granola bars with us because I figured lunch would be a while away. The doctor confirmed that both ears were infected, then sent us to radiology to have Dean's arm x-rayed. Kent and I watched through the glass as a stranger-averse and screaming Dean got x-rays, with one tech holding him while another took the pictures. I explained to Kent what was happening, and his curiosity about the whole thing was satisfied when they were able to show him one of the pictures on their computer. He's very into skeletons, so he thought it was interesting. Dean also needed to have blood drawn to check his hemoglobin, which I would have done at his 15-month checkup last week except that I needed to leave to pick up Kent and figured I'd just come back another day. So as long as I was in that part of the clinic, I just had them do his bloodwork, too. On the other arm, of course. Kent sat quietly on a little stool while they stuck a needle in (yes, screaming) Dean's arm to get a blood sample. Then we headed back to the ped's office to await the radiology results and talk to our doctor about the next step. She was at a meeting, but she and the nurse texted back and forth for a few minutes (I think it's funny that even doctors pull out their phones to text during a meeting), and in the meantime the nurse told me that Dean did have a fractured radius and ulna (the two bones of the forearm) and would need to see an orthopedist.

After the doctor came back, I asked if I could talk to her without Kent in the room, so she had one of her nurses ask him to come play with her. I spilled my guts about how frustrated and upset I've been about Kent's aggression toward Dean, how it seems almost constant, and how broken bones take it to a whole new level in my mind. Of course, Kent didn't actually break Dean's bones, but he was careless and refusing to listen to my warnings, and because of that, something really serious happened to Dean. It terrifies me that Dean could have just as easily gotten a brain or spinal injury if he had fallen in a different way. So our doctor (who I'm coming to love more and more) had a stern talk with Kent about how he needs to treat Dean, how someday they're going to run around together and have a wonderful time, but that Dean is so much smaller than Kent right now that Kent really needs to be careful with him. All the months of Jack and me telling him this have not stuck, obviously, so I'm desperately hoping that an authority figure might drive the point home, or that he'll just age out of it. Soon.

When we saw the doctor again, it was after 1:00, and I knew I needed some food and some co-parenting assistance, so I called Jack and told him he needed to leave work and meet us there. He took Dean home to wait for our appointment time at the orthopedic clinic, and Kent and I went to find some lunch. It was the first time in a week that I had been alone with Kent, and I really wanted to feel like I was connecting with him. He clams up any time I ask about school (totally age-appropriate), so attempts to discuss school fell flat, but I asked him about what our doctor had said to him and asked how he felt. He reiterated what she said to him, but I'm still not sure how much is sinking in. Sigh. Anyway, we enjoyed a lot of good pizza and happened to see a preview for Cars 2, which we didn't even know about, so it was a fairly light few moments in the middle of a crazy day.

Kent announced that all that pizza was making him feel tired, so I thought there was a good chance he'd want to take a nap, Jack would stay home with him, and I'd be taking Dean to ortho alone. I had posted quickly on Facebook about what was happening, and my friend Jennifer responded that she'd be glad to help if I wanted to call her, so I called her almost the moment that Kent fell asleep and asked if she'd be able to meet me at the clinic at 3 just so I'd have someone there with me. I opened the conversation by saying, "So you remember a few minutes ago when you said I should call you if I needed anything?" and she said jokingly, "Boy, you just jumped right on that one, didn't you?"

Jennifer earned the Most Dedicated Friend award today.

I got home with an asleep Kent, just in time to swap children with my husband and take Dean to get his cast. Jennifer met us at the clinic, and between filling out paperwork, paying our copay, and waiting back in the doctor's waiting area, it was an hour before we saw the orthopedist. Our pediatrician had said she wasn't sure if they'd need to do any anesthesia on Dean, so we shouldn't feed him anything just to be on the safe side, but this is a kid who eats a meal or snack about every two hours, often nursing in between, so going several hours without eating or nursing was starting to wear on him (besides the obvious physical discomfort he had already been in for several days). I paced around the office, holding him and singing to him to keep him happy, for probably 30 minutes, while everyone who had gotten there before us went back for their consultations on various broken bones. Nobody else had a screaming child.

[Are you tired yet?]

Once we saw the orthopedist, things went very quickly, and Jennifer helped carry our stuff and asked a couple of questions here and there that I hadn't thought to ask. The ortho doctor showed me the breaks on Dean's x-ray, talked to me about the cast and how we'd need to follow up with him, and then sent me straight to a nurse who'd do the cast. He was great, as was his entire staff. The nurse who put on Dean's cast was so empathetic to him, and another nurse came in to help hold his arm. They offered him a lollipop, which I was more than happy to give him even though I'd never given him one before, so he ate the lollipop, cried in between licks, and thereby drooled green sticky goop on himself and me. I also got cast goop dripped on my arm, which I'm pretty sure is going to stay there until that skin eventually sloughs off. I was in great shape by this point, let me tell you. But it was almost over (it only took about ten minutes for her to put the cast on him), and I knew he could nurse as soon as she were done and then we could get back to our lives.

So yes, they finished his cast, Jennifer sat with me and chatted about all kinds of funny things while Dean nursed, and then we did return to our lives. And I'm just going to say right now that Dean is a superstar. He is powering through everything, delighting in banging his cast on the table at dinner and already figuring out how to transfer food from his right hand to his left to get it into his mouth.

Did you notice that the cast matches his eyes? That was no accident. A mom has to focus on something like that to get through the day.

I have no idea how he'll sleep with this thing on his arm — my guess is badly — but he seems so much happier in general that we all finally clued in to what was wrong with him. He seems to actually like his cast, or at least he's relieved that his arm doesn't hurt any more. We also have antibiotics to fight his ear infection (#6, for those keeping score at home), so he's well on the way to recovery.

I am trying SO. HARD. Not to stay mad at Kent. I know things like this happen with siblings, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to figure out how to teach Kent to do better. I don't want every step of this cast episode to turn into a guilt trip. He didn't hurt him on purpose. But he did hurt him. Anyway, I hope we'll get through this with Kent having learned something. Or maybe it'll be like Danny Kaye's character in White Christmas, where Dean will just have to grab his arm and wince every time he wants something from Kent.

Crepes, the other way

2011-03-08T19:26:00.005-05:00

I've been thinking this week about how my mom and Bill are going to France this summer, and I'm a little jealous but mostly just excited for them. So that means I've also been thinking about French food. A lot. African hot chocolate at Angelina in Paris. Tarte au poisson and Kir Royal at a bistro in Rouen. Crepes from a street vendor in the Jardin des Tuileries. Croque monsieur sandwiches, pretty much anywhere. On this rainy day, in which I was sorely disappointed not to go to the Rex parade in NOLA and desperately needed something to help me embrace the rain, I couldn't get savory crepes out of my head. Crepes made with salt and herbs instead of sugar and vanilla, wrapped around roasted chicken, mushrooms, and potatoes, and topped with just a smidge of gravy. La Madeleine has something like this on their menu, but it's overly salty and has too much gravy, so I decided I could do better myself.

I can roast a pretty great chicken, but this seemed to need the ease of a rotisserie chicken. Rotisserie chickens remind me of France, too; the apartment I stayed in in Nice was right next to an open market, and I walked past the rotisserie chickens every morning on my way to school. Even at 8 a.m., it's a great smell. Plus, there's that lovely scene from Amélie where she's describing everything to a blind man at breakneck pace, including a child who's watching a dog who's watching some chickens spin on a rotisserie.

The chicken already taken care of, I diced some potatoes and onions, quartered some mushrooms, and threw the vegetables into a roasting dish with olive oil, salt and pepper, and herbes de Provence. They did their thing in a 425 degree oven while we watched Jeopardy! (it comes on at 4:30 here, freakishly), and then I made the gravy and crepes. For the crepes, I used Alton Brown's recipe and followed the "savory" guidelines, using fresh parsley from my garden for the herbs. The gravy had to be vegetarian, because Jack was having the same thing I was having, minus the chicken, so I made a roux and then added a cup of vegetable broth, some dried thyme, and some fresh parsley. I simmered it until it was thick, while I was cooking the crepes, then rolled everything together like a big French enchilada and spooned some gravy on top. Et voilà. It was done.

I had meant to steam some broccoli with it (since the green beans at the store looked horrible) but about five minutes before everything else was done, I realized I had forgotten the broccoli. It would have been nice to have a fresh vegetable, but we did just fine. And I realized that even buying a whole chicken, I fed all of us for less than I would've spent on the thing from La Madeleine.

One bite into it, I knew it was better than La Madeleine's, anyway.

Best rainy day meal I've had in quite some time.

Demolition Day

2011-02-26T17:14:00.005-05:00

The hardest part of our bathroom remodel is finding a chance to work. Two small children tend to need our attention, like ALL THE TIME. Go figure. So after a couple of months of biding our time on the bathroom repair, Jack had scraped away at the popcorn ceiling little by little, and he and his dad had pulled out our fake marble shower walls. Then Jack took out the drywall around the tub this past week, but with as much as we still had left, it felt like it was painfully slow to get things rolling. We finally caught our big break on Friday afternoon. A friend volunteered to watch Dean for a couple of hours, so I called Jack at work and told him to come home early. We put Kent in front of a movie (Wall-E, which we all love), and then we launched into our long-awaited demolition.

I had pulled up some of the baseboards and quarter-round a few weeks ago, very satisfying at first, until I realized there was a second layer of flooring underneath the linoleum that was standing in the way of the baseboards coming out completely. So we had this big plan to yank up the flooring and get the tub out all at once, whenever we both had a chance to get in there and work. The first layer of floor came up fairly easily in large pieces. Then Jack started in on the second layer, which came up in one big piece and revealed — yep — a third layer. Jack remarked that it was one layer for each decade the house has existed. Actuaries think of things like that. So this bottom layer was linoleum that was basically stuck right on the slab. It peeled off in unruly chunks, kind of like one of those bad price stickers that doesn't come all the way off, but 37 square feet of that. It'll require a lot of scraping to take care of it and reveal the nice clean slab underneath. Honestly, it makes me just want to coat the whole floor in Goo Gone. Bleh. At least the baseboards came out really easily after all the flooring was gone, and we can chip away at the residue in the coming days.

The first major item to leave the house was our old toilet. Thank goodness our city does large-item pickup every week.

Here's the floor after we took out the toilet and part of the top layer of flooring, and you can see the second layer of flooring where we started to take up the floor next to the tub.

The third layer of flooring, some very crusty, yellowish old linoleum.

See my pretty chunks of baseboard? P.S. The mask is for mold, not fashion or comfort.

The awesome do-it-yourselfers.

The second major undertaking of the day, removing the tub, required a sledgehammer. As we've learned about bathroom remodeling, we've realized that almost everyone busts up their tub with a sledgehammer to get it out, because they're so darn heavy that it's nearly impossible to get them out in one piece. We already called the Habitat Restore to see if they wanted to come pick it up, but after they told us they don't have a lot of demand for cast-iron tubs, we figured there was no reason to try to get it out in one piece. After the flooring was out of the way, Jack was free to start whacking away at the tub. Observe.

It took a while, and Jack was tentative at first but really got into a groove and would shout triumphantly every so often when a big piece came flying off. Kent was very concerned about the banging, though not enough to stop watching Wall-E. Jack managed to break the tub into two large, ridiculously heavy pieces that he and I carried awkwardly out to the curb, plus several medium-sized chunks and about 100,000 tiny shards, one of which later took up residence in my foot before we had a chance to sweep thoroughly. Better me than my kids, I guess.

This is what remained after we carried out the first big chunk of tub. Note the small tear visible in the drywall just above the tub.

Here's our bathtub alcove after all the pieces were removed, but before sweeping.

And here's that same space after sweeping. Stark contrast.

Did you notice the tear in the drywall? That came from a flying piece of metal. Here's what it looks like on the other side, which happens to be in our guest bathroom:

Oh well. Patching comes with the territory. And we're probably going to be replacing the flooring in this bathroom (boy, I hope it has the same three layers) and repainting it when we're done with the other bathroom, so we'll hardly notice the extra work. Ha.

Kent is very happy to walk around the bathroom again and see the changes unfolding.

On their way to us from various corners of the internet are a new, deeper bathtub and all our shower/tub hardware. Amazon really does sell just about everything these days. We've also been all over town for research and price comparisons, to tile and plumbing stores, hardware stores, and paint stores. (Painting still seems somewhere in the distant future, considering all the other work that needs to be done first.) We have this saying in our house every time we start a project, no matter how small: "There's never just one trip to Lowe's." This time, though, it's getting out of hand. They're going to start recognizing us soon. "Oh, there's the mom with the screeching baby who always carries around the same tile mosaic to different parts of the store to match it to everything..."

The Great Bathroom Project of 2011

2011-01-24T16:54:00.006-05:00

Part of what's been keeping me away from my blog lately is a bathroom, er, situation we seem to have found ourselves in. We first started noticing a small spot of mold near our shower in the master bath a few weeks ago, and the shower wall had started to pull away from the drywall. It seemed like just another thing we'd have to take care of whenever we eventually sell our house, and Jack and I began to think about eventually redoing the bathroom. Eventually.

But then we started wondering how big of a problem we were dealing with. We noticed what seemed like a leak in our shower behind the wall, making the drywall puffy. It started to seem like more of a "fix this now" problem. We asked advice from Jack's dad, who suggested we call our insurance company in case the mold problem warranted an insurance claim.

Cut to now... about half a dozen people have been in and out of our house in the last two weeks. First, we had a visit from a mold abatement subcontractor, who left a dehumidifier in our bathroom for three days and sprayed anti-microbial stuff to stop mold growth. We had a plumber come cut a hole in the wall and fix the shower leak, which we learned was due to hairline crack in a cheap plastic pipe. (I'm just going to point out right now that the metal replacement pipe cost $6.50, which means this entire problem arose because of a decision some cheap person made before we ever owned the house to save a few dollars. Keep this in mind as you read, and as this story unfolds over the coming months.)

Our insurance adjuster has also been here, and today, a contractor came to rip out the wall and find out exactly how much mold was back there. The drywall was pretty disgusting, as you can see.

The drywall is gone now, and according to our insurance adjuster, it would be less than our $1000 deductible to replace the drywall and glue the shower wall back to it. But in a particularly rocking visit to Lowe's last week, Jack and I thought, "Hey, why stop there?" We've never really liked this bathroom, but it has a ton of potential. A little sugar and caffeine prompted me to suggest that we turn this into a mostly-do-it-ourselves awesome remodeling project. So now we're pricing deeper tubs, wall tile, floor tile, toilets, fixtures, and storage. We have great plans. Great plans, I tell you. I can't really sketch this sort of thing like a designer would, and it's still a fluid vision in my head anyway, but I envision neutral beiges and grays on the walls and floors with hints of color, a big white soaking tub, possibly some glass tile in the shower, a dark piece of wood furniture for storage at the opposite end of the bathroom, a mirror to open up the space, and maybe a dual flush toilet. Oh, and before anything else, we're getting rid of the popcorn ceiling. We always told ourselves we'd do that someday, going room to room at our own pace, so this is as good a time as any to start that.

Mostly I'm eager to get it underway, but since we have a second bathroom and are waiting on a tax refund, there's no big rush. This will give us time to do the research we need to do, and acquire the many skills we need to acquire, which we currently do not have. But these are skills we need, and I know we can do it. I just have no idea how long it's going to take, since we also happen to be parents of two very active tiny persons.

My goal is to get this done by my birthday. We shall see.

Christmas 2010 in New Hampshire

2011-01-03T22:37:00.000-05:00

Photos from our Christmas trip are up! Most, but not all, activities and people are represented in the photos. I think I'm going to have to leave it at this, rather than posting a full-length rundown of the trip. Despite the extra day that it took for us to get home (thank you, D.C. airport, for your many delays and crazy mechanical issues), it was a wonderful trip. White Christmas was great. Still, the trip was stressful enough beforehand, and on the way home, that I think we're settling in for a nice Brown Christmas in Baton Rouge next year. While our kids are still so little, it's very hard to travel so much around the holidays. When they can tote their own belongings and put themselves to bed, the story will be very different.

DPP Day 25

2010-12-30T21:45:00.001-05:00

Christmas morning. I love these guys.

DPP Day 24

2010-12-30T21:45:00.000-05:00

This is pretty much how Dean felt about the snow.

(More trip pics will be coming soon.)

DPP Day 23

2010-12-30T21:03:00.000-05:00

Flying in to Manchester, NH

DPP Day 22

2010-12-22T22:41:00.002-05:00

Life with a three-year-old. He's fine. Just insane.

Kent was mad at me, I was out of the room changing Dean's diaper, and so he pushed the green chair into the window. The 137 times I've told him not to push the chair into the window because it might break did apparently not sink in. Maybe now he'll understand. Or maybe not. It's so hard to take your mom's word for something.

The upshot is that we've now had long conversations about broken glass (including talking about stitches and hospital visits, which easily could have been part of today's broken window but thankfully weren't) and financial responsibility. He voluntarily gave up his accumulated change collection of roughly $1 to help pay for the window, after I explained that when we break something, we should help fix it or pay to fix it. I asked him if he thought it would be a good idea for him to help pay for it, he said yes, and then when I asked if he wanted to give part or all of his money, he said all of it. He gave me the change, I thanked him for helping to fix it, and then he asked, "Is it fixed now?" Uhh, no. That'll have to wait until after our trip, so we'll just have a cardboard likeness of a window until then... so it goes.

You might be thinking I sound rather calm about all of this, but I'll remind you that you didn't hear me five hours ago. That's all I'm going to say.

DPP Day 21

2010-12-22T09:24:00.000-05:00

Kent wanted to play dress-up yesterday. You can't really see it, but I'm also wearing a firefighter vest and an apron, and he's wearing an apron and a dragon tail.

DPP Day 20

2010-12-21T16:07:00.000-05:00

Jack took Kent to the dollar store to shop for my presents, too, and one of the things he chose for me was a glow wand with a heart on the end. He was very excited to help me play with it outside last night.

DPP Day 19

2010-12-21T15:52:00.000-05:00

(Yes, I know I'm falling behind on the December Photo Project.)

We decided to have our family's Christmas on Sunday morning, since we're traveling for actual Christmas and don't want to lug a bunch of stuff to and from New Hampshire. We figured a weekend day would be nice, so we could open presents, have a nice breakfast, play with presents, go to church... anyway, it was a marvelous day with only slightly more chaos than I was expecting. Kent and Dean and I had gone Christmas shopping for Jack at the dollar store, and here are the things they (Kent) hand-selected for him. Sandwich cookies, a lighthouse for his desk at work, a snowglobe, and a Spider-Man toothbrush.

Despite my advice to the contrary, Kent was adamant that his dad needed that Spider-Man toothbrush.

I thought it was a pretty great group of gifts.

DPP Day 18

2010-12-18T22:04:00.000-05:00

Kent and I went to see the Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre's performance of The Nutcracker tonight. I think I may have seen it once as a kid, but I barely remember it except for the part where the Christmas tree gets really big. I played the music on the piano and in band and orchestra for years, so that's the part I've been sharing with Kent, and he really loves listening to it year-round, not just at Christmas. The March is his favorite. He can't resist humming or hooing along (i.e., "hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hooooooooooo"). I did a lot of explaining about ballet etiquette beforehand, though, specifically that he couldn't hoo along with the music, and he did very well. He has such great theater manners. We both had a great time and did actually make it through the entire show, even when the second act seemed to be dragging a little. The dancing and spectacle of the whole thing were beautiful, but I was also seeing it from my son's perspective, and the Waltz of the Flowers and Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (which come toward the end) seemed rather non-interesting to a three-year-old boy. Still, he stuck it out, and we whispered about things here and there. He mentioned about ten times on the way home that his favorite part was when the Mouse King and The Nutcracker were battling and there was a fire. Also, he loved when they made it snow inside the theater.

All in all, it was a lovely date with my son, who I still sometimes can't believe is old enough to attend the ballet.

DPP Day 17

2010-12-17T21:11:00.000-05:00

I was running errands alone (!) this morning that included a trip to Starbucks, whereupon I happened to note this truck parked outside. These sweet furries were all just sitting there, resting their chins on the truck and waiting for their owner. What a crew. Almost makes me want a dog, or four, and a truck to drive them around in.

DPP Day 16

2010-12-16T21:35:00.000-05:00

We had an afternoon visit with Linda, a friend from church and one of my favorite people in the world. Kent knew we were going to her house after his nap, and as soon as he woke up, he came out of his room, bounded down the hall, and declared, "I'm ready to go!" Linda and her husband are leaving town tomorrow for a couple of weeks with their kids and other family members, so we went over to exchange little gifts and have some fun. We played outside in her great backyard, she shared a raspberry chocolate bar she brought back from Argentina, and then she read a couple of holiday books with Kent, including The Polar Express, while Dean took a little snooze on me. Today's weather was absolutely perfect for these sort of outdoor shenanigans, and it was a lovely couple of hours. I feel so lucky when I'm in the presence of such great friends who also happen to adore my kids.

DPP Day 15

2010-12-15T21:56:00.000-05:00

My stylish son decided to grab my ugly comfy socks from the living room floor and put them on his own feet, then slap his red Crocs on top of them to go out to dinner.

DPP Day 14

2010-12-14T20:37:00.001-05:00

This afternoon, my boys shared a cinnamon roll for the first time. It was pretty healthy, as far as cinnamon rolls go. I made a batch of wheat bread dough, rolled it out, brushed it with melted butter and sprinkled it with cinnamon and brown sugar, then rolled it up. I was making a loaf of cinnamon bread, actually, but when I roll it up, it's always too long for my loaf pan, so I have to trim the ends and bake them up as rolls with a little extra cinnamon sugar on top. Have to.

DPP Day 13

2010-12-13T15:17:00.007-05:00

Step 1: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

Step 2: Take pictures.

Step 3: Repeat steps 1-2 until you feel better.

Step 4: Make a mental note that the small table is no longer an appropriate place to keep things away from the baby.

DPP Day 12

2010-12-12T21:10:00.000-05:00

Cypresses are some of the most magical things in Louisiana. I love the little knobby knees that poke up out of the ground, and the feathery green bits that turn a rich auburn color in the fall. I noticed these about a block away from our church this morning. Happy Sunday.

DPP Day 11

2010-12-11T17:46:00.000-05:00

Busy weekend. Baked presents are being assembled and prepared for mailing. I love making presents, but right around this point each year, I start thinking, "Next year, what if I just gave everyone gift cards??"

DPP Day 10

2010-12-10T21:40:00.000-05:00

Meet Carl.

Carl appears in a different place each morning, much to the delight of a Certain Little Person in our house. This morning, he was found hanging from the wreath on the wall. Many giggles were heard when Certain Little Person spotted him.

(In case you were wondering, his name is an homage to Carl from the Pixar film Up. When pressed to come up with a name for this elf, Kent naturally turned to one of his favorite movies for inspiration.)

DPP Day 9

2010-12-09T21:37:00.000-05:00

Radishes and lettuces from the garden (and the gardener).

DPP Day 8

2010-12-08T23:05:00.000-05:00

Hot cocoa and a candy cane joe-joe (Trader Joe's version of an Oreo, basically the same but with candy cane bits in the cream, and without all the scary chemicals). Holiday snack extraordinaire.

DPP Day 7

2010-12-07T23:02:00.001-05:00

We had a hard freeze last night, so this morning some of our less hardy plants are starting to shrivel up. The basil plant looks terrible and will be completely brown by tomorrow, I'm sure. The pumpkin vine has also started to wither, so today, Kent and I scooted out to the garden with a large knife and cut one of the pumpkins off the vine. The second one may never completely ripen, depending on how that vine is doing, but I figured the one that's basically ripe can stand to come inside now. I washed it off, then weighed it, and it's a whopping 13 pounds. It will surely make many delicious pies and raviolis. And it's already made one little boy very proud of himself and his budding (ha) gardening skillz.

DPP Day 6

2010-12-06T21:26:00.000-05:00

We went to a get-together at a friend's house today for some fun ornament making. She had beads and pipe cleaners for the older kids to make ornaments with, and paint for the moms to help the babies make their own cardboard ornaments, too. Kent made a charming little wreath that unfortunately did not photograph well in the evening (this is the first day that I got all the way to nighttime and realized I hadn't taken any pictures yet). By borrowing Dean's thumb, I was able to make this sweet little tree ornament. My friend had a sheet of project ideas for using fingerprints, handprints, and footprints, and I latched right on to the tree idea and made it my own (err, Dean's own) with some snow and a star at the top. On the reverse, it says, "Dean's 1st Christmas 2010."

DPP Day 5

2010-12-05T16:42:00.000-05:00

We got this beautiful pink poinsettia from a friend of Kent's who was doing a fundraiser for his school. I was slightly overwhelmed by color choices of both poinsettias and covers, but I settled on a pink one with a gold cover just to buck the trend of traditional red. I'm so happy to see it every time I walk past it.

DPP Day 4

2010-12-04T22:41:00.000-05:00

Kent couldn't wait to place the star on our humble little tree this afternoon. He really got into the tree thing this year, even though we're using our 3-foot fake tree from college in lieu of a large tree that a baby would enjoy pulling over on himself. It was so fun to share the stories of all the ornaments with Kent as we placed them on the tree — so what if the star went on first instead of last?

DPP Day 3

2010-12-03T21:43:00.000-05:00

Dean has been relishing our time outside lately. He crawls on, feels, tastes, and generally absorbs the leaves and grasses, sticks and pine needles. I love watching how the world is unfolding to my baby.

DPP Day 2

2010-12-02T14:59:00.001-05:00

Kent's pumpkin patch has two pumpkins that have been growing and ripening for the past two months. They're just days away from being ready to pick, at which point they will be made into all sorts of delicious holiday pumpkin concoctions. I still think it's magical that we can grow things like pumpkins in our yard.

DPP Day 1

2010-12-01T20:28:00.000-05:00

Kicking off the December Photo Project 2010, I thought I'd share a photo from our trip home. This is (my goofy son in front of) a training model of the lunar module, used to train astronauts in the 1960s. It's at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where we always stop because it doubles as a rest area.

We had a lovely trip, including visits with all sorts of people we almost never see, but after several hours of Dean crying off and on, we were very, very ready to be home and get the rest of our December on.

Side-by-side fun

2010-11-13T22:31:00.006-05:00

Tonight's Photoshop project has been on my to-do list for months. Enjoy!

Kent and Dean as newborns, in the same PJs

Nurslings

Self-feeding

Reaching for a handful of Patti

Again with another pair of PJs

Family photos at Kent's and Dean's baptisms

Proof that even if they don't *look* that much alike, there are still moments when we know for sure that they're brothers

Oh, I almost forgot about this one:

Obviously they both know a good place to sleep when they feel it.

Project Milk: third shipment

2010-11-11T14:29:00.003-05:00

I just sent off my last shipment to the milk bank. My grand total: 788 oz. It was actually higher, but a couple of weeks ago, a good friend of mine with a baby had horrible food poisoning and spent the night in the hospital, so since she was in no condition to nurse or to pump, I took some bottles of milk to her house. I was sort of hoping to be over 800 oz., but I was close enough. It's a great feeling anyway.

I thought I might go all the way to a year, which is the longest I could have pumped, but my supply has been way down since Dean started solids, and with taking Kent to/from preschool in the mornings, I've also had more trouble finding time to pump. So I actually hadn't pumped in over a week, but then I got one more bottle a couple of days ago right around the time I decided it was just time to send everything on to the bank and officially retire.

So now I'm retiring as a donor. On to find another way to help change the world.

If you give a dad a washrag

2010-11-09T08:09:00.003-05:00

In homage to Laura Numeroff's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series...

***

If you give a dad a washrag, he’s going to do the dishes. When he’s finished with the dishes, he’s going to want to clean off the stovetop. When he goes to wipe it down, he won't be able to see how clean it is, and he’ll remember the bulb is out. He’ll look for a new lightbulb. When he puts the lightbulb in, it won’t work, so he’ll have to throw it away and find another lightbulb. And another. He’ll wonder if it really is a problem with the lightbulbs, or an electrical wiring problem. He’ll take the lightbulbs back out of the trash can. They’ll have coffee grounds all over them, so he’ll have to wipe them off. Then he’ll take the lightbulbs to a lamp and test them out. He’ll realize that the lightbulbs are fine and it is a wiring problem. So he’ll have to call his dad for advice. His dad will make some suggestions and help him fix it over the phone. After he fixes the stove light, he’ll generally feel like a pretty cool husband. He'll go on about his business of being a cool husband (and dad). Later that week, he’ll stay up late one night and forget to do any dishes. He’ll be tired the next morning, and so will his wife, because their baby doesn't sleep. His wife will get mad that he stayed up late and didn’t do any dishes, so he’ll wander bleary-eyed over to the sink to wash some dishes. And chances are, if his wife nags him about doing the dishes, he’s going to need a washrag to get it done.

Dean at 9 months

2010-11-03T16:05:00.006-04:00

Dean has officially been out longer than he was in. 9 months seems like such a grown-up baby age. They're really coming into their own little personalities around 9 months, being mobile and eating and making their wishes known.

Witness the game of Peekaboo:

Dean has 5 teeth with another on the way. He loves Gerber puffs and recognizes the containers instantly, including the little snack container we keep in the diaper bag, hopping up and down and "oohing" and panting when he sees them. He loves his new sippy cup almost as much. Kent picked it out for him a few weeks ago, since Kent had chewed holes in all of his and they had to be thrown away a while back. We're hearing more babbles and "lala, gaga," each day, but nothing that seems like a purposeful identification of someone's name, like, say, his mama. I've been working on that one a lot, but to no avail so far.

Dean is crawling with more confidence each day, sometimes following us down the hall or into another room. Sometimes, though, he just sits and cries when we leave the room, since he hasn't quite figured out that he has the power to come with us whenever he wants. He's also pulling up at every opportunity, and his very favorite thing to pull up on is my legs. This makes it rather difficult for me to get around, since if I stop moving, he's immediately right there, grabbing onto my pants and pulling himself up. Observe.

Basically, I have to be prepared to stand in one place for a while if I stop moving. And sometimes if he thinks I'm stopping, but then I start to walk away, he gets really mad.

He's a snuggler, a singer, a gigglebox, and a total sweetheart. 'Scuse me while I go snuggle him and babble with him for a few more minutes before we pick up Kent from school. This time with just my baby is precious.

October wrap-up

2010-10-31T21:32:00.005-04:00

There were a couple of milestones I had been meaning to blog about this October, and here we are, hours away from November, so I figured I'd better get to it. Forgive my absence from the internet, but my three-year-old is, well, three, and has decided to turn into a monster every time I open my laptop and attempt to check my email or write anything. If I don't get back to you, do not take it personally. If it's important, please email me again. I have to believe that my life won't always be this way... otherwise my head will break.

So the first milestone is that our sweet cat Patti is ten years old this month. We don't know her exact birthday, so we've just always had kind of a general month of Patti celebrations each October. She's been such a great cat, and we feel so lucky to have her around. She says "meh" instead of meowing, and still has unexpected bursts of silliness like chasing her tail in the hallway, or just now when I looked over to see her jumping with both front paws up in the air to catch a bug in the kitchen.

The second milestone is that October 2010 marks four years that I've been pregnant, nursing, or both. Yep. Some women wait several years between pregnancies, and very few nurse up until the next pregnancy, so I feel like I'm in some kind of club for moms who just get all their fertility done in one straight shot. (Incidentally, Jack's mom also belongs to this club, and I suppose my mom does too since she only had me.) I'm 98% sure that we're done having kids, even though it took me several months to decide that. I know I'll have baby pangs at some point in the future; we'll just have to see how loud they are. But two feels good. Two brothers against the world. It means saying goodbye to the hope of having a daughter someday, but I'm becoming more okay with that as time goes by and I grow into my role as Mom of Two Boys.

I know a lot of you have been wondering about the Halloween costumes this year, so here they are. I found Dean's monkey costume last year when he was still in utero, and since the best costume to go with a monkey was already done last year, I asked Kent if he would like to dress up as a tree. He was super-excited. Thank goodness, because that was my one idea. I bought a leaf garland to cut up, then intertwined the leaves with florist wire to make a leafy hat and some wristbands. Kent helped me glue the rest of the leaves to a green t-shirt, and some brown pants and brown shoes finished off the look. Most people have gotten it when they've seen him, though a few weirdos have asked if he's the Jolly Green Giant or a dragon or something. Apparently he had been telling everyone at school about his costume all week, so his teachers were thrilled to see it at the fall festival on Friday. I love seeing my son's oddball costumes among all the princesses, animals, bugs, and superheroes, but I am absolutely sure that this was the last year I got to pick his costume. We'll just have to wait and see what the opinionated Kent of the Future will choose. Hopefully something I can make. I get such a kick out of making costumes.

Dean, Kent, and cousin Blythe (Morgan's little girl, they were in town last weekend): trying to get a good photo of all three of them was interesting. Blythe trying to eat Kent's costume while Dean looks off in the distance pretty much encapsulates the experience.

Dean and Blythe, just 6 weeks apart and destined to be buddies.

Kent's alternate costume, courtesy of Chick-Fil-A family nights, wherein they made a different part of the costume each week and then had a pirate party this past week.

Today's caramel apples, shared with the friends we went trick-or-treating with.

Our jack-o-lantern, which Kent insisted should be "silly" and not "scary". Before I added the eyebrows, Kent got mad at me and told me the eyes were too scary, like maybe I hadn't been paying attention to his directions. I'm just not artistic enough to get "silly" right on the first try. At least he agreed that the eyebrows helped.

Pumpkin pumpkin

2010-10-15T10:12:00.005-04:00

I've decided we have to grow pumpkins every year. This is the most exciting plant I've ever seen. The vine is lovely, with all its spirally sprigs popping out everywhere, the broad dark leaves make a neat canopy, and the huge flowers are such a brilliant orange color. For a while, all of the flowers were male flowers, so they just fell off and no pumpkins grew underneath, but I loved the vine even then. And now that it has a few female flowers, one of which is already making a sizable pumpkin... well, it's basically the coolest plant ever. Also, it has long since spilled over the side of our raised bed and is slowly taking over that quadrant of the back yard. Kent is pretty thrilled. He wants to check on it every day, and the pumpkins do not disappoint; they get visibly larger overnight, so there's always progress. When the kids are a little bigger, it would be really fun to measure and weigh the pumpkins each day and chart their progress.

See these amazing blooms? Our bees have never been happier.

This is the first pumpkin as of about a week ago.

Here's the same pumpkin as of this morning. It's bigger than my hand, and the outside is kind of furry. I have no idea how big it'll get before it turns orange, but I'll try to post a pumpkin update.

When I made pumpkin ravioli a few months ago, I made up a little song to get Kent interested in trying it. As with most new foods, though, he is more excited about the idea of it than the actual eating of it. Still, he talks about making his pumpkins into pumpkin ravioli. And to make his parents melt, when he sings the song, he says, "rabioyi." Oh, how I adore three-year-old speech. Considering the fact that we have pumpkin in the freezer from last year, and we got two pumpkins from the pumpkin patch this weekend, I see many pumpkin delicacies in our future. Perhaps there will be pumpkin gifts for family at Thanksgiving, if they're ready by then.

Butternut squash tarte tatin

2010-10-08T19:58:00.007-04:00

Tonight was the second time I tried to make something I saw on Iron Chef America. It's a bit of a challenge, since they don't publish the recipes the chefs make, and I just have to go off sight, Alton Brown's delightful commentary, and my own culinary knowledge. In Battle Butter, Iron Chef Cat Cora made a butternut squash tarte tatin, a little pastry thing that looked so delicious and easy I had to try it. Keep in mind as you read that this was Battle Butter. Butternut squash, puff pastry (which is full of butter), melted butter, and five spice... that's it. Yum. Kent even ate it. I told him it was a butternut squash pie with cinnamon, enticing him with the two key words "pie" and "cinnamon". He believed me. Add a bit of molasses or brown sugar, and it would taste like an actual pie, but Jack and I thought the flavor was incredible exactly as is. It made a wonderful Friday supper with pork tenderloin, crock pot mac and cheese, and steamed broccoli. I realized after dinner that I should have put five spice on the pork, too, but it was just dandy brined in OJ, apple cider vinegar, and brown sugar, then pan-seared and baked in the oven.

First, I peeled the squash, cut it into slices about 1/2-inch thick, then cut the slices into smaller pieces that would fit in my crocks. Cat Cora had these cute little cast-iron ramekins that held a round slice perfectly, but in the absence of that, I just cut them into semi-circles and a few smaller pieces for the edges. I was going for an even layer of squash on the bottom of each crock. Then I melted some butter (about 4 Tbsp in all for the whole recipe) and added a bit of it to the squash and tossed in some Chinese five spice. Cat Cora used brown butter to toss with the squash and five spice, but I didn't have that kind of time.

I put a little melted butter in the bottom of each crock, then added a layer of squash. My crocks are oval-shaped, so this is what I ended up with.

Next, I cut some puff pastry in the shape of my baking dishes. I used the bottom of the dish for a guide, but since the pastry draws up a little when it bakes, I could have used the top, too. Either way would seem to work.

I topped each layer of squash with a piece of puff pastry, then brushed a tad more melted butter on top. Blame Cat Cora. Then I put my scraps in a baggie back in the freezer. I'm not sure what I'll do with the scraps, but I hate to waste puff pastry, ever.

I baked them at 425 for some length of time. I had this great plan to time it and see how long it took to bake, but I have two small children. Thus, I know that I put them in the oven at 5:40 p.m., but I have no idea what time I took them out. It was maybe 15 minutes later, but I just kept an eye on them until they were puffed and golden brown.

Just to be funny, I made a short movie of these things sizzling when they came out of the oven. Butter. Can you hear it?

The final step is inverting them onto a plate after they've had a few minutes to cool. Well, okay, the FINAL step is eating them slowly enough that you don't burn yourself, but it's hard. They're that good.

On repurposing fabric

2010-09-27T15:39:00.006-04:00

I whipped up a skirt on Saturday night that I've been dreaming about for weeks. I got a wonderful book from my stepsister last year called Sewing Green, with a lot of creative ideas for repurposing old things into new ones. One of the most intriguing ideas was making a skirt from a pillowcase, using the pillowcase's finished edge as the hemline. I'm sized out of fitting a pillowcase over my hips by about 2 inches, but smaller people could get away with it. Anyway, we have these sheets that we got for a wedding gift, all white with a beautiful embroidered eyelet border. They got a few small stains on them several years ago, and they're not as soft as some of our other sheets, so they've been put away for a while, but once I started thinking about making a skirt, I couldn’t get that gorgeous embroidery out of my head. So instead of a pillowcase, I used the bedsheet instead. It couldn't have been simpler: cutting a rectangle (hips plus 3" x desired length plus 1.5"), sewing it up the side to make a tube, then making an elastic casing and finishing the whole thing up. It was literally three seams. It took me more time to iron and cut the fabric than it took to sew, and the project was made even easier by Jack volunteering to take the boys to the library so I could get it done before dinner. It's not the most elegant skirt since it's just straight with an elastic waist, and since it's white and I didn't bother with a lining, I had to dig my old slip (not seen in about five years) out of the back of the closet. But it's comfy, and it was worth it anyway.

I just love the hemline of this skirt right above my boots. Every woman needs some boots to wear once in a while.

I've also pulled out my grandmother's scrapaholic quilt to work on — remember it from way back two years ago?? Well, I got it from her when I was still working on a dissertation, so I sewed a border on, basted it together with the batting and backing, then rolled it up and stuck it in a box. It sat in the box through dissertation, then dissertation abandonment was quickly followed by pregnancy, and a newborn... and all of those things precluded working seriously on a quilt. When Kent started school, I was determined to pull it out and begin quilting it, but I looked at it again and realized it would still take me years to hand quilt it like I had been planning.

My grandmother taught me to hand quilt. It’s one of those passed-down skills that I’m so grateful to have — it makes me feel connected to generations of women in my family whom I never even met. Machine quilting is sort of unreliable since the stitching can come out a lot more easily, and there’s something about it that’s not quite visceral enough for me. I love my sewing machine, but I feel the need to finger the fabrics on a quilt like this. I didn't want to cop out and do it on a machine. I took a long look at the quilt after having a timely reminder about another option, and I tried to imagine it as a tied quilt. Tied quilts are doable. I sheepishly asked my grandmother if it was alright for me to tie it instead of hand quilting, because I wanted to finish it and let her enjoy her handiwork. She worried that it was going to be a burden to me, but I assured her it wasn't, that I was thrilled to be able to do it. How could I not LOVE this opportunity? I mean, it's her life in fabric. Every scrap means something to her, either because she made something from it like an article of clothing or a quilt for one of us, or because it came from the stash of a friend, or a sister who recently passed away. As I've been tying the little knots of purple wool that seem to pick up the purple in the quilt beautifully, I've reminisced and dreamed a little about what all of these different fabrics mean. Most have meanings I'll never know. Every 10 or 15 squares, I find one that instantly becomes my new favorite. There's a lot of: "Okay, that's my favorite. No wait, this one is DEFINITELY my favorite."

It's nice to pull my head up out of the water of childrearing for a minute so I can do this kind of work again.

A-scootin'

2010-09-18T19:23:00.009-04:00

Dean is a baby on the move. He's not crawling forward yet, but he does a marvelous job of getting on his hands and knees and scooting around. He often goes backward, reminding me a lot of Mater in Cars, who is the self-proclaimed "world's best backwards driver" and doesn't need to know where he's going, just where he's been. He's also really good at sitting and pivoting in many directions to get the toys he needs, causing his brother much chagrin at playtime. He loves trains, wooden toys he can teethe on, and musical instruments most of all. Kent and I have been discussing what it's going to be like when Dean is fully mobile and starts knocking things down and taking his toys at will. I might have to reread Siblings Without Rivalry.

He's dabbling in self-feeding, which started two days ago with Gerber puffs (a Cheerios-like creation that melts easily for tiny people with no/few teeth). We've been feeding him veggie and fruit purees once or twice a day, plus oatmeal one morning just for fun, and he's just now getting to the point where he'll grab the spoon and bring it toward his mouth if he agrees with what we're trying to feed him. Today was the most wholehearted acceptance of a new food yet: a grape. I peeled and cut up a grape for him, and he seemed to think it was just about the best thing he ever could have imagined.

Dean is also getting too busy to nurse for very long, which is okay with me except that it means he only eats for a few minutes at a time, so he's hungry more often. When he's hungry, or otherwise upset because he can't go forward, he screams. A lot. Some days, I think my ears are going to pack up and just go inside my head so they don't have to listen to the screaming anymore. Between Kent's willful disobedience and Dean's screaming, I feel like I'm doing a stellar job of just holding it together. It's not horrible, just exhausting. It's no wonder that today, I needed to bake some spice cake cupcakes with experimental chai cream cheese frosting. Verdict: Would Bake Again.

Also, Dean is awesome, even if life is getting more complicated. I wonder where my quiet, calm baby has gone, but at least I can still dress him in footies. As soon as I find some big enough to fit him.

School and development

2010-09-08T21:43:00.010-04:00

Kent has officially started school at La Printanière Montessori. We had a visit last week to meet his teachers, he's been going for an hour each day since last Friday, and he'll go for his full three hours each day starting next Monday. I love the way they phase the kids in, making sure everyone is acclimated and that the older kids are settled before the newer kids arrive. They have 3- through 5-year-olds in the same room, so the newer ones rely so much on the older ones to model things around the classroom and to show them the routine. We've been very impressed with how comfortable we all feel as a family in this school, and Kent's teachers are terrific, so patient and warm with the kids and so helpful to first-time parents.

Kent has trotted off with his teacher each day in the carpool line, and then when I come to get him an hour later, he has a huge grin and is immediately bursting with stories from his day. He always starts with a report of what they had for a snack — snack duty rotates among the families, so the snacks are pretty different from one day to the next — then moves on to where they went on their walk that day, what things they learned in the classroom, what he played on outside, what puzzle he might have worked on, etc. Montessori is very big on empowering kids to do daily tasks by themselves, so he's getting some practice with scooping and pouring (what they call Practical Life) from actual glass containers. He's learning to do other things for himself like swing without being pushed, eat and clean up on his own, choose what he wants to work on, and even potty on his own, though he's been there for such a short time each day that he hasn't gotten to that last part yet. When his teacher brought him to the car today, she mentioned that he's been doing great so far, which I had already expected but was still happy to hear. It's a perfect environment for him.

I've been musing this past week that this is my first time being on the outside of his learning, rather than right there next to him while he's learning. I'm usually the one explaining, showing, singing, spelling, modeling, and all the other things teachers do, but now, for the first time, Kent is learning without me. It's incredible. He's completely blossoming. And I know that for the rest of his life, I'm not ever going to be as intimately connected to what he's learning as I was for those first three years, but that's part of him becoming his own person and coming to rely more on himself than he does on me. I was ready to let him experience that next phase of his development, and he's taken to it beautifully so far. I've felt very contented all week. I also breathe a sigh of relief each time I hear my friends talking about their kids' experiences in more traditional schools, with uniforms, scheduled potty breaks, and token reward systems. I feel like Montessori places such a high value on trusting our children, making these things unnecessary, and it really mirrors how I try to be as a mother.

We've revamped Kent's room a little, giving him different spaces and making an attempt to put things on his walls that are more relevant to him and what he's doing. This is partly inspired by school, partly just a revamping I've been meaning to do for a while. [Read: people have given him things to put on his wall that we've never managed to put on his wall.] My mom got him a cool little peg rack that holds dress-up clothes and doubles as a curtain hook to hold his curtain open during the day, so he can do that himself when he wants more light. He also has a reading corner, the most exciting aspect of which is his new red bean bag. It's also adorned with some wall art, including a "k" sign that his Aunt Morgan made him, a drawing Mom and Bill bought for him of jungle animals reading together, and a print of Marcus Pfister's The Rainbow Fish that I actually bought back in college because I loved the book so much.

For now, the reading corner is mostly another place to play with his trains and cars, but someday, I tell you, it shall be for reading.

This past weekend, we also put up a clothesline and bought little binder clips to hold photos Kent has taken. I had fun looking back through the "By Kent" folder of photos on my computer to find print-worthy ones he'd enjoy seeing in his room. I did briefly ask for his input, but he wanted to get every photo printed, including the hundreds of blurry photos of his and other people's feet, or just the floor. It will be a bright day indeed when he fully absorbs the "point" aspect of "point and shoot". Anyway, this is what the clothesline looks like in general:

And these are a few of my favorite photos:

He captures the best Dean faces.

I think this must have been his finger.

This is a drawing he made that he told me at the time was dolphins. That was one of the first times he had mentioned something specific he drew, so I insisted he take a photo.

Using macro mode (which I turned on for him), he took a cool series of the stacking cups that used to be his and are now Dean's.

This last one is clearly awesome. Show him macro mode, suggest he put the camera on the floor for a different perspective (bonus: it holds the camera steady), and just look what he can do.

He's also starting to be really funny on purpose, not just making faces/noises, but actually crafting his own humor. I love it. This evening, we were on our way home from dinner, and he was holding a set of puzzle blocks he had been playing with in the restaurant. He started saying something about how he was never going to see his puzzle again, and I figured he had dropped it on the floor of the car or something. When I turned around to look at him, though, he was holding it on top of his head, completely stone-faced. He let out a little guffaw when he saw me looking at him.

SuperHusband

2010-08-22T22:19:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, while I was at a fun baby shower for a good friend, Jack had Kent help him sweep and clean our bedroom, change our sheets, and make the bed. I came home a few hours later with Dean, and Kent ran out to greet me and was so excited to show me the "surprise" they had made for me. He led me right to the bedroom, gestured around, and said, "SEE??"

Tonight, I had been having a rough evening with Kent and feeling like a crazy yelling mom person. Dean's first couple of teeth are millimeters away from coming through, so he's been a real peach, too. We were all heading to Target after dinner to pick up a few things we needed, and Jack said, "Why don't you go to Starbucks and get a drink, and we'll get started shopping and you can just catch up with us whenever you want to?" He took both boys and got the stuff on our list while I got an iced coffee and a danish and looked at apps on my phone for about ten minutes. It was just enough to turn my day around, and then I had apps and new games to show Kent, allowing us to bond after our otherwise crappy evening.

HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY TO HAVE THIS GUY AS MY HUSBAND??

Hello, stranger.

2010-08-11T14:13:00.002-04:00

Kent is away. He's on a road trip with Jack's mom to Oklahoma for a family reunion, and Jack, Dean and I are going to fly up in two days to join them. Except for our hospital stay when Dean was born, this is Kent's first real time away from us. I know he's going to have a blast. I also know that, as much as I've been craving some time away from him and a chance for him to bond with a grandparent, I already miss him. He's so big, going on a road trip without me.

As soon as Dean and I came home from lunch, I got started on clearing off our monstrously messy computer desk. I sifted through a few papers and started organizing Kent's art supplies, and then I came across a folder from the first church women's retreat I attended a few years ago. They had given us notebook paper to jot down thoughts over the weekend, and I found a little mini-essay I had scrawled. I had completely forgotten about it, but as soon as I started reading, I remembered exactly what it felt like to visit Feliciana for the first time on that spring weekend, to sit outside on a bench overlooking the slope of pine trees and the glassy lake in the distance. It's a beautifully still space, a magical escape. What I saw was this:

"As I sat outside, I scanned the grounds and admired the slender long-leaf pines. The tallest and straightest caught my eye first, but then I noticed that not every tree had such a clear and unembellished way about it. Some forked early, with mighty branches reaching out in all directions. Others were smaller, younger. Before I knew it, I found myself searching for the most crooked that might stand in opposition to the straightness of the others. Suddenly, the trees became to me a community of individuals, each with its own separate path to the sky. Because, in spite of the twists, forks, and sideways growth, they were, all of them, stretching ultimately upward to be guided by the sun. They were all sisters and brothers, parents and children in a glorious lineage of greenness and vitality. How could I not look for that crooked pine? It was the one capable of reminding me that, though I have surface incongruities, I have a family. I also have something that is all my own — the spontaneous perfection of individualism that is treasured by God."

Keep in mind that I wrote this before children, before abandoning a PhD, before I took a hard look at my life and realized academia for its own sake was not my calling. And yet, I still knew that I was a crooked pine. I was grappling with my place in the world, and as usual, was crafting an elaborate analogy to explain it all.

I love being a mother. LOVE. My choices have led me right to this spot in life, this frustrating, exhausting, beautiful spot. I couldn't be luckier. But man, it's nice to have some time to be inside my own head again.

Dean Isaac at 6 months

2010-08-04T14:58:00.006-04:00

You might wonder what our little boy is up to, now that he's half a year old. Here's a bit of what Dean does these days.

Sleeps in the car with his brother.

Sleeps in the mornings with me (yeah, not such a fan of the way I look here, but I like the way he and I look together).

Takes baths with his brother.

Dazzles us with the Hooded Towel Effect, a favorite talent of babies everywhere.

Poses with his silly mom.

Yearns for the day when he can play trains with his brother.

Tries on handmade outfits from good friends.

Laughs during all of his photo shoots.

Wears silly hats.

Etc.

Etc.

Tries sweet potatoes (see it in moving pictures here).

Loves his daddy.

And another video of Dean laughing, because that's his most wonderful skill at the moment... we should have known he'd be a happy kid when we gave him Isaac (laughter) for a middle name.

Pork two ways and fruity couscous

2010-08-04T14:45:00.004-04:00

Today, Kent and I cooked a piece of pork and made some fruity couscous with stuff in it I thought he'd like. I'm a huge fan of brining, so I marinated this pork for a couple of hours in orange juice, rice vinegar (we were running low on apple cider vinegar, which is what I normally use), brown sugar, and salt and pepper. I seared it on all sides, then put it in a baking dish, slathered the top with dijon mustard, then had Kent help me put some strips of bacon on top. I know, I know. Bacon on pork. But I can't argue with the results. I baked it until the bacon was done and the pork was cooked through, and it was moist and salty and oh-so-good.

For the couscous, I boiled just under a cup of water, then added 1/2 cup of couscous, a small peeled, diced apple, and a handful of raisins, and I took it off the heat and put a lid on to let it steam. I usually cook couscous for about five minutes, but this particular batch cooked for as long as it took me to get Dean down for a nap... how's that for a helpful gauge? When I came back into the kitchen, I added a handful of cashews, then tossed it with an orange-honey vinaigrette (hoping again to appeal to Kent).

He ate a lot of pork and bacon, and a few pieces of apple, raisins, and nuts, though he was very concerned any time couscous got on something he wanted to put in his mouth. Never the foods shall touch: this is his motto for now. But I did convince him to take a bite with couscous AND raisins together, and he didn't complain. It seemed like he wasn't really into the texture — he never has been any other time we've had couscous — but I keep thinking that if I introduce unfamiliar ingredients along with familiar tastes, he'll get on board at some point. I'm marking today as a success. Plus, I actually liked all of the stuff I cooked, and I thought the sweetness of the couscous was the perfect counterpoint to the saltiness of the pork. I usually say that I like raisins, but I don't like raisins in other stuff, though I discovered today that I really like raisins in couscous. See... moms can try new things, too.

Project Milk: second shipment

2010-08-04T14:39:00.003-04:00

...arrived this morning in Austin, milk still frozen. This cooler was almost completely full, with 74 tiny bottles of (frozen) liquid gold, for a total of 548 ounces that I've sent to the bank so far. Huzzah!

I'm still pumping each morning, trying to fill up a bottle most days, but sometimes I only make it to 2 or 3 ounces. I've slowed somewhat, but I'm not done. A few people have asked me my goal, and I honestly don't have one. I feel like making a goal will make me think too much about when I'm quitting, and I just want to keep going as long as I can.

Date supper

2010-08-01T20:37:00.003-04:00

Kent and I had a date this afternoon to see Toy Story 3 (sob, cheer, smile) and followed it up with a cupcake at Barnes & Noble. Jack met us at the bookstore with Dean, who was very happy to see me and catch up on some eating. Apparently he took about an ounce and a half of pumped milk from a bottle, which I wasn't sure he'd do, but Jack said he was pretty desperate. I'm glad I don't have to be away from him very often, and it was nice to know that he would, in fact, drink from a bottle if he really needed to.

We came home and I started cooking a date supper, something I'd been excited about all weekend. Of course, we were all eating dinner together, but having a fancy dinner makes me feel like Jack and I are having a date, even if we're separated by our curiously chatty three-year-old and shouty baby.

This week's meal planning is brought to us by my folder of saved recipes on FoodNetwork.com, in most cases dishes that I've seen on TV but haven't gotten a chance to make yet. The star of tonight's dinner was chicken scallopine in a saffron cream sauce, except that when I saw Giada make it, I instantly pictured it made with tofu instead. (Amateur chefs who are married to vegetarians have to do things like that.)

Incidentally, are you getting tired of seeing all my cooking photos on that same plate? I'm not. But I eat off it almost every night, because my little boy made it for me.

The hardest part of this recipe was convincing myself to spend $8 on .007 ounces of saffron, which is just about the 1/4 tsp called for in this recipe. Now that I've made it, I appreciate the warm flavor of the saffron and that gorgeous yellow color, but I can't say for certain that the saffron totally makes the dish. I might even try it without the saffron sometime; even though I'm sure real chefs would argue that I'm an idiot, I don't think I'd miss it too much. Maybe saffron can be found cheaper on the internet. It's certainly true for vanilla beans. For the record, the tofu held up its end of the bargain, though I'll admit that while I was eating, I was kind of excited about making it again with chicken someday. I think it would be awesome.

I roasted diced red potatoes with a little olive oil, salt, and herbes de Provence, and sautéed green beans with some garlic thrown in at the end. I've decided the potatoes are an essential accompaniment to the tofu scallopine. They soak up the extra sauce perfectly. And Jack and I really needed something to soak up that sauce, because we couldn't stop eating it. We also had a couple of those little loaves of dark wheat or pumperknickel or whatever it is, the little loaves that they have at steakhouses with a big steak knife sticking out of them — do you know the ones I'm talking about? They have to have honey butter on them. So I made some honey butter, too. All in all, this was a really perfect dinner.

I wished that Kent liked more of it, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards right now. Perhaps Dean will like my cooking more than his brother does. We'll find out soon; that little babe is almost 6 months old now, and ready to start on his sweet potatoes.

Honey chicken and Kent's pasta

2010-07-27T13:33:00.003-04:00

Our weekly lunch club has temporarily been moved to Tuesdays, due to the free carousel rides on Mondays at lunchtime this summer. Today's menu included honey chicken, adapted from Annabel Karmel's First Meals cookbook, and fiori pasta with carrots, peas, and cheese sauce.

Kent picked out a shape of pasta at the store last week, and we talked during our shopping trip about what he might like to put in the pasta. He settled on carrots and peas, and I decided to make a mild mozzarella sauce to go with it (flour, butter, milk, and fresh mozzarella).

We were looking through First Meals this morning to get some inspiration, and the recipe for honey chicken caught my eye. I wish there were more pictures in this cookbook, because I think Kent could get more excited about something if he saw what the end result would be, but I know they can make a cookbook for much cheaper if it doesn't have photographs of everything. So I tell him about the recipes, highlighting the ingredients I know he'll like, like honey. I changed her marinade based on what I had, mixing together about a tablespoon each of honey, soy sauce, olive oil, and orange juice. I cut a chicken breast into strips and marinated them for about an hour. Then I put them into a skillet with a bit of oil, cooked them on one side, flipped them over, and had Kent add red pepper strips to the pan. I reserved the marinade and brought it to a boil in another pot (very important, to cook out the raw chicken nastiness), then topped the cooked chicken and peppers with the reduced sauce.

The chicken was amazing. I loved the sweet and sour sauce, and the red peppers were perfect with it. For me, anyway. Kent liked the chicken and sauce, but not the peppers. I wasn't surprised, since he's rejected them in the past, but I consider it a major victory when he even tries something like red peppers. He tried to tell me he was all done after two bites of chicken, but I reminded him of the rule that he needs to try everything, so he reluctantly took a bite of pasta. Seriously, what is up with this pickiness? It's flower pasta. A shape he picked out. He fights so hard about trying anything that isn't completely familiar to him. It drives me crazy sometimes, and it's like a huge mental exercise for me to figure out how to get him to try something without giving him food ultimatums, which I hate (i.e., "if you eat x, you can have y"). I thought a cool shape of pasta, with familiar veggies he likes, would be an easy hit, but it was a tough sell. Anyway, once he tried it, he declared, "I LOVE these flowers!" and he was okay with the carrots and peas, though I could tell he wasn't too excited.

So he ate chicken and pasta, not big news since those are two of the only things he eats regularly, but they had new sauces and vegetables with them, and some of that stuff got in his mouth, too. Baby steps, baby steps.

Rolls

2010-07-26T18:28:00.003-04:00

I'm pulling a pan of my grandmother's rolls out of the oven. They're delicious. This is the fifth or sixth time I've made them, but the first time when they've actually tasted right. When they taste right, I want to eat about five of them in one sitting.

That is all.

Dinner party

2010-07-25T19:54:00.005-04:00

"A party isn't a party unless you pick up small food with toothpicks."
—The Man With the Yellow Hat, Curious George television series

We had our friends Jennifer and Brett over for dinner last night. Kent always has a terrific time with them, and we've recently discovered that it's much easier when we go to each other's homes instead of meeting at a restaurant. The food is better, too. We went over to their apartment for swimming and pizza a few weeks ago, so we had them over for lasagna and various related food objects last night. I cooked a lot of stuff and was in danger of going overboard, but it was well worth it to make our friends feel special and have a lot of delicious things we all enjoyed.

We started off with some toothpicky antipasto, salami wrapped around fresh mozzarella, and mini caprese salads with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and cucumbers (which I later drizzled with balsamic vinegar on Brett's request). I also breaded and fried some artichokes, the one and only Sandra Lee recipe I have ever cooked and enjoyed. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I liked something of hers. But I guess in all her blubbering and food gaffs there's bound to be a grain of deliciousness. A stopped clock is right twice a day, after all. (Okay, now I feel really mean.) The recipe for the artichokes is so old that it isn't on the Food Network website, but it basically consists of draining canned artichokes, dipping them in beaten egg, breading them in Italian breadcrumbs, then frying them until they're golden. They're marvelous, crispy little bites of salty flavor.

After the appetizers, we had veggie lasagna packed with roasted eggplant, peppers, zucchini and mushrooms, and made with homemade sauce (thanks, Anne!). Crusty bread, roasted garlic, and a simple green salad rounded out the meal. I dressed the salad with a vinaigrette made with honey, Dijon mustard, salt, olive oil, and my favorite vinaigrette-making ingredient: Trader Joe's orange muscat champagne vinegar. I miss Trader Joe's, but I can get versions of basically everything else they have except for this awesome vinegar, so I always stock up when we drive through Atlanta.

Yes, Atlanta, nearly 9 hours away, has the closest Trader Joe's. Meh.

Jennifer and Brett are newlyweds, and as such have been laden with new cooking equipment, so she was eager to try out some of her new bakeware and a brownie recipe I had given her at Christmas. Brett suggested that she add peanut butter chips instead of chocolate chips. Win. They were too good for description. Chocolate and peanut butter... you get the idea. Milk required.

After dinner, Jennifer and Brett both started cutting up with Kent, flying him around the room and having him jump over their legs and doing all sorts of silly things that he just lapped up. I watched them and thought, "Yes, this is what Kent has been in desperate need of: some time to just have fun!" Consequently, every time I woke up in the night (which is often, because of Dean), I thought about how Jack and I have gotten stuck lately with "parenting" and have forgotten to just have fun with our three-year-old.

Brett is a percussionist, and we watched one of his videos on YouTube while Kent sat in his lap and Brett drummed with him. They had the greatest time. Brett is going to be such a cool dad — they're both going to be great parents — and they're getting a lot of practice with Kent. (Luckily for them, they just get to do the fun part now, and then when it's time to get the boy through the bath and bedtime routine, we take over...)

Good friends are good for so many reasons.

New Jersey July 2010

2010-07-20T13:29:00.012-04:00

We took a trip to New Jersey a few weeks ago to visit my mom and a bunch of family who were also gathering there. The official reason for the trip was to celebrate my grandfather's 80.5 birthday, since his 80th was in January and we didn't get a chance to celebrate as a family then. His 80.5 was on July 4, which meant we were also gathered for Kent's birthday on July 3, plus the holiday festivities and fireworks.

We got there on a Thursday, settling in and hanging out with my grandparents who also arrived that day. The flight was pretty bumpy on the way down, and Kent ended up being sick right when we landed and he was thrown forward. I cleaned him off and changed his clothes without too much trouble, and Jack and I wondered why in the heck we can't seem to have a trip to visit my mom without Kent throwing up.

On Friday, we borrowed a car and drove down to Philly to visit our friends Lauren and Steve. Lauren (and Jeannette) had told me about a fabulous little play cafe in Chestnut Hill called The Little Treehouse, a sweet super-fun place that's almost just like the kid-friendly coffee shop I've been dreaming about.

I didn't remember to take any pictures of the actual play space, which took up about half the interior, or our amazing wood-fired pizza or coffee drinks... but the place was amazing. Here's just one aspect of the amazingness. Toys on the wall of the bathroom for the kids to play with while Mom goes to the potty. I have a difficult time keeping Kent in the bathroom with me sometimes, since he goes right away and then wants to leave before I'm done. Example: when I took my pregnancy test at Target last year and found out I was pregnant with Dean, Kent busted out of the handicapped stall before I had my pants up. I'll never forget that. So having something to keep him occupied was pretty ingenious.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling with Lauren and Steve, who gave Kent a card that we could turn into a cardboard airplane. There was much revelry throwing the airplane around their apartment. We also introduced Kent to a couple of different video games on the Nintendo Wii. He couldn't quite understand that his movements while holding the Wii remote were controlling what happened on the screen, but he thought bowling with 100 pins was pretty spectacular. Several of my friends in town, who have kids just a little older than Kent, have Wiis, and I've thought seriously about getting one sometime soon so that we can play games as a family. Perhaps it's in our future.

We also did a lot of Dean-gazing, because he's fun and very giggly.

We made a stop by the side of the road on the way back to NJ that evening, because Dean needed a break from the carseat. I snapped this picture of our reflection in the car's window.

Saturday was Kent's birthday, with a party and cake planned for the evening. My stepbrother Chris and his wife Cat had arrived from NC, my Aunt Mary and Uncle Jeff and two of their kids, Dave and Dan, had flown in from Colorado, and my stepsister Morgan, her husband Brian, and their baby daughter Blythe drove up from Baltimore on Saturday, so we had a pretty large crew. During the day, Mom and Bill took my little branch of the family to a carnival in town that Bill had some experience with as a Kiwanian. Mom, Kent, and I rode on the ferris wheel, which Kent always loves doing, and then Kent got to ride kiddie rides for the first time. He had a blast. He just kept grinning and smirking and then running around excitedly, telling us which thing he wanted to do next.

It was dang hot, so Dean and I bought a bottle of water and chilled in the shade where we could still see Kent.

Here's Kent getting a fun shoulder ride from Bill.

After Kent's nap, the birthday festivities got going, which included swimming, grilling out, and Kent's birthday cake, which I decorated earlier in the day to his specifications. He had told me he wanted a space shuttle on his cake, so I ran with it, and this is what I ended up with:

Several people have been confused by the numbers at the bottom, thinking that perhaps Kent was turning 32, but it says "3 2 1!" for anyone who can't read frosting.

On Sunday, we had a sort of lazy morning at Mom's house, while Mom, Bill, and my grandparents went to church. Ordinarily, we would go with them, but we knew that between Kent being in an unfamiliar church (and consequently not wanting to go to the nursery), and the up-and-down dance we usually do with Dean at our own church, we wouldn't get much out of the service, so we sat it out this time and hoped for a day in the future when it'll be easier to tag along. After church, we all went to a diner for brunch/lunch, and I got a Greek-style chicken wrap with tzatziki sauce, something I'd been craving. It was perfect. I don't quite remember what anyone else ate because I was so happy eating my own food. I think Kent had part of a meatball and some spaghetti, plus the chocolate pudding that came with his meal. It's funny, I read a quote recently about having realistic expectations while on vacation, and the example the author cited was that if your child is a picky eater at home, s/he is going to be a picky eater on vacation. Um, yes.

After the meal, Jack and Brian found themselves swaying side by side with their respective babies, so everyone turned to look and smile, and then Dave and Dan decided they ought to get in on the swaying, so Dan jumped into Dave's arms and gave us all a good laugh.

Back at home, Morgan and I took about 100 pictures of Blythe and Dean together in their Fourth of July outfits. What a couple of cuties. They're a month and a half apart, destined to be great friends as they get older. Dean hadn't quite developed all his sitting up muscles yet, so he kept falling over and we kept propping him back up next to her.

Brian caught a snooze later with Blythe and Mom and Bill's cat, Barnaby.

And my favorite part of Sunday was a little personal tribute to my grandfather: homemade pretzels. He and I made these all the time when I was a kid (though admittedly I didn't drink beer with them back then... I didn't know what I was missing). I have so many memories revolving around those pretzels. There was greasing the pan with Crisco, then having to wash it off my hands while my grandfather turned up the water temperature and I complained repeatedly that it was too hot. There were all the times I tried to make letters for everyone in my family instead of the classic pretzel shape, and my grandfather was a terrific sport and tried to keep Ms, Es, and Js together in the water bath and on the pan so that the letters would stay intact. And there was the time that we couldn't find the recipe (in the days before looking things up on the internet), and we tried to recreate the recipe from memory. I think my grandfather looked at it as a teachable moment, but I was too young to be much help.

Here's Kent munching on his pretzel by the pool. One of my favorite things about having kids is passing on traditions to them that have already brought me so much joy.

Here are some more pool pictures from throughout the weekend:

On Monday, Dave and Dan did a lot of crazy diving where they attempted to dive under each other, do high-fives on the way into the water, etc. I took a lot of pictures and a couple of short movies, and I thought I was going to be calling the collection "How Dave and Dan Ended Up in the Emergency Room." But somehow they managed not to injure each other, except one time that I heard Dave say, "You poked me in the eye!" Those two are hilarious. I wish we all lived closer.

All the diving board action seems to have inspired Kent to finally jump into our arms in the pool, and he dazzled us with his newfound adventurous spirit in the water.

Mom read a lot of books with Kent. I just love watching my mom bond with my kiddo.

At some point in the weekend, Chris and Cat posed for me to take a quick picture in Mom and Bill's kitchen. I was terrible about taking lots of pictures of everyone, so when I realized I didn't have any of them, I had to fix it.

Mom has lived in NJ for (almost?) three years now, and in that short time, I have developed a favorite tradition: walking to the little farm stand on the main road, shopping for produce, and then eating a cider doughnut and petting the goats. Here are Jack and Kent sharing a doughnut in the sun. Not much beats a doughnut enjoyed with the people you love most.

Inevitably, we had to go home. It was one of the few trips I've taken where I really didn't feel ready to leave. However, the temperatures in NJ were topping 100 that Tuesday, and when we got back to New Orleans, it was a pleasant 80 degrees. Talk about a schema breaking.

As we boarded the plane, the very eager flight attendant offered to let Kent go into the cockpit, and the pilots were all over him and had a great time with him while I went to grab the camera.

The pilot insisted on posing Mike the Tiger Kitty as well, and I was cracking up at all of them. I've said many times that I wish I could always fly Southwest because the staff is so great, but Continental gave them a run for their money this time.

And here's our wide-eyed baby enjoying the flight home.

The web of family was tightened a bit over this weekend, strengthening our bond across the vast country where we've been scattered. Thank goodness for the internet, and air travel.

Peekaboo!

2010-07-16T13:37:00.000-04:00

For your Friday enjoyment.

Our very important 5 month old

2010-07-12T21:20:00.006-04:00

is now sitting up for 5 or 10 minutes at a time. Whee! This is new in the last week or so. I think it's all the time he spent around his cousin Blythe when we were gathered in New Jersey, since she's a month and a half older than he is and about one developmental step ahead. Hooray for positive peer pressure. He's so cute with his new skill, reaching all around himself for things, then getting too excited and accidentally knocking himself over. He's sitting near me in our bed right now, since he can plant himself firmly on our pillowtop mattress and hold onto the sheets all around him for stability.

He chomps in a major way, working on some teeth that have yet to emerge. We're probably still a couple of months away from that. He chews lightly on his own fingers, but when he gets a hold of Jack's or my fingers, he tries to extract our knuckles like a dog taking the squeaker out of a squeaky toy. It's fun. I promise.

Dean is also responding more to things we do and say, especially with his sweet smiles and uproarious laughs. Kent was blowing raspberries at him in the car the other day, and he was totally cracking up. I think it warmed my heart even more that Kent was excited to be having such an effect and that he kept saying, "I made him laugh!"

For over a year now, we've been singing "Skinnamarink" at bedtime as part of our ritual with Kent, and just recently, Dean has started getting a big goofy grin on his face whenever we start the song. I guess he heard it for a long time in utero, in addition to nearly every night he's been alive, so it's ingrained by now. It's so sweet to see his face light up upon hearing it.

Also, he can't get enough of that baby in the mirror. We have many silly mirror games.

Now he has tumbled over to the side and is examining his toes in painstaking detail. Much busy work to be done. And so very many big smiles for his mom.

The Monday Lunch Club

2010-07-12T13:28:00.004-04:00

I've mentioned before that Kent is a picky eater, and I've admitted my complicity in it, feeding him the same boring or processed things I know he'll eat when I'm feeling lazy, uninspired, or too hungry myself to fuss with something new that he'll probably fight me on. I decided a few weeks ago to set a goal of cooking together with Kent at least once a week, and I figured that if we did it for lunch, we could experiment with different kinds of meat, chicken, and seafood. I tried to make a chicken and pasta dish for us a couple of weeks ago, but I got a little carried away and added wine to the sauce while I was cooking. Kent loved the chicken, but he wouldn't eat the pasta. I gave him a choice of soybeans or green beans to put in the pasta, and even though he chose soybeans and normally loves them, he didn't want to eat those either. So I felt a little sheepish about our first attempt but vowed to try again.

Kent and I went to the grocery store by ourselves yesterday. It's a rare treat to go without Dean, even though it sounds lame, because if I don't have Dean strapped to my front, I can relax a little more, and Kent gets to help me push the cart and walk by himself instead of having to sit in the basket. I decided to talk up something new to him and have him help me shop for it: homemade fish sticks. I saw Giada do it and thought it might be just mild and simple enough that Kent would eat it. We bought a tilapia fillet and buttermilk, and Kent randomly got excited about the broccoli in the produce section, so we bought some broccoli to go with it. This morning we marinated the fish in buttermilk for a few minutes, and Kent helped me pull the pieces of fish out with tongs and put them in the breadcrumbs and then into a baking pan. He was getting super excited. It helped that he was also getting super hungry. I cut and peeled the broccoli, then steamed it while the fish was cooking, so everything was ready all at once and we sat down to eat. I was reminded of how much Kent likes eating his food at room temperature, when after deeming his lunch too hot, he played for a few minutes, then came back to try everything after it had cooled.

He liked the fish from the first bite, and he ate all of what was on his plate. Insert Mom jaw-drop here. He didn't want to dip it in the marinara sauce, because he's not much of a dipper, despite what all the child nutrition experts say about how much kids love to dip things and how it's a great way to get them to eat veggies. The fish had tons of flavor on its own, and I loved it too. This dish got a big exclamation point in my meal-planning notebook, meaning "Please cook me again!" The broccoli didn't go over so well, unfortunately; Kent keeps wanting to try broccoli, but he never likes it as much as he seems to think he will, sort of like the cherry tomatoes he picks from our garden. I'm happy that he keeps trying it and am hopeful that someday he'll actually enjoy it.

We don't always eat dessert, but since I had been baking that morning, we had some dessert together too: chocolate hazelnut biscotti. Biscotti is something I love, though my one attempt to make it several years ago ended in kind of a flop. I found another recipe this time (with a simple substitution of hazelnuts for the almonds the recipe calls for), and it came out beautifully. It goes perfectly with my coffee. Biscotti is kind of dry because it's twice-baked, starting out as a crumbly dough that you bake in logs, then slice and bake again. (What did I ever do before I had a Silpat??) When I cut the ends off before slicing it, I set them aside rather than baking them a second time, because I figured Kent would enjoy a moister cookie if I was going to share any with him. And to tell you the truth, now that he's tall enough to see over the counter, I pretty much have to be prepared to share desserts with him anyway, or give him a very good reason why he can't have any. He has recently discovered the pleasurable perfection of dipping cookies in milk, so he dipped his once-baked biscotti in milk and I dipped my twice-baked biscotti in coffee. Grand success all around.

I'm excited for Dean to join our Monday Lunch Club. He's an auxiliary member now, since he sometimes nurses during part of lunchtime but hasn't eaten any of our food yet. He's really eager to get started with the whole solid food thing, though, and I'm eager to see what he'll like. Incidentally, the first time Kent ate fish, it was a puree of fish, broccoli, and cheese sauce that I made for him, and he gobbled it up. Maybe Dean will like it too. I noticed a few days ago that Dean was jealously eyeing my water glass as I drank from it, so I offered him a few sips and he did a great job of drinking from the glass. We tried giving him pumped milk in a glass this weekend, and it went much better than any of our attempts to give him a bottle. Thankfully, I haven't had to be away from him for any length of time, but I'm starting to feel the need to see movies and do other things without him — Kent has now seen Toy Story 3 without me twice, and I'm dying to see it! — so I think this new discovery about drinking from a glass is going to make me feel a lot better about leaving him. And soon he'll be gobbling up veggies and fruit and getting things all over his face and the floor. I can't wait.

I told Jack a couple of months ago that I was feeling really dejected about my attempts to cook for Kent, and he cheered me up by reminding me to take the long view. He said that someday our kids are going to be out of the house, and when they come home, they're going to ask me to cook all of their favorites that they will have grown up eating. That made me feel a lot better. In the meantime, I'll take the little victories like today's lunch, and I'll keep hoping for more exclamation points in the notebook.

Fried rice

2010-07-10T13:54:00.004-04:00

Tyler Florence saves the weekend again.

I've realized that every time I'm in a food rut, the best thing for me to do is to DVR some episodes of Good Eats, Tyler's Ultimate, and Giada at Home, and then I have more meal ideas than I know what to do with. Tyler's episode about Ultimate Dim Sum yielded an easy recipe for delicious fried rice that made me drool just thinking about it.

I made it almost just like Tyler did, except that I cooked the shrimp in a separate pan so as not to contaminate the rice with shrimpiness that my darling husband does not enjoy, and I added extra veggies like carrots, sweet peppers, and zucchini. I didn't want to go overboard with the soy sauce, since that's a pretty hard mistake to recover from, so I dumped a little in while I was tossing everything together at the end, and then we added more at the table. I used three eggs, like he suggests, but I think it could almost use more than that, since I like a lot of egg and it was hard to find the bits of egg among everything else. But overall, it was a fabulous weekend lunch, a one-pot meal that made us all happy. It's very much like the fried rice we get at our favorite sushi place, nice and light with real vegetable flavors, and very unlike the greasy, salty fried rice we get from our favorite Chinese takeout place. I much prefer the former.

This could definitely go well with edamame and potstickers or something like that, but I needed to keep it simple today. We have a lot of leftover rice, so maybe I'll be in a potsticker mood in a day or two and I can test that hypothesis.

Ingredients for Kent's art party

2010-06-26T15:22:00.002-04:00

Fabric crayons for drawings that iron onto tote bags:

Homemade playdough and an assortment of cookie cutters, rollers, and found objects:

Handpainted thank-you notes, containing recipe for playdough:

Mocha cupcakes, with sprinkles and crazy glitter icing:

"Happy Birthday to You" and a "3" candle:

Sidewalk chalk, even though it's dang hot:

Party food, including the birthday boy's favorite chicken nuggets and pretzels

A post-party rest (this was *after* his post-party nap, by the way):

And a friend without young kids to help out... this may be the most important ingredient of all! Thanks, Linda!

I'm blogging the party because I'm avoiding clean-up. The house isn't nearly as messy as I had thought it might be, but I definitely don't have the mental energy to tackle the playdough table yet. It was a major success, though. And I daresay Kent had an awesome time with his friends. I really loved planning this party and helping him celebrate.

I think I might need a beer to celebrate the facts that he's nearly 3 (next week), I'm still alive, and I'm not a crazy person. Yet.

(a thousand thanks to Amanda and Jean for the inspiration)

Dean's birth story

2010-06-23T21:57:00.007-04:00

I finally made the time to read a friend's birth story today, so that inspired me to finally make the time to finish writing my story about Dean. You absolutely do not have to read this, but I know some of you will want to, hence the "Read More" option. Also, it's pretty long, so I didn't want people to have to scroll all the way through it to get to previous posts.

Dean’s birth story

4:30 a.m.—I woke up. My mind was buzzing. It was nothing particularly new during pregnancy to be suddenly awake, but I started thinking about things I needed to do before Dean was born. The main thing was realizing that it would be really helpful for whoever took Kent to have an info sheet with his favorite foods, activities, where we are in potty training, friends to call for playdates, etc. I started writing it in my head, and then around 5, I realized I was having contractions. I lay in bed a little while longer, feeling the contractions and thinking they felt different but that I didn’t want to get my hopes up that this might finally be labor, since I had had a few periods of regular contractions in the previous weeks and kept having my hopes dashed when they went away. I decided to get up and start typing up his info sheet, and I ate a bowl of Kashi Cinnamon Harvest and enjoyed the silence of the dark morning. I had mostly finished the info sheet when Jack and Kent got up around 6:00, and Jack was surprised to see me sitting on the sofa since he had thought I was still in bed. I told Jack that I thought this might be it but I wasn’t sure, filled him in on the info sheet, and then told him I thought he’d better plan to stay home for at least a few hours, just in case.

Around 8 a.m., I was thinking more and more that this was it. My contractions were hurting, not a lot but persistently enough that I knew they felt different than Braxton-Hicks. When one started, I did a cleansing breath, leaned over against something high (the TV, changing table, countertop) and swayed back and forth slowly, the way I remember the nurse showing us in the first childbirth class we took several years ago. It helped, and I felt like I was doing something I’d be able to use for the rest of my labor since I was able to relax through the contractions.

I called the midwives’ office to get some advice about whether to come in, and the receptionist (or was it a nurse?) advised me to go ahead and go to the hospital to be checked. I then called our doula René and told her we’d be going to the hospital soon, and Jack called Mary Mikell (our friend from church and on-call babysitter) to ask her to come over and stay with Kent. I felt at this point like I was rushing around like a crazy mom, trying to get Kent packed up for a night away, since his bag was mostly packed but I knew there were things I still needed to throw in. We were also getting our hospital bag ready, since it was also missing some stuff I knew I’d want. Mary showed up around 8:30, and we stayed for a few minutes to talk to her and get Kent settled, and then we headed to the hospital and told René we were on our way. My contractions were generally about 7-8 minutes apart at this point, about a 2 on my pain scale.

We got to the hospital around 9:15, and I got out at the awning to ask the security guard where Jack could park. I said to her very pleasantly, “I’m in labor and my husband needs to know where to park.” She told him where, then looked at me sideways and asked, “You’re really in labor?” “Yep.” “Does it hurt?” “Not much yet—it’s pretty early.” I think she thought I was insane.

We walked to the check-in desk on the second floor, I got my bracelets, and then they showed me to a triage room and asked me to get changed and pee in a cup. It was just like our visit a month earlier, when I had been afraid I was in labor at 34.5 weeks, except I wasn’t scared at all and was feeling pretty excited. Almost bubbly. Obviously I wasn’t in a lot of pain yet. Tina (one of the nurses I’d spend time with that day) came in to talk to me, and René arrived sometime shortly after we got settled in the room. I told everyone how I was feeling, they put me on the monitors and everything seemed fine. Then Tina checked me, probably the most painful cervical check I’ve ever had in my life. She had a lot of trouble getting all the way to my cervix since Dean’s head was pressing right down on it, so she pushed her hand in, I thought, “Okay, this is manageable,” and then she literally pushed me backward a few inches on the bed as she reached farther in. Yikes. I was 2 cm (“a tight 2”) and about 80% effaced, only a bit farther along than I had been at my prenatal appointment the previous Friday. From that point on, though, I was terrified of being checked for the rest of the day. Thank goodness it only happened three more times, and the last was practically blissful since I was in the tub and it ended up being some surprisingly good news. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The nurse was a little concerned that the monitors weren’t picking up many accelerations of Dean’s heartbeat, so they got me a bunch of boxes of apple juice and I started sucking them down. I remember René opening them for me, and when she had some trouble getting the straws in, I joked that she was too far gone from being the mom of a young child, since she was visibly out of practice with juice boxes. After a few minutes, the juice hit Dean’s system and his heart rate started jumping around, good news to the nurse, so we all felt a little better. At this point, since my labor wasn’t hard yet and I was only 2 cm along, René mentioned that if the nurses and Kathy (the midwife on call) okayed it, I might want to think about going home to relax, getting something to eat, and seeing if I could get labor to pick up on my own instead of waiting at the hospital and possibly getting a bunch of interventions I didn’t want. I was working with my contractions and swaying a lot once I was able to get off the monitors, and we took several walks around the floor to see if my labor would pick up. Jack started swaying with me and pushing on my back, because I felt a lot of back pain with some of the contractions. Dean’s position was apparently going to mean a lot of back labor for me, in addition to the really painful cervical checks. Woot.

Another nurse, Traci, came in to see how I was doing, and right away I was impressed with her. She started bubbling over about tub births and how I’d better have the baby before 7 p.m., since that’s when her shift ended. She was incredibly excited to have me there, and we had only just met. I think she and René had worked together a lot and were really comfortable with each other, and she was obviously really pro-natural. I was definitely thinking that I wanted to leave to get something to eat and try to relax at home, so Traci checked me again before I left (this had been about 2 hours since I arrived at the hospital) and I hadn’t changed from when Tina checked me. It was almost as painful, probably only slightly less painful because I was dreading it and expected it to hurt even more.

When we were leaving, René and at least one of the nurses made it sound like I might be coming back that evening or it might be later in the weekend, they weren’t sure—but I was thinking it would be really strange if I was dealing with this all weekend before things picked up.

I wanted a cheeseburger. From Chili’s. A cheeseburger is the first thing I ate after Kent was born, so besides the association with my first birth, I knew I wanted the protein. So determined was I to have a good burger that we drove several minutes away and waited to get our food to-go, rather than just going through the McDonald’s drive-thru. My contractions were picking up in intensity, and it was much worse to labor in the car and not be able to get up and move around. If it hadn’t been pouring down rain, I would have gotten out of the car in the parking lot and just swayed right there next to the car, but I didn’t want to be soaking wet in addition to really uncomfortable, so I just stayed in the car and waited for our food to be done. Jack came to wait in the car with me and held my hand during the contractions, then got me a cup of water from inside when I asked him to. When our food was finally ready, we called Mary to make sure she and Kent weren’t at the house, because I knew I’d be laboring at home and was not interested in having Kent around to see me like that. I also knew I’d be under a lot of stress trying to be his mom while I was trying to manage my increasing pain.

When we got home just after 1 p.m., I filled up our tub and got in, then had Jack bring me my cheeseburger. We ate in the bathroom with a couple of candles lit, him on the closed toilet with a plate in his lap, and me naked in the tub trying to eat bites between contractions. The warm water felt great, but after a while I started to feel like I couldn’t work as well with my pain when I was in the tub. I had eaten about half of my cheeseburger and felt tired of eating, and I just wanted to be dry and able to move around more, so I got out of the tub and back into my t-shirt and yoga pants.

For the next couple of hours, I labored in our bedroom, lying down between contractions (because I was already exhausted at this point and wished I could sleep) and then getting up every time I felt one start to surge. Laboring in the sanctity of my bedroom, I really understood the appeal of home births for the first time. I’d get on all fours with Jack behind me to push on my back, a position René had suggested to try to get Dean to move around so I wouldn’t have so much back labor. Then, for other contractions, I got out of the bed and stood on the floor, leaning over onto the bed and swaying like I had done earlier in the day. Some of them were manageable this way, but I was having alternating strong and weak contractions just as I had with Kent, and the strong ones were starting to knock me on my butt.

At about 3:30, I began seriously considering an epidural. I was surprised at how easily it occurred to me, since I had been so fired up about going natural with Kent and the thought never really crossed my mind for more than a few seconds during his birth. But this time, I felt the intensity of my labor ratcheting up dramatically and had no idea how I was going to get through the rest of it, particularly since I didn’t know how far I had progressed since leaving the hospital. Would I be doing this all night? I knew I couldn’t last that long. I wished desperately that there were some way for me to check myself or for Jack to check me—someone really needs to come up with that. Not knowing how long I’d be laboring, and starting to feel defeated, I felt so vulnerable and emotional. I broke down sobbing when I looked at the clock and realized this was the longest I’d ever been away from Kent, because I was really starting to miss him. In my mind, I imagined being able to see him at the hospital if I could just get an epidural. I was ready to justify it any way I could, I think. Jack asked if I wanted Mary to bring Kent by for a little while, but I knew that would be stupid because even if I got to see him, I’d be running out of the room every couple of minutes with a contraction. They were 3 or 4 minutes apart by this point, and I had stopped thinking in terms of my pain scale because I was starting to feel a loss of control over the whole situation. Back to the hospital we went.

Because of the rain and the fact that it was about 4:15, we hit some major traffic and ended up taking a different, longer route back to the hospital. I was so upset at having to labor in the car for that much longer, but we made it to the hospital and René came out to walk us inside. I told her I was having them every 3 minutes and they were much stronger, and she said something like, “Good for you! You’re doing great!” We made it upstairs (it’s a much longer walk and elevator ride during hard labor), and between contractions, I checked in with the nurse at the desk. I sat down between contractions because my body was so tired, but I eventually got into a room. Karen, René’s backup doula, was there with her, and René told us that another client of hers had just come over from the clinic at 5 cm and asked if it was alright if Karen stayed with us so that she could be with this other couple. (We found out later that they paid their deposit first, hence the switch.) I hadn’t met Karen, but it didn’t matter to me at all. Even though René had been helpful earlier in the day, helping me to relax various parts of my body during contractions and helping me make clear decisions, I felt so much more comfortable with how Jack was helping me through contractions than how she was. I had expected to use a doula physically, for help in positioning, helping Jack know what to do, etc., but it turned out not to be that way at all. And Karen ended up being incredibly helpful at key moments during the rest of my labor. I’m so thankful she was there when she was.

Once I got back on the monitors and met Erin, the nurse who’d be with me for the rest of my labor, I started to feel a little better about things but still wanted desperately to be checked (even though I was dreading the pain of it again). Erin checked me and said I was at 4 cm. I thought, “Are you freaking kidding me?” but I think what I said was, “I was afraid of that.” Everyone else in the room was trying to make me feel better, saying, “Oh, 4 cm, that’s great!” and I just wanted to crawl into a hole. I was almost sure at this point that I’d be getting pain meds, but I did want to try a few more things first. Thankfully, I had surrounded myself with people who weren’t just going to let me get an epidural without making sure I had thought as clearly as possible about it—Erin included, since she was very pro-natural as well and told me that with her second child, she went from 2 cm to pushing in about an hour. And of course I knew that my mom had progressed quickly at the end as well. But I felt like I just didn’t know what my body was going to do, since my labor took an artificial pace with Kent from being on Pitocin, and I wasn’t sure how quickly things would go this time.

I had gotten into the hospital room at about 4:45, and after I had been laboring in bed and on the monitors for about half an hour (horrible because I couldn’t move, only cringe), Erin encouraged me to move around. Karen had started setting up the tub at this point, though I didn’t think it would help at all since I hadn’t been very comfortable in our tub at home. Both Karen and Erin (and maybe even René) were quick to tell me how different this would be than my tub at home, since it was a lot bigger and I’d be able to move around more, but I was still pretty skeptical. If Karen hadn’t been there as the backup doula, Jack would have been the one to set up the tub, and I’m still so grateful that she was there, because I didn’t want to let go of him for more than a few seconds at a time. He had been amazing at home, and I knew I’d need him almost constantly now that things were getting even more intense at the hospital.

Karen was still getting the tub together, so she and Erin both encouraged me to get in the shower and have Jack aim the hot water on my back while I waited for the tub. I was willing to try it, and the water did help a bit once I got in there, but the shower wasn’t really big enough for me to be able to lean over like I wanted to, or to sit down between contractions. Jack had his swimsuit on, and I was totally naked at this point, because I didn’t feel like bothering with a tank top that would only get soaked, and I suddenly didn’t care who in the world saw me naked. Karen came in to check on me a couple of times and let me know that the tub was almost ready. I talked to Jack about getting an epidural. I’m sure I had brought it up to him before that, but I wanted him to know that I was serious and needed him to find out what needed to happen so I could get one. I knew I couldn’t just get it hooked up immediately. So Jack asked, and someone told him I’d need to have a full bag of IV fluids which would take about half an hour, and then I could do it. After a few more contractions in the shower, I was ready to do that. We came back out into my room, and Erin told me she’d check me in a minute and then start my Hep-lock for the IV since I hadn’t gotten one yet. I started to get dressed, but then Karen said the tub was ready and encouraged me again to get in, so I convinced myself to give it a shot even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to help at all.

At 5:40, I got in the tub, and I asked for a couple of pointers on how women usually did it and what positions they used. Karen said I could get on all fours, lean over the edge of the tub, get up on my knees, or pretty much anything else that felt comfortable. Jack got in behind me to help me through my contractions, and after a couple of minutes, I felt a totally odd sensation like Dean had just jumped down a couple of inches. Jack felt it too, because it shook the tub. Maybe it was my water breaking, but I have no idea. I had had two or three more contractions when Erin came back in to check me. I didn’t feel like the tub was helping a lot, but I just wanted to be checked so I’d have that information. She said she could check me in the tub (big relief—I wouldn’t have to get out and get back on the bed), so Jack basically made himself into a table and I effortlessly flipped back onto him, and Erin checked me quickly with a lot less pain that I’d had with the previous checks. She said, “You’re at 7 or 8.” The sweetest words I could have heard, almost as sweet as when I was fighting the urge to push with Kent and the nurse finally told me it was okay to push. Jack practically cried from relief and said, “You’ve done so great, baby!” and I said with a confident smile, “That’s a game changer.” I felt totally empowered. I was me again. For the first time in several hours, I felt like I could handle it. I was ready to fight the rest of the way. If I could dilate that much in an hour, I knew it would be over soon and I’d have my little boy in my arms.

I mostly had my eyes closed, so I wasn’t always aware of who was in front of me or who was talking, just that everyone was on my team and things were finally going okay. At one point I heard René’s voice and knew she must have come to check on me, and at another point, I could smell Karen’s gum right in front of me and it was randomly driving me crazy. I said, “That mint smell has to go,” and Karen said, “That’s me, sorry!” and immediately spit out her gum. Thank goodness we laughed about it later, and she said she was glad I was able to tell her what was bothering me so she could fix it.

Erin left the room after she checked me, and at the end of the very next contraction, I felt the urge to push. I was already yelling, groaning, and cursing at that point, and I yelled to Jack that was I feeling the urge to push and said to everyone in the room, “Tell her [Erin] I’m pushing! I can’t stop it!” Karen said very calmly, “You just do what your body is telling you. It’s okay.” I’m not sure how much she knew about how I’d had to fight that urge for 20 minutes with Kent, but I know she sensed how afraid I was that I was feeling the urge already after only being 7-8 cm, and she responded in exactly the way I needed her to. So at 5:50, I started to push. Karen said, “Everyone’s in the room who needs to be,” and she urged me to go slow and steady, but I knew that wasn’t happening. My body was ready to do this as quickly as possible, and I wasn’t about to hold back. (René later told me that she was out in the hallway, heard me yelling, and noticed Kathy coming down the hall and said something like, “I think they need you in there!”) Two, maybe three contractions later, I realized Kathy was in the room, and I said, “Hey, Kathy. What’s up?” A couple of people giggled. Looking back on those last few minutes, I felt like I was in a dream. After crawling along all day, things were suddenly moving so fast that my head was spinning, and since my eyes were closed for so much of the end, I mostly have sound and sensation memories rather than sight memories. I was always aware, though, that Jack was with me, and that my baby was coming out, albeit in searing pain. Kathy reached into the tub to massage me for a minute and feel where Dean was, and when she felt his head, she urged me to stick my hand down there and feel him as well. I could feel him just an inch or two away from the outside—miraculous—and Jack reached down to feel him after that. We were doing this.

I pushed out his head, screaming as I did it, and because I’ve seen so many childbirth videos and had been through it before on a bed, I stopped because I was thinking about them needing to suction him out and turn his head upright. A few seconds later, I think Kathy said, “Keep pushing!” and something about getting the rest of him out, and I thought, “Oh yeah, no suctioning—he’s underwater.” And then, at 5:55, just 15 minutes after I had gotten into the tub with dwindling hope about having another natural birth, I pushed him out. Kathy said, “Reach down and grab him,” and I pulled Dean up to the surface. Again, not thinking about the fact that the water was still safe for him at this point, I found myself trying to keep his head above the water, but then I realized that was silly too, and Kathy took over. She and the rest of the nurses realized quickly that the cord was wrapped around his neck. I looked at my purple baby, with a bright blue cord wrapped tightly around his neck, and I didn’t panic. Now, I wonder how I kept a level head, but at the time, my first thought was, “We’re in a hospital, surrounded by medical professionals. He’s going to be fine.”

And he was, eventually. Thank God.

With Jack’s help, they got the cord off him, and I could feel it pulling inside me as they unwrapped it from his neck. Kathy then cut through the cord, splattering Dean’s side with blood. He was immediately put on the warmer and given oxygen—I couldn’t see him, though I wasn’t panicked at all. I think my lack of panic was more because I was still on the high from having given birth. It’s hard to remember exactly what I was thinking. I leaned back against Jack, completely relieved that it was over and feeling so much love from him, he who had held me in the tub as I birthed our beautiful son. The nurses told me Dean was pretty pale and they were going to need to take him to the NICU, so they wrapped him in a blanket, let us have a quick hold and hello kiss, and then wheeled him down the hall and away from us. They had told us his weight, 6 lbs 12.6 oz, just about an ounce heavier than his big brother had been. But they hadn’t checked his height or head circumference, so we didn’t find those out until later, and I never have found out what his Apgar scores were.

Soon after Dean left, I got out of the tub (with a lot of help), still holding the cord in my hand because I hadn’t delivered the placenta yet. I think I got a hospital gown on but I’m not sure—it may have only been a large blanket—and then I got into the bed and Kathy pulled on the placenta while I gave one more push. I remember thinking how odd it was to be pushing one last time without feeling that urge anymore. Kathy gave me a shot to numb me so she could sew me up, and she asked more than once if I had had an episiotomy with my first birth because my tear was in such a straight line. No, I hadn’t, but I thought it was a nice reaffirmation that episiotomies are usually unnecessary because our bodies just know how to tear the way they need to. Even though I had some kind of anesthetic, the stitches hurt like hell, and since Dean was gone I didn’t have my gorgeous new baby to distract me like I had with Kent.

I had a second-degree tear, exactly the same as with Kent, but I didn’t really care. I still think it’s odd that tearing isn’t nearly as scary as we think it’s going to be, but I suppose it isn’t scary because it happens at the moment that our child is entering the world.

After Karen drained and broke down the tub, she stuck around for a little while and was in the room when a nurse came in to tell us we’d be able to have Dean back to us in a few hours. I didn’t have a really clear head and wasn’t even sure what to ask about how he was doing, but Karen stepped in and said, “They haven’t been told anything—can you tell them how he’s doing?” The nurse said he was actually doing really well, that they had to keep him for a standard 4 hours but that they might be able to release him earlier than that.

The staff knew I wanted to breastfeed him as soon as he was ready, so after about an hour and a half of waiting in the L&D room, we got to go back to the NICU to visit him. I walked, because I was feeling great, and the nurses were surprised that I didn’t need a wheelchair. Mostly, I didn’t want to wait any longer to see Dean, so I didn’t want to wait for someone to get me a wheelchair. We got into the NICU and were told to wash our hands to see our own baby, which I know is a good policy, but it still felt bizarre. We came over to Dean’s little table, saw about a dozen wires sticking out of various parts of his body, and started to bond with our son, finally. The NICU nurse was very friendly and said that he had been doing great—they had given him oxygen at first and a tiny bag of fluids to help his color and strength. She unhooked him from the monitors, showed me a chair where I could sit to nurse, and said she’d be back in a minute to help me get him latched. No need. I knew just how to hold him, and because he was doing so well and hadn’t eaten anything yet in his short little life, he latched right on. The nurse came back, took one look at us, grinned, and said, “I just love second-time moms.”

Dean nursed beautifully for about 15 minutes, and then Jack and I both held him for a little while as the nurse took some pictures for us. She explained that they wanted to monitor his temperature for just a little while longer but that he’d be back to us soon. We kissed him a temporary goodbye so we could go transfer to a recovery room.

I was starving, and the ward had been unusually busy that morning so they were out of the food they usually gave to new moms. As soon as we got checked into the recovery room, I sent Jack down to the hospital’s Subway before they closed, and I called my mom. We held off on calling a lot of people until we knew Dean was okay, but I wanted to talk to my mom. Jack came back with our food, and we ate together in relative silence as we marveled at how strange it was not to have our baby with us in the hospital room. I thought about trying to rest until Dean was with us again. We had just turned off the lights when the NICU nurse knocked on the door with our little boy, so sleep would just have to wait a little while longer. I wanted to feed him, and then I needed to gaze at him for as long as I possibly could.

Beware the cuteness

2010-06-23T09:34:00.003-04:00

Doesn't this just make you want to get back into bed?

And a cute video. Dean likes to grab everything and cram it into his mouth, and I find it really hilarious. Enjoy.

He rolled over two days ago and has been working to recreate the feat ever since. I'll work on capturing it in video whenever he does it again, because he just works so hard and it's kind of inspirational.

Mr. Giggles at 4.5 months

2010-06-16T20:59:00.002-04:00

We have a very happy baby in our house.

He's still working on sitting up and rolling over. No mastery of those skills yet, but stay tuned. He's laughing at the cats and at Kent, and especially at Jack and me when we tickle him and make funny faces/noises at him. Since Kent still has only a sporadic interest in his baby brother, he's not so much into making him laugh yet, but I have no doubt that the two of them will be cutting up at the dinner table in no time at all.

Photos by Kent

2010-06-10T19:59:00.004-04:00

Kent is hard at work learning to be the next great Angert photographer. Reason #412 why I love digital cameras: he can take a hundred or a thousand blurry pictures and we never have to pay for the film.

From the garden

2010-06-10T19:45:00.005-04:00

Pesto tortellini and green beans, with green beans, basil, and parsley from our garden. The tortellini is not from our garden. If there were plants that grew tortellini, and I had them in my garden, I would never need to go grocery shopping again.

We're getting beautiful clusters of cherry tomatoes. Just today, Kent and I were out there scouring for veggies, and since he has a lot of trouble finding green beans among the vines, he was looking for red tomatoes. I thought surely he'd be done soon, but he just kept yelling, "I see a tomato that's ready to be eaten!!" then picking it and dropping it into the bowl. At dinner tonight, he said that when Dean got bigger, Dean could look for tomatoes and he could look for green beans. I told him that was a great idea and that it was probably going to happen next summer.

I started a bunch of okra plants from seed, and there are four nice-sized plants in our garden and a couple of other small plants in a pot that are producing pods. They make these gorgeous pale yellow flowers, then after the flowers die, the pods start growing in their place, and they grow fast. If I see one that looks about ready to eat (3 or 4 inches), I have to get it that day, otherwise it gets huge and really tough and it's not as yummy. We get 2 or 3 pods per day, so I just rinse them and keep them in the fridge until we have enough to bother cooking. Tomorrow we're having some with red beans and grits.

This gardening business is fun stuff. I definitely need a second bed next year.

Weekend dinners

2010-06-07T13:43:00.008-04:00

The two cookbooks I've been working out of the last few days are Linda Fraser's Vegetarian: The Best-Ever Recipe Collection and Louise Steele's Indian Vegetarian Cooking, both bargain books with awesome photos that we got back when we worked at Borders (gosh, that was a long time ago). Unfortunately, both are now out of print, but such is the way with bargain books.

Last night, we had an amazing Broccoli Ricotta Cannelloni out of Fraser's book, cooked in individual crocks so it's adorable as well as being delicious. I used egg roll wraps as the pasta, instead of cooking cannelloni noodles and then having to stuff them. I think I'm fairly obsessed with using egg roll wraps and wonton wraps these days. The cannelloni has a basic cooked-from-scratch tomato sauce at the bottom, then the pasta rolls with their luxurious light green filling, and then cheese and pine nuts on top. I struggle with making my own tomato sauce, because I never seem to get the proportions quite right, but in this dish, homemade sauce provides a wonderful balance of flavors with the freshness of the broccoli and richness of all the cheese. I halved the recipe (see below) to yield six large pasta rolls, which was enough for our dinner last night and my lunch today.

Friday night was another exciting dinner, Egg and Lentil Curry, from the Indian cookbook. We had something similar at a church potluck once, then begged the cook for his recipe, but his recipe didn't use lentils, just a creamy sauce. I love the thickness that the lentils add. We served it over rice, and I attempted to make some parathas (flatbread) using a recipe from the same book but was unimpressed with the results. I might look for a different naan or flatbread recipe next time, or just do it with rice, because it was delicious.

I thought Kent probably wasn't going to like the curry, so I gave him a modified version with eggs, rice, and curry on the side. When he saw me photographing his dad's plate, he insisted on taking a picture of his dinner as well.

Broccoli Ricotta Cannelloni, slightly modified from Linda Fraser

12 cannelloni tubes [or 12 egg roll wrappers]
4 cups broccoli florets
1.5 cups fresh breadcrumbs
2/3 cup milk
4 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra for brushing
1 cup ricotta cheese
pinch of grated nutmeg [I forgot to add this — oops]
6 Tbsp grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese [my addition]
2 Tbsp pine nuts
salt and pepper

Tomato sauce:
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup red or white wine [my addition]
pinch of sugar [my addition]
1 14-oz can diced tomatoes
1 Tbsp tomato paste
thyme, basil, and oregano

Cook the cannelloni noodles if using, and steam or boil the broccoli until tender. Drain both and set aside.

Place breadcrumbs in a mixing bowl with milk and olive oil, and stir until softened. Puree the broccoli with the ricotta in a food processor, then add broccoli mixture to the soaked breadcrumbs. Add nutmeg, half the Parmesan cheese, and half the mozzarella cheese, stir well, and add salt and pepper to taste.

To make the sauce, heat the oil in a large pan, then add onions and garlic. Cook 5 minutes or until onions are soft, then add wine, sugar, tomatoes, tomato paste, and herbs. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil, then simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. Divide sauce among greased baking dishes [I used oval-shaped crocks that each held two pasta tubes, but this recipe would probably do fine in a 13 x 9 pan if you don't have individual crocks].

Fill pasta with broccoli mixture, either by piping/spooning it into cooked cannelloni tubes, or by laying egg roll wrappers on a flat surface, spooning mixture in a thick stripe down the middle, and rolling them up, sealing the edges with water. Place filled tubes on top of tomato sauce, brush tops with olive oil, then top with remaining Parmesan and mozzarella, and sprinkle with pine nuts. Bake at 375F for 25-30 minutes, or until bubbling and golden.

***

Egg and Lentil Curry

3 Tbsp ghee or oil
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 inch ginger root, peeled and chopped
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
3 oz split red lentils (this was somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 cup)
1 3/4 cups vegetable stock
8 oz can chopped tomatoes
6 eggs
1/4 cup coconut milk
salt
tomatoes, cut into wedges
cilantro, to garnish
flatbread or rice

Heat oil in a saucepan, add the onion, and fry gently for 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic, ginger, and spices and cook gently for 1 minute. Stir in the lentils, stock, and canned tomatoes, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until lentils and onions are tender.

Meanwhile, hard boil the eggs. [I do this by placing eggs in a pot of cold salted water, covering and placing on a burner on high heat, then turning off the heat as soon as they come to a boil and leaving covered on the burner for 12 minutes. Put eggs into ice water bath when done.]

Stir coconut milk into lentil mixture and season well with salt to taste. Puree the mixture in a food processor or blender until smooth, then return to pan over low heat.

Shell and cut the hard-boiled eggs in half. Arrange 3 egg halves and 3 tomato wedges in a petal design on plate (over rice if desired), then top generously with lentil mixture and garnish with cilantro.

These are both keepers. They got big stars next to them in my meal planning notebook, which means, "Please cook me again!"

Pay day and indulging

2010-06-04T14:19:00.005-04:00

I love pay days. A big trip to the grocery store is somehow so satisfying, especially now that I'm planning meals. Before meal planning, I'd come home with $80 worth of groceries and still have no idea what I was making for dinner that night, but now I have days and days of peace of mind packed into my trunk when I leave the store.

Today was supposed to contain a trip to the sprayground in the morning with our playgroup, but severe thunderstorms warranted canceling the playdate, so we were left with our usual pay day routine of running errands and shopping. I first indulged in my every-so-often treat of a mocha and a cheese danish at Starbucks (plus banana walnut bread for Kent), then I sipped away at my mocha while we drove around. We dropped off a Kipper movie at the library despite Kent's protests that he wanted to keep it (seriously, that is a cute dog, and I *love* his little British voice), filled up the gas tank, made a quick stop at the produce market, then headed to Target for the grocery extravaganza.

One day when we were killing time in Target, I gave Kent a grocery basket to carry a couple of things in and told him he was being a "good shopper," and ever since then he's been dying to carry a basket and shuffle around the store with it at .5 mph. Most of the time, I just want to put him in the cart and get the job done, especially since I usually have Dean strapped in the BabyHawk and he likes it if I keep moving. Kent still tells me each time that he wants to be a good shopper, though. Today, I explained to him that there are a lot of ways to be a good shopper, and one of the best ways is by being patient and helpful, as he almost always is on these outings. He's just gotten to the point where he really can help me if I keep him engaged, like choosing a flavor of fruit strip or a shape of pasta, or telling me what he wants on the pizza we're buying to have for lunch. As we were strolling down the cereal aisle, he started talking again about something he's been wanting for a while, Cocoa Krispies. Except he calls them Hot Cocoa Rice Krispies, which I just love. We had them around the house when I was pregnant, and he knows they're a Sometimes Treat but he wanted Sometime to be Today. I was okay with that.

We checked things off the list, loaded up the cart, and headed toward the checkout, and I got in line behind a woman with two preteen daughters. They had completely filled the conveyor belt with everything bright and colorful they could find in the store, from clothes and bathing suits to hair bands, candy, and home decor. Their total was $677. I cannot imagine ever having that kind of money to drop in one trip to Target, but I'm cheap, and I don't have preteen daughters. Anyway, they happily grabbed all their purchases, and then I put through our rather modest collection of pantry items and toiletries.

Reusable bags loaded up, and boys still happy, I head toward the exit, and I realize that the severe thunderstorm coming in from the west is here. The parking lot is completely grey. I'm thankful that I grabbed the umbrella out of the car, I warn Kent that we're about to get really wet, and then I splash into the crazy puddles, pushing a shopping cart with one hand and holding the umbrella over my kids with the other. I have to take the umbrella away from Kent's head when I load the bags into the car, so he just sits in the cart, squinting with a goofy half-smile on his face and already soaked to the skin. I realize quickly that there's no way to get the boys into their carseats while still holding the umbrella, but by now, it has blown completely inside out, so it's fairly useless anyway. At this point, all I can do is laugh and enjoy the rain. I make my best attempt at folding up the umbrella to chuck it into the car, open Kent's door so he can climb, squeaky-shoed, into his seat, take the cart back to the cart return area (because I think it's important, even in the rain), and then put a very surprised-to-be-wet baby into his carseat. Kent gets strapped in as well, and then I run to my door and attempt to climb in, despite the fact that my jeans are drenched and, as such, are glued to my skin and will not allow me to sit down properly. After I finally get in the car, I take off my wet shoes and socks, brush my hair so it doesn't dry in a tangly mess, then exclaim, "Holy moly!" which sends Kent into fits of giggles. He asks me in between snickers if I'm saying holy moly because my hair is wet, and I reply that I'm saying that about all of it, the whole thing.

We get home, I change two very wet diapers and get everyone into dry clothes, and then I start the pizza and get Dean down for a nap. A little while later, Kent and I sit down to enjoy our meal together. One of my favorite things he's saying right now is that he likes a particular meal we're eating, and it's a bonus to me if he says this while actually eating from more than one food group. He surveyed his sausage pizza, his box of raisins, and his cup of milk, and said in his sweetest voice, "I like this lunch, Mom." Me too, kid. It might have been a lot of trouble to get to this point, but I like this lunch, too.

Spinning Italian

2010-05-31T18:52:00.004-04:00

I just saw that this is my 900th post. No pressure.

We've been having some great trips to the farmer's market lately, wherein we have stocked up on blueberries and brussels sprouts (try this recipe) and have hotly anticipated the arrival of corn and peaches. One of my favorite seasonal items just popped up last week: fairy tale eggplant. It's lavender and white, tiny, cute, and has a wonderful mild, sweet flavor. My favorite way to cook eggplant is to roast it, and roasted fairy tale eggplant is so sweet and delicious, I want to put it in/on everything.

First up: eggplant puff pastry pizza from a few nights ago. I knew I wanted to do something with eggplant, Swiss cheese, and puff pastry, and then I decided that making a pizza was the way to go. I unfolded the thawed puff pastry, topped it with roasted eggplant, Swiss and mozzarella cheese, and halved grape tomatoes, then baked it on a cookie sheet at 450F until it was golden and bubbling. The puff pastry around the outside was delicious, but the toppings were so heavy that it didn't really rise in the middle, so next time I might try baking it for a few minutes before I put the toppings on. Still, it worked as it was. And it was one of those nights that I was happy to be growing fresh basil in my backyard. Jack and I happily gobbled it up, and Kent ate some sort of leftover something. He often eats the same food we do, but sometimes I'm compelled to make something extra-delicious even if I know he won't eat it.

I roasted the rest of the eggplant tonight and decided to put a spin on lasagna and use up some wonton wrappers I had in the fridge, and I made mini lasagnas. I saw Giada do something similar with full-sized lasagna noodles, folding them over inside a muffin tin and layering with sauce and cheese, but I thought wonton wrappers might make it even easier to make them in muffin tins. I layered ricotta herb sauce, tomato sauce, roasted veggies, pepperoni, and cheese with the wontons in each muffin cup, and I baked them at 375F for about 20 minutes. They were cheesy and delicious, and since I sprayed each muffin cup and the wontons came all the way up the sides, they came out really easily and went into our mouths even easier. It's a great thing to make if the people in your family eat different sorts of foods, like if your husband eats veggies but no meat, and your son likes pepperoni but not vegetables. (I ate three with a salad, just to give you an idea of portion size.)

I get so inspired by seasonal ingredients that I often think I ought to be more led by farmer's market finds than I am, working to incorporate more than just one or two seasonal ingredients into our meals. I'm getting there.

Dean is...

2010-05-25T16:28:00.006-04:00

...trying so hard to roll over. He's almost got it. In the meantime, he enjoys it quite a bit when I prop him up on his elbows.

...giggling a very lot. At his dad, at his mom, at his big brother, when being tickled or wiggled, when getting dressed, when getting undressed. We, in turn, are giggling a very lot, right back at him.

...loving the attention that is occasionally lavished on him by his big brother. He gets a big kick out of sitting in the Bumbo and "playing" with Kent (usually watching Kent play, sometimes reaching out for a toy).

...sleeping longer for his naps and taking fewer of them, but not sleeping any longer at night. The best he can do is apparently 3 hours, then 2- and 1-hour stretches for the rest of the night. I'm hanging in there, but it's definitely taking a toll over time.

...my beautiful little boy. I never get tired of looking at him.

His World

2010-05-25T14:28:00.003-04:00

After a very difficult day yesterday, wherein I was mad at Kent for most of the day and spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself that I hadn't gotten to sleep the night before, I resolved that today would be better.

Yesterday: I was tired, headachey, and feeling the effects of yet another cold we're passing around, and I just wanted to do nothing, so we stayed at home for most of the day and I was pretty lazy and uninspired. Kent, as a result, went stir-crazy. He hit me, spent a lot of time not listening and talking back, got me so angry that I cried and yelled at him a couple of times, and generally gave all impressions that he wasn't a happy kid. I had a tearful phone call to my husband wherein I told him I wanted him to fix everything because I couldn't, and he came home for an extended lunch. Things just kept being difficult, because Kent's actions were met by my overreactions, sending his mood spiraling even further downward. There were a couple of miraculous potty successes, but the day was pretty much crap other than that. Even though Kent and I had a couple of good talks about how we should treat the people we love, which I think is always important after we make bad decisions, I went to bed so sad about how the day had gone, feeling like a horrible mom.

Today: I got much better sleep last night, thanks to Jack getting up with Dean a few times in the night. After breakfast, I loaded the boys in the car, and we went to the good park, the one with lots of big trees and fun equipment. It's in the 90s here, so we have to go early and got there at about 8:45. Kent spent a good hour and a half playing with this other funny little boy, I had a nice conversation with another nursing mom whose kids are just about the same ages as mine, I got Dean to giggle uproariously by tickling his feet, and then I washed all the sand off Kent's feet and we went to Highland Coffees, my old stomping grounds and still favorite coffee shop. I used my full stamp card to get a free drink (which makes for a good day all by itself), a rich Viennese iced coffee. Kent had some water, and we shared a croissant. We talked about the paintings on the wall (they always have cool displays from local artists) and the classical symphony playing over the speakers. He's learned a lot about instruments already, so we talked about some of the sounds we were hearing, and I gave him a refresher course on the string family. All on his own, he then learned to blow bubbles into his drink with a straw, because he was trying to talk while drinking. Then he kept doing it and saying, "It's funny when I talk into my drink, like this!" I told him that even though it's funny, he could only do it when there was a lid on his cup. (Yeah, we'll see how that goes.)

We got home and played outside for a while, and I harvested a few green beans and our first okra pods. Lunchtime was nice. There was a minor squabble over naptime, but now he's sleeping, and so is Dean. I tell ya, I do NOT take these Double Nap days for granted.

The afternoon's activities are yet to be determined, but I think we'll read books and maybe do some art together. Tonight, we're going to Chick Fil-A with friends so that Jack can study.

I realized last night, and again this morning, that the reason yesterday was so bad was that I kept expecting Kent to be on my level, to adapt to my world. I was tired and cranky, and I wanted him to cut me a break. He just doesn't know to do that, and I'm not being sensitive or smart when I expect it. So today, I'm trying to live more in his world. To structure things more according to his needs. It takes more energy, but I get a pretty awesome yield in the form of a happier kid. I don't bend over backward for him, or let him have his way all the time, but I do take into account that he's going to need time to run around and be crazy, and he's going to need me to engage him and make him feel loved and special.

Dean's needs are so uncomplicated and so few right now, it's been fairly easy to incorporate him into my role as Kent's mom. It works for me to think in terms of Kent's needs. As Dean gets older and has his own set of needs that are different from his big brother's, though, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to adapt.

Challenges: always. Rewards: always.

Impulsive thinking

2010-05-23T16:20:00.002-04:00

I’m thinking about all the profile shows I’ve seen of restaurant owners, where they say, “It was always our dream to open our own restaurant.” I never thought that was me. I never thought I’d have a dream like that. But now, all of a sudden (like today), I have one. I have the makings of a business plan. And it’s scary, because it’s such a cool idea and something I *so* want to exist.

It’s a coffee shop for parents and their kids. It has coffee and traditional coffee-shop food like muffins and the like, but it also has fun drinks for kids like smoothies, and healthy snacks. It has a play area with a train table, puzzles, blocks. Crayons and stickers at the tables. And some kind of showcase for work-at-home parents who make or sell their own stuff (like clothing, toys, cloth diapers), to be rotated every so often. It’s a place where parents can come to meet each other, or where groups of friends can come with their kids to have a chance to talk. There are no breakable things within the reach of kids, and plenty of things for kids to do. Maybe even a movie hour one or two days a week in the summer.

It’s a place for all the parents who loved coming to coffee shops to hang out before they had kids, but who worry about their kids breaking the expensive mugs and espresso machines on display. Or whose kids have nothing to do and want to leave after being at a coffee shop for ten minutes. Parents like me. Only, they can’t go back to when they were in college or grad school, so there’s a new coffee shop just for them. Regular people can come too, but it’s going to be too noisy to study, so all those students with their iPods and laptops will probably want to just go to one of the thousand other coffee shops that’s designed with them in mind. This one is for us.

I can’t even imagine all the zoning, health, and safety codes I’d have to adhere to. Not only are there the regular food and beverage licenses, but also whatever licenses there are for kids’ play areas. And of course I’d need a major loan, or a savvy investor. And probably the help of my husband, who’s very into his stable job and his benefits right now. Maybe I could do it with a business partner instead, but it would be kind of insane for Jack to have his job and me to be pouring everything I am into a new coffee shop. Insane, I know.

And what if, instead of hiring any slacker in a t-shirt, I hired education majors who also happened to love coffee? They could play with the kids, like taking a five-minute break to play Simon Says with whoever’s in the shop. It would be a great way for them to get babysitting gigs, too, if they wanted them, since the parents would come to know them and would see how they interact with their children.

Jack thinks I should talk to somebody who already owns a coffee shop and get them to do it, so I can enjoy the benefits without any of the risk. I told him not to kill my dream yet.

I’m creating a community here. It’s beautiful in my mind, simply wonderful. And if I ever happened to turn a profit, I’d find some awesome ways to do community outreach. I might even organize free parenting seminars and breastfeeding classes.

Is anyone else inspired yet?

Playing with my food

2010-05-17T09:15:00.003-04:00

Meal planning has led to great productivity in my kitchen and less eating out. Huzzah! I used to think that meal planning was for people with no creativity or spontaneity, and I never thought I'd sit down to plan out a whole week of meals at once, but it turns out to be pretty fun, and it helps me feel more efficient at the grocery store. Anilia got me a cute little notebook for my birthday that has become my meal planning notebook, and my plan is to flip back through it every time I feel like we're in a food rut. This week's inspiration came from the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook, a James Beard Award winner that's full of great vegetarian dishes. I don't use a cookbook for every meal; sometimes all I need to see is an interesting ingredient that reminds me of something else, and it sort of spins out from there. It's a stream-of-consciousness thing, though I try to craft a shopping list at the same time and think of dishes that will reuse the same components in different ways from one day to the next.

This was an exciting weekend of cooking and baking. I started by making bagels on Saturday, following Jeannette's helpful recipe. I enlisted Kent's "help" during several steps of the process, from mixing and kneading to poking holes in the balls of dough to putting stuff on top (or, in his case, deciding that he wanted all of his to be plain). It was a lot of fun for both of us. He doesn't quite have an appreciation yet for how long it takes to make certain things like bread, so I'm trying to teach him about delayed gratification through direct experience. He thought kneading was great, and he kept picking up flour and bits of dough off the counter and smooshing them into the ball of dough. I remember when I was a kid, watching and sort of helping my grandmother bake bread, and my grandfather bake pretzels, and I never felt like my hands were nearly strong enough to knead the dough. So maybe Kent will feel that way too, but I still like seeing him get flour all over his hands. The bagels were great, and they've been eaten in various manifestations over the weekend.

To celebrate the start of blueberry season, we got our first farmer's market blueberries on Saturday, and we made scones yesterday morning. (I'm still grateful to Joanna for leading me to this recipe — it's amazing!) Kent can't really say words that start with "s" and another consonant, so he was saying "scone" the same way he says "stone" and seemed to think they were roughly the same thing. He kept yabbering on about The Sword in the Stone. Even if he had understood what they were, he doesn't like things with blueberries in them, so he didn't really partake and just wanted another bagel for breakfast that day. That kid loves his bagels. He even wanted to try one with sesame seeds on it.

The really exciting cooking endeavor this weekend was the inaugural use of my mandoline that Jack got me for my birthday. It's been sitting in its box for two weeks, waiting patiently for me to pull it out and use it, and yesterday it finally got its big chance. First, I have to remark on how impressed I am with German engineering. This thing is so well-designed. Even the little manual is cool. After reading the directions, I set about slicing some vegetables to make a strata, sort of like lasagna but with veggies for the layers instead of noodles. I sliced eggplant with the thicker of the two settings, then roasted it, and I used the thinner setting for zucchini and tomatoes, which I just added raw. I was just falling over myself with excitement about my little zucchini ribbons and paper-thin tomato slices. I mixed up a ricotta sauce on the stove, then started layering everything, with a layer of lasagna noodles on the bottom to help hold everything together, then tomato sauce, ricotta, vegetables, and mozzarella in random order. It was amazingly good. I didn't miss the noodles at all. And now I'm really eager to use my mandoline to julienne something... probably carrots to go in tonight's buckwheat soba noodles (Japanese noodles roughly the thickness of spaghetti). It's like using a fabulous new toy. A sharp, dangerous toy that could cut off part of my finger. That's the best kind, right?

After dinner, I realized that I had been meaning to make granola all weekend but hadn't gotten around to it. I've never been 100% happy with any granola I've made, so I wanted to look online for a new recipe, and I found Elie Krieger's simple granola recipe with great reviews and decided to give it a shot. She calls for using several different kinds of nuts, but since we live in Louisiana, I wanted to use only pecans. I also left out the raisins, since I'm not a big fan of raisins in stuff. And I realized that I had bought quick oats at the store instead of old-fashioned oats, but I used them anyway and they seem alright. The granola is seriously addictive. I wanted to eat all of it last night after I pulled it out of the oven.

It feels weird to be making a long cooking post without any photos, but that's pretty much my life right now. Not quite enough time or brainpower to remember to pull out the camera in the midst of the cooking process. I did consider photographing our half-eaten strata last night, but that would just have been silly. You'll have to use your imaginations.

Love is...

2010-05-13T09:20:00.003-04:00

...hot-gluing fifty tiny pompoms to a piece of felt so your son can make his own American flag.

Kent is very interested in flags these days. It started with the American flag, which he used to go around saying was "for Obama," before I explained to him that it was for our country. I thought it was cute that he would say, "That flag is also for Obama!" every time he saw one, but at some point the kid needs to learn that we don't live in a monarchy or a tyranny where the flag is synonymous with the leader. So I explained the United States to him as best I could, and now he says, "That's the American flag for our country!" He's just *so* excited. I realized he was over-generalizing yesterday when we were watching The Sound of Music and he said that both the Austrian flag and the Nazi flag were American flags. Hmm. When I told him what the Nazi flag was (leaving out certain horrors of the Holocaust), he said he wanted it to be an American flag. Someday, he'll learn about VE Day and the end of WWII, and he'll be thrilled. R. Kent, Imperialist.

Anyway, I saw the need for him to understand that different flags mean different things, so we're going to be making a few flags out of felt. I think if I make all the pieces, and he puts them together while looking at a picture of the flag, it'll be both flag lesson and spatial/art perception lesson. I was thinking we'd start with the U.S., Ireland and France (where Jack and I spent time, respectively), and maybe Canada and Mexico, but dang, the Mexican flag is hard. I don't want to be all Arizonan and dismiss the Mexican flag, though. We'll have to find a way around that.

Lest you think I'm raising some kid with a heightened sense of international awareness, the main trick as I see it will be keeping him from pulling the fifty white pompoms off. Wish us luck.

Project Milk: initial donation

2010-05-04T20:22:00.004-04:00

I sent the milk yesterday! 252 ounces, in 63 four-ounce bottles. FedEx guy came to pick it up at my house, dry ice worked marvelously, box arrived in Austin safe and sound this morning. I was *so* nervous that something was going to go wrong, but it all went swimmingly. I'm still pumping — the bank requests that I continue to pump for at least two more months, and I'm happy to keep doing it as long as my supply will keep up. I'm not sure I'll do it for a whole year, but we'll see how it goes.

As you can see in the photos, there was a lot of room to spare in the cooler, even though I surpassed the 200 ounces they want for the initial donation, so next time I'll wait to get a cooler until I have plenty to fill it up.

I lost my wallet today, or perhaps it was stolen, while we were at the sprayground. Boo. At least I'm still riding the high of helping sick and premature babies.

Poaching eggs

2010-05-04T20:02:00.004-04:00

A friend of mine, who's looking to expand her cooking repertoire, mentioned recently that she wants to learn to poach eggs. Ever since I heard her say those magic words, I've really wanted some. My favorite horrible-for-me breakfast is called Eggs Ponchartrain, served at a local restaurant called The Chimes: it consists of poached eggs on top of a toasted croissant, topped with hollandaise, bacon, and fried oysters. It's SO good. And I feel kind of gross after I eat it. I dialed back the heaviness when I poached eggs tonight, keeping the croissant factor (because why wouldn't you??) and doing a sliced tomato and a mozzarella sauce on top. To keep the seafood factor, mine got some sautéed garlic shrimp on top, too. We also had roasted asparagus, because asparagus always seems happy to sit next to a poached egg.

I've poached eggs a couple of times in the past, and they're passable, even though they usually turn out rather ugly. The pot gets to be a total mess, too, with egg white bits floating everywhere. I used Emeril's procedure this time, since it's slightly intimidating to poach an egg and I feel like I need explicit directions when things are slightly intimidating. I roasted the asparagus and sautéed the shrimp first. (For the record, Papa John's garlic sauce is *excellent* for sautéing shrimp. It's also excellent in grits, mashed potatoes, and just about anything else I think to cook with it.) Then I put the croissants in the warm oven as I turned my attention to the eggs and cheese sauce. The eggs drained on a paper towel while I finished the cheese sauce and sliced the tomatoes, and everything came together pretty well. Quick, delicious. Highly recommended.

Things a-sproutin'

2010-05-02T20:17:00.003-04:00

I just pulled nine green beans out of our garden. NINE! Guess what we're having tomorrow with dinner?

There are several juliet tomatoes (a cherry variety) sprouting out, thinking about turning red. I finally wrestled the tomatoes into cages today, far too late to be doing that because I seriously damaged a few of the more stubborn stems. Next year, I'll try to remember to put the cages around them before they're three feet high.

I think I put the plants too close together, in all my excitement about growing different things. I was afraid of that when I planted everything, but now it's very apparent. The peppers barely have enough room to grow, though they're looking a little happier without tomatoes sprawled all over them. The okra plants are doing well too, though they're not producing any flowers yet, so it'll be a while before we get to enjoy any of them. And just as I knew it would, the mint is already going nuts. Time for mint tea and Greek salsa (tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, mint, and parsley). FYI, Greek salsa is really excellent paired with hummus and flatbread. We'll have to make spring rolls with some of the mint, too. Mmmm. Any other suggestions for using mint, like syrup, or something I could freeze?

Moment

2010-05-02T19:01:00.002-04:00

I had a moment just a little while ago. A rare moment of peace. Dean was napping, Kent and Jack were outside trying to put up the new mailbox post (ours was knocked down in a crime spree last weekend), and I had just gotten dinner on the table. Getting dinner on the table usually happens while one or both of my kids is upset, I'm sweating, Jack is pouring drinks while trying to tell me about his day or about a story he heard on NPR on the drive home, and I'm racking my brain trying to think of what ingredient or component I've forgotten. But tonight, dinner came together in peace. Dressed salads in bowls, puff pastry pinwheels with red peppers and cheese sat piled on a plate, and each place had its beverage all ready. Jack's and mine included a glass of red wine, a rare but special addition to the table. I was enjoying a sip of wine while listening to The Beatles, all on my own.

Then I went outside to check on progress, and I came back inside to hear Dean screaming. Moment over, but not forgotten.

The Final Approach

2010-04-30T16:56:00.002-04:00

I’m a day away from 30. And I’ve never felt better. I’m embracing it, looking forward with nothing but excitement and optimism.

In my 20s, I got a first-class education. I found a husband. I created life. I learned how to keep dear old friends and make new ones, how to sustain loving relationships with family members from halfway across the country. I learned how to apologize, really apologize. I learned to let things go. I took writing classes. I started a blog. In my 20s, I learned to cook for my family, everything from bread to baby food. I learned to grow my own food in a garden. I learned to zest a lemon and roast a chicken. I learned to knit, got better at sewing, developed my artistic eye. I learned to take pictures. I learned to drink coffee. I bought a car. I bought a house. I started an IRA.

In my 20s, I lost a father, and then a stepfather. I watched my own mother become a widow, and then I stood next to her at her wedding. I learned about grief, and then recovery. Then I experienced the sheer joy of seeing my father in the eyes of my son.

In my 20s, I lived in France for a month. I bought my own train tickets and my own gelato. I learned German. I learned a tiny bit of Italian, a few words in Latin (nevermind that most of it was Medieval Latin). I started to learn the Russian alphabet.

In my 20s, I fell in love with music from the Renaissance. And music from the 20th century. I learned to read white mensural notation and shape notes, to play four parts on the piano from only figured bass. I carried keys to a classroom and a stereo cabinet. I taught solfege. I learned how to sing in front of a full classroom, and how to teach even when I think my students hate me.

In my 20s, I shopped at hardware stores, farmer’s markets, teacher supply shops, and used bookstores. I bought cloth diapers, cat litter, seed packets, and bridesmaid’s dresses. I bought alcohol. I ordered vanilla beans from the internet and bought yeast by the jar. I developed a true appreciation for going to the bookstore or even the grocery store without children.

In my 20s, I chose furniture. I chose a new place to live. I chose paint colors. I chose names for my children. I chose a church and a playgroup. I chose a dissertation topic. And then I chose to abandon an academic life to walk a lovelier path instead.

In my 20s, I read the directions on pregnancy tests, made prenatal appointments, listened to the heartbeat of a tiny creature growing inside me. I rocked childbirth. Twice. I learned to breastfeed, then figured out how to share the gift of my milk with others. I felt the bittersweet celebration of weaning, then rejoiced when I got to start another nursing relationship all over again. I learned how to travel with a baby, and how to paint with a toddler. I taught a child the alphabet and watched him learn to walk. I learned all of the words to Goodnight, Moon. I heard a little voice learn to say, “I love you,” for the first time.

In my 20s, I became a wife, and then a mom. I became truly grateful for my parents and grandparents. I became an adult.

So I’d say that’s about enough for one decade. I’m ready to see what comes next.

What to eat, in photos

2010-04-28T17:47:00.004-04:00

Possibly the best looking loaf of bread I've ever made.

Green beans in the garden! We ate one raw last night. Kent said it didn't taste very good, but Jack and I disagreed. It tasted like success to me.

Hands free

2010-04-20T19:56:00.001-04:00

In this moment, I saw my big chance to escape...

Nah, not really. But aren't they cute?

Fresh/local/good

2010-04-19T20:00:00.005-04:00

I've missed my blog in these last few months. I miss the elegant posts I used to have time to craft, not that every post was elegant, but there were some nicely written ones back in the day before Two Children. Now, it's all photos and quick updates, plus a word or two about Project Milk here and there. I was recently introduced to a friend's cooking blog, complete with gorgeous photos, mouth-watering recipes, and wonderfully simple writing, and I thought, "Hey, I used to do that. I used to take pictures of my food, and then I couldn't wait to post about it." I think it's partly lack of time, and partly lack of inspiration that keeps me from posting, since I've also had to let blog-reading fall by the wayside while I nurse a baby and find enriching experiences for an almost-three-year-old.

I began last week with a moratorium on French fries. It was necessary to take this step, because we had fries twice on Sunday, and later, in retrospect, I realized this was a clear sign that we needed some change. I've found myself very jealous of my friends' children who eat more variety of foods than Kent does, and after conversations with them about the many foods their kids are willing to try, I lament the fact that Kent always wants chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, and PB&J. These things are fine in moderation, but they're not really the basis of a balanced diet, and it was starting to wear on me, even though I know most kids are picky at this stage, and it won't last forever. Then I remembered my role in all of this; I'm the one who puts food on his plate. There are kids all over the world who get by just fine without PB&J or chicken nuggets. Of course, I can't put Thai green curry and spring rolls in front of him and expect him to eat those yet, but there are ways to modify our diet a little to fit what I can reasonably assume he might be willing to try.

I tried to do a better job last week of planning out meals in advance, which makes my life easier on tough afternoons, and it has the added benefit of keeping us from going out so often, where we spend too much money and too much time convincing Kent to stay at the table. I told myself that I wasn't going to make him a PB&J or chicken nuggets instead of what we were eating, and he responded to this beautifully by trying a lot of foods I didn't think he'd try. Sure, he ate a lot of bread, and plain versions of things we were eating, but it was closer to a family meal each night. Sometimes I got stuck, like when we made our very favorite Indian dish, carrot red lentil soup and vegetable cashew samosas, but he did at least try those things. I hate being a food cop and don't think it's the best way to instill a healthy attitude toward food, so Jack and I praise the heck out of him when he tries something he doesn't think he'll like, and I silently hope he'll be more receptive to x-unknown food the next time it appears on his plate.

I'm not usually much of a meal planner and tend to be guided more by whimsy than practicality when it comes to deciding what to eat. But I think I'm happier when I plan things out — not for the whole week, but for a few days at a time, at least. Waiting until 3 p.m. to decide what to cook for dinner often results in dinner out, or something really lackluster that I threw together after a stressful, hasty trip to the store, and I feel so much better about my day when I know what I'll be cooking for dinner. I have peace of mind at having all the right groceries already (grocery shopping is harder than it used to be), and if I have some down time during the day, I can get chopping and other prep-work done early.

I need to let myself be guided more by seasonal and local produce as well, which ought to be easy in Louisiana with its ridiculously long growing season and year-round farmer's markets. Planning comes more easily to me when I'm staring down a bunch of fresh produce. A small example of the kind of eating/planning I wish I were doing more of: use of springtime strawberries. I've made several jars of delicious jam, and ice cream, which we've happily shared with friends. I've also made fruit puree and frozen it in cubes for when Dean is ready to eat yogurt sometime this fall. Kent ate fruit puree mixed with plain yogurt every day for almost a year, and I hope Dean takes to it so well. I can't wait to start making more baby food, since that was one aspect of Kent's babyhood that I thoroughly enjoyed. I would extend the strawberry thing further if I could think of more applications, besides sugaring the rest and then freezing them in their syrup like my grandmother always used to do. She'd just pull out a pint of strawberries for our ice cream or cereal, and there seemed to be an endless supply. I have no idea how many pints she made each year. My frozen corn from last summer almost got us through to this year's corn season, but I used the last of it a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, that's the idea. I wish I knew more about canning, but every time I try to learn, I feel like I'm in over my head, and most vegetables appeal to me much less if I'm pulling them out of a can than if they're fresh, or if they've been frozen or cooked in something else delicious.

I scored okra at our produce stand today, so I rearranged this week's meal plan so that we could have okra with red beans and grits tomorrow night. The beans are already soaking, and I can practically smell the simmering pot of rich flavors we'll encounter tomorrow night. Maybe Kent will even eat some of it. If our okra plants take off this summer, I'm going to force myself to try cooking it in some way besides frying it. It's high time I learned to make gumbo, I think.

Project Milk: Month 2

2010-04-15T14:51:00.002-04:00

180 ounces. 45 bottles (and very little freezer space left, though I can borrow a friend's space if it comes to that). FYI, I added a little box over at the left of the page with my total to-date so you can keep up. Because I know everyone is dying to know.

I'm waiting on official paperwork approval from the bank so they can send me the cooler to ship my first 200 ounces back... I'm hoping that happens next week. I'm feeling slightly rock-star-esque because of all the sick and premature babies I'll be helping. Jack told me last week how impressed he's been and how well I've been doing, because he remembers how much I complained about pumping when Kent was a baby and wasn't sure how far I'd get this time. It's funny, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to make it work, but after he said that, I did remember how much I used to loathe the pump. Now, it's fine. I barely mind it. It's part of my routine, once when I wake up, and then again sometime in the afternoon. Fill up a freezer bottle, put a label on it, add a sticker to my chart, find time to wash pump parts... and repeat.

I really hope I inspire someone else to do this at some point, because it's not nearly as hard as I would've thought, and so many women could do it but don't. Such is the way with pretty much everything humanitarian, right?

Project Milk: Month 1

2010-03-28T20:01:00.004-04:00

Quick update on the milk donating: I've now pumped and frozen 72 ounces (18 bottles). I'm well on my way to my initial donation of 200 ounces, but I still have about a month to go, I think. I'm trying to get 6 or 8 ounces per day, though some days are slower than others. My sticker chart is on the fridge with cute girly flower stickers to chart my progress, and it makes me so happy to see it each time I walk by. If only Kent's potty sticker chart were getting the same level of attention...

Us in March

2010-03-28T19:26:00.010-04:00

How different a first and second child can be. We don't have a good sense of Dean's personality just yet, at least not in the way we know Kent's, but the sleeping thing still blows me away. Dean sleeps for 2- and 3-hour stretches all night, nursing for a few minutes and then going right back to sleep, and he takes several long naps throughout the day. He's especially good at falling asleep in the car on the way to something and then sleeping throughout our errand while strapped to me. When Kent was a baby, on the other hand, he slept for short stretches at night and took one or two very short naps each day (after much struggle on my part), sometimes as short as 20 minutes. We kept a sleep log for a week because I was so concerned about Kent's sleep, back before I knew it was okay that some babies just don't sleep, and he logged between 11 and 12 hours a day total. Newborns are supposed to get an average of about 16 hours. So Dean is definitely doing what he can to make up for that, probably sleeping at least 16 hours. I'm not sure, because I haven't logged his sleep at all. Why would I? Anyway, I feel very rested most of the time, which is odd considering I thought I would still be "adjusting" at this point.

Dean will sleep in the BabyHawk carrier for a long time, but he has to keep moving or he calls the whole thing off, so I don't get to sit down very often except to nurse. I've been doing a heck of a lot of dishes, laundry, and other chores since I'm on my feet so much. And I haven't seen much of the internet, because I kind of need to be still to blog, check email, post photos, etc. So continue to bear with me, at least until I have children who are old enough to play outside for long stretches while I lounge deliciously on the sofa.

It strikes me every year that March is the very best month to live in Louisiana. The weather is absolutely gorgeous, and I just want to be outside all the time. Not surprisingly, so does Kent. This is spurring some serious backyard ennui, though. We can only blow bubbles, draw with chalk, work in our little sprouting garden, and throw balls for so long. I'm bubbling over with ideas of what to put in our yard to make it more fun for little boys. A tire swing, perhaps, hanging from our huge live oak. I need to find out if our mechanic can give us an old tire (for free). I would love a hammock, but we'd have to have a stand for it, and it's not a huge priority, just a nice "someday" item. I also want one of those Little Tikes basketball hoops so Kent can work on his heretofore neglected athletic skillz. And my super-duper-uper-schmooper big idea, which is slowly coming together, is a golf ball run, kind of like a marble run but made for outside, and without the choking hazard that marble runs present. The golf ball run in my head is like a giant physics lesson for my kids, modular so they can rearrange pipes, connectors, and funnels. It's fantastic in my mind. I just can't quite figure out how we can make something that Kent can put together himself in different ways. I've looked at PVC pipes and connectors, and other kinds of flexible hoses, and I'm sure the materials exist to do what I'm thinking of, but my main problem is figuring out how to support it. We can start it on our carport fence, which is the perfect height for Kent to reach up and drop a golf ball into a tube, but the pieces would just kind of fall if we tried to set up tubes from that height unless we put them on some kind of posts... which makes it hard to keep the whole thing modular. The modular part might have to go. Googling the project idea hasn't yielded much useful information so far, but Jack thinks he may be able to find something if he pokes around.

Our weekends have been really productive lately; this weekend's big excitement was getting a toddler seat for the back of Jack's bike so that Kent can go on rides with him. So far, they've been around the neighborhood twice, even going to the park for a while today while Dean and I hung out at home and made dinner. I have visions of relearning how to ride a bike myself, then biking around with our boys when they're bigger, but for now, the bike outings are a nice divide-and-conquer technique that lets the toddler do something toddler-ish with his dad while the baby does something baby-ish with his mom.

One last funny picture. Kent will reach over absent-mindedly and touch Dean when he's asleep, nursing, or otherwise next to him, and it's the cutest thing. A few days ago, Dean was sleeping in the Boppy pillow on the sofa, and Kent was next to him, watching a movie. Kent had his hand on Dean's head for about 20 minutes, just resting it there. When Kent got up to get a new diaper, Dean woke up within a few minutes, so Kent had apparently been doing everyone a favor by helping his brother stay asleep. Today in church, Dean was asleep in the BabyHawk with one little arm hanging out, and Kent kept reaching over to hold his hand.

So life is peaceful at times, crazy at others, and wonderfully sunny right now with our windows open and the fresh spring air washing away my humdrums.

Working on

2010-03-16T19:58:00.004-04:00

Okra and green bean seeds just went into the ground last weekend, and they're already coming up. The plants that I started from seed several weeks ago, however, are doing a terrible job of staying alive. They sprouted inside but then stopped growing altogether, so I transplanted them outside to see if being in the garden would help their morale. No such luck so far. I might have to buy tomato, pepper, and herb plants, but that would be okay. It worked last year.

Kent is amusing us with language funnies. He's trying to synthesize verb tenses he doesn't know, which is pretty cool, but he comes up with some silly stuff on the way to the right answer. For example, when trying to decide the past tense of "to pick", he arrived at "pook" (rhymes with "took"). And his new thing this week is the negative version of "I am", which is apparently "I amn't." Some days, like today, I find myself wanting to sell my toddler to the highest bidder, but the cuteness helps mitigate all of my frustration with this amazing developing person. Free will is annoying.

Dean's new signature move is pooping, then immediately falling asleep. Also, he's incredibly cute, sleeps a lot, and is still as squeaky as ever, as Anilia and her family can attest since they were here all weekend for a wonderful visit.

I finally got my containers from the milk bank a couple of weeks ago, and I'm borrowing an electric pump from a friend for Project Milk. So far I've collected 20 ounces, which means five of their little 4-ounce bottles. I have cute flower stickers procured from Target, and Jack is making me a sticker chart to keep me motivated. As if helping other babies isn't motivation enough, I now have girly stickers, too. I'm going to be borrowing freezer space from at least one person, because there's no way that 50 of these bottles are going to fit in our freezer. The logistics of pumping while parenting two small people are kind of tough some days, but it's worth it.

Over and out, so I can live to fight another day.

What Kent is doing

2010-03-07T21:04:00.004-05:00

Bonding. Head rubs, hand holds, loving glances. He often tells us he wants to hold his brudduh, or that Dean is his favorite brudduh, and he's recently started telling Dean that he loves him. We talk a lot about the things he's going to teach Dean when he gets bigger, and Kent is ready to get started right away.

Adjusting. He definitely had a shock to his system when Dean was born, similar to my shock when Kent was born (the "what the heck is this baby and what do I do with it?" problem), but I can tell already in this first month that he's returning to normal, or more likely that he's redefining what normal means to him. It was actually harder when my mom and Jack's parents were here to help. They wanted to do things with or for Kent, like taking him to the potty, getting him a drink or snack, reading a book with him, helping him get dressed, and a hundred other things throughout the day, and he mostly just wanted *me* to do them even when I was nursing Dean or had zero energy. When he feels me pulling away, he pulls just as strongly to get me to come back to him, so we were both pretty stressed out about certain things while the grandparents were in town. This past week, though, when the three of us were alone for the first time, the sun came out for both Kent and me as we figured out our new weekday life with Dean around.

Helping. He's just getting old enough that he wants to help us do things and is also physically able to help, so he helped me plant the garden this weekend and helped Jack build a new mailbox post. That sort of thing gives us the opportunity as parents to switch off, so the one of us who isn't doing something outside with Kent gets to stay inside with a sleeping Dean. It's been warmer in the last few days, so we've had Dean outside a little more, but we also understand the value of having one-on-one time with Kent and letting him help with important things. That seems to make him more apt to help with the unimportant things, too, like taking clothes to the laundry hamper or putting his toys away or following directions in general. It still feels a lot of the time like we're trying to herd a cat when we ask Kent to do something, but if we get to praise him for helping, then we all get to feel better about things.

Sleeping. Somehow, he's sleeping through the night almost every night despite this incredible upset to his routine. He's such a light sleeper that we were certain he'd wake up when Dean started crying in the night, but he doesn't. He also falls asleep in the car even if Dean is crying, which perplexes me, but I don't argue because he still needs his naps and the car seems to be the only reliable way to get him to take one. People have said that older children will just sleep through their younger siblings waking up, but I honestly didn't believe Kent would, so it's been a pleasant surprise.

Singing to Dean. Well, not so much singing, because Kent doesn't "sing" yet; he chants rhythmically in a sort of monotone voice. We're waiting very patiently for him to use pitch, but so far, he's only displaying an aptitude for rhythm. Anyway, when Dean is fussy in the car, we sometimes suggest to Kent that he sing or talk to Dean, and somehow he's gotten into the habit of singing "Baa Baa Black Sheep". Except it's more like shouting. So we have a crying baby, and a shouting toddler, in the backseat of our car, and all Jack and I can do is giggle.

These brudduhs are something else, I tell you what.

What Dean is doing

2010-03-05T20:56:00.004-05:00

Growing. He's over 9 pounds now, just where he should be based on his birth weight. He's just about too long for newborn-size clothes already, but we got a ton of use out of the ones we had. It's been unseasonably cold here, so we definitely needed lots of long sleeves and footies and such, which is just what we had. He didn't really get to wear my favorite newborn stuff of Kent's, but this way, I'll have different memories of what each of them wore during their first weeks. He's also big enough for the small size of Fuzzi Bunz diapers now, so he has a big poofy butt. I love it.

Squeaking. He's a very squeaky baby. He makes all these hilarious noises when he's trying to fall asleep, some nose whistles, some little grunts and snorts, but mostly squeaks.

Sleeping. A lot. Our nighttimes are actually pretty easy (depending on your definition of "easy" — it's all relative). He's in bed with us since he's made it quite clear that he's not a fan of sleeping on his own yet, so he wakes every 2 or 3 hours, nurses for a few minutes, occasionally gets a diaper change, and then goes right back to sleep, swaddled next to me. It's peaceful, and it's working beautifully. I don't freak out about things like, "But he'll never sleep in his own bed!" or "He'll never learn to sleep through the night that way!" because I know he will when he's ready. Kent sleeps wonderfully now. I'm not sure whether I can safely call Dean a sleeper at this point in his life, but I've been so pleased with his sleep so far. It helps me a lot that waking every couple of hours to nurse in the night is familiar, rather than totally shocking to my sleep-loving body the way it was the first time around. Everything feels that way with Dean. And I have our first experiment in parenthood running around my house, helping me remember that we got through all the baby stuff the first time and are totally competent parents, even if we don't always feel like it.

Being worn. A lot. We get 2 or 3 long stretches of him in the Moby wrap (or occasionally the sling) each day, and I get so much done that way, especially chores and cooking around the house. And as long as he's well fed, he'll go from the carseat to the Moby and sleep there for up to 2 hours wherever we are: at church, at a meal, at the park, etc. We have three different baby carriers, which sounds like a lot but they're all for different purposes and different life stages, so to speak, even though they all work now: the Moby is perfect for snuggly newborn holding because it feels like a t-shirt with a baby in it, the pouch sling we used with Kent will be perfect for hip carries when he gets a little older, and the BabyHawk (a mei-tai-style carrier) works well now and will also be great through toddlerhood because it holds up to 40 pounds. We've even used it to strap Kent to Jack's back a couple of times when he's gotten jealous of all the babywearing. My, how I love baby carriers. I wish I had known of all the options available when I was pregnant with Kent; there's so much more than what Babies R Us is willing to tell us about.

Snuggling. Even though the cold has prevented us from going outside as much as Kent and I would like, it has been incredibly nice to have a warm baby all snuggled up to me in his little hats, instead of a sweaty baby who didn't wear hats and who barely wore pants for the first couple of months of his life because it was too hot. I remember that first summer that Kent was here, I didn't even wear a shirt around the house because I was too sweaty. Change of season for this baby is a good thing.

Bonding with his big brother. Kent is getting better at knowing how to touch Dean without making us nervous (i.e., not poking or pulling at him), and Dean responds so well to Kent's affection and attention. I can hardly wait until Kent can make him laugh.

Most everything is joy these days. Even when it's hard, it's joy. And it's really not that hard, not nearly as hard as I'd feared. I can't always predict what time I'll actually be able to get out of the house with the two of them in clean diapers and schlepping and all their gear, but hey, we're doing just fine.

Faces

2010-02-24T17:07:00.005-05:00

I'd been sitting on this idea for a while, and things finally coalesced today for me to put it together. I made a felt board for my nephew last spring, so I had been wanting to do something similar for Kent when he got a little older but couldn't ever decide what to make. Another Easter egg hunt board seemed too elaborate, especially since he doesn't really know what Easter eggs are yet. I thought of other outdoorsy things, maybe a nighttime scene with stars and the moon and an owl, but nothing made me terribly excited. And Kent is afraid of owls. Then, I decided: faces. With some cutting help from Ann, I got everything together this afternoon, and Kent (though grumpy from waking up on the wrong side of his nap) enjoyed rearranging all of the eyes, hair, noses, and mouths for quite a while.

I think I want to make another set of shapes or something, but I'm not sure what to make yet. I could go all Montessori and make him a set of letters. Or revisit the outdoorsy scene idea. Or maybe a house, with windows and doors and a chimney and decorations and stuff that he could rearrange. Post an idea below if you have one.

I may not be able to get a lot of knitting or sewing done right now, but at least I can cut small shapes out of felt and hot glue some eyeballs together.

Dean photo batch

2010-02-21T10:33:00.006-05:00

Scene

2010-02-15T17:22:00.005-05:00

I'm lying back in the recliner in my living room, sleeping Dean strapped to my chest in the Moby wrap, looking out the sliding glass door to the backyard. In my backyard are Kent, along with not one, but two grandmothers, blowing bubbles and running around in the sun. It's about 40 degrees out there, so I'm sure they're freezing their butts off, but to me it just looks sunny and cheery. A lot of giggles and squeals are making their way inside. This very sleepy but happy mama feels the joy radiating from those three. I'm feeling mostly like myself these days, but it's still wonderful to tap into the collective energy of others while I rest with my baby.

Since they have a couple of days' worth of overlap, I'm reminded of how lucky we are to have in-laws who not only get along but who actually enjoy each other's company. They respect each other. There's no competition, no one-upping, no passive aggression or bickering. I'm blessed in so many ways. My mom has been here for a wonderful week and is leaving tomorrow, and Jack's mom got here yesterday and will be here for another almost two weeks before she heads back to Virginia (with Jack's dad coming for the last couple of days of her visit).

Also, my mom has been cleaning like a mad woman. Give that woman an award for awesomeness.

After Kent was born, I remember needing the grandparent time and help desperately so that I could recover. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that I was in shock after his birth, trying to keep my head above water while I learned to do everything for a baby and learned how to survive emotionally without any time to myself to recharge. I figured out how to be a mom, and eventually I felt like I was actually pretty good at it, but it felt crazy for a while. I felt crazy. This time, it doesn't feel crazy. I've recovered physically. I know how to take care of a newborn and have been so pleased that it's come back to me quickly. And so far, Dean sleeps a lot. Not by himself, mind you, but he'll sleep for hours in the Moby or in our arms, and it doesn't feel exhausting at all, just sweet. More sleep would be nice, but the lack of sleep, just like everything else, is also familiar and doesn't feel like a shock to my system either. The hardest part is meeting Kent's emotional needs while wearing a baby, something the grandmothers are a *huge* help with. I feel like my time with them here is giving me a chance to strategize about how I'm going to accomplish everything after they leave. Like how to get food on the table and then get through a meal. Or how to discipline Kent from across the room or across the house while Dean is nursing. Or how I'm going to finish Kent's potty training by the time he starts school in August. Still not sure about that one.

The blessings are many. I'm very rich.

My list for the rest of the week

2010-02-09T13:34:00.004-05:00

Take naps
Organize/post photos
Order at least one fancy nursing bra online, because seriously, these old ones are horrible and are falling apart
Inhale the scent of my baby and try desperately to commit it to memory forever
Welcome my mom to town tonight
Kiss my little boys as often as possible
Bake cupcakes (with my mom) on Thursday for a cupcake party on Friday, which will be Dean's first intro to several of my friends and their kids
Have more Kent time
Thank profusely the centuries of women who have worn their babies strapped to their bodies, for the Moby wrap is the most awesome thing ever, and Dean is happy as a clam to sleep in it all day
Wait for that umbilical cord stump to fall off so I can see the adorable belly button underneath
Enjoy the moments of tenderness and fun shared between my two boys
Watch our vegetable and herb seedlings grow in the window
Keep devouring all the good food people are bringing us — making milk is hard
Write out birth story
Be amazed, again, at what having a child can do to me

The Dean intro

2010-02-06T15:23:00.006-05:00

Dean is here! He came on Thursday evening, February 4, at 5:55 p.m. (compared to Kent's 1:11 p.m., ha!), 6 lbs 12 oz, and 20.5 inches long. I had an intense natural labor, the last ten minutes of which were in a birthing tub with Jack right behind me, and Dean came out after only five minutes of pushing. In. Tense. The cord was wrapped around his neck and he had some trouble breathing at first, and even though you'd think it would have freaked me out, I honestly looked at him and thought, "Okay, we're in a hospital surrounded by medical professionals. They know what to do, and he's going to be fine." And he was. They took him to the NICU after we had a very brief chance to hold him and say hi, and after I was stitched up, we started getting reports that he was doing well. I was able to breastfeed him in the NICU after about an hour and a half, and he latched right on — he was obviously ready, and he's been nursing like a champ ever since. He got to come back to my room after about 4 hours (the minimum amount of time they have to keep a baby who's been admitted to the NICU), and everyone who checked up on him after that was really impressed with how well he was doing. No lasting effects from the wrapped cord. Happy sighs.

We just got home from the hospital a couple of hours ago and are enjoying the simultaneous naps of our two little boys, probably the only time they'll ever nap at the same time. Jack is snoozing next to me on the bed as well, but we were eager to get some photos and stories posted. We're tired but happy, relishing the newborn-ness again. It's so different the second time, knowing what to expect and how to deal with most of what comes up; I feel like it's much easier to appreciate all of this time instead of feeling overwhelmed and crazy. I'm healing a lot faster too, though I still definitely feel the effects if I'm on my feet for too long.

When Kent came to visit the day after Dean was born, he immediately wanted to jump onto the sofa next to us and hold him. He actually started pulling him out of my lap, but we've had lots of reminders about gentleness, and he's been so affectionate and great. He's also been noticeably overwhelmed by being shuttled around to different friends' houses and spending his first two nights away from us, so I'm glad we're home now and can start to make our new routine.

More later, but here are some photos from the hospital to get you started...

Hanging out, waiting

2010-01-31T16:02:00.007-05:00

Both last Friday and this past Friday at the midwife's office, I was 1 cm, 50% effaced. So it goes.

I'm having a lot of contractions when I've been on my feet, and since I've had some serious bursts of energy this week, there's been a lot of activity. I really thought my cervix would have changed somewhat, but it hasn't, so I'm still. Just. Waiting. Rather than being painless like the contractions I had during my labor scare of a month ago, they've started to hurt just a tad, leading me to think that they probably are somewhat productive and might still mean my actual labor will be shorter. But I have zero intuition about this sort of thing.

While I wait, I'm trying to strike a balance between making a lot of plans (which have the potential to just fall through) and being on a state of high-alert all the time. Another couple of weeks of this might make me crazy, though. My due date is 6 days away, and if it comes and goes with a whole lotta nuthin' going on, I may not be a pleasant person to be around.

There's a flurry of upcoming celebrations, not even counting our impending progeny: Jack's birthday is the 12th, then Valentine's Day is two days later, and then Mardi Gras is two days after that (which really means that Mardi Gras is ongoing for several weeks and will be *over* on the 16th). I know I'm not expected to do much of anything for these celebrations, but it would be nice if I had some clue what to do for Jack's birthday, at least. He is the love of my life, and I enjoy celebrating his existence. The only thing I've decided is that I want chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentine's Day, and I'd even be happy to make them myself with some fresh berries from the market. Yes, I'll say it again: I LOVE Louisiana's growing season. My mom will be in town that week, during all three aforementioned celebrations, so I'll make her some chocolate-covered pretzels or something similar since she doesn't like fruit. Or maybe we'll have fondue that day. Or maybe I'll be in the hospital, or home but barely walking, and I should just stop trying to make plans. See, this is my problem.

Kent and I started most of our garden plants from seed this week, so they'll just get to sit in the window and germinate in their little cardboard trays while we wait for Dean. I may run out of space in the garden, but so far, we've planted three hybrid varieties of tomatoes — Beefmaster (huge and red), Jubilee (medium and yellow), and Juliet (grape-like and red) — plus sweet peppers, basil, parsley, and Kent's various seeds (sunflowers from last year, plus whatever we get from his watermelon and pumpkin cups). I'll also be starting okra and green bean seeds in the ground sometime in late February or early March. I cannot WAIT to have okra. That's the one I'm really pinning my hopes and dreams on this year.

I've just made a batch of meatballs for Kent and me, most of which have gone into the freezer for future spaghettis and meatball subs. I love homemade meatballs, especially since I get to make them nice and moist (a little ketchup and sour cream, yum), and I add carrots, onions, and spinach to up Kent's veggie intake. A sweet friend of ours is bringing by a couple of freezer meals today for us to have around after Dean arrives, and I think some of my mom friends in town are going to organize meal drop-offs as well. This is all very helpful, because not only did we LOVE having food brought to us last time, when our church stepped in to help with that, but also I have done very little food planning in all my nesting efforts. The extent of my food planning has been to make more room in the freezer. Winging it. I'm counting on a quicker recovery this time, based on the advice/experience of friends.

And now, more photos.

Series: Kent and the tomato cages

Biggest. Tower. EVER.

Kent sitting on a package of toilet paper, eating a strawberry. Note the nice haircut.

Sharing some Dean kicks

Project Milk

2010-01-26T21:38:00.005-05:00

I think I'm going to become a milk donor.

I get regular emails from the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee, a group charged with raising breastfeeding rates in the U.S. (which are much lower than in the rest of the developed world, just so you know), researching a wide range of issues related to breastfeeding, and generally promoting the importance of human milk. Today, they put out an urgent call for milk donation. They're partnering with other organizations like La Leche League International to send human milk to Haiti, but for now, while Haiti doesn't have the infrastructure to support international milk donation (e.g., refrigeration and reliable shipping methods), they're also hoping to build up supplies in American milk banks, which are usually woefully short of the supply that's needed for premature and sick infants unable to take formula.

I didn't know milk donation even existed when Kent was a baby, and since the composition of a mother's milk changes so much as her child grows, he was too old for me to donate by the time I learned about it. I've been thinking that I ought to look into it this time around, and several months ago, I even offered to pump extra milk for a friend of mine in town who's an adoptive parent, if they decide to adopt another baby any time soon. Still, I'd sort of been sitting on the idea, since this friend may not be adopting this year, and I hadn't done any research about milk banks or what it would take to get started as a donor. If the USBC hadn't put out this call today, I'm not sure I ever would have followed up on it. But the more I thought about it today, the more I thought, "Wow, this is something I can do to help babies in need. And I can start in just a few weeks."

As much as I talk about wanting to do volunteer work when my kids get older, I feel really inadequate right now, since being a stay-at-home mom precludes a lot of the work I would ordinarily seek out. But donating milk? It's not only something I can do while I have a baby; it's something I can do because I have a baby. That window won't be open forever. And so few women do it.

Milk donation is a huge investment of time and energy, first of all because pumping is no picnic. And this requires a lot of pumping, way more than I would need to do just to build up a supply in the freezer for the few times I need to be away from my own baby. The more I've learned today, though, the easier the whole process seems. There's a bank in Austin, TX, (the closest one to us) that will pay for the blood screenings they require, and they'll send me storage containers and a shipping cooler and pay for me to ship the milk to them on dry ice. They were thrilled to get back to me after I sent them an email this afternoon, because they have a lot of trouble keeping up with the demand out there, even in the U.S. I'm sure there aren't many women who make such a commitment; I tend to run with a very pro-breastfeeding crowd, and none of us has ever donated milk, even though some of my friends have talked about it. Knowing what I know about how few people donate blood who are able, I can't imagine what a small percentage there must be of lactating women who donate their milk.

Even though the idea of helping Haitians was the kick in the pants I needed to get started on this, I'm okay with my milk helping American babies instead, especially right now while Haiti is unable to receive it. I feel like Haitians would also probably be more receptive to the idea of wet nurses than Americans would, so I hope that's an option right now while so many babies are left needing human milk.

This bank requires a large initial donation — 200 ounces for the first shipment I send them — since it costs a lot for them to get a donor set up and I'm sure they want to make sure I'm serious. Other banks have minimums as low as 100 ounces, which would take much less time to build up, but it just depends on their individual requirements. They do have a lower minimum for people who are able to drop off their donations in person, but since Louisiana doesn't have a bank, this is what I'm going to do. I'm sure it'll take me a couple of months and some borrowed freezer space at friends' houses to build up 200 ounces, but at least my subsequent donations can be smaller.

On a related note, I've also been hearing from a friend of mine about an organization called Milkshare that a lot of people go through. Unlike a milk bank, which combines donations from a lot of women, pasteurizes their milk in large batches, and distributes it to hospitals and families (who usually have to pay per ounce to cover costs), Milkshare facilitates something a little more personal, sort of like an open adoption. It helps individual donors and families find and select each other, and then it's up to them to work out what sort of health screenings the donor will undergo and to make shipping/reimbursement arrangements, and pasteurization is something that's left up to the receiving family. Apparently there are home pasteurization kits. Who knew? Well, Pasteur knew... but I didn't.

So this is quite a project, eh? I'm thinking of it the way I would think of any new volunteering or community service project. I might make myself a sticker chart — after all, stickers do wonders for Kent's motivation to use the potty, so maybe they work on moms as well. I'm so excited about this and can't wait for the screening call from Austin to make sure I'm eligible. If anyone else wants to join Project Milk, let me know. I'm not expecting a response, really, but it doesn't hurt to put the information out there, start the conversation, and see where it travels.

The garden: year 2

2010-01-25T14:14:00.004-05:00

I'm scheming about our vegetable/herb garden already. We've been having warm, sunny days lately, so even though it's only January and we're not past the danger of frost yet, I'm ready to get started. The raised bed had been completely overgrown this fall, and then when it was so cold in December, everything turned brown or grey and died except for two red peppers that were overrun with bugs by the time I noticed them. After taking a good look at the bed on Saturday morning and tugging on a couple of dead vines, I decided that Kent and I could clear it out pretty easily while Jack had some rest and study time, so we started pulling vines and piling them in our yard waste bin (an old trash can, which just makes it easier to drag stuff to our compost pile). Kent had a wonderful time tossing sticks and vines into the bin, and then he started playing with our sad, bent tomato cages (way too small for the plants we ended up producing). He lined them up and rearranged them in various ways while I finished the last of the pulling. The dirt underneath all of the dead vines is in great shape — dark and rich with lots of happy bugs in it — so we shouldn't need to buy too much soil or dig through our compost heap to find what little bit of compost might be in there.

After chatting with my grandmother yesterday about various options, I decided to go check out the seed packets at Lowe's and get some ideas of what to grow. I'm going a step further than last year, attempting to start everything from seed instead of waiting to see what plants I can find at the market or gardening stores. I feel like I have a lot more choices this way, and I'm excited to start the process earlier and have more ownership over the whole thing. Plus, if I fail miserably and nothing comes up, I'll still have plenty of time to buy plants and get them into the ground. Now, I just need to find a spot in my house where I can start the seeds that need to start inside. Hmm.

Tomatoes are a definite yes, probably 2 or 3 hybrid varieties, since our hybrids did well last year but the Brandywine plant (an heirloom variety I was really excited about) got some sort of horrid disease last year and we were never able to eat a single one. The onions never grew very well, I'm lukewarm on bell peppers, and I'm not interested in doing eggplant again even though it grew well last year. It's just so hard for me to get excited about *that* much eggplant. But what can I get excited about, day after day, week after week? Okra. I'm 100% sold on trying okra this year. Green beans are also high on my list, and my grandmother suggested the little French beans because their vines don't get as unruly as the regular large beans. I was briefly tempted by the packet of sugar snap peas I saw at Lowe's today, but then I read on the back that they're sensitive to heat. Ha. I think I'll skip those.

I'd love to have dill and cilantro, but they were so hard to keep alive last year that I think I'll just buy those fresh from the market like usual. The dill got fried and turned brown pretty quickly when the summer hit, and once the cilantro started producing flowers, I couldn't get it to make any more leaves no matter how much I trimmed it back. I have no patience for fussy plants. The basil and Italian parsley grew like rock stars last year, so I will happily invite them back, and I may try mint again, too. It's probably just as well that I keep the herb selection low so that I have more space for veggies.

I'm waiting until the weekend to get seeds, soil, and tiny cardboard planting grids that I can just break apart and put into the ground after the seeds germinate, but I couldn't resist getting Kent a couple of $1 Dixie cup gardens to get started today. He grew an awesome sunflower last year, and once it started dropping seeds late in the season, we gathered several of them in hopes of growing more this year from his original plant. The company that makes these little Dixie cups with seeds and a dirt pod also has watermelons and pumpkins, so even though it seems almost ridiculous to have either of those growing in our yard, we're going for it.

Since I won't be smacked over the head by first trimester nonsense this summer, I hope I'll stay more motivated and involved with the garden and all the veggies it produces than I was last year. I have images of my two boys digging around in the dirt year after year as our family learns more about gardening and we expand our efforts, and they're nice images. Dean will probably lie on a blanket or hang out in a carrier strapped to my chest for his first gardening summer, but next year, when he's toddling around, I expect him to be throwing himself headlong into the whole project. And Kent, of course, will be a master by then.

The mochaliciousness

2010-01-22T17:58:00.006-05:00

Some of my friends from my parenting group are getting together on February 12 for a cupcake party. Since I don't know whether I'll actually be able to attend, depending on the status of my uterus and heretofore unborn child, I'm thinking of this particular party as my consolation prize in case I do go a week past my due date. In any case, I want to bring mocha cupcakes, but I needed to do a test batch, mostly because I had cupcakes on the brain and didn't want to wait three weeks to eat them.

I crack myself up when I decide to bake a whole batch of something, then start looking around to figure out who's going to help us eat it. Some of these cupcakes are going to friends tomorrow, and the plate of mini cupcakes in the photo are going to church on Sunday. Various people at church will occasionally bring a plate of muffins, banana bread, a coffee cake, etc., for people to munch on with their coffee before or after the service, so I'll just add my little Mardi Gras cupcakes to that table and see what happens. I'm pretty sure I'll be taking home an empty plate.

Here are the recipes I used:

Black Cake (from Nina Tedder, a family friend)

2 sticks softened butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups flour
1 cup warm coffee
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat until combined. Add cocoa and baking soda, beat, then add some of the flour and beat well. Add coffee, remaining flour, vanilla, and salt, and beat until all ingredients are combined, scraping sides of bowl if necessary. Bake in pans or muffin tins at 350 F until done (depends on size of pans/muffins-- be sure to test with a toothpick).

[This cake recipe is for 2 layers or 1 sheet cake, but it ended up making 12 regular cupcakes and a whole bunch of mini cupcakes, since I wanted some of both. The regular cupcakes took about 15 minutes, the minis about 10, though you should probably just check them with a toothpick anyway.]

Mocha Icing (from The Joy of Cooking)

1/4 to 1/2 cup softened butter (I used 1/4 cup)
1 2/3 cups powdered sugar
1 to 2 Tbsp cocoa
1/8 tsp salt
3 Tbsp strong hot coffee
1 tsp vanilla, almond flavoring, or rum (I used vanilla)

Beat butter until smooth. Add powdered sugar and cocoa gradually, blending until creamy. Add salt and coffee, beat for 2 minutes. When icing is cool, add vanilla, beat until blended. Let stand for 5 minutes, then beat again and spread on cake or cupcakes. Makes about 1 cup (which was enough to frost a whole batch of cupcakes).

[The icing ends up hardening after it sits, so it's best to frost the cupcakes and do any decorating right away. I'll have to remember this for our cupcake party, because we were going to let the kids decorate some, but that may not work so well on crusty icing. Maybe I'll bring the icing in a sealed container and frost them right before we let the kids do their thing with the sprinkles and the jelly beans and such.]

So far, these have been approved by everyone who has tried them. Kent would like another one, no matter how many he's already had.