The Boy Can Eat

Last week, after Auric's belated 6-month check-up, we finally introduced him to food in solid form. What excitement! He was giddy, and seemed to think that the whole thing was hilarious and wonderful.

He got 3 days of just rice cereal mixed with breast milk. And the boy can eat! Late last week, I pulled some frozen containers of homemade pureed butternut squash from the freezer, labeled 12/08. Ahh, the memories of my baby food assembly line. He has taken to that as well. For the last few days, I've been feeding him twice-daily meals of about half a container of butternut squash and then mixing up rice cereal with the pumped milk until he seems full. However, I've been depleting my supply of pumped milk that I need for bottle feeding prior to his bath at night. So this morning I tested his tolerance for rice cereal mixed with water. And it worked. Pumped milk saved! Also, since the squash has a thin consistency, I thickened it with the rice cereal, and that was what he seemed to like the best.

We have the workings of a routine. He's been waking at 5 or 5:30 am, I nurse him and play with him for awhile. Then, if I can keep him up until his sister wakes up some time around 7, then I try to have us all at the table together, eating our breakfast. Then it's off to school with Thora. At night, I try to get the same family dinner experience again.

However, all this takes brain power (something that is running low in the wee hours of the morning and then again after a long day) and tons of preparation. (What feels like "tons of preparation" is really just being home at the right time, and having pulled a couple items from the fridge so they're room temperature. Not much, but I'm easily overwhelmed.) I feel less like a mom who is on top of things, and more like a frazzled lady in a game show where I'm supposed to hold a baby on one hip, talk through negotiations with a almost-tantruming toddler, while preparing a dinner for two with one arm. Picture inefficient trips from cabinets and drawers to table, a blur between fridge, microwave, and oven, all while jiggling the hungry boy and negotiating the toddler away from the edge of a tantrum.

It's not pretty. But it gets done.

Thora's Current Favorite Books

These are the books that Thora goes to again and again. In order of my preference:

Lemony Snicket's The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming. This is very funny, but she rarely lets me read it. It's her go-to book when she's reading to her brother, probably because she feels it gives her license to scream. (Not a traditional picture book.)

Amy MacDonald's Little Beaver and The Echo. This is a very sweet book, a nice one to read aloud.

Cressida Cowell's That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown. I love books that show girls doing all sorts of imaginary play. Emily Brown takes her rabbit, Stanley, on adventures in the rain forest, in outer space, deep sea diving along the Great Barrier Reef, etc. Another funny book with a sweet ending.

Anna McQuinn's, If You're Happy and You Know It. This has fun, quirky illustrations and a nice, multicultural message.

Helen Cooper's Tatty Ratty. This isn't my favorite of Cooper's. I like almost everything we find of hers, particularly Pumpkin Soup, and the first one we ever encountered, The Boy Who Wouldn't Go to Bed. However, of the books we have on loan from the library, this is our only Cooper book. And as expected, the surprising layout and illustrations make the read dynamic. Also a cute story, with the added bonus that it gives parents an idea of how to remedy the dreaded situation of a lost "lovie."

And lastly, Goldilicious, by Victoria Kann. I have to say that I won't be sad to return this one to the library. And of course, since it's a book about a girl named Pinkalicious, Thora loves it. My initial dislike of it has to do with personal taste: everything is pink! And she only does girly things, like dress her unicorn for a fancy-dress ball, practice her ballet, and have a tea party. Again, nothing inherently wrong with these activities--just not my idea of fun. And while I'm not a fan of pink and drowning little girls in all things pink/purple, the reason for my dislike of this book has more to do with what seems like lazy writing. The story line is disjointed at times (even moreso than what I think is the intentional mimicry of a girl's unbridled imagination). And I find the dialogue frustratingly laid out, so that it took me several reads to be able to anticipate and appropriately attribute dialogue.

Thora at 2 years and 10 months

There are some things that I want to put down for posterity, some things that I don't want to forget.

Right now, Thora calls Sean, Sean. She doesn't call him Daddy nor Daddy Sean as she sometimes did. Now it's exclusively Sean. We are not encouraging this, while at the same time not trying to make too big of a deal out of it. Surely this is a phase she'll grow out of. When asked why she calls him Sean, she said, "That's his name."

She sometimes mimics me to such a degree that if I didn't know better, I would call it sarcasm. If you don't believe me, check out this video.

Her language is just out of control. And by that, I mean I feel like it's totally her own now. Granted, her phrases are mirrors of our own. But gone are the days of the mispronunciations that last weeks and weeks. She tries on new, grown-up words, and it sounds funny initially. But within a day, or an hour, she owns that phrase. It's hers. And with it, she's grown up just a little bit more.

She says everything back to us, copies (particularly my) speech patterns. Like last night, she said, "You know what made me laugh? Daddy's joke made me laugh." The pattern is what stuck out to me, rather than the content of that particular statement, since she's plucked this directly from my mouth, (e.g.) "You know what makes me frustrated? You rolling around on the ground and screaming makes me frustrated."

More to come later. Auric is stirring.

New Favorite Pizza Place

We ordered a pizza from Zing Pizza tonight. And it was a smashing success. They offer four pizzas at any given time. Tonight we got half cheese (the John Dough) and the other half the Blue October. And it was wonderful!

First of all, it totally delicious. The Blue October was an amazing combination of fresh ingredients while still tasting like pizza. I will be sad to see this one inevitably rotate off their menu.

The pizza comes in a rectangular shape roughly 1 foot by 2 feet. The price struck me as a bit steep, but since we usually order Upper Crust for our "fancy" pizza, I took it as par for the course in Cambridge for gourmet pizza. However, what you get is practically the equivalent to 2 thin crust pizzas. So the $19 that it cost to have it delivered (including the $2 delivery fee but not including tip) seems very reasonable.

I also am a fan of thin crust pizza that isn't droopy, since I want to be able to put a slice of pizza in front of my 2 year old and watch her eat it. I don't want to have to feed it to her because her small hands can't keep it from collapsing all over the front of her, or worse, the floor or carpet or furniture which is often where the pizza gets eaten when we're in a "pizza party" frame of mind. And I don't want to have to cut it up into pieces. I just want to hand her a piece of pizza and not watch her struggle. And not only did she handle the pizza like a pro, she couldn't get enough. Literally, after our friends left, I kept nibbling on a small wedge here and a left-over square there and each time she would spot me in the midst of my first bite and commandeer the slice. I was very happy to see her eat so much.

And last but not least, I LOVE their eco-friendly practices. They use organic and local ingredients whenever possible and compost all of their waste.

So Zing has done right by me and has replaced Upper Crust as our "go to" fancy pizza place. Visiting friends and family will no doubt benefit greatly from this discovery.

Auric at 3 months

Check out my little green sweet pea! Auric turned 3 months old on Wednesday. It is a joy to watch him develop and become more engaged and engaging. His smile is so infectious. And he seems like such an easy-going baby that sometimes I can lure him out of fussiness crying just by smiling and making faces at him.

A memory I want to savor so I'll record it here: the other night, I was rocking him in my arms, lulling him to sleep before putting him in his bed. His eyes were heavy, the lids falling, lifting, then falling again. He was sucking on his orange pacifier. His face mostly buried in the crook of my elbow. Then, as if to take in his surroundings, he opens his eyes, focuses in on my face, gives me a big, tired smile that threatens to send the pacifier to the floor, and then puts his head back into my arm and closes his eyes. Within a minute or so I had him in his bed and was tip-toeing out of our room. The moment was surprising and wonderful, as if he were giving me an baby-equivalent to a good night kiss. Awww. I could eat him up sometimes!

Auric Wears First Cloth Diaper

Incredibly, Auric and Thora are both wearing cloth diapers. I mean the exact same ones! These Knicker Nappies One Size Diapers are great! Here, Auric is wearing his snapped to the smallest size. (He's about 10 or 11 lbs right now. When Thora wears it, she has it on the largest setting. She's around 36 lbs.) You can find them online, but for those of you near Somerville who want to save on shipping costs, you can get them at the cloth diapering store, Diaper Lab. We recently made the trip to Diaper Lab when we ran out of these Imse Vimse Flushable Liners. I was excited to visit this store for the first time and am looking forward to using them for our future diapering needs. They also carry these Kissaluvs cloth wipes which we recently got to add to our cloth wipes collection. They work really well, are a great size and thickness, and I love the smooth side for Auric's newborn skin.

Farmer's Market Bounty: Candied Squash Seeds

There have been so many squashes in our house over the last several weeks and I'm glad of it, since it means I got the excuse to try these candied pumpkin seeds. They taste delicious! However... I made some significant adjustments to the recipe since I had trouble with them being too chewy.

The first thing I did was boil the cleaned seeds in unsalted water for at least 10 minutes. Then I followed the recipe, cooking the spices together with the butter and sugar in a sauce pan and then adding the drained seeds. But for some reason the mixture was just all too runny. After letting them simmer for a long time in hopes that the candy sauce would cook down to a thicker consistency, I gave up, took them off the heat and then spread the gooey seeds onto a sheet of wax paper, in hopes that the mixture would dry out. No luck. So then I sprayed some non-stick spray onto a cookie sheet and roasted them in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes--after 5 minutes, I kept a very close eye. And that did the trick! They were clumped together in chip-sized bites. They were crunchy and not chewy. And they didn't last long, a sad detail considering how long it took me to get the seeds clean. If I could find an easy way to clean all the seeds we ultimately compost, I would make these all the time. Sadly, I think it will be awhile before I build up the endurance to make these again. Even if I don't make candied squash seed right away, I have to admit that my immediate response to the final product was that I wanted to candy everything in the house, in particular, I wanted to abscond with all of the nuts that Sean uses for his various healthy snacks (his homemade power bars, and his muesli cereal) and candy them all! Sadly, he didn't agree with this plan.

Farmer's Market Bounty: Broccoli Pesto

While not a terribly camera-friendly presentation here, I'm very happy with this result. Super easy, and well-timed. Last Monday was our final Farmer's Market and our favorite veggie and fruit farmer had a great deal on broccoli: buy 2 pounds and get 1 pound free. So I had tons of broccoli to use.

We're big fans of broccoli in our house. We regularly steam it up and spritz with "I Can't Believe it's not Butter" spray and salt, pepper, and garlic powder. (This is our very basic, quick and easy way of getting lots of veggies on our table.) My favorite method of cooking broccoli is Ellie Krieger's recipe for "dirty broccoli," which is basically cooked broccoli tossed with sauteed garlic and breadcrumbs. Awesome!




Anyway, for this broccoli pesto, I treated it just as I would regular pesto, just substituting broccoli for basil. I steamed up quite a bit of broccoli (about 3 small heads) and then put it in our food processor.








I put in 5 or so cloves of raw garlic, about 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese, about 1/4 cup of pan-toasted pine nuts (just what I had on hand), and blended away. As I blended, I slowly added about 1/4 cup or so of olive oil, after which point I added some of the reserved water that I used to steam the broccoli to give it a bit thinner texture. (Of course, I could've just added more olive oil, but I was trying to keep the fat content under control.) Then I added salt and pepper to taste. It's still a smidge on the thick side. I've since portioned it out and frozen it in 1/2 cup servings to be used to mix with a box of cooked pasta down the road. It will likely need a touch of olive oil or pasta water to thin it back out when it's mixed with the pasta.

It went really well with large batch of pasta salad, which was inspired by our friend, Kathleen's, recipe. She cooked it for us after Auric was born and it was great to have on hand for dinners or cold lunches. I added some of the broccoli pesto to cooked pasta, then added steamed broccoli, chopped oven-dried tomatoes that I store in herbed olive oil, cooked chicken breasts, salt and pepper. Very tasty and Thora-friendly!

Container Garden 2009 Re-Cap

I cleared out the container garden a few weekends ago, snipping and yardwaste-binning the spent or unusable plants from this summer's garden. I'm very glad that I did the garden. In addition to the somewhat measely output, I'm glad for the memories that we shared around the garden.

Harvesting a single strawberry per night and splitting it three ways. Thora turning the bottom of her shirt into a harvesting basket to collect the snips of herbs or cherry tomatoes for our salads. Teaching Thora to gently pinch the herbs to release the aromatic oils of the plant and then smelling her fingers. Watching her explain to her dad which one is the rosemary, which one is the pepper, etc., and pointing out the budding fruit. Teaching her the patience that gardening demands.

I will do it again next year but with a few adjustments.

* One of the best performers were the yellow gooseberry tomatoes, despite the fact that the weather and blight combined to thwart the tomato production. And frustratingly, just as the sun was getting weaker and weaker as we moved through September, my gooseberry plant seemed to shift into overdrive. I had dozens of branches weighted heavy with a handfulls of large, green tomatoes. But they just couldn't ripen. That was a shame. But I'll definitely plant these again next year. The Brandywines were attacked by the blight, I think. I didn't get a single usable tomato from 4 plants. That was a disappointment.

* I only got a few peppers but will likely try those again. However, I doubt I will bother with eggplants or zuchinni, both of which failed to give me a single vegetable. Again, I'm not sure how much of this is due to the strange weather (a very rainy June and a short, hot, summer). As I get more experienced, I will happily take on more of our family's food production in the form of a garden. But while I improve my gardening skills, I'm happy to let the local farmers do the squash and large veggie growing for us.

* The herbs were far and away the easiest and most prolific plants that I grew. The basil just flourished and gave me a lot at the end to make a good amount of pesto. We've got dried rosemary, thyme, sage, and oregano coming out of our ears, which is a good thing. I'm very happy about my experience with the herbs and will add those to next year's garden.

* While the strawberries weren't abundant, they were fun. I'll likely get another strawberry plant again next year, especially since it was the most rewarding one to harvest for our toddler.

* Lastly, I'd like to do more to mix in flowers to the garden and incorporate plant stands for some of the plants in an effort to design a more visually-pleasing layout.

And we're back

I hate that it's been ages since my last post. Life got a little unexpectedly... well, life-like: vivid, breathless, chaotic, when this little guy, Auric, showed up almost 6 weeks early:

Here he is at 5 weeks.

He's 11+ weeks now and wonderful. With the sleepless nights hopefully becoming less so, and our toddler transitioning slowly to life with a little brother, I hope to begin to posting with more regularity.

Overall, life is hard but good. Our boy, seems to be the calm to his sister's storm... at least for now. He's smiley and coy-seeming, fascinated, and above all, so lovable.

Lots more to come.