My house is a pigsty right now, so in the interest of time, this post will have no pictures. I’ll just record my temperature for a quick second before I board a plane tomorrow and head to New York to meet the woman of my dreams, Martha Stewart.
Here’s my temperature: I am excited! Grateful! …and a little stressed out. I know I just complained about how I can never get away from my girls, but I don’t know how I’ll handle being away for days. I already miss them.
So a quick update on today, because I feel committed (at least for now) to recording these precious days of life.
Lydia had her preschool in the morning, during which I took Mary to do some visiting teaching. One of the ladies I visit teach has a wonderful garden, and she loaded me up with goodies–including a gorgeous, big pumpkin!
Then I fed the girls as fast as possible and put them down for quiet time/naps so I could lie down and waste time online before a babysitting marathon. One of my friends has a son who needed to have surgery today, so she dropped off her two kids for the afternoon. They were little angels, and I have photos on my camera that I wish I had energy to share here.
Then I ran out the door to do some Bikram Yoga, after which I had an awesome conversation with my Sunday School teacher/ yoga buddy. She introduced me to the concept of meditation, and I am so excited to start the practice. She told me that meditation can help clear negativity from the mind so that all that’s left is compassion and love. I want a mind like that!!
Then my friend, Candice, came over to say good-bye because, sniffle, she is moving to Saint George. I detained her way too long because a) I will miss her a lot and b) so she could act as my fashion consultant regarding what to wear when I meet Martha. (One of the things that makes Candice special is that she always looks like she walked out of an Anthropologie catalogue, and she pulls that off even as the mother of the most energetic–sweet!!–two year old on the planet. People like me need people like her in their lives.)
And now it is time to clean the, um, entire house. Can I please eat another cookie first?
I did not post anything yesterday because, honestly, I was feeling too low. I felt trapped by the fact the only way I can get away from my (darling) daughters is to have someone (usually Abe or my mom) do me the favor of watching them. I mean, I love spending time with them and I would not want to ever HAVE to leave my children to go to work, but sometimes the around-the-clock mommy thing gets a little tiring. Happily, Abe and my mom are always, always happy to help in any way. The result is I can actually get away almost anytime I want or need, but still…I hate having to be so dependent. I intensely dislike having to be the recipient of service.
Also, Mary is almost one and I am still at least (depending on how you calculate) twenty pounds overweight. (This despite the fact I have gone MONTHS at a time without a single sugary treat, worked out multiple times a week–many weeks–on very few hours of sleep, and I cook relatively healthy food with equally relative regularity. Is life super unfair or what?)
To top it all off, yesterday I finished reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist. By the closing sentences, wherein the reader is left with a sense of impending doom offset by only the faintest of hope glimmers, I was done. Not only does my emotional landscape look bleak, but the world is a wreck too. Where’s my bed?
Thankfully, Abe gave me a blessing this morning. It literally felt like someone extended a hand and brought me out of the dark into the light. When he started pronouncing the blessing, I was practically catatonic, but by the end (it was the looooongest blessing I have EVER had in my life), I felt full of light and thankful for my life. I had a great day, and every time I did an internal scan to see how my heart was feeling, I came to the same conclusion: I felt happy!
Since I was so stressed out yesterday, I kind of lost my mind and cooked meat for the first time in two years. (I have a weakness for lamb.) I also made plum/apple/thyme turnovers because I am crazy. Mary basically cried any time I put her down, and if you know how puff pastry works, you know that to make these suckers I had to put her down. I repeat, I am/the process of making these was crazy.
In case you’re interested in making a prettier version of these, I got the recipe for these here:
When I thought Mary’s crying was going to drive me out of my mind, I said a quick prayer for help. Seconds later Lydia went over to Mary and said, “Here, sweetheart. Do you want to play with these toys?” And she calmed Mary down. It was a small miracle.Abe came home and wrestled with the girls outside. I was too busy moping inside to join them, but watching this through the window made me feel at least one small twinge of happiness.
So enough whining about yesterday! Today Misty called to tell me she was going to Costco and kindly invited me to come. She even waited an extra hour so Mary could wake up and come too (even though I am sure this compromised Sophia’s nap). Did I mention how much I love Misty? Also, she completed a sprint triathlon this weekend, and it feels to me like she JUST gave birth to little Max. (She placed 4th in her age group.) I told you she was cool.
Here are Lydia and Sophia goofing around in Costco.Here is Mary having a bad hair day at Costco.
After Costco, I pumped Mary full of Tylenol and put her down for a nap. It worked. My awesome visiting teacher, Erika Bowen, came over with her two kids, and Mary slept through the entire visit. I should have taken pictures because Erika’s kids are a.dor.a.ble., but I was having so much fun chatting with Erika that I completely forgot.
When Erika left, Lydia and I stayed on the front lawn and raced each other (at times, I sat on the stoop and convinced Lydia to race, um, the clock) until Mary woke up. At which time, I fed Mary dinner #1. Then I cooked our real dinner, fed everyone again, and hightailed it to DSW for some stuff I need for my Martha Stewart trip this weekend. (I know. I am ridiculous for complaining about anything ever at all. My life is actually perfect and I am just a whiner.)
We match! Abe said Mary should have worn ALL black, though. She was waaaay too sad today to be wearing yellow, although she loves the camera and mustered a smile for it in spite of herself.
Here is Mary trying to pretend that she was happy all day. Here is me having a bad hair day.Okay, okay. I know how I complained about how unfair it is that I am still 20 lbs overweight, but maybe it’s not that unfair. On the left you will see some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies I made today, and on the right you will see some chocolate cookies Erika brought me. At this moment, wherein I am full of cookies, I truly intend to give the rest away. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Abe took this while I was out shopping tonight.He also took this one; I assume he took it because he thinks it’s funny that Lydia cuddles with her books at night?And in case she gets too lonely, this is her emergency stash. (Actually, we just have not thought of a better place to store our library books.)
Not much happened today. We went to church, played with our kids, ate food, and, right when I was about to consign the day to oblivion (even thought that exact thought as I glanced at my camera and decided NOT to bring it with me to the park), a memorable thing happened.
At the park, the wind was whipping up a storm. Abe jogged Lydia over to a family flying kites, and out of the blue they let Lydia fly a kite! For the next thirty minutes, Lydia held tight and stared wide-eyed at her big kite aloft in the sky. A grinning Mary even held out her hand and grabbed the string. It was magical, memorable, and…not photographed.
Oh, well. Before I lost steam, I did take some other pictures during our lazy day.
Mary was excited to eat breakfast.Abe does not often prepare the girls food, and so he overdid it a little on the portion size of Lydia’s after-church snack.Mary and I are, um, tight. Here she is throwing herself on the ground and crying because I am ten whole feet away.
Better now! She made Mama so proud today.And she knew it.
Abe’s original joke of the day: “What did the chef say who was cutting fruit? ‘I’m Cuban.’ ” (That is a delicious yellow watermelon he “cubed.”)Chard, eggplant and tomato lasagne. Cooking the tomatoes yesterday turned out to be the right thing to do.Mary’s appetite has stayed strong since yesterday evening. Hooray! Here she is eating watermelon after consuming an adult size portion of lasagne.We got a lot of mileage out of these glasses today.Right before bath time. See what I mean?
Abe was a gem of a husband and let me lie in bed until 9:30 this morning. I feel: happy! energetic! in love with my husband, my children, and life! What a difference sleep makes!
As a result of my sky-high mood, I dragged my husband and kids all around today. They are all pooped, and I feel like I could yet clean, read a book, bake a plum cake, and, of course, blog. In the interest of my exhausted husband’s bedtime, though, I will probably just blog and clean (the kitchen).
So after I got out of bed, we went for a long walk/run to City Creek Canyon.
Right before we loaded the kids in the jogger. They spent the better part of the day in their jammies.Right before this picture, a bunch of joggers/dog owners/bikers swarmed past, and Abe observed that they all smiled at the children. He then remarked how children generate so many smiles in the world simply by being children. So true.I LOVE the sunflowers along the road to the canyon. I took a picture of the flowers with the state capitol in the background. Of course, my limited photography skills and the phone camera do not convey the prettiness of the tangled, leggy flower stems, the breeze, the sunshine, and the happy yellow petals.
We then walked to the yard sale of our friends, Joe, Candice and Cole. They are moving to Saint George, and we will miss them so much! On a happy note, though, the weather was PERFECT for a yard sale. Lydia loved seeing Cole, and she even got to use his potty. =)
We then went home and I improvised lunch. Yesterday I just happened to have roasted a spaghetti squash and made pesto with the sincere intent to give it all away, but I never got around to giving anything away. Today we became hungry ones in need of lunch, and so yesterday’s good intentions flew out the window.
Spaghetti squash with pesto I made yesterday (with one hand! Mary, I think I mentioned, is going through a don’t-put-me-down stage. I felt very self-satisfied after managing to wrangle the skins off the garlic cloves–single handed, without a knife.)
Then we put down the girls and I took off for my happy place, the farmer’s market. When we first came to Salt Lake, I disliked how big the market here is. Back in Hyde Park, we had a small market and I knew where to go for what. However, I have stopped moping about what I miss and instead have started to embrace what is here. The variety turns out to be quite welcome, and the bounty of September produce makes me happy to be an eater of food.
I bought a ton of exquisite little tomatoes from the market today, only to discover the eggplant chard lasagne I wanted to make called for fresh tomato sauce. It felt wrong, but I cooked them for ten minutes like the recipe said. We’ll see if this was the world’s worst mistake or not.
And then the pictures stop. After the market, we cleaned the house while the kids napped. I also got a head start cooking a lot of that farmer’s market produce. Then we packed up our children and headed for the pool at a nearby community center. We spent an hour there, and (I kid you not) Abe spent most of that time bribing Lydia to go down the big slide with him. This tentative little soul (she takes after me) wouldn’t budge until finally we announced it was time to go. She had a choice: either slide down the big slide with Abe and earn a trip to Coldstone, or get out of the pool and go shower. Guess what she chose?
We then used a Groupon to eat dinner at a Sushi restaurant on State Street. Remember how Mary is teething and super duper picky right now? Well, it turns out she loves Japanese food. She could not get enough of everything, and I was so relieved to see her finally eat something. The service was so fast (appreciated when you have hungry children in tow) and the food was delicious. Oh, and Lydia is better at using chopsticks than I am. I don’t know how that happened. She referred to them as “my chop.”
Then it was off to Coldstone. I distinctly recall days in my former life when I felt torn between my love of Coldstone’s birthday cake remix and my desire to reduce caloric intake. On those such days, I would do the following: drive to Coldstone, eat a sizable serving of birthday cake remix, and then eat nothing else until the next day. Such a day was not today.
Then home, and guess what?!! I think I might have time yet to read a chapter in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a book I checked out at the library a couple days ago. If so, I am so excited. I’ve sneaked reading the first chapter, and I am hooked!
Here’s how quiet time goes at our house: I shut Lydia in her room and do not go to her–unless there’s a major problem–until Mary wakes up. Usually, Mary’s nap is one or two hours. During that time, Lydia plays, sings, hoots and hollers (joyfully) and, on very rare occasions, she will call for me to help her with a puzzle. (I never respond. Guilt inevitably abounds.) Sometimes she will also tuck herself neatly in bed and take a nap.
The result is, Lydia can be very independent when she chooses to be. Today, for example, she awoke from her nap with a nosebleed, but since she also needed to pee, she immediately peed in her potty (while bleeding) and then used up all the tissues in her room in an attempt to clean her nose. After she had exhausted the tissue box, she politely knocked on the door and asked for some help. Love/guilt/delight swelled up in my heart when I saw how hard she had worked to take care of her own mess. Sweet, conscienscious thing.
Abe has been out of town and came home early today–at 11am. He was in time to help out with the play date we had this morning, and having him around made the whole day feel like Saturday. To top it off, we ended the day with a walk/jog around the canyon and a temple trip to do initiatories–two activities that we normally do on Saturdays. I feel happy (and thankful to Suzanne, Abe’s stepmom, who made our temple date possible!).
Also, I took at least fifty pictures today. The following may seem like a lot, but consider yourself spared.
Couldn’t practice Lydia’s waterfall braids without the help of Dora the Explorer…Espen and Lydia water coloring. Lydia, of course, drank the water color water.Playing cars with Espen and our new friends, the Skardas.Lydia and Espen lounging on the lawn together. Could this be a shot on a college green? I think so.Mary was sad again today. This is what she did anytime I put her down for longer than…30 seconds? Her cry is so funny. She says “Ay-yi-yi-yi” over and over. That’s the Filipino in her.Lydia tried on Abe’s shoes.We spent a lot of time outside today. This was in the evening while we ate “dinner” (corn, string cheese, a banana and an apple) on the lawn.Lydia tried to pour water from this watering can on the ground. When I told her there was no water in it, she civilly asked me to please stop talking. She then proceeded to tell me not to come with her to her chalk (where she tried again to pour water out of the empty watering can).She drew the blue “smiley face” all by herself. Good job, Lydia!Did you know rose bushes bloom both at the beginning AND at the end of summer? I had no idea. Maybe these bushes are just super special, but they surprise and delight me every day we go outside.More roses, because I love them (and did not take enough pictures today, obviously).
So Lydia woke up at 5am screaming that she had peed in the bed, but it turned out to be a nightmare. I do not know what we did to instill such a fear of bed wetting in her, but it’s to the point where I feel sorry for the poor little thing. Since Abe is gone and I wanted a cuddle buddy anyway, I took the risk and brought Lydia into bed with me. She did great! No accidents and lots of cuddles. Fun, fun for everyone (but only sleep for Lydia. Sigh.)
And then our day started. It went as follows:
Drive randomly around Salt Lake’s Marmalade district for long time because I could not make up my mind about whether to go to Misty’s house or take the girls shopping. This neighborhood is so pretty, and the roads are steep and twisty. I got lost, took pictures of cute streets, and decided to head to Misty’s.
Awesome play date with Misty, Sophia and Max. We ended on this high point: Misty and I walked in on Sophia and Lydia, who had both shed their undies during a potty marathon and were playing in Sophia’s room stark naked from the waste down. Lydia threw a fit when I forced her to put her undies and skirt back on.
Against my better judgment, I took the girls to Old Navy without feeding them lunch first. It was already noon. It went surprisingly well, although if you had asked me in the moment, I would have told you otherwise. (Lydia ran around sporadically pulling things off the shelves and stuffing things into a Halloween bag. After hissing a million empty threats at her, I gave in and let her do whatever she wanted so I could try to concentrate. Yes, I am that mom who can not control her child. Sorry, world.)
Lunch and a truncated nap/quiet time. During her quiet time, Lydia climbed on top of a bunch of boxes and fell over. She was, understandably, traumatized. But her trauma woke Mary, and all was lost in the nap department.
So I packed the girls up and headed to the library. We checked out DVDs and books for the girls, and even some books for me. Who knows if I’ll get to read them; about six months ago I announced to anyone who cared to listen that I’d given up reading because it felt like an incompatible hobby with motherhood, but I just. can’t. do. that. I need a plane of mental engagement higher than my kitchen floor.
We headed over to Temple Square to work in some religious education. The only way I could convince Lydia to leave was to tell her that we needed to rescue our car from the Big, Baaaad, Parking Police. She eventually complied, but not before almost hurling herself into City Creek.
Dinner, baths, clean-up, reading, bed. Then the obligatory post-bedtime house clean-up. Now blog time and waste-time-on-internet time (and maybe reading time!!!!). Whenever there’s a day like today wherein the girls skipped naps, I do stupid things like stay up until 1am just because it’s quiet, I kind of love the quiet, and…I can. I hope I make smarter choices tonight.
So for the photos. There were a LOT today!!
Getting lost on Apricot Avenue. The picture does not begin to do the pleasure justice.Um. Cuteness.Misty and Max. Can you even handle them?I, for one, can not. I am kind of in love with Max. Not only is he (see picture!!!!) absolutely adorable, but he is the sweetest thing. I hope Mary marries him someday. Also, Misty made that hat.Misty’s inspiring Menu chalkboard. Or in other words, “Ode to a Good Mom.”At the check-out in Old Navy, I turned around to see Lydia hugging and holding hands with the mannikins.On the way back from the library. I parked far away because 1) it was free and 2) the weather was gorgeous, and I want to make the most of this beautiful blip before winter.Lydia watching a temple bride. A great teaching moment.Applesauce break at the temple.As I turned my back to ask some people to take this photo, Lydia ran for the fountain and almost dove in head first. We look so calm in the picture, though, don’t we? HA!I hope the girls had a spiritual experience here.The last moments of our outing. Aren’t you scared Lydia is going to clamber OVER the rock and fall in? I was.
Today was Lydia’s first day of “joy school,” a preschool co-op with some moms in my ward. Some moms conceived the idea while we were out of town, and the minute I heard about it I begged to join. They graciously let me.
It was a glorious day, and since we were only going a couple blocks, I took the girls in the “buddy bubble” (i.e., the double jogger). A lovely walk, and a great way to start a day–even though I started on approximately five hours of sleep. (Poor Mary is really struggling this week.)
Cute kids eating snacks before the lesson (this week on circles and the letter “C”).
Afterwards, we had a lovely walk back and played with chalk a bit before coming inside for lunch. I put the girls down for quiet time and naps as soon as possible and then passed out on the couch until Mary woke up two hours later. After I got Mary, I went into Lydia’s room to find Lydia sitting on her little potty reading books, singing to herself, and peeing. So proud. (We got tired of the false alarms during quiet time and bed time; Lydia just wanted to get out of her room and kept telling us she needed to go potty when she did not need to. We solved the problem by sticking a potty in her bedroom.)
Lydia never got a nap, and so for the next two hours, both girls took turns throwing fits and being weepy.
Here is Lydia crying that she wants Mary’s stickers (picture two below). On another note, I got ambitious with Lydia’s waterfall braid and did a double waterfall braid today. Clearly, I need a lot more practice.You might wonder why I can so heartlessly photograph my two year old as she tantrums on the floor. Let me tell you, this girl has stamina. About an hour into her fits, I no longer have the capacity to think or feel authentic emotions, so I just take pictures of her instead. Sometimes, the photo taking even distracts her for the tantrum (not this time, though!).Mary was so sad from her rash and teething situation that up until five minutes before this picture, I could not put her down unless it was in her crib for a nap. (Translation: I had to pee with Mary on my lap multiple times today. I feel slightly ambivalent about that acrobatic achievement.) Doesn’t she just melt your heart, though? Here she is absorbed in peeling Lydia’s potty stickers off of the sticker sheet. I had another sheet of stickers, but Lydia went ballistic when she saw Mary touching her stickers. Since the stickers were the sole reason Mary let me put her down, I made Lydia share.
And three catch-up photos from yesterday and Monday.
Abe took the girls to Cold Stone while I was at yoga yesterday evening. Lydia clearly loved it. (Mary, not pictured, also loved it. She is ice cream’s number one fan.)We have been giving the girls bubble baths at night. Two weeks ago we realized the “shampoo” we had been using for the past couple months was actually…bubble bath. Oops!I took a picture of Lydia at the doctor’s office because she was so incredibly well-behaved on that outing. As in, she sat in this chair quietly and patiently throughout Mary’s entire appointment, and she never whined or complained once. I don’t even recall her squirming. She is becoming such a well-behaved child–in public. =)
Also, this piece of information is of interest to absolutely no one but me (but it interests me SO highly), my house is impeccably clean right now. Well, only the downstairs and basement are completely sanitized and picked up, but you should have seen the messes before the girls went down. I spent an hour in high gear attacking every mess, and right now I feel…kind of like a rock star? That is so sad, I know. People are dying in Syria and I am congratulating myself on my clean house, but sometimes, home hits closest to home, you know?
Poor Mary woke up at 5:45am whimpering because she had pooped, and who knows how long she had gone with it in her diaper since she was asleep. Her diaper rash was awful, and I felt so, so sorry for my baby. That said, I would have preferred a later start to my day, and so I improvised a survival solution by doing absolutely nothing all day.
That worked for Mary! She’s teething, doesn’t want to eat, and therefore lethargic, so she just cuddled with me while Lydia played, watched her kid shows, and practiced going to the potty. I did not clean anything or cook anything today. I spent all the free time I had finishing up my book No Easy Day (don’t even ask me why I read it–it was on the “Lucky Day” shelf at the library, so I guess I thought it had to be good if it made it to The Shelf), and shopping on Zulily. Yikes!
I did, however, drop the kids off at Abe’s office at 5:30pm so I could make the 6:15 session of Bikram Yoga. Afterwards, I lay on the six-inch wide bench outside of the room and tried to get the energy to walk to the car. Don’t mind the chubby lady trying to fit on the teeny bench, sweating a pool of smelly puddles onto the floor and tootin’ up a storm! (That would have been me.)
Since I was lazy, I did not get that many pictures today, so I made up for it by running around the house before typing this blog so I could photograph random things to talk about. Here we go!
Again, Mary is wearing one of Lydia’s staple summer outfits from last year (probably the last chance she has to wear it), and the end of a beloved hand-me-down always makes me want to run for a tissue.Don’t mind my naked child. She did not feel like getting dressed, and I did not care to fight that battle. So here she is, in all of her naked glory. I did, however, re-try that waterfall twist braid. It doesn’t look super great here, but it wore really well and got progressively prettier as the day went on.
Aghhh! Below is my naked toddler again. The neighbors can see right into our house (we live on a hill), and so I am sure they think I am negligent. Lydia had two full hours of quiet time today…she actually has a blast during quiet time, but I do wonder what the neighbors think watching a little naked child run all around by herself for that amount of time. Also, here she is calling her cat on the phone. (The cat is her favorite thing in the world, and we accidentally left it in New York. I have been ambivalent about asking Clark and Swathi to send it back since Lydia’s devotion transformed a cuddly stuffed animal into a mangy, smelly, most-likely-hazardous object. But Lydia has talked about/to the cat every day since he went missing weeks ago, and my heart goes out to this loyal child of mine.)
Today mommy just lost some steam, okay?My dinner. Ingredients: bananas. If you have never frozen bananas and blended them in a food processor afterward, you need to go do that RIGHT NOW. I saw this recipe years ago and dismissed it as ridiculous, but now I know I am the ridiculous one for not trying it. The easiest thing ever, and the end result tastes like the best ice cream you have ever had. Please go do this now.Lydia wrote the “o” in the word, “Stop”. This was for the game she, Abe and Mary played a couple days ago, and boy, we are so proud of her!The flowers Abe got me are blooming. If I did not battle a continual running dialogue in my head about how terrible I am at everything and what a horrible person I am, I think my life would be perfect. I have the world’s sweetest, most affirming husband, beautiful children, the best mother in the world, the greatest brother and sister-in-law in the world, and everything else anyone could possibly want to be happy. I just need to get with the program and start being happy, right?
Last night was rough. Abe and I got to bed around midnight, and two hours later Lydia woke up from a nightmare. I had those all the time growing up, and I really appreciated that my mom always came to me when I was scared. So we do the same for Lydia, and Abe heroically got out of bed and comforted her. A mere two hours after that, Mary woke up sobbing from a poopy diaper and fire-engine red diaper rash. I changed her diaper and put her down, but the ordeal was so loud and messy that Abe got involved; by the end, I was wide awake and did not fall asleep again until right before Lydia woke us at 7:30 with the news that she had peed and pooped in her potty. (By the way, Lydia had no accidents again today and kept her bed dry all night. Go Lydia!!)
So I had trouble being motivated today. I ate too many brownies, let Lydia watch hours of kiddie shows on DVD and the iPad, and stayed engrossed in my own book way after the girls were done with afternoon nap/quiet time. (That means I read my book to myself for an hour while they did whatever the heck they wanted nearby.)
During Family Home Evening, we read from the Doctrine and Covenants about establishing a house of order, and then we promptly tramped down to the basement to organize. Basically, cold weather will be upon us soon, and I want to do crafts with the kids down there without feeling that we are being ambushed by entropy. Hence my proposal for our FHE activity. (Abe did all the work while Mary and I cuddled on the couch. I love my husband.)
Before FHE, I did get some other stuff done. I took Mary (and Lydia) to the doctor when Mary’s diaper rash started bleeding. SO sad. And I cleaned the basement, did laundry, cooked dinner, wrote in my scripture journal and, of course, cleaned the kitchen. Considering I feel like I have been slogging through mud all day, that’s not too bad, right?
I found this after breakfast. Minnie Mouse was taking a bath in Lydia’s water cup.Mary’s teething, and she had a terrible diaper rash today. So she was fussy, but let me tell you, I think I fell in love all over again today. She was just over-the-top cute, and we spent a LOT of time cuddling.I mainly took this picture to show Lydia wearing something other than pink. Also, I spent a bunch of time this morning trying to master this ridiculously easy hairdo, but I failed miserably. But I am proud that I have managed to learn how to do the Dutch braid headband thing. This is huge, considering I could not even do pigtails properly two years ago.Lydia’s new favorite way to watch DVDs.My sage friend, Misty, shared this tip with me: Throw away broken crayons! If you think about it for a minute, you, like me, might also come to the conclusion that Misty is Socrates in disguise. And you, like me, might want to do as I did today, and take that awesome advice.Here’s the pasta puttanesca I made for dinner. It wasn’t that great, actually. I mean, it was okay, but considering the cool things that went into the sauce (LOTS of anchovy paste! Kalamata olives! Capers! FOUR cloves of garlic!), I was kind of disappointing. Either that, or I was not really in the mood for pasta puttanesca tonight.
Lydia had zero accidents today. Count’em: Ze-ro! We are just beside ourselves with joy. At the same time, I am terrified that the candy corn potty treats plugged her up and set her up for some, um, nighttime trauma. So we end the day on a note of proud trepidation.
Aside from the loveliest of phone calls with Clark and Swathi (and also a sweet, short call with my mom and Uncle Steve), here are the best parts of our day, in pictures:
This is where I spent the majority of my day. How about you?
Lydia left her undies on the front path in her haste to make it to the potty. Our undie-less toddler single-handedly dragged down the property value of homes on our block tonight, but we were so proud of her nonetheless.
Eating apples, shucking corn, and playing chalk on the driveway. We loved our lives tonight.We found a caterpillar in the corn!Lydia spent a looong time picking apples off the tree and throwing them down our street. We live on 12th avenue, which means the apples rolled down twelve blocks before they reached level ground. Quite a thrill for these worm-filled pome fruits.
Our apple tree, because we love it so much.
Mary started doing these trust falls in India when she could not contain her excitement. She still does them whenever she is over-the-top happy, which she apparently was. We ate dinner outside on the lawn tonight. Maybe that made her happy!And to think this mess would have taken place on my kitchen floor. Why don’t we eat outside every night?
Today was Sunday. Normally on Sunday, we try to be good Mormons and refrain from work. We were inside the first part of the day, and Abe was helping so much that I could not resist getting a head start on this week’s meals. By the end of the day, I had cooked the following:
Roasted squash with giant red onions and balsamic vinegar.toasted almonds for a pesto later.basil, cilantro, almond pesto for lunch. These are leftovers for Abe’s lunch tomorrow, and I hope he remembers to bring it to work. His lunch budget is teeny tiny, and when he forgets to take his lunch to work, by the end of the week his only option left is to drink water for lunch.Um, this is a brownie. The recipe swapped out butter/oil for applesauce and light sour cream. That, of course, is the only reason why I ate half the pan.Tomorrow we are trying out that exciting recipe in Cook’s Illustrated for pasta puttanesca with fresh tomatoes. Even though it’s sacrilegious, I am amending the recipe so that the fresh tomatoes will be…er… roasted. These tomatoes were SUCH a disappointment: Think grocery-store-Roma-in-December disappointing, even though I bought them at the farmer’s market yesterday. So I roasted the bejeebers out of ’em in the hopes that they’d emerge from the oven tasting more like their authentic tomato selves. We’ll see what happens tomorrow when these meet up with all that puttanesca good stuff.This is one of my beloved basil patches in my garden. The plants got neglected and woody while we were away, and so I cut them down today to great effect. Next year I plan on planting NOTHING except for basil and tomatoes in my garden. I am signing up for a church garden plot for everything else. (This year I was greedy and planted too many things in too little space. My tomatoes don’t get enough sun because they are smashed too close together, and I have to do ridiculous things like cut down my cucumber vines to get at my basil.)
