Thursday, October 27, 2005

Chop chop!

Just what does a full, messy baby look like? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's The Messy Man himself, having just polished off an entire cup of smashed yams/bananas/barley cereal:
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This came in the mail yesterday. I was beyond excited:
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Greg bought it for me from Viking:
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I love it! All of the things I cook are on the prep heavy side of things, since there's so much chopping and such, so this makes my job SO much easier. This knife happily made short work of this entire bowl of veggies for Medditerranian Roasted Vegetables:
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Yes, Andrew knew he was being photographed, and chose to be a little snot.

("Andrew, put this stuff in the yellow bowl...ok, now put this in the red garbage bowl in the sink" "Wed bowl. Yeyow bowl.")

We then mixed up a bowl of spices to toss it with; cumin, cinnamon, paprika, turmeric, cayenne, lemon juice and oil:
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Andrew, of course, had to taste the spices. Not only that, but he also ate some raw, sliced garlic. ("Need some!" "Andrew, this is kind of spicy..." "Need more spicy!" "Ok..." "Need more?")

After preping a dish this fragrant, the hardest thing to do is wait for it to be done, especially when you have a light inside of your new oven (the waiting is done with your cheetah, of course).
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Note: This dish was then eaten over cous cous and sprinkled liberally with sliced almonds and sultanas (golden raisens). Yummy!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Milestones and catching up

Woah, the minute I don't make time to blog, I have a million things to say! Or show, more like it. So come along with me for a little pictoral journey.

Elijah (or "Ijah", as Andrew calls him) had been sleeping thorough the night (from 8 or 9 until around 6 in the morning, then back down again for a few more hours until Andrew woke up at 8!), but started to get up at least once every night to eat. I started to get very weary of this and suddenly thought (or actually my mom thought) "Hey! Maybe the little guy's hungry." So Grace and I gave him his first taste of banana.


As you can see, it wasn't a big hit at first.


Soon though, he was snogging down 3/4 of a banana per shot!! And that was after a full "both sides" meal of breastmilk. Woah. He was hungry.

So now he eats barley cereal mixed with banana, and today he'll try some sweet potato that I baked this morning. For those who care, his first taste of banana happened in Florida on September 11th.

Andrew has started potty training. I am a firm believer in "windows training", which is to say: I don't believe that there is a hard and fast rule that says what time you train your kids to do any one thing. You look for windows (which are usually fairly obvious) of opportunity and take them if it works with what you're doing in your life just then. Andrew probably could have started potty training a few months ago, but because of everything that was going on in our lives, I knew it would be time wasted on my part. Soooo....

On October 20th (this past Thursday) we went out to buy the new potty. I explained it to Andrew and told him that it was his, and he proudly held it on his lap as we went to the check-out. When we got home, he and Elijah tried to figure out exactly what it should be used for (aparently my detailed instructions were like water through as seive).


Because really -- there's a cup, so shouldn't we be drinking out of it?


OK, Mommy didn't react too well to that one. Well, no matter, if all else fails, throw the thing! That's always a good idea.


Aha! So this is what she was talking about. Cool!*


I have never cleaned up so much pee in my life. But he does get everything in there more than not, which is good. Also, not to go into too much gory detail, but he pooped in there yesterday and today, which is a big step. Usually toddlers are very upset about the idea of pooping anywhere but their diaper (Andrew feels this way too), but I was able to convince him otherwise.

Andrew will eat almost anything as long as it's dipped, and usually the dip is ketchup. Here he is dipping soup:


Yesterday (finally, I'm caught up!) Andrew and I made the Fabled Date Nut Bread from Sarah K's family recipe. That stuff is amazing, I tell you, and I have no idea why it took me so many years to start making it. Every year Sarah's family would bake up truckloads of the stuff in cleaned out coffee cans and hand them out at Christmas time. They'd be wrapped in foil with a little festive bow, and the bread would be so dark and sticky that you had to use a can-opener on the bottom of the can and push the bread out that way. There were some people who didn't use their noggin and thought the only way to get the bread out was by scooping it out with a spoon. But scoop they did, because that bread was not to be wasted! The best thing about the bread is that the longer it sits, the better it gets. There was this story (included in at least one of her dad's christmas letters, always taped to the bread) of some lady who kept hers for some unbelievable amount of time and when she finally decided to eat it it was still good. Sarah would have to back me up on that one, because I don't remember the details of it.

Anyway, Andrew helped me by eating flour (Mmmm! Good!)

He ate at least a 1/4 cup of it straight before I could add anything else, so I wasn't sure if they'd still turn out right, but they did

Elijah wasn't allowed to eat any, but he bounced away for most of the baking time in his jolly jumper:

As you can see, he was very jolly.





*Yes I do realize that Andrew will be mortified** in about 10 years when he realizes that his first potty attempt was blogged, but the picture was just so damn cute I couldn't help it. Anyway, it's a modest one, so I'm ok with that.



**If he ends up like Greg, he won't be mortified.*** He'll be proud.



***Have you ever read a footnote to a footnote to a footnote?

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Amtrak


Ok, I was having all kinds of gallery troubles, but they're fixed. Everything's in order. So click at your own risk, and please forgive the confusion. Immerse yourself in an Amtrak trip. =)

Saturday, October 15, 2005

shirt in panama city beach, FL

And then the shirt went to Panama City Beach. (A bit hot to wear it here, but we wanted to let you know that we were thinking of you even then) =)

shirt in atlanta, GA


shirt in atlanta, GA
Originally uploaded by faithdarling.
Becky, wish you were here! We miss you so much! Grace has your black sweatshirt you left behind. She's taking it to see the country before sending it back (...or so she says...)

Here we are!

Ok, I'm attempting to make an album of the train pics, but somehow Buzznet isn't letting me. Frustrating. I'll try again later, but for now, here's a few shots from the past two weeks. Click on each for a little description on Flickr. =)




Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Alive and well in GA

Hey everyone! We've successfully made it to GA via Amtrak two weekends ago. I haven't gotten a chance to breath yet, much less actually blog, but I promise that there are pictures, there are stories, and my apartment is beautiful! More to come...

P.S. For those of you who have written me emails, I appreciate them, and will get back to you as soon as I stop feeling like a crazy person!