girlfiend

These are in no particular order, but the books grouped together are by the same author.  I don’t  mind reading these repeatedly and don’t roll my eyes when F wants to take them out of the library again.

Lost and Found
The Incredible Book-Eating Boy
The Way Back Home  (Oliver Jeffers)

And the Train Goes (William Bee)

Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing (Judi Barrett)

A Color of His Own (Leo Lionni)

Knuffle Bunny
Edwina the Dinosaur who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct
Leonardo the Terrible Monster (Mo Willems)

You Can Do It, Sam (Anita Hest)

Ten Apples up on Top (Dr. Seuss)

Why is Blue Dog Blue? (George Rodrigue)

Angus Lost (Marjorie Flack)

Let’s Go! (Lizann Flatt)

Are You My Mother?
Sam and the Firefly (P.D. Eastman)

Freight Train (Donald Crews)

We have so many, that after five years I let my subscription to Real Simple lapse. There may be a few I’m forgetting.

1.  Metropolitan Home

2. Elle Decor

3. Self

4. Good Housekeeping

5. Woman’s Day (was a subscription to the now defunct Home)

6. Esquire

7. Wood

8. Boating Life

9. Martha Stewart Living

10. Yachting

11. Kiwi

12. Parents

13. Parenting

14. Family Fun (was a subscription to the now defunct Wondertime)

15. Organic Gardening

16. Old House Journal

17. Gourmet ( not exactly free. it’s through B’s MS bike race- he could get $12 back, but I like the magazine)

18. Newsweek  (my dad gets it for B for Christmas every year)

There are a billion things around here that need to get done, but these are a few of the things I want to do this summer. I think this list may be overly ambitious, but if I accomplish one of the items on the list it will be better than nothing.

1. Refinish or paint trash-picked mirrors and hang them
2. refinish or paint vanity and move upstairs
3. get extra computer out of the office into parlor leaving it in office, but it’s off of the floor and F is using it.
4. learn to use a sewing machine again since the first time didn’t take.registered for a sewing class!

5. Improve my bedroom. It looks like shit:
a. get bedroom furniture for clothing storage
b.replace bedroom art
c. get a rug for the bedroom
d. curtains

6. hang pictures in baby’s room
7. refinish or paint dresser in baby’s room and replace the hardware
8.curtains in baby’s room
9. reorganize storage in baby’s room
10.reorganize upstairs closets
11. frame unframed pics in F’s room

12. replace crappy ceiling fixtures in upstairs parlor and F’s room
13.organize books by color

14. reorganize/declutter laundry room storage

15. figure out a way to make the office less of an eyesore and more of a usable space okay, so this is impossible without a complete overhaul- I’d have to remove the built-ins for the room not to suck. But I reorganized the shelves and cabinets.

At 12 months the baby is the perfect baby. We won the baby lottery with this kid. He is charming and pleasant and smiley and an all-around good time. Here are some things he likes and things he can do.

He can eat. He loves food and is most proficient at getting it cleanly into his mouth.

He can sign for more food. It is his only “word” thus far and he uses it to ask for more of just about everything he eats.

He can pull himself up. He likes to stand up and bang on surfaces and grin. He’s not yet ready to cruise or walk and that’s fine with me.

He likes to play with the shape sorter and is getting better at getting the right shapes in the right holes. It makes me proud to see him figure it out on his own.

He plays ball pretty well for a baby, throwing the ball to someone and waiting to get it when it’s rolled back.

He will give you something when he’s asked.

My favorite thing that he gives when asked is a kiss. Baby kisses are the best.

He loves his dada and his brother and lights up when they walk into the room.

His entire face crumples and he dissolves into tears when his dada leaves the room he’s just entered. It’s like his heart is breaking from the 3 seconds of loneliness.

He is a very good sleeper when it’s not a Wonder Week and he’s not teething. When the conditions are right he takes regular naps and sleeps through the night. I love him for that.

When he’s not putting them in his mouth he tries to put his shoes on his feet.

He likes to pick up the phone and put it to his ear. If I pick up the phone and say, “T, it’s for you,” and hand it to him he laughs and smiles like he’s won the baby lottery.

He loves cats and dogs and the pig around the corner. Our neighbor who rarely sees the baby came over holding his teeny tiny dog the other day. The baby was thrilled, and kept petting him and cooing. The neighbor said, “He is delighted. Just look at his face. He’s delighted.”

And that describes my baby. He is delighted by the world and he is a delight. We are lucky to have him.

I finally finished knitting a massive project. I laid it out to see how much blocking was required and my mother said, “What happened there? Did you drop a stitch?”

Thanks.

Mother’s Day wasn’t bad. The Fiendling spent Friday and Saturday night with my in-laws so we could get ready for the party on Sunday. The baby woke me up at 6.30. At 9 I woke B with coffee in bed. I was only slightly bitter.

The baby’s first birthday party was big and fun and the house is mostly cleaned up. We have more leftover cookies than we know what to do with.

His actual birthday isn’t until Wednesday. I’m not crying about it yet, but all of the newborns I see are brutal reminders that my baby won’t be a baby for much longer. I anticipate tears on his birthday proper.

I did something to my big toe. I’m not entirely sure what I did to it since it’s not bruised or swollen, but I’ve spent the last two days hobbling around. It is incredibly painful to walk without shoes. I must have pulled something. The few steps from bedroom to bathroom in the middle of the night are excruciating.

Speaking of the middle of the night, I just learned from B that I somehow managed to get him to take care of two middle of the night wakeups. Both F and T woke up and I have no memory of either. He says the Fiendling was at my side of the bed imploring me to get up and get him his water from upstairs and I made him go instead. He claims that he also rocked the baby back to sleep after I woke him up and told him to. I find this most difficult to believe. I posited that perhaps he dreamed it, but F remembers that he wanted me, not B to get his water and was sad that I did not. I must have been exhausted.

I went back to the pulmonologist this morning for my three-month check up. She wanted to put me on a lower dose of my asthma medicine but didn’t because I’ve been hanging on to a cough since we all got sick a few weeks back. (Shit, it was a month ago. ) She gave me a prescription for the lower dose and told me to cut back my current dose to once a day instead of twice over the next six weeks and see how I do. She asked if the summer would be a tough time to do it because of the heat and it sucks because I just don’t know. I started coughing the first summer after F was born and didn’t get an asthma diagnosis for a year after that. But it wasn’t until this fall that I was finally given an inhaler that actually controlled the asthma. After close to three years of non-stop coughing I don’t know what seasons are worse than others. Childbirth really did wreck my immune system.

Two margaritas no longer improve my mood. Instead they give me a headache. I learned this the hard way last night.

B has been covered in poison ivy for more than a week and he’s completely miserable. I’m glad it’s not me, but I feel terrible for him.

The unrelenting rain is driving F up the wall. He is like a bull in a china shop. He doesn’t rest, he just runs back and forth bashing and crashing into things like me and the baby.

I will blame the rain for my short temper. It’s very difficult not to scream at the kid after he headbutts the baby. Poor baby.

I need an initial for the baby. How about T, for “the” since Boyfiend is already B.

T busted out another molar. I guess some babies really do get fevers and diarrhea when they’re teething. F never did. He just stopped sleeping for six months at a time.

T’s birthday party is this weekend. I am heartbroken that my baby is going to be one.

The house is a disaster and the backyard is a disaster and with this endless rain I don’t know how I’ll get it together. It’s impossible to clean inside with two children destroying every area I so painstakingly unclutter and clean.

My laundry room is currently housing four loads of clean laundry. There is one clean load in this room. I have no interest in folding it and putting it away.

T has cheerios stuck to his butt right now.

This week I’ve made two batches of chocolate chip cookie dough, two loaves of whole wheat sandwich bread, four sourdough baguettes, and pizza dough. It’s only Wednesday morning.  I would like the rain to stop so I can stop baking. Why am I baking so much? Because F likes to help. And by help I mean drive his trains through the flour and eat chocolate chips.

Driving his trains through the flour requires less clean up than allowing him to drive his trains through playdough. It doesn’t get stuck in the wheels, harden, and fall out all over the goddamn house, leaving tasty little pink and blue bits for the baby to eat.

I would very much like this week to be over.

The house is pretty well organized. I’ve been doing my best to keep things picked up and in their proper places so it won’t be too much of a mess when I actually go into labor. Things have been dusted in the past week and I’ve been vacuuming fairly regularly. The kitchen is cleaned daily so that’s not an issue and I’ve been on top of the laundry. The bathroom, while certainly not as clean as I’d like, is clean enough to not be too much of an embarrassment. My bedroom is a wreck, but I blame that on Boyfiend since all of his clean, folded laundry is sitting on top of an old trunk we moved out of the storage room upstairs. If he’d put his shit away (just a subtle hint) it wouldn’t look quite so bad in there.

I really need a cleaning service. It would really improve the quality of my life. Instead of hiring a service I ordered another dyson.

I’ve been cooking like crazy so I won’t have to worry about eating well later.  I’ve made a bunch of dinners and some one-handed breakfasts. In the freezer I have:

• 1 9”x 13” pan of eggplant parmesan
• 3/4 of a large baked ziti in three portions
• 2 8-cup containers vegetable soup
• 1 3-quart and 1 4-cup container of beef stew
• 1 9″x13″ pan of rotini with goat cheese, spinach and red pepper sauce divided into individual servings
• 6 bean and sausage enchiladas (1 dinner and leftovers if Boyfiend doesn’t gorge himself)
• 1 tray (3 meals) chicken enchiladas
• 2 8-cup containers of chicken soup
• half a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough
• 6 cranberry muffins
• 6 strawberry mango muffins
• 18 blueberry pancakes

I’ve also got a bunch of chocolate ricotta muffins I baked tonight that still need to be wrapped and frozen. Tomorrow or Friday I’ll probably end up baking a few loaves of zucchini bread with the last of my freezer stash from last year’s CSA.

The next meat delivery from the farm is scheduled for my due date and I ordered plenty of beef so Boyfiend could cook dinner (burgers and steaks, of course) with confidence. Shortly after my due date is the start of my CSA for the summer,  so I won’t have to worry too much about grocery shopping for a while.

Now I just want this baby out.

I’m lazy and double posting from my food blog.

Last night I picked up the turkey, did the grocery shopping and spent a good three and half hours in the kitchen accomplishing… Well, I don’t even know what I accomplished. It doesn’t seem like a whole lot.

I cleaned out the refrigerator and discarded all of the expired condiments. We somehow had a fridge full of salad dressings I’d never buy since I make all of my own. I guess my mother-in-law must have brought them here for some meal or another and forgotten them. I also discarded an ancient jar of mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is one of those things I won’t touch unless I’ve made it myself (well, I’ll eat some restaurant aioli, but only sometimes.)

So the refrigerator is cleaned out, the shelves are clean (except for the two drawers that I just didn’t have the energy to deal with) and some of the prep work is done.  I still need to figure out how to make the green beans and I haven’t decided if I want to make multigrain dinner rolls or buttermilk biscuits. I bought the stuff for both. I was pleased to see that the turkey (unlike the chickens I’ve bought from the farm) was pretty well cleaned. The giblets and neck were actually detached and stuffed inside the cavity and I didn’t have to scrape out any nasty, gooey innards. Nothing like fresh from the farm animal goo.

The menu:
roasted butternut squash and garlic bisque
turkey
extra stuffing (aunt bea)*
mashed potatoes (aunt bea)*
cranberry sauce (aunt bea)*
roasted potatoes (I have close to five pounds. Will people eat two kinds of white potatoes?)
candied sweet potatoes
green beans
balsamic glazed carrots
rolls or biscuits
cheesecake (mom)
apple pie
chocolate chip oatmeal pecan cookies

*I wanted to tell her no when she offered because I have 5 lbs of potatoes left over from the CSA and I make awesome mashed potatoes, but I didn’t want to offend. So she’s bringing stuff that would be easy for me to make. I’ll just try and be thankful that it’s three fewer items I have to worry about.

Completed prep:
Butternut squash and veggies roasted and pureed
Stock made for soup and stuffing
Onions and celery chopped for stuffing and gravy
Turkey ready to be brined
Giblets removed and liver discarded
Green beans trimmed
Sweet potatoes scrubbed
Refrigerator cleaned
Cookies baked

Today
1.    Prepare brine
2.    start bread dough? Biscuit dough?
3.    make pie dough
4.    make sweet potatoes
5.    blanch green beans
6.    cut herbs from the garden: thyme, chives, rosemary
7.    clean up
8.    bake bread
9.    make herb butter for turkey

Thursday:
1.    rinse and dry turkey
2.    make stuffing
3.    stuff turkey,  and start roasting
4.    start gravy
5.    assemble pie
6.    make carrots
7.    reheat sweet potatoes and bread
8.    finish green beans

I know I’m missing plenty from the lists. I have to set the table at some point and get all of my serving dishes labeled and ready to go. I don’t know if I’ll do that today or tomorrow though.

And I must go to water aerobics. I need a good splash with the old ladies.

I don’t vacation like most people. I’m on vacation right now, I just finished a Tae Bo workout, and I just wrote a blog post about the four cooler’s worth of food I brought on vacation at Farm to Philly. Here’s a full list (as opposed to my abridged list of local foods) of all of the food I packed.

Fruit

2 quarts of Peaches
Cantaloupe
Pint of apricots
quart of cherries
Quart of blueberries
Two bananas
12 limes

Vegetables

Beets
Bunch of kale
3 zucchini
4 green peppers
bunch walla walla onions
half pint of sun gold cherry tomatoes
garlic
quart of green beans
quart of wax beans
pint of new potatoes
bunch of swiss chard
bunch of carrots
one shallot
6 ears of corn

Fresh herbs from my garden

Rosemary
Basil
Tarragon
Parsley (not from my garden)
thyme

Meat
2 lbs hamburger
2 filet mignon
4 new york strip steaks
1 whole chicken
lb bacon
short ribs
spare ribs
4 smoked sausage links

dairy
cheddar
Jack
Raw milk Colby dill
Raw millk herbed jack
Herbed goat cheese
Parmesan
Amish butter- both salted and unsalted
half and half from pastured cows

Miscellaneous

Tofurkey Italian sausage
Morningstar grillers (veggie burgers)
whole wheat pasta (2 bags)
whole grain brown rice
whole wheat hamburger buns
whole wheat hot dog buns
peanut butter Puffins
blueberry cereal bars (from Trader Joes)
salt and pepper kettle chips
lightly salted chips
peanut butter
2 jars bruschetta (from Trader Joes)
newman os
2lbs coffee
sugar
olive oil
peanut oil
seasoned salt
garlic salt
red pepper flakes
pepper grinder
kosher salt
pizza seasoning
spicy seasoning
nutmeg
balsamic vinegar
ketchup
mustard

And I forgot the Cheddar Bunnies. I was forced to buy Goldfish.

If you think the food list is nuts, you’d never believe the packing/to do list. All four pages of it.  Perhaps I’ll scan it in all of it’s glory upon my return home. Until then, I may or may not write again. I am on vacation. Many adorable Fiendling at the beach photos are on flickr.

I’ve been tagged by Fraulein N. I feel like I constantly repeat myself when I do these things but I’ll do it anyway. These are the rules:

Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I suck at folding laundry and often leave it to wrinkle in the basket after it’s washed and dried
2. Yesterday I began using my google calendar in earnest since it’s spring and all of a sudden not only are we invited places again, there are a few days where we have more than one commitment.
3. Even though I can be obsessive about cleaning I still haven’t touched the cat puke on the windowsill that’s been there since Tuesday.
4. Remember the bronchitis that I’ve had on and off since July and haven’t written about in a while? Mostly gone. I finally went to a decent doctor and got put on about a gazillion different medications and I haven’t woken up coughing in almost a week.
5. But the medications have had nasty side effects- splitting headaches, abdominal cramps, dizziness, and sunburn. I’ve been walking around in my beach hat for the past three days.
6. I was going to add the book I finished the other night to my 50 books page only I couldn’t remember the name and rather than go into the bedroom and look at the title I’ve been searching on Amazon for the past 5 minutes trying to figure it out based on the search phrase “literacy los angeles”
7. I just successfully googled it on my first try- Literacy and Longing in L.A.
8. Watching Ugly Betty I just had a craving for empanadas. The frozen Goya kind.

I don’t usually tag people because I almost never get tagged so I’ll throw caution to the wind and tag Mix because I always tag him when I get tagged, Madgirl because I forgot to tell her I wouldn’t make it to knitting on Monday and I hope she wasn’t there by herself, Doodlebug because her lists are always interesting, Chris Lehmann because I have a feeling he doesn’t get tagged for too many silly memes, Lawmummy because she has too much spare time, Natasha because she really made me want a thai ice coffee the other day, MV because she had her little girl Gabriela and I want to say congratulations and what better way to congratulate someone than to tag them for a meme. And I’ll tag Liz because Owen’s a cutie.

(I’m skipping the rule about leaving comments so if you were tagged and didn’t get a comment from me it’s because I have no regard for the rules.)