How I Spent November

Overdue Post: Vacation Wrapup

Life continues to be crazy; so what else is new? Still settling in, have started car hunting, and there's all the joys of the third trimester with which to cope. I have been spending a lot of time reading other blogs and being generally envious of other peoples' time and energy. But I wanted to post about our vacation before it falls entirely out of my thoughts. The paucity of pictures is due to my failure to pack the battery charger for my camera.

8/14 Saturday: We drove up in the morning. L melted down on arrival, got over it and spent most of the day playing with her grandma. JJ spent most of his time on the sand pile, a remnant of last year's landscaping and leveling efforts. Dave's mom made dinner, we had pie and ice cream to celebrate his birthday, and lit sparklers out on the dock after it got dark. We had to move L's bed--she had first said she wanted to be upstairs, then changed her mind, which I pretty much expected was going to happen. JJ didn't even wait for lights out, but snuggled down and went to sleep, one exhausted little boy.

8/15 Sunday: Food shopping at Moulton Farm and then the grocery store in Center Harbor was followed by a quick lunch, and then hitting the beach with the grandparents before they had to head for home. Left Dave alone to relax and write and stuff. Later on, Dave's uncle took the kids for a boat ride. I am told that L used the words "accelerate" and "turbulence" during that. For dinner we had tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese, drizzled with olive oil and sea salt; corn on the cob; steak with a pan sauce of shallots and red wine. Dave told me that if he was ever sent to prison, memory of that meal would sustain him. The man knows how to give a compliment!

8/16 Monday: Rain moved in, so we went to Fun Spot for a couple of hours. Dave took L for a canoe ride, which she liked a bit too much, and did not want to stop. Didn't do much in the afternoon; the kids watched DVDs on my laptop. Dinner was an improvised pasta salad with green beans, cherry tomatoes, more mozzarella, olive oil and lemon juice. Strawberries and ice cream for dessert.

8/17 Tuesday: Got a lot of writing done, made pancakes. Another gorgeous day, so we went to the beach again for the morning. Journal says, "Cicadas all day, crickets all night." In the afternoon Dave took the kids to the library. A late trip to GPC for ice cream capped the day.

8/18 Wednesday: Was declared "the worst day ever" by our overly dramatic daughter, who got up much too early, refused to eat breakfast, and spent most of the day in A Mood. Not actually a bad day by any objective measure; played on the dock and the sand pile, went to Meredith in the afternoon. Made the usual pilgrimage to Innisfree Bookshop, did our bit to keep the place in business. Stopped by Oglethorpe and spent an imaginary ten thousand dollars, and then Lee's chocolate store to spend a few real ones. Dave and the kids went to the GPC playground for a while--more writing time for me!

8/19 Thursday: More beach time. L spends all her time in the water, enjoying the kickboard Grandma got her for her birthday, and trying to make friends with everyone remotely her own age. JJ doesn't trust the lake, will only go in up to his knees, and that with much coaxing; he prefers to play in the sand. I took L to the quilt shop, where we found some nice things, and she got to practice apologizing for breaking a dried eggshell they had in a display. I bought a couple more patterns to add to my "some day I will have time for this" collection. The first of our friends arrived for their weekend visit, the first time in ages we've been able to arrange a get-together.

8/20 Friday: Windy and chilly in the morning, but nice later on, though far from hot. Our other friend arrived at lunchtime. We went to the Old Country Store. L wanted to go to the library (the Moultonborough Library has a wonderful kids' section); the plan was that the guys would return to the cottage, but they got wrapped up doing a jigsaw puzzle and we all ended up staying for a while. Played with the kids; L had one of her wands and went around soliciting wishes from everyone. After dinner we had a fire and made s'mores, which L called "smears." It was absolutely wonderful, seeing old friends and my own family, everyone having a grand time. I took JJ off to bed, and everyone else played Trivial Pursuit, with L assisting.

8/21 Saturday: Quiet morning, uncertain weather, another visit to Fun Spot in the afternoon. We played mini-golf on the decaying course, and I got a couple of games of pinball in. Lee Wah's for dinner--it's pretty awful Chinese food, but you can't mess with Tradition. More Trivial Pursuit in the evening.

8/22 Sunday: Our one friend had to catch the bus back to NYC in the early morning; the rest of the time was occupied by cleaning, a trip to the dump, and so forth. Traffic was horrendous, but we made it home eventually and collapsed into our beds.

I didn't exactly feel rested when we got back, but I did feel good. It was a great vacation, and I feel enormously fortunate to have such wonderful people and places as part of my life.

Countdown: The Final Week

Last night I made chili without a recipe. I didn't even really think about finding one, just threw a bunch of things that seemed right into a pot, based on memories of the first chili I ever made. Ground beef, onion, green pepper, chili powder, cumin, a can of tomato puree, and some kidney beans. It turned out just fine. 

A week from today we'll be moving into our new place, and starting the business of learning a new town and sorting our lives back out from their current boxed state. The moving company has been around to give us an estimate. The packing is going well. We are excavating things that were shoved into a closet when we moved into this place, and throwing a fair number of them away, or giving them to the thrift store, hoping to avoid last-minute craziness as far as possible.

We'll be leaving some furniture behind when we go, some of the unfinished pine we picked up cheap in our first Boston years, and replacing it with what I continue to think of as "grown-up" furniture. Last night I packed up the baking ingredients--two entire boxes' worth.

27 weeks pregnant and things seem to be fine. She's an active little critter, just like her siblings. I got my packet of preregistration paperwork for the hospital, and started making a list of the things we'll need to get.

Last but not least, today is my daughter's birthday! 6 years ago we were well into the second day of labor, with five hours still to go before meeting her. It's been a wonderful time, full of adventures. Yesterday while I was working at home, I tried to assuage her disappointment at not being able to spend time with me by suggesting that she write me a letter. "Dear Mommy, I love you. Love Lydia."

Trials and Tribulations

This has been one of those periods in which the good things arrived sandwiched between the really unpleasant.

It started nearly two weeks ago, on Sunday, when we were supposed to drive into the city to look at a few apartments. Every single appointment ended up canceled or postponed until Tuesday. On Tuesday I went to the office early so I could head out and see the two places I had managed to reschedule. After spending twenty minutes stuck in an inexplicable traffic stoppage, I found that the first was in appalling condition and the second, despite being a duplex, was actually smaller than our current apartment.

Then I got lost trying to get to the highway. Did I mention that it was raining? I found myself thinking that maybe we should just stay put after all, forget the whole idea of moving.

The following morning we set out to visit my family in Pennsylvania. The trip itself went fine; everything was lovely and the kids behaved themselves to an astonishing degree. On Thursday we went to Presque Isle in the morning, then out for dinner with my grandparents (Olive Garden--Erie doesn't offer a lot of options). It was at about 2:30 the following morning that things really and truly went south, as I woke up with a vague feeling of all not being well. By 5:00 it was unequivocally established that I was ill (I blamed the restaurant, but later events seem to have cleared them). I spent the day on the couch with a can of ginger ale, package of saltines, and a Terry Pratchett novel while D* and my mom took the kids out.

Saturday I seemed to be improved, so we headed down to our college reunion. Had a lovely time, though I was very tired; it was nice to see people, to gripe about the changes made to the campus (and those that should have happened, but haven't). Around 9 that night I either relapsed or went into a delayed Stage 2 of the bug. Bad night. Sunday I was still a mess, and we had to drive down to Butler to see my seldom-visited paternal grandmother. I sat in the living room with my Gatorade while everyone else ate lunch, unable to contemplate the smell of anything edible. Then we continued on to Pittsburgh.

On arriving in the hotel parking lot, JJ threw up. The temptation was strong to turn around and head back to my mother's place and thence home, but having tossed his milk he seemed chipper enough, so we decided to see how the night went. D* took them out to a nearby park while I rested. JJ threw up once more, and so did I, before bedtime, but the night passed uneventfully after that, and in the morning everyone seemed to be doing okay. We went to the zoo as planned and had a fine old time of it, started our homeward trip that afternoon, enjoyed a lovely night's stay in Buffalo (and how often do you hear that?), and enjoyed an uneventful drive on Tuesday. I kept exclaiming delightedly about feeling more or less normal again.

Wednesday, JJ vomited again, but again it seemed to be an isolated incident, and it was hard to say whether he was really sick or just having some aftereffect of all the travel and excitement. Then our remaining cat, Jasper, was acting a little odd in the afternoon, and seemed to be having some trouble walking when he got up from a nap, so I made an appointment for him and blew a bunch of money on blood tests that showed nothing wrong that we didn't know about.

Thursday, JJ seemed to be more clearly under the weather. The cat seemed to be fine. I went to my OB/GYN appointment; I haven't gained much weight with this pregnancy yet, but I started off with some to spare, and the baby appears to have weathered my little gastro-intestinal adventure handily.

Friday, 4:30 a.m., L asked for a drink of water, and two minutes later was heaving.

Needless to say, I hope, I haven't been doing much cooking, and indeed food of any kind has not played much of a role for most of us in the past week. Still, the farmer's markets are opening, and in a fit of optimism, I am nevertheless making appointments for more apartment viewings this weekend. Sooner or later, things have to start going better.

Right?

5:30 AM

"What are you doing?"
"Making sure the erasers are okay."
"Oh."
"Can I go to the bathroom?"
"Sure." "Now go back to bed."
"But the sun is up."
"It's 5:30. The sun gets up early in the summer. People need to go back to sleep."
5 minutes later, "Mom! What was that noise?"
"Probably birds."
"I think it was trees moving back and forth outside the window."
"Could be. Go back to sleep."
5 minutes later, "Mom!"
"What?"
"The sun's rising."

*Sigh.*

A Busy Kitchen Weekend

Of all the times to misplace my camera.

To start the weekend properly, on Friday... it was a long week. So on Friday night I made a chocolate cake. On Saturday morning I iced it, but impatience got the better of me -- the butter wasn't soft enough, and did not mix in entirely with everything else, so my cake has eensy blobs of butter in the frosting, and I wouldn't have taken a picture of it anyway. It was the same cake I made for L's last birthday.

Speaking of L, she got her first haircut on Saturday! Apparently it went reasonably well. Afterwards her dad took her to Barnes and Noble, where Winnie the Pooh was making an appearance, and she got a new Thomas the Tank Engine train. Quite a good day from her point of view.

While they were out, I went to the grocery store. I didn't have much of a list yet, but I figured I might as well go ahead and get the things that I knew I needed. For once, the store was looking pretty good. I bought some bright bell peppers, which didn't even look as if they had been hurled with force from the back of a truck at some point, some salad fixings, and a grab bag of protein-type things, including a 4+ pound pork loin roast. I have never cooked a loin roast before, but I knew I had seen recipes for them that looked tasty.

I got back, put everything away, and decided that I ought to make a batch of marinara sauce for later this week. I have a training class to attend, which means I'll be home pretty late two days, which means that the menu has to be D-friendly (pasta and tacos). The recipe that I use is one that makes the rounds of the Cooking Light bulletin boards and is known simply as "Lindrussos". Some day I might pass this recipe to my kids and they will wonder who Lindrusso might be. The recipe starts by caramelizing onions, and for once I was not impatient, and I did not singe the onions, and I did not make the mistake of turning the heat up too high later on, and my marinara turned out wonderfully, without the bitter undernote it had last time, which D loyally denied being able to taste.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon sugar
3-4 medium onions, chopped
1/2 cup cup dry red wine
6 cloves garlic, crushed with the blade of a knife
3 (28-ounce) cans crushed tomatoes (or 2 28-ounce cans crushed and 2 14-ounce cans diced if you want a bit more chunkiness)
2 (6-ounce) cans tomato paste
2 teaspoons oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
pinch of crushed red pepper or more to taste
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Heat oil in a Dutch Oven over medium heat. Add chopped onions and 1 tablespoon sugar. Sauté onions for 30-45 minutes, or until sweet and caramelized. As the pan dries while onions are cooking, add red wine as needed. Once onions are done, continue to add the rest of the ingredients. Stir until well-combined. Simmer over low heat for 4-6 hours (you can simmer for less, but I would simmer for at least 1-2 hours). Stir often to keep the sauce from burning or getting overcooked. Makes about 9 cups of sauce.

In the afternoon, while JJ napped and the sauce simmered, I played with L. We even went outside and made a little snowman. It was unseasonably warm, a wonderful feeling after the seriously harsh winter we've been having, and the snow was slumping and easy to work with. I made snowballs, and she threw chunks of ice into the puddles to see them start melting.

In the course of his nap, JJ developed a lovely, though fortunately mild, croupy cough. So we called the pediatrician's office, and D went out to buy a humidifier.

There was still dinner, and that pork loin. I did a few recipe searches and came up with Chinese Red-Cooked Pork. Considerably easier than making pie, and almost as rewarding. I will say two things about the recipe, though: My loin took about thirty minutes longer than stated to get to the fork-tender stage, and it would have benefited from more, since it wasn't quite shreddable. But there's that impatience thing... and I was hungry. Second, they include instructions to "brown" the roast.

Umm... in what? A roast is not going to brown in a bath of wine and sugar. So next time I make this I may fiddle with it a bit and see if browning it represents an improvement. I still have half of my loin roast tucked in the freezer, after all. With the pork I made rice, and sliced up some of the peppers and a cucumber. L ate copious amounts of both vegetables, astonishingly, but didn't touch anything else. Perhaps I should include a crudite plate with all meals? Slices of cake made a splendid dessert.

Sunday was supper club, and just as busy a day if not more so....

0 Degrees...

... is what weather.com says for Worcester right now. This has been an unusually vicious cold snap, even for January.

In other vicious news, L has been flattened all week by a stomach flu that has had her sleeping most of the days away and keeping down very little food. Last night, JJ developed a light fever and threw up his dinner, then had a very up and down night (probably hungry, since we didn't want to give him any solids for a while). Didn't eat much for breakfast, but at least so far it's stayed inside him.

Aaand D has developed a knee problem, which he is going to doctor about today. Somehow I don't think our plans for the weekend are going to happen. The minor miracle? In the midst of all of this, it's been a pretty productive week at work. Not terribly productive in the kitchen, though, but maybe over the course of the weekend everyone will get healthy again.

Yellow Lentil Dal

Some months ago, on a whim, I bought a package of yellow lentils. Since then, they have mostly been lugged around by my son, who loves pulling things off my "pantry" shelves. Also on a whim, I bought some tandoori seasoning with one of my Penzey's orders. Together, they suggested a meal for a night when I thought I would have some free time to fuss around in the kitchen.

Last night I finally opened the darned lentils, and I'm glad that I did! This recipe I found through a Google search turned out to be reasonably easy and very, very good.

Yellow Lentil Dal

I just did plain rice with it, feeling like I had taken on too much already, and tandoori chicken (replacing the spice mix in the recipe with my Penzey's stuff), which didn't turn out right since I forgot to take off the skin, and then undercooked it a tad. Next time I will try to plan better.

JJ had his one-year checkup yesterday. He's in the 95th percentile for height, but at 21 lb and change, only 25th for weight -- running around all day long will do that! Everything is spot on, his doctor tells us. He got two vaccinations, but was in a pretty chipper mood despite that, at least until he fell off the bed right before bedtime. Just a bump and a scare, fortunately. I am trying to plan a grocery shopping run while he toddles around the place right now, since he got up much earlier than I was hoping he would.

Raaarrr!

Dark Chocolate Brownies with White Chocolate Chunks

Gah, a whole week since my last post? I'm not sure what it says that my long holiday weekend was so busy that I barely had time to check my mail a few times, but that seems to be how things are lately.

On Saturday, for instance, we took advantage of the flagrantly gorgeous weather and took a picnic lunch to Green Hill Park, on the other side of town. Aside from the congregation of bulldog owners (seriously), it was quite nearly deserted. We found a table, admired the foliage, and watched flocks of geese take off in frantic pursuit of or flight from whatever it was they thought was important, while L poked around on the shore and soaked her shoes. Afterward we walked up to the little farm/petting zoo, and then over to the playground. JJ played with sticks, I lay in the grass clippings and watched some fantastic high clouds, we all got a bit too much sun, and it was one of the most perfect days imaginable.


On Sunday, D had to go up to NH to help close up the cottage. I was still recovering from the hideous cough that had been plaguing me for nearly a week, and we didn't really want to get the kids up and ready for a 7 a.m. departure, so it had been agreed that the rest of us would stay home. I always feel a bit nervous about having them to myself for a long stretch, but as it turned out, the day went very well. I made bread and these brownies, which along with Ina Garten's "outrageous" ones are the best ones I've had:

DARK-CHOCOLATE-BROWNIES-WITH-WHITE-CHOCOLATE-CHUNKS

Our friend B came up from Connecticut for a visit with his daughter. She and L ran around the driveway for a while, watched Toy Story, and we got a pizza for lunch. After our visitors had gone and JJ was napping, L got a bath. I didn't aim high for dinner--Chicken & Stars soup for her, leftovers for me--but I did get them both fed and in bed by the time D had battled his way through the fair-going traffic. And no one melted down all day, not even me!

Monday I had off, and since it was still unseasonably nice, we went over to Hadwen Park, near our apartment, for the morning. We walked up the hill and along the trails through dried leaves and pine needles, and talked glancingly about the fact that it might well be our last visit to the place, if we find a house and move this winter. In the afternoon, I bathed the other kid and spent some quality time with my stack of old November issues of Bon Appetit, thinking idle thoughts about holiday menus. I sliced up a pork tenderloin, found a recipe for an easy pan sauce of red wine, orange juice, and broth, added some roasted carrots, squash, and turnips from the farmer's market, and called it dinner.

General update notes: JJ is standing by himself more often, starting to get the hang of this balancing thing. He goes in today to see how his head is coming along. And L, having put up a fight about it that has long baffled her parents, has finally been using the potty. Work has been crazy, but we have our big deadline for this release a week from today, and after that things should get a bit quieter there. I have a ton of vacation time to use up before the end of the year, so I'm thinking about how to best use that (a few days spent baking cookies, perhaps?).

JJ's Baptismal Lunch

It was an enormously busy weekend--a D&D game on Saturday, and one of the group had a recent birthday so I made Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Cloud Cake. It was absolutely fantastic and I wish I'd taken a picture. The only problem was the presentation, in that the whipped cream tends to slide around a bit when you cut into the cake. Minor problem, though, since it tasted great. While we played, I put together Ina Garten's Outrageous Brownies. (Take a pound of butter....)

My in-laws were here to watch the kids during the game. For dinner we gave them Bistro Chicken with rice pilaf and steamed green beans, and then we finished off the cake.

On Sunday morning I made some French-style potato salad, chopped up veggies for nibbling with hummus, plated the brownies, and put the ham in the oven. JJ was fussy at first during church, and complained quite loudly about the water, but soon after that he fell asleep. Here's the little guy in his gown.


We caravaned the family back to our apartment, and it was short work to put all the food out. D's mom and dad brought some bread and iced tea to round out the menu, and his aunt and uncle had thoughtfully brought some prosecco and glasses, and we toasted our little guy and then fell to demolishing the food.

That didn't take long, and there isn't much left over, which is pretty much the best compliment one can have for this sort of event. Everyone stayed for a while, catching up, taking pictures, playing with the kids (L was a little hyper but generally pretty good, and JJ behaved fabulously--must have been the nap).

Midafternoon JJ finally went to sleep again. I took L outside and blew bubbles for her, and we went down by the pond's shore to see the turtles, and the heron that was fishing off the old pilings. I will miss that pond, but I am really starting to look forward to moving.

Here's a pic of the two kids from earlier this week, just for the heck of it!

He slept through the night!!!

I will never figure kids out.

Friday night was awful. L brought a cold home from school and gave it to her brother, and he was up I think four times in the course of the night--crying, snuffling, and more than willing to share his misery with his parents. So Saturday night we were braced for more of the same; we got the car seat ready in case he found it easier to sleep propped up, and agreed to take turns getting up with him as needed.

Instead, he slept from 8:30 to 5, had a snack, and went back to sleep for another couple hours. Amazing. He has also become quite competent at pulling himself to standing. While he had done it a few times before yesterday, over the course of the weekend he has gained confidence and proficiency. When I went in this morning to find him standing up in his crib, it was time to lower the mattress level.

Most of yesterday was taken up with a trip to the Roger Williams Park Zoo in RI. We were there last year with our friends the Rs and their daughter, and are trying to make it something of a tradition, since we don't get to see them as often as we'd like. The zoo is on the small side in terms of the number of exhibits, which makes it just the right size for small children; both girls were pretty tired and edging into cranky by the time we finished. When the kids are bigger we might broaden our activity zone to other parts of the park.

Something to remember for next time: with little ones, do not try to leave something good for the end of the visit; they'll be too tired to enjoy it and will rush you through it, too.

Now to spend a rainy morning figuring out menus and shopping lists. Aside from the normal weekly things, JJ is getting baptized a week from now, and I have to figure out something to feed people afterward, plus we have a D&D game on Saturday. Takeout may figure into one or more of these events....

No further news on the house front; we seem to have exhausted the existing stock that meets our criteria in the Framingham area, and are left waiting to see what else comes on the market. We are hoping to take a second look at that one fixer-upper, just for kicks and to see how much work would really be involved. I keep reminding myself that we have plenty of time... but last night I packed up two boxes of videos we don't watch much. There's a big part of me that really wants to have this done with.

Cruising!

JJ took his first cruising steps today. Wish I'd had a camera handy, because he had the biggest grin I have ever seen!

Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake

I've been meaning to post this for weeks now--it's the recipe I used to make L's birthday cake, and it was not only the best chocolate layer cake I've ever made, but quite possibly the best I've ever eaten. Thank you, Rose Levy Berenbaum, whose book truly deserves the title The Cake Bible.

1/2 c + 3 Tbsp unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa (I use Droste, and for things like this, it is worth the expense!)
1 c boiling water
3 large eggs, room temp
2 1/4 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 c + 2 Tbsp sifted cake flour
1 1/2 c sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 c unsalted butter, softened.

1. Preheat oven to 35oF. Prepare 2 9-inch cake pans: greased, bottoms lined with parchment or wax paper, then greased again and floured.
   
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together cocoa and boiling water until smooth. Cool to room temp.
3. In another bowl, lightly combine the eggs, 1/4 of the cooled cocoa mixture, and vanilla.
4. In a large mixing bowl, combine the remaining dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 30 seconds to blend.
   
5. Add the butter and the remaining cocoa mixture. Mix on low speed until dry ingredients are moistened.
6. Increase to medium speed (high if hand mixer) and beat for 1 1/2 minutes. Scape down the sides.
   
7. Gradually add the egg mixture in 3 batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition. Scrape down the sides.
8. Scrape batter into prepared pans and smooth. Bake 25-35 minutes or until a tester inserted near the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when touched lightly in the center. Should start to shrink from the sides only after removing from the oven.
9. Let the cakes cool in the pans on a rack for 10 minutes. Loosen the sides and invert onto greased metal racks. To prevent splitting, reinvert and cool completely.

I used Martha Stewart's chocolate frosting, and the result was fabulous.



UPDATE: Added the sugar!

Kids Moving Right Along

Can't believe I forgot to mention this in yesterday's post, but on Sunday night JJ said "maamaaamaamaaa". We're very excited! And last night L actually ate some pasta.

I'll get back to posting recipes soon, but this week I haven't had any time to plan or to shop.

A Red-Letter Day

Last night my very own daughter, the one who regularly flies into hysterics if faced with food she thinks she won't like, ate a piece of broccoli. Raw. And a piece of pasta that wasn't star-shaped and in a can of Campbell's soup.

She has been doing this sort of thing more often lately, which leads me to a tiny flicker of hope that we won't be sending her off to college with a diet consisting solely of hot dogs and yogurt. The funny thing is that she will apparently try new foods if they are given to her at the counter where I'm prepping them. Put them on a plate, on the table, cooked, and she will utter her charmingly phrased demand, "Maybe I should have some yogurt instead?" Mind you, she so far has only eaten one piece of each experimental food, but I figure it's progress.

JJ is also coming along, though we are still trying to find the best window for giving him cereal, where he's hungry enough to eat it but not so hungry that he doesn't want to deal with the whole spoon thing. He's still waking up at night, but goes back to sleep much more easily than he was for some weeks. He's going in this afternoon to get measured for what his pediatrician calls a "hat" to reshape his flat spot.

Six-Month Update

JJ cut his first tooth earlier this week, and according to yesterday's pediatric visit has at least three more following close behind. This explains the night waking, or so we hope. We gave him Motrin last night, but it seems to have been only partly effective (the shots yesterday probably didn't help either). Still, we can at least look forward to a day not too far off (we hope) when he (and we) will get a bit of a break.

He's up to 17 lb, 12 oz. It's probably a good thing that his growth has slowed down a bit, if only so we might get more than six weeks' wear out of his clothes.

Dinner for a Frazzled Weekend

The frazzling began late Saturday night, when out of nowhere JJ started throwing up. Now, this child spits up right and left, but had never out and out vomited before, so we checked all of our books, and when he did it a few more times called his doctor. After which, of course, he settled down and didn't do it again, sparing us a trip to the emergency room at midnight. But the damage to his hapless parents was done. D got next to no sleep all night, leaving him borderline ill himself the next day, when we were expecting his sister and her husband to be staying the night with us on Sunday.

We managed to get the place cleaned up, and I finished up the grocery shopping. On the way home, the ginger ale's cardboard case gave way, scattering cans hither and yon through the the parking lot. I gathered up those that hadn't sprung a leak and soldiered on. When we got home, I found that the bottle of spray cleaner hadn't been tightly closed, so most of one bag smelled rather strongly of citrus and half of its contents had to be thrown out.

In the afternoon, wonder of wonders, both kids took a nap, so I took myself to my freshly cleaned kitchen and started to mess it up again, making sandwich bread and a cake to go along with the taco dinner I had planned. The latter I have made before, and we love the recipe in the summer, though the tacos tend to be a little bit unwieldy, with bits of veggies and pork juices falling everywhere. The previously untried lemon cake was okay, but I've definitely had better. I may give up on Cooking Light for dessert recipes; they have some standouts, but the whole impulse to be low-fat about things has led to some less than outstanding results. Though it may not seem like it to read this blog, I don't make desserts all that often, and if I'm going to the effort I want something that tastes really, really good. Like Lisa Yockelson's blueberry tea cake, reported on here by a fellow blogger (and commented on by Ms. Yockelson herself!).

By the time we finished dinner, I could feel the scratchiness starting in my throat. JJ got us up no less than three times in the night, and every time he did, my throat felt worse. So here it is, Monday morning, I am coming down with a cold, I have a ton of work to do this week, and I left my headphones at home.

The week should get better from here.

Finally Caught the Smile!

A tiring and discouraging day yesterday, driving around Framingham to see what our budget will get us by way of a house there. I am less than thrilled with the idea of having to look farther outside of Boston than that, but our explorations have only begun.

In better news, I finally got JJ to smile for the camera. He's taken well to cereal but still not sleeping as solidly as we would like. Could be teething, of course.



This morning he rolled from his back to his tummy for the first time! Now he's got both directions.

"You're wasting perfectly good sticks!"

So one of the neighbor kids reproved another for pushing them out onto the pond yesterday afternoon. It was an unusual day in that D was out all day; it's not often that I have the kids to myself for that long a stretch, and I tried to prepare myself for a chaotic and exhausting time. But it worked out pretty well. We went to the playground and the grocery store in the morning, and in the afternoon went out in the back yard. It was a warm and gorgeous morning, but as the day advanced clouds moved in and a breeze picked up. I kept thinking it was about to rain, but it never did. I even got a few things done around the apartment, including hauling out and washing off the high chair, which was stuck in the broom closet the day L outgrew it and has been collecting dust there ever since.

Sorry for the lack of posting lately; last week was nigh-hellish with late days at work and lots of missed sleep due to JJ, who also got us about four times in a three-hour period last night, and sounds like he's about to get up for real now. I haven't had the energy to cook in days, but this week should be getting back on track.