B is home recovering from a random fever today, and we’ve had some fun talks in which I’ve gathered interesting information:
He thinks it is crazy that The Princess In Black has not yet been made into a movie. He thinks that George Lucas should produce it, since he did a good job on Star Wars. He suggests we just “go down to there” to go see Mr. Lucas and ask him, since he’s just “across from us” in California. It is shocking that I don’t already know Mr. Lucas, but we shan’t let that stop us.
Classic videos of Wonder Woman > Dinosaur Train > Thomas the Train > Sesame Street
He can carry very heavy pillows, and thereby help me make his bed.
When I say “eat three carrots,” that means he will eat three bites of carrot.
“It’s a good thing Wonder Woman can help!”
“Whoa, you can take this off. Look, I took this off.”
Amelia and I were eating some of the previously mentioned strawberries for lunch.
Suddenly she said, “Mom look: stamens!”
And we started talking about how the green flowery-looking stem of a strawberry is actually the cover of the bud of the strawberry flower, and that the flower was pollinated by bees probably, but other animals can also pollinate, and then she adroitly finished the discussion with:
“Well, I’m eating a swollen ovary right now — I know that!”
Sometimes she shares.
Amelia has started building herself more and more elaborate, throne-like seats (the better to rule her kingdom from, my dear).
When Baxter asked her to read him a book this morning, I walked back in the room to see her leading a one-person story hour. To his credit, he lasted about 10 minutes.
I love this slow, unstructured time we sometimes have on weekends. And now, I need to chase them into street clothes and get them out the door before all the strawberries at the farmers market are bought up!
When I got out of bed this morning, I found Amelia carefully brushing Baxter’s hair around his tiara/headband. She had already helped him put on two tutus under his Cinderella dress (and over his pajamas). He was very pleased the results.
Baxter wakes up and groggily stumbles out of his room, saying “Mom, the green light* is on! I’m going to go back to sleep.”
Me: “You’re going back to sleep?”
Baxter: “Yes, right here on dis chair.”
He turned on the lights between curling up on the armchair, the way you do.
His “sleep” didn’t last long. 🙂 Have a great morning!
*The kids have stoplight alarm clocks in their rooms, in an effort to keep them in bed until a certain time. When the green light comes on in the morning, they are allowed to get up.
This weekend was a quiet one, with lots of spring cleaning and a heaping helping of household (and teardrop trailer) maintenance. What with the bereavement last month and then all the carpe diem-ing we’ve been doing since, our home and garden have been getting more and more grubby. When we gross out even ourselves, steps must be taken. So! Cue the spring cleaning music (lately, we clean tothe soundtrack of Guardians of the Galaxy).
It’s shocking how quickly weeds come up in this pea-gravel walkway.
Profusion!
One of our three small oases of grass.
And it’s spring, so all green things are growing like crazy, including all the weeds and the grass. We don’t have too much lawn, but we have enough weeds to make up for it. But wow, the payoff! We didn’t buy this house for the stunning and lovingly nurtured landscape, but I’m getting more pleasure out of our plants than I ever thought I would. This spring has been a wonderful journey of discovery, learning what blooms what color, and when. (Hint: everything, usually white, and all the time.)
Our handcrafted, artisan teardrop trailer.
We go on our first camping of the season in about a month, and the trailer needed some pretty significant maintenance before we could take it out. If you’re not familiar with our teardrop trailer, Tom built it with his own hands, from the axle up (with the help of some good friends on the interior woodwork). It gives us a watertight (now — good work, Tom!) spot to sleep when we camp, though it’s kind of claustrophobic in there with all 4 of us — this summer I think we’ll put the kids in the trailer and Tom and I will sleep in a tent nearby. The back hatch serves as a galley, and it’s nice to be able to lock all the food down, good and tight, now that we’re camping in Bear Country. (Is the coast still Bear Country? The raccoons are fierce enough, if not.)
We also did some springtime storm window shifting; the storm door in the front got a screen instead of glass, and I opened the storm windows in the bedrooms to expose the screens and allow us to get more of this gorgeous spring air in the house.
This doesn’t look any different with the screen on, actually. 😉
I wish I had taken a “before” picture. But seriously, these railings are so clean!
Then I washed a few windows and scrubbed down the railing on the back porch. It’s overhung by a very bloomy-polleny tree, and the mold/mildew/dirt on the weird coated wood was getting really bad. As you might spot, some moisture has penetrated the weird coating, and we’re going to have to replace at least the railings after this season, I think. But now I’ll have an even more idyllic place to work on sunny days, and there’s nothing wrong with THAT!
And of course on top of all that we had all the laundry and all the dishes and all the floors. I’m heading down to the basement in a few minutes to fold my way through a pile of laundry that registers on the Everest scale, as soon as I have confidence that the kids are closer to sleep. While Tom and I were busy with all of these chores, they either helped clean (their rooms and the toys in the basement) or played together, largely entertaining themselves. We’re ridiculously lucky to have two kids who enjoy each other so much. With chores done, sun setting, bread baking, and kids sleeping, I’m hyper-aware right now that some people are muchly much-much more unlucky than us. #seussblessed
I bought myself a little something.
I have just about cooked Time for Dinner — of which Jenny Rosenstrach was one of three authors — into oblivion. It’s my most-recommended cookbook to anyone with kids. Things needed freshening up on the meal plan around here, so I picked up one of Jenny’s newer books. If you don’t already read her blog, Dinner A Love Story, I suggest you add it to your food blog rotation, pronto.
I’ve cooked two recipes this week from Dinner: The Playbook, and they’ve been very well-received! The Slow-Cooker Korean Short Ribs were a huge hit, and the whole house smelled amazesauce all day because of the crockpot. I made sesame broccoli to go alongside, and served it over the Goya-infused rice I made for beans-and-rice night the day before. Yumtastic! Amelia had thirds. It makes a lot of meat, so I froze the leftovers to use later in Lettuce Hand Rolls (also known as “make your own dinner”) next week. I do like a flexible prepared protein!
Slow-Cooker Korean Short Ribs over yellow rice. Also, sesame broccoli. That’s a green plate, huh?
Here’s what the inside of the book looks like.
Then on Wednesday night I made the chorizo tacos. I used a really mild Longaniza for the chorizo, actually, since my kids are horrified by anything spicy ( and it was the only link style chorizo I could find at the grocery store).
Yogurt-lime-cilantro sauce, shredded cabbage, avocado, longaniza, and corn tortilla ready to be filled with delicious.
My taco *kind* of looked like this, when assembled.
This was a minefield of “I don’t like that” for the kids — avocado, raw cabbage, and yogurt sauces are all highly suspect among my littles — but I tried something new and it was brilliantly successful. I assembled a taco with all the ingredients (made them watch), took a bite, made appropriate yummy noises, and then offered them each a bite of my taco. They both liked the bite they took, and when I offered to make them a taco just like mine (with all the “icky” components!), they eagerly said yes. They both ate the whole taco I made for them, and then they started making their own combinations. Did those combinations include avocado, raw cabbage, and yogurt sauce? No. But they got to taste how all of the ingredients work together, and I think that’s a win. 🙂
The concept of “make your own dinner” is one I adopted from Time for Dinner. I put a bunch of bowls of ingredients on the table, and everyone can assemble their own perfect meal — is a huge hit with my family. It exposes the kids to lots of flavors but reduces the amount of New Food left on their plates. We do multiple versions of this now: lettuce hand rolls, as mentioned, tostadas (which we had last night), baked potato bar, sesame noodles… and I think I’ll add the chorizo tacos to our rotation with a few edits (I’m the only one in my house who likes corn tortillas, put a bowl of cheese out and maybe some refried beans). If you have a table full of picky eaters at your house, I highly recommend “make your own dinner” night in all its many guises. It does produce more dishes than simply plating the kids’ food in the kitchen, and that is a total drawback, but I think it’s worth it.
B is home recovering from a random fever today, and we’ve had some fun talks in which I’ve gathered interesting information:
The Thing With The Stuff 