woe is me

 

I feel like maybe I've run the sympathy well dry over here with all that ails me.  I've tried to limit my complaining, but seriously.  This was a nasty bug.  Perhaps if I had just settled into the fact that I had a nasty bug, tucked myself into bed for a few days, and gotten over myself things would be different.  But instead I worked most of yesterday and thirteen hours straight today, all on about three bites of food since Monday night.  Which is where I will say that those were the three best bites I've had in days.  You can take that as a good recommendation or not, but if it leads you to this cake that's a good thing.

Peach cake, from the latest Cooks Illustrated, and topped with homemade vanilla ice cream (that I didn't try, but heard was good.)  That makes the recipes tried from this issue 3 for 3 - the lighter corn chowder was so good we've already made it twice.  And in the summer, of all things.  It's that good.  Sorry - I lost focus.  

Peach cake.  I made this Monday evening a good eight hours before I fell ill, so I'm pretty sure it's not toxic.  I'm super crazy clean lady when I cook for others anyway, but I will say that it felt a little strange to show up to work so sick and carrying a cake.  It was for a sixtieth birthday, a celebration that I didn't even stick around to celebrate, but I finally managed to try a few bites of it this afternoon, and it was delicious.  I'll try to post the recipe soon  (once I'm off my deathbed) - it's not difficult, but has some interesting twists to boost the flavor of the peaches and keep them from becoming a soggy mess.  They worked.  

I'm hoping to resume eating again tomorrow, but I'm afraid the leftovers will soon be gone.  Which is okay really, because I know someone else who's turning sixty in a few days... 

perspective

This past weekend was a tough one.  The big one was away, and the little one was a force to be reckoned with.  She tossed and turned at night, waking up multiple times in addition to the noisy thunderstorms outside, and she really tested our patience out.  Mid-afternoon Saturday she unloaded her entire breakfast and lunch (bacon and Gruyere pastry and a pint of farmers' market blackberries) onto herself, the floors, the walls.   Sunday night wasn't much better, and Monday morning rolled around and I really thought we might die of exhaustion.

Fast forward to this morning, 2:30am, when I woke with a start.  For a split second I thought my body had just forgotten how to sleep through the night, but about thirty seconds later it hit me.  A wave of nausea far stronger than any that I endured during either pregnancy.  I never went back to sleep it was so strong.  E woke up feeling the same way around six, and we proceeded to fill up the toilet and the tub with our crummy feelings, and I knew she couldn't go to camp, but I really needed to go to work - at least to finish off something for a meeting this afternoon.  My eyelids hurt to blink - you can imagine how the rest of me felt sitting at a computer.

It's almost seven at night, and E is sleeping next to me in my bed.  We both have high fevers and feel altogether miserable.  The weight of my skin on my bones hurts.  If I think too hard, my brain hurts.  It might be a long night.  But as soon as I'm feeling better I'll make sure that I scoop that baby up and let her know I feel her pain.  As parents we think we are so in tune with our children, but sleep deprivation can do tricky things to your mind, and convince you that your toddler is out to get you with their cunning ways.  Last night she slept all thirteen hours without a peep, except for the ten minutes or so that she sings herself to sleep in her crib.  She slept through the sickfest of her mom and sister, she slept like a baby.  I'm hoping for a night like that any day now.

puppet difficulties

I forgot about these photos, but stumbled upon them again yesterday.  There were some little cardboard puppet stages set up for the kids to play with during the puppet show intermission, and E jumped at the chance to try it out.  F, on the other hand, didn't seem to get the concept.  First, she thought the puppets that appeared were for her, and she tried to grab each one and take off with it.

After telling her to go behind the stage about two million times, she decided to check it out.  At that point she forgot completely about the actual puppets, and just stuck her bare hand into the story.  If you haven't yet seen "The Hare and the Hand" I highly recommend it.  Just be warned - the cardboard stage will come hurling at your feet with a toddler sprawled across it at least once during the performance.  Which just adds to the show.

melt

Now that she can climb up here by herself, she grabs a pillow, a stack of books, and nestles in.  If you could only know what my heart did when I walked back into her room and saw this.  For all the moments of toddler wrestling that go on throughout the day, it's watching her snuggle up happily into her crib for a nap, waking up all snuggly-sleepy-sweaty, puttering around her room with a constant stream of dialogue, and then this.  Those sweet feet sticking out from underneath a book, delightful.  I could eat her up, I really could.  And she would just giggle, and then let me. 

friday finds

This Friday we found ourselves saying goodbye to the oldest one - she's off for a long weekend at the lake with a friend.  The little one wasn't too keen on that find.  We took our mind off the sadness with a trip to our candy store.  This time we got little bags filled with butterflies for all our friends.  It's hard to wait two more weeks...

Lollies for the older kids.

Could you resist this ribbon?  Good thing most of you voted for the ants.

Speaking of resistance.  Not one bit of it when I saw this picnic blanket.  Not one bit.  We're just about ready for the party - just a little baking and decorating to do. 

I hope this Friday finds you well, and with no ants (except the cute embroidered types).  What did you find this Friday?

someone's almost two

Oh my, I do love these invitations.

Oh my, I do get a bit tired of writing the same thing twenty times over.

 

But still worth it.  I love these little "bye-bye's" (baskets).  By the way, F started calling backpacks "backpacks" and purses "purses" - everything with a strap or handle used to be a "bye-bye".  I tested her out with a picnic basket, and it's still a "bye-bye".  I said - Listen kiddo, you wanted a bye-bye party, and you're getting a bye-bye party.  Don't you go growing up on me now and start calling everything by its real name and blowing the theme...

And then, the icing on the cake:  postage.  At first there was only a wedding cake option for the stamp that I needed.  They dug around a bit and found these.  Perfect.

a living room that lives again

Progress is slow and comes in bits and spurts as we get the time, but we do have primer on the walls, and some trim paint and a larger color sample are coming this evening.  We've got roofers coming to give us quotes on the work that we need to have done there (on the flat portion that you can't see) - that's what has held us up on the bookshelves and the fireplace.  We need to know just what the roof (not optional) is going to cost before we purchase fireplaces and bookshelves (desirable, but still optional).  It rained all of April and May, so we could never get anyone up to look at the roof, and late May and early June have been a whirlwind.  But we're back on track I think, and ready to get this show on the road.

F's invitations are going out today and tomorrow, and this room just might be our rainy day backup plan.  A big empty, echo-y room to set up an indoor picnic in.  Fingers crossed for sunshine...

decadent

Remember how I mentioned decadent desserts in yesterday's post?  Here's the evidence.  The richer and sweeter something is, the more she likes to rub it all over her face in pleasure.  And then give you this kind of look when you dare to come after her with a wet washcloth.

on father's day

While I would have liked to have given my husband a whole day devoted to whatever he likes best, the reality is, at this stage in our lives, those days are hard to come by.  Instead of breakfast in bed (or an even better treat - we leave the house for breakfast and let him sleep in for as long as he wants), I rose early and left him to wrangle the kids while I preached not one, but two services.  We had leftovers for lunch, and he spent the afternoon working with a friend in the living room while I ran a few errands with the girls.  I did put together a delicious dinner that we all slurped up in mass quantities, and then finished off with some decadent dessert.  The kids went to bed, and we curled up on the couch to watch the last segment of a movie we've had for a week.  A day full of things that had to be done mixed in with things that are fun to do.

That's how we operate right now - rarely watching a feature film in one sitting, shifting from working to playing, always one of us in kid mode while the other tries to knock something off that endless to-do list.  There are days when that gets to be so very trying, when we wish there were more times with the four of us, not just various combinations of three.  I'm sure that yesterday afternoon there were moments that he looked up from sanding wood trim to watch the three of us building with legos on the floor and wished he were doing that.  I know there were moments during the lego building that requires constant negotiations between a very particular seven-year-old and a very pushy toddler when I watched him rolling primer onto the walls and wished I were in there doing that very thing.

It is in this constant juggling mode that we call life right now that I am incredibly grateful that there are two of us.  That shifting of roles and responsibilities is necessary, critical really, to catch your breath, to remember who you are, to be a better parent, a better partner.  Thank goodness for fathers, especially this one.

hand puppet

The girls and I attended a puppet show event this morning, and one of the puppets that they got to make were these little hand puppets.  The eyes were made out of ponytail holders with plastic balls on the two ends.  The pupils were added with permanent markers.  The feathers were made of this ribbon that looked like a string of feathers - any type of boa would work.  You simply wind the feathers around your hand, trim that length off and tape the ends together.  Slide your four fingers through, and thread your pointer finger and your pinky through the rubberband to make your eyes.  You could create lots of variations depending upon the type of trim that you use and the colors and style of eyes.  Really easy, inexpensive and clever.

friday finds, saturday edition

 

Well, looky there!  Where did that come from?  This bloomed Friday morning, and I honestly can't remember how this got there, and who might have planted it.  But what a lovely surprise.  Usually surprises found in our yard are most decidedly not lovely.  I'll take mystery lilies anytime.

So, my Friday finds are limited and a day late because I banned myself from the internet yesterday and concentrated on writing a sermon for tomorrow.  I know.  A sermon.  I can't believe it either.

But tomorrow morning I'll deliver it at two services, and as long as I don't trip on stage like I did at a piano recital one time, I'll consider it a roaring success.  To get over the hump of knowing where to start, I just sat down and pretended to write a blog post.  Writing a blog post that fills twenty minutes of speaking is a really long blog post.  So don't think of me as being absent yesterday.  It was like I was here in spirit - and you didn't have to spend all afternoon reading it.

Wish me luck.

staged photo

This morning the girls and I went to Rue Lafayette to pick up breakfast and some other lovely croissant-y like things for the office.  They each picked out pastry wrapped cheese and bacon, and after being warmed up a bit behind the counter they were a little too hot to handle.  We walked across the street to our car, and the girls ran over to the fence to watch a bunny hopping around.  I thought they looked so cute watching the little guy through the fence that I went for my camera.  By the time I had it out the bunny was long gone and my photo opportunity missed.  

"Girls!  Can I still take a photo of you guys by the fence?"  They weren't too thrilled at the idea, so I tried to sweeten the deal.  Their pastries were still too warm, so I offered them each a croissant to hold for the photo.  I felt a bit silly with the pose, but I was hoping to get a few close ups with the fence and the morning light and the green grass and the sweet girls.  It didn't work.   I only took a few grainy ones. They weren't into it at all, and I couldn't even get close while trying to keep the oldest one from looking bored / cheesy / sarcastic and the little one from dropping the croissant.  I should have been more worried about her stealing a nibble.  I thought maybe she had pinched off a bit of the corner, but now that I look at these photos, the evidence is written all over her face.

No one seemed to mind at the office.  They were cleaned out in under an hour.

.....

Haven't eaten there yet?  You really should go.

first, an apology

I didn't mean to scare anyone with my vague description of our emergency room visit.  (But thanks for all the calls and emails of concern.) I get a little weird about relaying too much information here - particularly of the medical kind - but it really turned out to be okay.  The short version is that on the way home from a pool party, F started screaming and crying uncontrollably.  She was hard to settle and lethargic all evening and into the night, but had no other symptoms like fever, etc.  We chalked it up to being overtired and over-anxious about mom.  I've been gone so much the past two weeks, and a bit spaced out when I have been home.  As it neared midnight we realized that it was more than exhaustion and anxiety.  She was in pain.  She couldn't turn her head to the left (which is the way she turns to suck her left thumb for comfort - poor thing) and she couldn't look up.  By midnight her head was falling to the right and she wasn't moving a whole lot without prodding.

Fast forward through the emergency room, lots of evaluations, some medicine and a few x-rays, and we determined that it was muscular - not an infection (scary).  She must have suffered some type of muscle spasm in her neck that was extremely painful and as a result she stiffened up and eventually stopped moving altogether.  Determining this from an exhausted toddler in pain is not easy.  Watching her so miserable was even worse.

Ibuprofin worked wonders, and she seems to be back to normal two days later.  She had a good follow up with her doctor, and we know for certain nothing is wrong with her voice.  Because this child is LOUD.  I mean, really, really LOUD.  When you look up the phrase "inside voice" in the wikipedia of her brain it comes up blank.  If you are wondering what you can get her for her second birthday, instilling that definition into her would be great.  Or a muzzle.  Your choice.

Speaking of inside voices, we have a new sound for our inside voices... ECHOS.  As in, the sound our voices now make with the plastic back down between the temporary living room and the real one.  JOY!

Sunday evening we told M through the plastic that dinner was ready.  Normally he would walk out the front door, down the sidewalk to the back door, and come into the house to eat.  All of a sudden we heard the sound of tape and the rustle of plastic.  After too many months* to disclose here, the plastic came down.

You should have heard the squeals from me and from E!  Loud, beautiful, echoing squeals.  And then F looked at us with a giant smile that seemed to say "FINALLY!  Someone else is speaking my language!"

.....

*That statement was not intended to suggest on this blog that this project is dragging on forever**.  I say that enough in person.

**That statement was meant to be funny (and only a little bit true).  If you are wondering why this project is taking forever, see the past one hundred posts here.  We can't catch up.

maybe not a cure-all, but a cure-some

My best bet for feeling a little more in control of life is when I'm back in the kitchen with a stocked pantry and meal plans for the week.  Cookies above*, one of our go-to dinners below.  No one has complained about kale two night in a row.

* I know that I promised a review weeks ago, but things have been busy.  We've been devouring recipe after recipe from Super Natural Every Day - so if I don't make time to convince you in the future, consider this a freebie recommendation right now, and pick up your own copy.

perpetual catch up

2:00 pm, Saturday.  This was the scene in our house for the two kids after a long, late night in the emergency room (for the youngest).  All's well now, but it was a tense night and early morning and it was nice to get back home again as the sun was starting to come back up.  We all caught a couple of hours of sleep, and then the kids fell back asleep after noon until I finally roused them again at 4:30pm.  Because I'm not about to repeat last night's schedule again.

No matter how hard we try to catch up, something else surfaces.  And I know when too many things surface, some things stay hidden beneath, and it's the "lurkers" that I worry about most.  I'm feeling the need to be a little more proactive than reactive, but when you are faced with unexpected loss, long hours, stressful transitions and huge scares with tiny ones in the night, reactive is all you get.

On that note, it's way past my bedtime as well.

Yawn.

friday finds: ten on ten

 

1.  cappuccino skimming  2.  breakfast  3.  picnic party scouting  4.  swinging horizontally  5.  wishful thinking  6.  full bloom  7.  unmade  8.  edible blooms  9.  inedible blooms  10.  hot and chilly

Nice to be back home today. 

to quote the little one, "my back"

I am back again after the second funeral in as many weeks.  At some point in the last month or so, I discovered a monthly exercise called "ten on ten".  As I was flying back home yesterday morning, trying to recall just what day it was, I realized that this Friday would be the tenth, and I'd be home and able to catch up with my family that I've missed and maybe even participate in this photo exercise.

I have no grand plans for today, but I have my camera and I'll be back in this space tonight to share a piece of our day, and a bit of what our family has lost (and found).  If you've got your camera handy, try it for yourself.

miniature picnic baskets

 

I found these small scale picnic baskets online after searching a few of the usual suspects around here to no avail.  I bought a dozen and we got them out of the box on Friday and lined them up and now they are perched on top of the cubbies upstairs.  F looks at them and smiles.  Then she says something that sounds like this - ahh-duv-mine-bye-byes - or "all of my bye-byes" to those of you who don't speak her language yet.  And then she smiles some more.

iris

I took these a few weeks ago.  The iris are long gone now.  I really love the triangular spokes from above.  F liked finding the ones with "caterpillars" in them.

batik

Now that the end of the school year has passed we find ourselves with a portfolio of work to go through and decide what to keep and what to pitch (quietly in the night, not in front of the kid).  I scan most of her work and keep some representative pieces, but we can't keep it all and still maintain some semblance of an organized life around here.  I don't have cable, but I've heard about that hoarders show.  Curious if they've ever profiled someone who can't throw away anything their kid makes.

I'm rather partial to this project - the kids did batiking, which is in fact a verb regardless of what my spell check says.  I especially love the eye in the center, and the embroidery done around it.  The kids did a lot of sewing and work with textiles this year in class, and I imagine that it was quite fun working on this.  Applying the hot wax, dying the fabric, the embroidery, and then adding other details.  I love that the studio art that they do takes weeks and not minutes - that they dive into a process and learn about the history and techniques.  

I'm not sure where I'll end up hanging this - for now it's in the laundry room.  E is not impressed.  But I'm sure my dear friend in South Carolina would consider that a high compliment - her work resides in one of our bathrooms, right above the toilet.

graduation stars

 

We have a lot of these stars in our neighborhood, and they are also the symbol for E's school.  I made these cookies this afternoon for the graduating class.  It was the first time that I tried making my own fondant and it went reasonably well.  I still love royal icing, hands down, but in some cases, fondant (especially as a base, or for more complicated designs or accents) is a lot of fun.  No one likes commercially produced fondant in large doses though, so I thought I'd give a homemade version a try - marshmallows and sugar.  Hard to top that.
 

 

It sure does taste a lot better, but the lack of unpronounceable ingredients probably also contributes to the fact that it's a lot harder to work with.  I thought the marbling effect worked well though.  I was going for something a little old and mottled looking, but didn't want to make a rust colored cookie so I stuck to a purple shade with reds and blues worked in.  The name of the oldest kids' class at the school is Mosaic, and I knew the banner for tomorrow's graduation brunch has multi-colored mosaic patterns so I thought a sparkly "tile" border would be cute.  The students' names are piped on in a deep purple, as well as the rest of the star details.  
 

 

 

I hope they enjoy them - they were a lot of fun to make.

friday finds: air and water

This Friday morning the little one found every possible way to get her feet off the ground.  Swinging on her stomach was the first discovery.

The jungle gyms still baffle her.  She paced the outer edge but never figured out how her sister reached the top.

The hanging bars above the slides are the perfect height.  No sliding, just swinging.  Those in line behind her aren't too thrilled.

And the fountains came on, and we found our feet again...

...racing between one bubbling geyser to the next.

What did you find this Friday?