evening

Happy Friday!

Both boys are quiet in bed, Adam's gone out to run some errands, and I am making yogourt for the first time ever. So simple - I'll share more details when I've tasted it. It's a lovely, quiet evening. Quite a change from some of the yelling and screaming bedtimes we've had lately with P. Oh, my. I'll just be thankful for tonight, and the other 22 or so lovely hours with him each day.

I'm off to check if my milk has skin on it yet. Mmmmm.

birthday treats

It's Adam's birthday tomorrow. His request for a 'cake' was ice cream sandwiches, made using the cookie part from this recipe. Mr T is napping after a rather wakeful night (yaaaaawn!) and Adam took P to "Timportons" (in non-Phillip speak, Tim Horton's) for a special treat, so I just whipped up the dough and it's chilling in the fridge. I think they will be delicious.
I think that eggs are beautiful. Everything about them, but especially the shells. Freckled eggshells are one of the most pleasant sights I can imagine. Although it's not the countertop of my dreams, I'm kind of starting to like the funny old-school speckled countertop in our pantry.

The first of the lily of the valley have arrived! The yard is a veritable riot of green, with lots of other bright colours on the way. I planted some lettuce the other evening, which I'm very much looking forward to eating, and once we get a load of composted soil, we'll be planting some more of our regular veggies. Yipee!

truck farm

How fun is this? I'm excited to see more.

Last night, I was kind of grumpy and out of sorts. It was primarily because I was looking ahead to today, expecting the worst. This morning was my first stint home alone with both boys for any extended period of time, and this evening, we were going out for dinner with my parents, sister and niece. In both cases, I was expecting total chaos and was not looking forward to the day. Which is unusual for me. Of course, all of my concerns were met with a beautifully behaved P who was nothing but charming and sweet all day (this is surprising mostly because he needs to poop and that turns him into a bit of a handful, to say the least) and a wonderful Mr T who slept all through dinner. It was a beautiful day.

4 weeks and Earth day

This is what Mr T looks like most of the time. Although sometimes he puts this face on.
Photos courtesy of Adam.

In case you might be wondering, we did keep Son #1, and we've even taken pictures of him. I just don't seem to have any of them on my memory card. And it's tricky to get decent pictures of them together, given all of the wiggling and such.

The days are flying by. By the time all of the necessary stuff gets taken care of, it seems like the day is done and it's tomorrow. I would usually post something about Earth Day and how every day should be Earth Day, but you all know that anyway, and I'm tired. I celebrated by hanging a very full clothesline and hanging out in the sun with P. As well as opening all of the windows and vacuuming the house (with help from Adam, this took place in a few stages, but it's done!) And scrubbing the insides of the window frames. Eeew.

I pseudo-made a batch of soap yesterday! I took a cold process batch I had made and wasn't thrilled with, chopped it up, and melted it in the slow cooker. It was semi-successful - believe it or not, you can burn soap in the slow cooker. Only a bit around the edges.

Okay, I'm done babbling for this evening. Happy Earth Day!

quince

I was thinking today of how much I will miss all of the plants and trees in our yard if we ever move.

nana's biscuits

I don't think I've shared this recipe here before, and it's a good one. It's Adam's Nana's basic biscuit recipe, which I made some changes to a couple of days ago. At Adam's request, they ended up as cheddar and chive biscuits, using chives straight from the garden. They make a perfect toasted bread for a breakfast egg sandwich, which we enjoyed yesterday. Holy yum.

Just follow biscuit protocol, and they should turn out beautifully, unlike mine which are admittedly not the fluffiest this time around. I changed several things: I used powdered milk, which I've been using for baking lately. It works well in everything I've tried so far, and it's a lot less expensive than fresh. I also added the cheddar and chives, and used butter in place of shortening. And I overmixed it. So perhaps yours will be perfect.

The recipe pictured is part of a book of recipes that Nana (who is now ninety four) put together ten years ago. She gave one to each of her grandchildren for Christmas. I couldn't be happier to have it in my cupboard.

yes!

So sleepy, lying on Dadoo's chest in the sun. (P started calling Adam Dadoo right after he turned one. How cute is that?)
What's that? A tax refund? Yes!

thank you

I just spent the first bit of the dual naptime writing some thank you notes for sweet, sweet gifts that we've been given upon T's arrival. And that made me think that I wanted to thank all of you for your sweet comments and encouragement during that wild week when he finally arrived. So thank you, thank you. Just thinking of all of the people rooting for T and me really helped me to get through labour. That and lots of popsicles. They had fresh root beer popsicles at the hospital! I was so very, very excited. It's my favourite flavour, but whenever I get them at convenience stores, they're always crusted in frost, and gooey. These ones were pristine, baby! I probably ate half the box. Mmm.

Above are the craziest flowers I've ever seen. "Carnations are crazy?" you ask. No, not the flowers themselves, but the fact that they've been on our table since March 13. And today was the first day they're starting to look kind of sad. (I took the picture a week or so ago.) Wild, eh?
And these adorable little booties were sent our way by the ever-crafty and thoughtful Austen. Thank you so much! My hands were too full to get a picture of them on T's sweet little feet, but I think he likes them. I certainly do! Ack, the buttons are so cute!

I hope that you're having a lovely weekend. The sun is out, and the forecast says that it's due to continue for most of the week. I'm hoping for some fun family outings, since I am very close to physically feeling like myself again. If I'm really on the ball, I'll take my camera!

eggs

We had a lovely Easter weekend, and P still wants to do mini Easter-egg hunts around the house. It's a good way to keep him busy for a few minutes if I need to do something without his 'help', and he is so excited when he finds them! No matter that Easter is over - to P, there is no concrete beginning and ending to any holiday. I think it's probably much more fun that way. Unlike my usual from-scratch approach to everything, in the midst of this year's new-baby chaos, we bought a cheapo (yet non-toxic) dye kit to colour some eggs with P. He liked it, but not quite as much as I thought he would. Next year, we'll definitely do the natural dye thing - I think it will be much prettier, and more fun. And if I'm on the ball, we might to it before Easter Sunday afternoon.

I think that I forgot to mention a big part of the reason why our first week at home with T was so easy (other than the fact that he's just about perfect, of course). My mother-in-law was here with us, and did masses of housework and kid-watching that helped to keep things swimming along. Thanks again, MIL!

Hope you're having a lovely Thursday.

smooth sailing

Happy Wednesday!

I feel as though I don't have a lot of new or exciting things to tell or show you, since so much of my time is spent micro-managing our little household and making milk. Which is still going extremely well - both boys have napped at the same time every day, T is up twice most nights, but only once the night before last, and when he's up he eats and is back to sleep pretty quickly. This baby is a dream. He is the mellowest babe imaginable - I'm envisioning him growing up, growing a great beard, living in holey jeans, Birkenstocks, and worn-out promotional t-shirts and doing something very practical (like masonry or restorative carpentry or something equally cool) with his extremely smart self. Just because I wrote that, he'll probably be a lawyer.

Speaking of people fitting that description (the jeans and such, not the lawyer bit), I finished reading Farewell My Subaru by Doug Fine yesterday - it's a fun read and worth checking out from the library. Edited to add: Here's a video teaser for you.


Mostly, though, I've been reading magazines, since my time is chopped up into little snippets, and funnily enough, so are magazines. I have been seriously enjoying my subscription to Style at Home since it began in January. The only odd thing is that I've been receiving the issues at strange and irregular times - the April issue arrived in February, about three weeks before the March one appeared. And the May one arrived during the third week of March, two weeks or so after the April one. Strange, but kind of pleasantly unpredictable. The tone of the magazine doesn't exactly scream 'me'; it takes itself too seriously, is a smidge too Toronto-centric, and is kind of out there with its $4900 chairs and such. All of those things taken into consideration, I'm still enjoying it very much, and the May issue is especially lovely.
One more magazine tidbit - if you can, get your hands on the April issue of Martha Stewart Living! A friend brought me a copy along with a gift for T, and it is one of the best (har har) issues, ever. It's definitely a keeper.

a non-baby post

Happy April and Easter! Both boys are napping right now (again! I am amazed and soooo lucky) so I scooted out into the garden to take a few pictures. After a nap, naturally. Check out those chives! They're delicious. Feel free to stop by if you need some.

Things continue smoothly. I don't dare say too much, lest I jinx our milk-filled and relatively restful nights and calm days. Things are even better with no staples holding me together - they came out yesterday, and I have about 400% better mobility since. Life is good.