Miscellany with a Side of Peas

Hey everybody, guess what! Two little upper teeth are poking out, ending the 4 month dental development hiatus.

In other (non) news:

As an example of our ships-in-the-night family schedule, on Friday morning Luke arrived home from a gig at 2:45 am and I woke up at 4:45 am to catch a flight (actually, four flights total ugh) for a work daytrip to Oklahoma. I kvetch about this quarterly trip but I usually end up enjoying it somewhat. I finished this fantastic short story collection and caught up on a few of the New Yorkers that arrive weekly to be deposited in the 'to read...someday' stack [where they eye me reproachfully]. This article about the history of death certificates and TV critic Emily Nussbaum's essay on the bad fan and the antihero as hero were interesting.

It was a weekend for being home, and it was glorious. The three of us went to Pearl to distribute press materials for Luke's Thursday show, had chicken sandwiches from Smashburger (the spinach-cucumber-goat cheese is so tasty -- and I pretty much hate grilled chicken), C and I went grocery shopping and I made up for the cooking I haven't had time to do recently. By cooking I mean baking and by baking Luke asked on Sunday night, scrounging for dinner, 'so, did you make anything other than desserts and that giant meat pie?'

I realize I like to bake because I don't mind measuring but I hate prep -- peeling and chopping vegetables, trimming beef, arghhhhhhh. Baking is only as difficult as the measuring!

// The giant meat pie is the Italian Easter Pie from Cook's Country, the ambitious project of the weekend
// I doubled pressure cooker mac and cheese and threw in a big bag of frozen peas. It appears Someone Aged Fourteen Months is adroit enough to express her opinion about that.




Time 0

What peas? All done.

// The Big & Chewy Oatmeal Cookies were a hit

// The crumb cake inverted during baking (?) but is still tasty.

// The bran muffins got a healthy mix-in of chia seeds to boost their marginal virtuousness. (All from Cook's Illustrated Baking Book)

// Not pictured: baked pumpkin pie oatmeal from Budget Bytes -- I can't make myself like it but the rest of the household does. I'm giving up on oatmeal, end of story.

 

Luke was in rehearsal Sunday afternoon so C and I went to the library and Target to get out of the house (a rainy morning meant no park time) to browse and spend $92 on I'm not exactly sure what. C fell asleep in the car seat in the parking lot and I began one of my checked-out books, How Toddlers Thrive. A very pleasant hour and a half passed, reading, people-watching, listening to her breathe in and out. And that was the point of this post, to remember some downtime in the car on a lazy Sunday and listening to one baby girl doze and feel another move in my belly.*

 

*Time to abandon the twee euphemism bump. It's a belly and I'm not sure what it's going to end up as with 14 weeks to go...starting to feel like a very Big Mammal again.