unbelievable

uhhh...master T slept for SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT last night. we were trying to get him back on track after a few late nights scrambled his brains again a bit, so we were waking him up to feed him every 3 hours on the hour. after dinner last night, he basically wanted to feed every hour, so i indulged him with boob. he took his daily bottle 9pm, crushed almost 5 oz of boob juice and then crashed from 11pm to 6am.

this morning when he started stirring i nudged the dotytron to change his diaper and he woke up, checked his cell phone, and was all like, "is this right? did the power go out? it's SIX AM!!!" what a smart little boobla khan.

our friend A gave us this book that his sister swore by, which the dotytron has been half-a**edly flipping through, which basically said that if you followed her program, your kid would be sleeping 12 hours. it comes down to stuffing them full of boob juice right before bed...which is kind of what we did, based on what master T was requesting, and it totally worked! it was a combination of that advice and our midwives advice, who basically said that we should feed him as much as he wants up until 10pm and then hopefully, he'll conk out.

this weekend was ram-jammed but so much fun. thursday night my friend H bailed on us for the leslieville wanderlust, so i strapped on master T and we went on our own little jaunt, which SOMEHOW resulted in us ending up at bobbette and belle. they were giving out free hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows and i ended up buying some cupcakes. these are the best purchased cupcakes ever. soft, moist, tender cake topped with the airiest buttercream. so good! from the bottom left we have: vanilla cake with raspberry buttercream, vanilla cupcake with espresso buttercream, and their chocolate cupcake with gianduja buttercream. ho boy, imma gonna get chub chub with them around the corner from us:

on friday night, our friends S and P hosted us and our buddies B & G for a polish dinner at their house. S is polish and won't be going home for xmas this year, so she worked out her homesickness by preparing us a multi-course polish extravaganza. we started with this kind of polish charcuterie board, consisting of fried polish sausage, a pepperoni type stick, a rolled pork belly cold cut, pork pate, and a raw pork tenderloin that's been smoked. i also had my first pickled herring experience. i don't know why i ever avoided it. it was SO good! almost like gravlax - S says sometimes it can get pretty funky and fermented, but this was clean and light and was served with lightly pickled white onions. you're supposed to spread rye bread really thick with butter, top it with the herring and onions and do a shot of vodka. if you say so, poland!

then we had these little dumplings stuffed with sauerkraut and mushrooms, that translated means "ears" - fried in butter with lots of browned, crispy onions:

cucumbers with dill, a grated beet salad, roasted green beans, salted sliced tomatoes with green onions:

finally, our main course, with sauerkraut with bacon, brisket, and pork sausage:

this dish was insane. you hardboil eggs and then take them out of the shell, chop them up with parsley and dill and put them BACK into the shell and top them with breadcrumbs and bake it. SO CRAZY!!!

there was also ANOTHER dish that i didn't take a picture of, a soup course that was a white borscht, based on a sour dough starter, with chopped egg and more pork sausage.

finally, an apple cheesecake. HOLY CRAP, RIGHT? i mean, i cook for people, but this was INSANE! it was a really fun night. we hung out there until about midnight (thus, scrambling our son's brains), but it was so worth it. i think we're going to join their softball team in the summer, and P gave us all "poopsicle" baseball hats, based on this business he had selling poopsicles out of a poopsicle cart he dragged across canada. poopsicles are chocolate covered frozen bananas (his idea predates arrested development). the whole night master T was so good. he snoozed away, did a little whiny cry for like, 1 second when he woke up to let me know he was hungry, and then let himself be carried by everyone, passed around like a football.

saturday we went to the dotytron's cousins weddings, which was crawling with dotys of all stripes and persuasions. here is the boobla with nany (now great-nany):

so cute!!! i swear, this guy loves making us look good when we leave the house. throughout the ceremony, and for most of the 8 hours we were there, he was sleeping. he woke up, did another little mewling cry and then snoozed away as he was passed from arm to arm. he saves all his long crying jags for us at home...but it's like he's got a sixth sense - when we're out, he sleeps and makes us look like we're amazing parents.

sunday we met up with dr. rei, hanbo, and bwonger for some "harry potter and the deathly hallows" part 1 action. there's not much to say. most everyone i know has read the books so you can't talk about the plot. i can say that they made really smart decisions in what to include in the movie and what not to, in terms of what makes a gripping film. i was a little worried, because i found the first half of the 7th installment of the book to be a bit of a slog, the second half is where things REALLY pick up, but the film totally delivers. there are some brilliant, beautiful scenes and the tone is DARK. yates renders everything in inky, moody blacks and bleak, wintery greys.

i was actually surprised that some idiot parents took their young, young kids to see the movies. the books and movies mature at the rate that harry does as a character. so if you started when you were 11 and read one a year, by the time you were 18 you'd be equipped to handle what happens. i wouldn't take a 5 year old to see the deathly hallows - the thing is rife with death, blood, despair, nazi overtones, decay. there are some pretty graphic, violent scenes that would've scared the crap out of young me.

all the performances are fantastic. ron weasley really shines in this one - he provides a lot of the levity and humour and there's a lovely, lovely scene with harry and hermione without any dialogue that underscores how far the three of them have come as friends. it was fantastic. i can't wait to see the last one, but in the meantime, i can re-read the books and get lost in that world again (and refresh the holes in my memory of what happens).

the dotytron always laughs at me because every now and then, i'll pick up the last book and read the "king's cross" chapter and just bawl my eyes out. but i'll probably start from the beginning and read it through. the dotytron has been starting from the beginning and i got into the habit of reading out loud to master T from "harry potter and the philosopher's stone" during the middle of the night feeding. i think he likes it.

while we were at the movie, the boobla was being watched by momma and poppa d so after the movie we trooped over there for a staycation. i love hanging out there. same way i love hanging out at my parents' place in markham. now that we have a baby, we're so coddled and spoiled! so last night momma d made us a delicious pot roast dinner - i had 2 helpings, it was so good:

today i'm getting cracking at school. for dinner i'm making a tater tot turkey casserole with chunks of leftover thanksgiving turkey, sliced mushrooms and celery all bound up with cream of mushroom soup and topped with tater tots. we'll have a salad to offset the betty crocker-ness of what i just typed out up there.

for dessert, i made that banana walnut upside down cake for my contribution to last night's dinner, so we'll have the last of that with a scoop of ice cream.

fin.