FUN

We've had a solid couple of weeks of everyone being at an amazing age.  Me, the Dotytron, the Big Yam, the Wonder Twins - we've hit a groove where everyone is just super-fun and it's so rewarding being around them.  Having said that, I expect things to take a nosedive like, in the next five minutes, but for now, we rejoice and are grateful for what we have.

I recently joined the Toronto Parents of Multiple Births Association (which is saddled with the horrible acronym, TPOMBA) because when I was going through that rough patch in late January, I had heard through my chiro that they would send you free help or like, someone would come and help hold a baby or tidy your house.  So I was like, a $40 membership is obviously worth that to me, so sign me up!  Then I started calling the links they sent and the people on the phone were like, "Uhhh, do you feel depressed?  Do you think you're a danger to yourself or your children?" and I was like, "If you put it that way, then fine, feeling stressed about how I'm going to execute a Monday night tempura-battered haddock, fried artichoke, and lemon dinner doesn't qualify me" (as I'm chatting with the phone cradled against my shoulder while cutting out quilt sashing).  ANYWAY, membership to the group allowed me onto their Facebook page and as usual, uptight parents be stressin' yo!  

Here are our tips for getting your baby(ies) to sleep.

1) Swaddle

2) a dark room, a noise machine, and a cool house temperature (so they don't overheat with the swaddle)

3) binkies

4) don't go buck trying to make the house completely pin-drop quiet (like the Roomie, who whispers when her daughter is napping, even though she's on a separate floor of the house).  My logic on this is: the womb is hella noisy!!!

5) let your baby figure out how to self-soothe around the 4-6 month mark.  Remember that some babies just need to get some ish out and cry a bit before they settle.

6) and NEVER, fall in love:

Technically, you should cue this to the 3:10 minute mark, whenever you've preceded the video with the words, "...and NEVER, fall in love."

Bedtime routine is the Dotytron's speciality.  He's way better at it than I am, mostly because I lose patience and have a tendency to be all, "Mama needs her ME time" and just dump the babies and let them cry and come back when I've decided that it's an adequate amount of time for sleep, even if they've spent that entire time crying.  This results in tragic scenes like the way the Quincess' face gets all puffy and his eyes get small and he looks like he got beaten up from crying so much (this is mostly because the Quincess produces mad sinus fluid so when he cries, all those pockets get filled up with mucous and so he looks like he's having a sad allergic reaction - an allergic reaction to sadness?)  

Anyway, this method has always worked for us.  Around the 3-4 week mark, when we've started giving the baby a bottle a day, their last feed of the night (anywhere from 8pm - 10pm) is a giant, MEGA bottle of pumped breastmilk.  We basically carb-load the f**k out of them.  Then, we swaddle, put them in a dark, chilly room, and put the sound machine on and we've found that they can generally sleep very long stretches and will only get up once to feed.  Nap schedules are very routine.  If I'm at home, I find that up to a year and up, babies are up for 2-3 hours, and then need to nap for 2 hours.  Recently, I discovered that I'd been following a 2-3-4 method with all of my boys.  That is, after they're up for the morning in the morning, the first nap is two hours after they're awake for the day.  Then down for 1.5-2 hours and then up for 3 hours, and then down for another 1.5-2 hours, and bedtime happens about 4 hours after they awaken from afternoon nap.  Naptime at home is very structured along that timeline and pretty scheduled.  The routine doesn't vary - swaddle, binky, cold, dark, room, let them cry it out.  Most babies, if they've had a decent night's sleep, get tired according to that schedule, and the key is to not miss those signs of tiredness and align yourself with their natural schedule.  It's bad for everyone when you over tiredness happens (take it from someone who goes apocalyptica.)  

All that being said, I'm not OCD about nap/sleep schedules the way some people are.  Those are the people you never see out of the house past 7pm or who can't go out for dinner or lunch at a normal time because they're so wedded to their sleep/nap schedule.  That way lies a prison-life, to me.  So I'm all about the schedule, with flexibility.  As long as most days, one of the naps during the day is in the crib and is a proper nap, then I'm okay to continue living my life and letting them catch some interrupted z's in the stroller or their carseat.  Whatevs.  I gotta do me, you know?  Same goes for the bedtime.  As long as most of the time, they're in their crib according to the usual routine, some deviation so that we can go to friends' for dinner or have a night out and not be stressing is okay.  You just have to realize your/their limitations.  So yeah, it might break bad and there might be some tired, cranky, crying babies.  Generally, you ride that out, strap them into a carseat, put them upstairs in your friend's house, and they'll pass out eventually.  You can always wear them in a baby carrier if they're making your life hell, and they'll pass out that way.  Basically: you have options.  It's all a compromise and it's all about understanding where they're coming from, and the babies understanding that you gotta treat yo' self sometimes.

Anyway, enough about that.  Photos!

Another from the edition of the Great Gazoo having a toque stuck to his head

The dainty little Quincess does this sweet move when he's eating where he delicately holds his hand in front of his mouth.  It looks like he's a demure Chinese girl hiding her chewing from the village matchmaker, but I think it's his way of keeping the food in his mouth while he slowly and fastidiously chews.  Either way: it's the cutest.

As is this little scene!  

The Big Yam requested a cape so that he could be Elsa.  So I clipped a piece of fabric to his shirt and had him wear his birthday crown while he slowly paraded around the house and had me periodically adjust his cape.  Cutest. Thing. Ever.  After doing this for 10 minutes or so, he looked down at his chest and said, "But, but Mama, I need boobies.  Elsa has boobies."  WAY TO GO WITH YOUR FEMINIST MESSAGING, DISNEY.  COMING THROUGH LOUD AND CLEAR.

Buds.

The definition of the word "fartsacked"

Leonard looking like he had just been bawling (which he had)

Quincess showing off his hick, one tooth.

Fin.

Blue Moon

The Dotytron has been obsessed with Beck's new album, Morning Phase lately and I wasn't feeling it as a whole - it's too sad and wintery and morose for me, but one of the songs that immediately grabbed me is Blue Moon.  So gorgeous.  Perfectly encapsulates this never-ending winter and grey days slowly bleeding into more sun and slightly warmer temperatures and green shoots in our garden and the promise of bike rides and beach picnics and shorts and low tennis sneakers.  I will say that the album makes for good listening while sitting on the couch at night with a quilt piled on your lap hand-sewing binding on.  Maybe the Dotytron is wearing me down?  Sewing binding on a quilt is one of my ALL TIME favorite tasks.  It makes you feel like SUCH a pioneer (and y'all know how much I love playing at pioneer life).

Guys, I just bought a jean shirt and it's CHANGED MY LIFE.  Summer uniform!  I'm going to wear it as a jacket over all my hippie sundresses and love life.  I also bought these sneakers:

I'm picturing a summer uniform of jean shorts, t shirts, and one of my many billion summer dresses all paired with these.  They're pretty cute, I must say, and I like that you can throw them in the wash.

I'm not ready to say goodbye to winter foods (I never am), but I am ready to stop worrying about losing gloves and putting a billion layers on squirmy babies.

This braised barley dish with fried eggs & parm is exactly the kind of winter food I don't want to say goodbye to, just yet.  Adapted from this recipe, and made slightly less virtuous with the addition of crisped pancetta cubes and the use of frozen beef braising liquid to cook the barley in.  So good!  I love kale.  

Sour cream peach pie.  A little watery from the frozen peaches, but I still ate the whole thing (not the slice, the whole PIE) because I'm not one to look a gift pie in the plate (new expression, trust).

My mom and youngest bro's birthday cake - a golden cake (from Smitten Kitchen, here) and a salted caramel Swiss meringue buttercream.  

Friday night was crunch wrap night and we all couldn't have been happier.  Especially the Wonder Twins, who acted like they had never tasted food before.

Sunday morning breakfast was my long longed-for blintzes.  Served up very non-Kosher with English bacon.  

Fish tacos!

Fin.

Playing Favorites

Me to the Big Yam: "Do you have a favorite baby brother?"
Big Yam: "Yes. Lenny.  I love Lenny."
Me: "You mean you don't love Quincess?"
BY: "No. I don't love him. I love Lenny."
Me: "Awww, you're making Quincess sad!"
BY: "I don't love him.  I love Lenny."
Me: "C'mon!  He's your baby brother.  He loves you so much."
BY, exasperated: "Fine. I love him." (clearly appeasing)

The Big Yam has been full of bon mots lately.  In order to get us to stay in his room longer at bedtime, we've been getting really plaintive, "Pleeeease?  Please, Mama?  It would make me so happy.  Just one more minute, pleeeease?"  The other day, we watched a documentary about the complete overhaul of the New Orleans school system in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which saw the failing public school system switched over primarily to charter schools.  One of the principals of a charter school made an assertion that I support.  That is, if you set a high bar of excellence and establish excellence as your de facto expectation, children will rise to meet it.  Setting the bar low is my nemesis.  Anyway, I started getting panicky about us being too "soft" on the Big Yam and succumbing to the namby pamby, indulgent, everyone-gets-a-prize-for-showing-up school of parenting that's so prevalent nowadays, so I said to the Big Yam: "You're going to university!"  He immediately looked up from the iPad (where he's been obsessed with a deep ocean episode of Blue Planet lately), and said, "No I'm not!"  The Dotytron laughed, and I started inwardly freaking out a bit.  "YES. YOU. ARE."  The Big Yam replied, wailing, "I thought I was going to kindergarten!!!"  LOL!

Aside: a 3.5 year old who is already working on a David Attenborough impression is pretty hilarious.

I went to the drop-in centre with the babies yesterday and because this drop-in centre doesn't insist on shoes off, I bring a big blanket to put the babies on in the baby area, to protect them from people tracking all their gross outdoor shoe detritus all over the baby mats.  This old grandma walks in, and STOMPS in her winter boots all over the blanket as I'm inwardly doing a slow motion, "Nooooooooooooooo!" and frantically trying to gather the blanket out of her way.  It made me physically recoil.  WHITE PEOPLE ARE THE WORST FOR THIS!  I will never understand why they think it's totally okay to wear their shoes inside, ON CARPET, especially when they know that there will be babies mashing their faces into the floor and gumming up all the dirt, dog poop, and who knows what else in that same area.  Meanwhile, white people are the first to freak out about whether their pork is cooked enough, but think it's okay to literally track s**t into the house. End Russell Peters-style rant.  Ha.

The weekend was pretty chill.  We ordered from the newly opened Mother's Dumplings on the Danforth for Friday night take out night.  I dunno.  I think the dumplings are pretty overpriced and were mediocre at best.  Everything was just lacking that certain finesse and delicacy that I've come to expect from places in the 'burbs.  I went to see the Veronica Mars movie which was DEEPLY satisfying.  I had been really worried that based on the vitriolic fan reaction to the much-maligned third season, series creator Rob Thomas was going to play the "auteur" card and try to continue along the path out of some misguided sense that he knew better than the fans.  10 years is a long time to let things fester, especially when your baby project gets cancelled.  However, I was pleasantly surprised in that he delivered a movie for the fans.  Seeing as how it was fan-funded, I could see that being a savvy business strategy, but it does call into question the whole process of crowd-funded projects.  If your shareholders are rabid fans, then what leeway do you have to tell the story you want to tell, as the creator?  All that being said, the movie was like a quality beefed up episode, and it was super fun to watch in a theatre filled with 'heads.  All the old favorites were trotted out and my only regret is that we didn't get to spend more time with some of them.   Kristen Bell must have shot the movie shortly after giving birth, because she clearly has giant breastfeeding cans.

At dinner with JJ and S, JJ mentioned how her sister-in-law had to go down to her (grade 6) kid's school at lunch, to sign him out so that he could go on a "date" and take a girl off school property to eat.  JJ asked me if I would ever do that, and I can say, unequivocally, without any fear of back-peddling at a future date, HELLS, NO.  Uh, seriously?  Since when would a kid of mine have time to be thinking of romantic relationships?  In between piano lessons, swimming lessons, junior astrophysicist school, Chinese school, and generally fostering a thoughtful, reflexive, and critical worldview, my boys aren't going to have time for romantic pursuits.  That kind of dreck leads to your kid being a fedora-wearing, low-achieving, slacker.  Look at my parents!  They severely limited my opportunities for social engagement and look how well we all turned out!  Am I socially stunted?  No!  If anything, my social skills are off the chain!  Why?  Because rather than exercising them in the no-holds-barred arena of ACTUAL social interactions with my so-called "peers", I was able to injest and assimilate idealized versions in all the books I read as a kid.

I recently finished Guy Delisle's graphic novel, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City.  It's a classic Delisle travelogue/memoir about the year he spent in Jerusalem with his partner (who was stationed there in her work with Doctors Without Borders), and their two young children, from 2008-2009.  He encounters many instances of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and while he doesn't side openly with the Palestinians, the depictions of some of the actions of the settlers in the Jewish settlements and the injustices and power wielded by the Israeli government in the checkpoints limiting movement by Palestinians certainly does make you, the reader, deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian situation.  Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  It helped to make me more informed of an area of the world which occupies a great deal of headline/news space, but about which I didn't know very much of depth.

As I read so many children's picture books, I'm going to start reviewing some of those here too, for those of you who have little ankle biters of your own, or are looking for good books to buy for your friends/relatives who do.

Monster, Don't Eat Me! By Carl Norac and illustrated by Carll Cneut.  Apparently this author-illustrator duo are Belgian, and all I can say about that is...it makes a lot of sense.  This was a Big Yam library grab.  As I've mentioned, he's starting to be more afraid of the dark and is obviously going through some monster-scary-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night developmental stuff at the moment.  Alex, a little pig, is caught snacking between meals and is chastised by his mother.  On his way to wash up, he gets nabbed by a monster.  Who should kids fear?  The monster?  Do all monsters have mamas?  The story is whimsical and the drawings are beautifully detailed and fantastical, with shades of the dream-like world of Chagall, but rendered in precise line and autumnal tones.  

There are beautiful, odd, hidden characters and details on every page.  It's like Cirque du Soleil but way less grating.  I loved this.

Jon Klassen is pretty well-known in the children's book world.  He's won at least one Caldecott, if not more, and you will generally recognize his work (he does illustrations for other people's stories, in addition to his own work as author/illustrator), by the very modern, naive, flat, and sly looking animal characters that populate them.  This is a book about a bear's search for his hat, and the tricky woodland creature who made off with it.  

To me, Klassen's work generally falls in the category of "the books you want your kids to like, versus the books they actually do like."  There's something a little sly, deadpan, and a shade dark about them that flies over the kid's head.  The humour definitely speaks more to adults, or at least kids who have been weaned on some kind of sardonic pop culture content that will give them the tools to pick up on the jokes.  I love the visual style though, so while this isn't a huge hit with the Yam at the moment, I'm hoping that it will be some day.

Video of the Quincess doing his inverted inchworm crawl.  Accessorized with a bonus knitted toque stuck to his helmet.  

St. Paddy's meal of oven-baked mustard & brown sugar crusted corned beef, with sautéed cabbage, honeyed carrots, and champ

Last night's dinner of braised barley & kale with eggs & grated parm

Sour cream peach pie

Fin.

March Broke

March Break started officially last Friday with a PA Day that I had been anxiously longing for with all the fervour of a Jehovah's Witness awaiting the Rapture.  What I had pictured was: me sitting with my feet up while the Dotytron took on the daily gamut of changing, feeding, clothing, and the Big Yam ablutions/wrestling that passes for mornings around here.  Trips downtown with the Dotytron to try some new restaurants with only 2 of our 3 children in tow.  Working on my long-in-the-waiting quilt.  Catching up on our current TV addiction, The Good Wife (WHY ARE WE SO HOOKED ON The Good Wife?!  It is a question for the ages.  We don't particularly like any of the characters, and yet, it goes down SO EASY.  It's like our nightly glass of warm milk.  We can't stay away, even as we know that we don't exactly fit the target demographic of like, 40-50 year old women who have outgrown Grey's Anatomy)

After a rough few days with me playing single mom (not very graciously mind) to four babies, everyone was officially on the mend as of Monday and we got back on track.  The weekend wasn't a complete write off - despite the fact that I was a cranky grump and kept accusing the Dotytron of having weak genetic material (he does!  He gets sick ALL THE TIME!) - I took the babies with me to dinner at our friend B & G's house on Saturday night and had a lovely time.  I spent a morning doing some home science experiments with the Big Yam.  Standard stuff - celery in food colouring water, coloured water moving up a paper towel, etc.  It was a big hit.  But the biggest hit by far was making "clouds" make rain.  I filled up a glass trifle bowl with water and filled the top with shaving cream.  Then I had him put drip dropperfuls of coloured water on top until the shaving cream "rained" the water.  It was pretty awesome.  A solid half hour of quiet time.  We went to see the Big Yam's final dance recital with his completed hip hop routine.  I cooked a giant batch of bolognese Sunday night (never unerdestimate the restorative powers of bolognese and pappardelle).  When I told the Big Yam that we had re-enrolled him in ballet and hip hop for next session, we were talking about his dance class in general and mentioned something about him getting to wear his ballet shoes again.  Then he says, "But what about...about...the...shirts the other girls wear?"  Me: "Do you want one of the skirts that the other girls wear?"  Him: "Yes."  Awww, what a sweetie!  I'm going to make him one.  He just wants to be like the other kids in the class, and why not?  I like that he's so innocent of gender conventions at the moment and that's a beautiful, beautiful thing.  It's going to be taken from him all too soon, so why not let him live in this blissful little bubble for a while longer?

Monday evening we took the Big Yam to the aquarium again.  He was sooo excited.  It was the Dotytron's first time there.  I'm not sure if we're going to be regulars there.  Zoos and aquariums make us feel really conflicted, from an ethics standpoint, more now that we recently watched that documentary Blackfish on Netflix.  THE NAME TILIKUM WILL HAUNT YOU ALL.  At it's heart, Blackfish is about how orcas, or other marine mammals shouldn't be in captivity, that it stresses them out, and that it leads to them attacking their trainers.  The doc follows the life of an orca male named Tilikum, who has caused the deaths of a few people and how basically SeaWorld is completely unethical and unscrupulous in terms of warning their trainers of the whales' history and taking adequate safety precautions.  We watched it with SMckay who came over on Wednesday night.  It made the Dotytron super-upset.  SMckay: "I hope someone gets a gun and just shoots Tilikum."  Dotytron: "I HOPE TILIKUM GETS THE GUN AND STARTS SHOOTING PEOPLE!"  LOL!  The image of the orca, holding a gun and mowing down his oppressors is so funny to me.

The Toronto Aquarium doesn't have any marine mammals, but there are some questions about how they procured some sand sharks in their stable that are listed as "endangered."  Basically, peeps are like, "if they're so 'endangered' why you be grabbing them from the ocean, sons?"  Which seems legit.  The whole existence of zoos and aquariums is problematic.  On the one hand, is it better to let these species die off in the wild due to overfishing, hunting, habitat degradation and express their innate animal natures?  Or, is it better to put a few of them in zoos so that people can see them, empathize, be exposed, and hopefully participate in conservation efforts?

The Wonder Twins have been hitting mad milestones lately.  They both can sit up.  Lindsay Lou-Lou is crawling.  Quincess does this reverse inchworm manoeuvre where he arches his back and slides along the floor using his helmet as an anchoring point.  It's not exactly kosher according to his physiotherapist.  Both of them have their bottom two teeth poking out.

Two weeks ago, we hit Ryoji Ramen & Izakaya with my mum and her posse.  Those ladies are a hoot.  It was our first time there.  It's a very spacious izakaya, as far as a baby-friendly option goes, and they do Okinawa-style ramen.  One of my mum's friends is Japanese and spoke highly of the food there.  They do a lot of dishes that you don't see at the other izakayas in Toronto, and it's good to have a family(ish) friendly option.  It was pretty empty on the Monday night that we went, and I figured it'd be safe to roll up with a large-ish group as long as you avoided Thursday through Saturday.

Their in-house made cold tofu.  A texture like bouncy custard, topped with a delicious sweet soy.  So good.

Stir-fried bitter melon with egg and bonito.  Also delicious and wonderfully balanced between bitter and sweet.

The shio ramen - the broth at Ryoji is by far the most delicate and subtle of the Toronto ramen restaurants broths.  It's really nice and not overly salted, unlike a lot of other places.  I liked the lightness of the broth, but I do like the full, meaty flavour of the Sansotei's best, still.

Yesterday was a day of FUN.  We took the Big Yam to daycare and had brunch at Bar Buca.  Faithful readers of my blog know that I wasn't the biggest fan of Buca.  But Bar Buca really dials it in.  It's an all day spot - open from 7am until 2am, with food meant for snacking and sharing, to be paired with espresso-based drinks in the morning and wine in the evening.  The dishes we really liked at Buca were the small plates of appetizers and fried things, and at Bar Buca, the entire menu is made up of these.  I'd definitely go back.

Fried artichokes with a lemon zabaglione

They serve a bunch of spiedini (skewers).  This was octopus (so tender!) and soppressata, on top of a potato puree

Stuffed foccacias also make up a section of the menu.  These were both outstanding.  So tasty.  The bread was nice and crisped from a time in the oven, lightly salted (and consequently a big hit with the Wonder Twins), and a perfectly neutral vehicle for the satisfying fillings.  One had bresaola, pickled eggplant, and buffalo ricotta, and the other had thinly shaved porchetta, mascarpone, mayonnaise, and apple mostarda.  So good!  

We also stopped by Forno Cultura and got some of their pastries.  I love Italian pastries.  Not too sweet, lots of cream fillings.  Divine.  That being said, I don't like this place as much as I liked the Terroni offshoot, Sud Forno.  Mainly because Sud Forno has bombolone.  

Dinner/baking catch-up:

Shrimp, crab, and andouille gumbo for Mardi Gras!  Served with brown rice.  Didn't get a chance to get filé powder, but it was still delicious.

Made churros for Mardi Gras as well.

And funnel cakes the next day?  Why not?

This is the gluten free almond, lemon, ricotta cake, the recipe for which I've posted below.  One of the best gluten-free desserts I've ever had.

Dinner we had when SMckay visited - devilled chicken thighs (oven baked, boneless skinless chicken thighs dipped in a mixture of melted butter, minced garlic, and a boatload of dijon mustard, then dredged in panko mixed with grated parmesan cheese).  Creamed spinach, freezer stuffing, green beans.

Tonight is takeout night so we're trying the new Mother's Dumplings that opened on the Danforth.  I will say that the prices at Mother's Dumplings are kinda high, for dumplings.  But I'm glad that it's close.

Fin.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Gluten Free Lemon, Almond, Ricotta Cake

serves 8-10

1/2 c. (or 1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1/4 c. lemon zest

4 eggs, separated and at room temperature (but it's not going to kill you if you pull them from the fridge)

2 1/2 c. ground almonds

300 g. ricotta (or 10.5 oz).  I used light ricotta with no ill effects

flaked almonds & powdered sugar for topping

- line the bottom of an 8" cake pan with a parchment round.  I also lined the sides, but I don't think that'd be necessary in the future

- cream the butter and sugar together on high until light and fluffy.  Add the lemon zest.  Add the egg yolks one at a time, then the almond meal.  Add the ricotta and mix until just combined.

- meanwhile, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.  Fold in 3 batches into the almond mixture.

- pour into your prepared pan, and top with flaked almonds.  

- bake in a preheated 325F oven for about 45 minutes - 1 hour.  The original recipe called for 40-45 minutes but I found that it took almost 1 hour 15 minutes in my oven.  You're looking for nice golden browning on the top (without burning the almonds) and for the cake to be firm all the way through to the centre.  

- Cool on rack and serve from the pan dusted with powdered sugar, or you can do what I do and invert it so that you can put the cake on a pretty plate.

Such a B

The other night, while I was gently enforcing the rules of the memory game I was playing with the Big Yam, he gave me this exasperated sigh and said, "Ugh, you're such a B, mama!  Why are you such a B!?"  It was hilarious.  He thinks he means the insect, but this means we really have to start censoring ourselves.  For real.  This time, it's serious.

Lately the Big Yam has been practising being "annoyed" or "upset" or saying stuff like, "are you playing a trick on me?" or "you're mean."  This all came to a head on Monday morning when we were doing our morning cuddles and he asked if he could have breakfast at home.  I said, no, you have breakfast at Miss J's house.  "I don't want to go to Miss J's house."  Okay, fine.  I asked why.  "Because she hits me."  !!!!!  Note: he said the same thing about me a couple of weeks ago.  Knowing full well that J doesn't hit, ever, I asked some probing questions.  The troubling thing is he came up with a whole story about it!  Granted, the story devolved after two sentences into some altercation between two of his daycare homies that was completely unrelated to the initial part of the story of J hitting him.  The cheek!  And this is why children make unreliable witnesses, people.  I didn't really know how to handle it.  I obviously want him to feel comfortable telling me when someone for real hits him, but I also want to gently impress upon him the seriousness of making up libelous and slanderous accusations like that.  What it comes down to is that he's super-obsessed with eating peanut butter on toast every morning and J doesn't let him have it every single day of his life.  Oh the indignity.

That being said, he's also been the sweetest.  We've gotten into the habit of indulging "sleepovers" (where one of us, usually me, sleeps in his bed with him) during the week.  When it comes time to break it to him that he won't be getting a sleepover, he gets all distraught: "But I'll miss you!  Whyyyyy?" and when I tell him that I'm going to have a sleepover with Baba, he says stuff like, "No! You're not allowed sleep-overing on a school night!  You're supposed to sleep all alone!"  The logic is sound.  My neighbour was telling me about her friend's son who said something along the lines of: "How come you're so big and you get to sleep with someone else but I'm the smallest and I have to sleep all by myself?"  You make a lot of sense, random kid I don't know.  Parents are the worst!  We know how good it feels to sleep next to someone you love and yet, we insist on making our kids sleep alone, especially during the years when they're starting to be more aware of their surroundings and start having legitimate fears.  We've talked about it, and neither of us thinks it's a big deal to get some extra smooshing in with our eldest - he's not going to want physical displays of affection forever, so why not get your hugs in while you can?

We recently watched the newest Disney animated movie, Frozen and he's been all over it.  He loves the songs and he loves pretending to be the main princess character, Elsa.  It's so freakin' cute.

In Wonder Twins news, they are the cutest.  Cutting their first tooth.  Babbling away (Leonard), hissing in a combination of Parseltongue/Mogwai (Quincess).  Eating a tonne.  I'm starting to get legit scared about our future grocery bills when the boys are grown.  We're totally going to need a second fridge.  Leonard has started this annoying thing where he's literally turning his nose up at purées I give him that aren't seasoned.  He does this dramatic head turn that is simultaneously the most aggravating thing and yet also, quite endearing.  He's a pig.  He can't fist food into his gaping mouth fast enough and usually starts bawling in between spoonfuls.  The limiting factor is how fast you can scoop more food out of the bowl and back into his mouth.  Leonard also likes to treat the Quincess' tray as an extension of his own.  So he'll finish his portion and then start surveying and pawing around Quincess' tray, often grabbing food right out of the Great Gazoo's hand.  He also makes a mess of everything, whereas the Quincess is so dainty.  Quincess opens his little rosebud mouth just the teensiest bit, and will sit and masticate each bite for a good minute or two before swallowing.  Couldn't be more different.  Couldn't be more adorable.

How much cornbread should a baby eat?

We've had a couple of low-key weekends.  Last weekend Dr. Rei and Hanbo came over for an edition of 80s Settlers, Chicago style deep dish pizza, and the ongoing tradition of Hanbo making critical decision-making errors early in the game.  This weekend is pretty relaxed and wide open.  I'm liking this pace.  It gives me the option of watching True Detective during the day instead of at night (and thereby reducing the possibility that I will contract a bladder infection from being too paralysed with fear to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night) and perhaps carve out some crafting time.  I need this level of restoration.  It's done wonders for my mind set and helped pull me out of my overwhelmed, anxious state that I was in a month ago.  

The Big Yam is way better at controlling his emotions now, as are we.  He's started talking back, which I think is normal, and while it does initially put me into a murderous rage, I'm better at just staying calm (but shrill!) and he's usually brought back into line with the warning of time out and by the stern (and shrill!) impression upon that such behaviour is unacceptable and will result in the loss of privileges.  I really feel like age 3 was a huge turning point, and it's been so much easier since then.

Looking very similar

Love the Big Yam's expression in this cousins shot from the Family Day long weekend!  He looks like a little man!

I made moussaka for dinner and it was a huge hit.  Ground lamb-tomato sauce mixture spiced with cinnamon, oregano, chili flakes, layered with pre-broiled, oiled, salted eggplant slices, sliced potato (that could have used a quick par-boil), and topped with a bechamel studded with crumbled feta and baked.  So very delicious!

The Chicago deep dish  with Dr. Rei's ceasar salad

Homemade sausage & egg mcmuffins.  I used a greased mason jar ring to make the round egg and it was a turning point in the Dotytron-Lagerfeld breakfast sandwich idiom

Cheddar broccoli soup and this delicious toast.  Basically: Ace bakery garlic oval, sliced, spread with my garlic butter and toasted on high heat until it's crisp on the edges but still chewy in the middle.  Spread with basil-scape pesto from my freezer, and white beans that I mashed with lemon zest, roasted garlic cloves, and some fresh rosemary.  Topped with a drizzle of good olive oil and some sea salt.  Delicious!

Fin.