little big cuz

has arrived! markus, the gentle giant, showed up as scheduled on monday, weighing in at a whopping 9lb 1oz, he outweighed master T by about almost 3/4 of a lb. he's got a really chubalub, wide noggin, but he looks very cute and smushable.

i'm going out of my mind wanting to visit my sis like, yesterday. gah! i can't wait! we're hopefully going down to the ol' geneseo the first weekend in december, if all goes according to plan.

not much to report here, lately. i have to bring the boobla into the midwives today for a visit that's going to result in major dramas. when babies are born they have their feet pricked to get blood for a series of metabolic tests that are mandated by the government (i think). checking for thyroid issues, etc. anyway, we had it done at the hospital but the lab just called and said they got insufficient amounts of blood!!! so now the little guy has to go in and get his foot pricked again. he's also started doing this thing where he cries himself hoarse if he's upset and we're not giving him what he wants. such dramas!!! luckily for us, the boobla has kind of a low voice. so it's not as brain-melting as other newborn cries. the roomie noticed it, too - and she sees a s**t f**k load more babies than i do, so i know now it wasn't all in my head. anyway, low voice is a blessing because he's been a bit of a fussy bo bussy lately.

last night was supposed to be my triumphant return to the wednesday night class...but i ditched and used the boobla as an excuse. heehee. i just felt that staying home and working on my paper on constitutional barriers to senate reform would be a much more quality use of my time. so instead of course, i procrastinated by working on a kitchen design in ikea. which i then accidentally ERASED like a loser. so frustrating.

dinner on monday was whole wheat fusilli with pancetta, fennel, onions, and grated parm, which we had with caesar salad:

tuesday night we had a freezer treasure meal of cabbage rolls, with my new favorite winter salad - caramelized pears, endive, dried cranberries, and toasted walnuts in a maple-mustard vinaigrette:

last night for dinner i made a semolina gnocchi gratin and topped it with a spinach, swiss chard, and mushroom gorgonzola ragout - freakin' hella tasty. the semolina gnocchi came together in about 10 minutes, too:

i'll post the recipe for it at the bottom.

i'm feeling very overwhelmed by the rapidly approaching holiday season right now. we haven't even finished planting all our spring bulbs yet! and we haven't raked any leaves. every time we set out to do it, we put it off, and then it rains and gets bitterly cold. rain + bitter cold are not conducive conditions for leaf wrangling. we have to put up our lights and get a tree and trim said tree and our weekends are RAMMED! i feel like we don't have a free moment, let alone finding time to carve out to write 2 assignments, 1 research paper proposal, a research paper presentation, AND the research paper itself. ugh. i just made myself sick to the stomach. i've only got one batch of cookie dough balled up and ready to go in the freezer - i've got to do a lot more. i keep reminding myself that it'll be easier this year because i'm not working, but being chained to the boob and watching after the little guy IS work and it's harder work, too. it's non-stop! at least with my job, when i come home, i leave work there. i don't have work following me around and screaming its guts out.

we've started on the cloth diapers. so far, so good. we had a bit of a learning curve with learning the right fold to avoid a**plosions, but it seems to be working okay. because the cloth doesn't wick away the moisture and because master T sleeps long hours at night and we don't want him a) stewing in his own urine/feces and b) waking up because of said stewing; we're doing disposables at night. i've heard that things become considerably more crazy once they start eating solid food. the breast milk poops are like nothing, really.

i better get down to business. tonight i'm supposed to meet up with H and baby D to check out the leslieville holiday wanderlust. basically, a bunch of the shops on queen east offer deals and have special promotions and throw open their doors and serve mulled apple cider and have fun stuff for you to check out. i think it should be really fun.

next blog post should feature some book reviews and hopefully more progress made on my schooling. *gulp*

fin.

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

semolina gnocchi gratin

serves 2

2 c. milk (or a mix of milk and water)
1 t. salt
1/2 c. semolina
1/4 c. grated parmesan cheese
2 T. unsalted butter

- bring milk, salt, and semolina to a boil in a medium saucepan. reduce heat and whisk/stir semolina until it becomes quite thick, about 5 minutes on medium-low.
- pour the semolina mixture into a greased 8" square baking pan and put it in the fridge to cool and firm up (about 1 hour)
- invert the baking pan and cut the semolina cake into squares (i used a round cutter just to be fancy)
- lay the squares in a buttered gratin dish, overlapping slightly
- sprinkle with the grated parm and dot with the butter
- bake it in a 425F oven for about 30 minutes or until the top is nicely golden brown.

this makes a great base for a lot of different things. you could do the veggie ragout route like i did, but it would also be tasty as a base for a bolognese, or any thick meat sauce, or as a side for grilled meats or a braise like osso buco. to make a semolina gnocchi souffle, i would add about 2 eggs to the semolina mixture, just after it thickens in the pot and before you pour it into the baking pan. the eggs should make the semolina puff up a bit.
- butter a shallow gratin dish

countdown...

to little big cousin's appearance into the world!!! eeks!!! can't wait to find out if i have a new niece or nephew! i'm calling the baby "little big cuz" because the boobla just got weighed at the midwives last week and is a whopping 8lb 5oz - gaining over an oz a day, BUT i think that's how much little big cuz weighed like, 3 weeks ago, in utero. my mum has taken to calling little big cuz the jolly green giant and referring to the boobla as sprout.

i can't imagine how rough it's going to be for my poor sis recovering from a c-section - it's major surgery! it's not like they can take a baby out laparoscopically. that and the fact that she gets 7 weeks off before she has to go back to work.

this weekend was fun! friday we had dinner at dr. rei and hanbo's house which resulted in this deliciousness courtesy of dr. rei (a lamb/eggplant dish with rice with raisins and carrots and a fattoush salad [not pictured] on the side):

my contribution was whipping my boob out during the meal and also a pumpkin/squash cheesecake that i forgot to flavour with pumpkin pie spice because i'm only half here, brain-wise lately. i was so stressed about it tasting weird that i had a slice of it during the day, which resulted in me bringing a pac-man cheescake over to their house. i had used this piece of squash/pumpkin from our CSA, it was a varietal i'd never heard of, which was MASSIVE. i roasted off cubes of it and then pureed it and folded it into the cheesecake batter in lieu of canned pumpkin. it definitely tasted fuller than canned pumpkin, but i think some cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger would have smoothed out the squashiness.

conversation on friday was aces as usual. we started talking about music and die antwoord came up and dr. rei started fuming, "die antwoord makes owl city [whom she had just been slagging] sound like freakin' pavarotti!" and we were all like, "PAVAROTTI?!? what does that even mean? is that a good thing or a bad thing?!?" it was jokes. it was also jokes when i caught dr. rei talking about how much she hates vince carter and managed to make her see that she hates vince carter for the same reason cleveland hates lebron (whom she had previously defended for defecting to miami). i felt so vindicated watching the dawning realization on her face when she realized she'd been caught.

saturday i went to school. ugh ugh ugh! the first hour i was like, WTF is going on?!? and then i eased into it. i went after lunch to maximize my time and left the dotytron at home for his longest solo stretch with the boobla ever. the boobla made it easy on him by basically snoozing the day away, the little champ. we had spaghetti and meatballs and a baby spinach salad for dinner:

and i baked off some of these macadamia shortbread cookies which are AMAZING! the ground up macadamia nuts add a rich butteriness that just underscores the natural butteriness of shortbread and the texture is insane. so crumbly and tender! these are definitely going in the xmas cookie tin this year for sure:



our saturday night was spent watching "toy story 3" which is SO GOOD. wow. pixar effin' nails every movie they make and they just keep getting better and better. the level of emotion they manage to squeeze into completely imaginary, computer generated characters should make james cameron and all those motion capture idiots writhe in their inferiority. the entire movie had me welling up every 10 minutes or so. so sad! and so cute! and so funny! there are so many genuine, laugh out loud moments that don't rely on cheap sophomoric humour - many live-action comedies should aspire to as much. blargh...so entertaining - i can't recommend it enough.

it was particularly affecting because the theme of the 3rd installment is all about growing up and coming to terms with growing up and i've had to grapple with that lately as the boobla continues to chub out and change on a daily basis and i've seen how his first month has literally FLOWN by. one of my favorite things in the world is after a feed, when he passes out milk drunk against my chest, and his eyes are closed, and his little mouth is gaping open in a little "o" shape and he's breathing all heavy and completely unaware of anything else - he's so defenceless and vulnerable, his little body slumped up against me is so small and trusting. looking down at him on friday night i started crying, because i was already missing the point when he wouldn't do that anymore. and i know that every stage just gets better and better, but it's hard to imagine anything more perfect than his being at every moment in the present. so hormonal!!!

sunday we strapped him into the ergo and went on a leslieville walk about. we wanted to try this coffee place that our neighbour, a coffee aficionado, recommended. it's called voulez-vous cafe and it's on queen, between greenwood and coxwell. the leslieville strip is rife with gourmet coffee retailers. we've got the original dark horse espresso bar, mercury espresso bar, te aro, tango palace coffee company, red rocket coffee company, and now voulez vous. the dotytron has been on a macchiato tour of all those places and agreed with the neighbour that voulez vous was the best, richest, most nuanced cup he's had so far. the ambiance is really nice, too. tonnes of magazines (my favorite is that they have lots of current issues of dwell) and a big, industrial communal table made from old bowling alley flooring.

then we headed down to visit my old canoe colleague, S's new storefront for her french macaron/wedding cake company, bobette and belle. they're a short, 10 minute walk from us and the store is GORGEOUS! just take a look at the wedding cakes on their site - freakin' incredible. and lots of delicious flavours, too. they've expanded so that the store also sells baked goods, pastries, cookies, and candies and it's a jewel box of a location with a full production kitchen in the back. we bought two cupcakes (red velvet and a chocolate hazelnut crunch), both topped with the airiest buttercream and a blueberry scone, which comes with a little pot of whipped devonshire cream. mmmmmmmmmm!!! we had the cupcakes late last night and they were DIVINE. moist, rich, cake topped with the fluffiest, lightest, most intensely flavoured buttercream imaginable, and all for the very reasonable price of $2.75 each! i'm so happy for S, her business is going so well - they did a bunch of macarons for the new york times party during the film fest, and they do cakes for the rich and famous and are routinely featured in high-end magazines.

i'm also selfishly happy that they set up shop in our hood. when we first bought lil' ugmo, i was more than a little upset to be moving away from my beloved danforth, home to my favorite grocery stores/cheese mongers/hardware stores, etc. and leslieville seemed SO gentrified to me. but now i freakin' love it. i love living in between two thriving, fantastic neighbourhoods that are equally accessible and yet are still far from the madding crowd. leslieville has amazing boutiques for clothes, vintage stores, more vintage furniture stores than you could ever possibly hope for, a plethora of charming neighbourhood restaurants, and SO. MANY. BAKERIES and brunch spots. plus my massage therapist and access to all the fast food along the lakeshore. then, when i have to do my grocery shopping, i can just nip up the danforht, which has all those material, daily life needs covered, but has a dearth of the "fun stuff" stores that queen east has. and in the middle of it all, is chinatown east and little india for arcane spices and cheap seafood. best! i love love love my hood!!!

for sunday breakkie, as a nod to the fact that we were scheduled to go to guu izakaya with mhui and her hubby for our quasi anniversary dinner, we had an OPEN FACED sausage and egg mcmuffin. i'll let you be the judge as to whether we actually exercised a lick of restraint or not:

not so much, eh? we dropped off the boobla for his first ever adventures in babysitting with momma and poppa d and went to guu for dinner and feasted like pigs. it was so good! i love that restaurant more than anything. i want in!!! how do i get in as an investor?!? mhui and her hubby (who were ALSO celebrating their quasi anniversary) eat the way we do (and by that i mean, a lot) and they love their guu hard. we just narrowly got into the restaurant, which almost resulted in a domestic.

the dotytron and i drove by at 4:40 and there was nobody there, so i made the call that he should drive me to my work so that i could pick up some books. i was also like, "don't worry! it's sunday night and it's raining! the hype has died down! we'll be there by 5pm!" we WERE there by 5pm to find that there was a LINE UP TO THE SIDEWALK. he wanted to murder me. we were the last people to the door when the host said the restaurant was officially full at which point you might as well have started making funeral arrangements for me. i asked if he would mind shifting people around at the bar and he agreed so we got to sit together. disaster averted (narrowly!) we ended up ordering 24 dishes at guu. plus drinks and dessert. amazing!!!

the outlaw grandparents were fine with the boobla, who again made it easy on them by basically snoozing for the entire four hours that we were gone. he was up long enough that momma d managed to finally get some photos of him with his eyes open:

what a little gaffer! goddamn, he's a cute kid.

fin.

there is no substitute...

for a mother's arms. except of course, 2 pillows, a swaddling blanket, a pre-fold swaddler, and a mom who has s**t to do.

so we bought a nursing pillow which turned out to be garbage for nursing, but makes a pretty awesome ground-control-it's-major-tom command centre for the boobla:

here he's all like, "whaat up?!"/kicking it old school and doing the mashed potato. we love it when he's all eyes open, toronto. it's the best. i can't believe he decided to turn into a white guy though. he started off so asian and now he's shedding it the way his belly button is slowly shedding its appearance of being a secondary mouth.

big d insisted on hosting a family one-month dinner for the boobla. it was pretty boss. shark's fin soup and eggs dyed red and lobster and other kinds of goodness:






the dotytron's movember 'stache is looking very fraaanche.

all the profs in my program (well, the 2 of them) are being super-nice about giving me extensions and i think the program director has washed his hands of me. i emailed him as a courtesy to let him know that i was going to be coming to the saturday class this week, but after lunch, because it's not the best use of my time away from the little tiger direct to show up for class at 10 for an hour's recap of last class and then sit through lunch and he was all like "sort something out with the professor to make up for your absence" and the prof is like, "we'll discuss this later" - sweet!


i made cinnamon pecan buns on the weekend - probably my most successful attempt to date - i'm going to throw out all my other recipes and just keep this one. i got it from food and wine magazine (fluffy, buttery, cinnamon rolls) and did some small tweaks to make it less fussy (ie. only dividing the dough in half instead of in quarters and skipping the parchment paper step) - the recipe was a little confusing - i'm not sure how you would have fit all the buns into one 10" springform pan. i split the dough in half and baked off two 9" springform pans and wrapped one and froze it to take to my sister when we finally get to see her and introduce the new cousins to one another.


tonight for dinner i made us a baked mac'n'cheese with a random crumb topping - i just smushed up a bunch of pretzel crackers, ritz crackers, and other hard, bread-like things and mixed it with butter and thyme to top the mac'n'cheese with. served alongside that fennel, radicchio, romano bean and parsley salad that we love in the winter.

fin.

lucky buttons galore

wow. so far it's been a humdinger of a weekend.

friday our friend S came for a visit with the boobla khan and then dr. rei showed up with her friend L and then my MOM showed up (totally forgot she was coming by) and then the dotytron came home from school so it was a full house of visitors showering love on the the little chicken. my mom was also being hilarious and chatty and turning on the charm and we got to regale people with stories of how the dotytron's very existence basically puts big d on edge. like how everything the dotytron touches at my parent's house in markham basically sends big d off into a tailspin of anger. lol!

par example, on the topmost shelf of the kitchen cabinets where my parents keep their glasses, they have like, novelty plastic glasses shaped like the CN tower from 1984 or something. one time, the dotytron had the temerity to take one of those glasses to make himself a drink, and then he got yelled at by big d. lol! on the same shelf, big d also has a collection of mini-booze bottles (like from airplanes and stuff) and one time, the dotytron asked if he could use one to make himself a drink and big d yelled at him (do you see a trend here?) big d has also yelled at the dotytron for making himself an espresso with my mum's espresso maker, which fulfills the "big d yelling at the dotytron" conditions: 1) the dotytron is involved; 2) drinks are involved. lol!!! it's actually comical how often big d yells at the dotytron.

saturday was a little buckshot - got up, took the boober to the danforth to do some grocery shopping came home, the dotytron went for a massage, i went for a massage, came home, met up with smckay and the 3000 for some hair cutting and visiting...look how cute they are with the bambino:


adorable, huh? then we went to meet the rest of the kdubsguelph tdot crew for uncle J's birthday dinner at yamato in yorkville.

this was an informative experience. informative because it reiterated AGAIN how much longer it takes to leave the house when you have a baby and also of the shortcomings and failings of my leaving-the-house-for-an-extended period preparedness skills. for example, the little guy blew ass at the restaurant, and the backup outfit i have in the diaper bag is a little skimpy for the cold weather. or, i brought all the components for my breast pump, EXCEPT the actual part that connects to the boob, which means that by the end of the night, we were dealing with a little of the ol' leak-through-the-top bizness:

so classy, eh? on the plus side, look at what a bangin' job smckay did on my hairs. on the negative side, look at how wall-eyed my boobs are. they're practically in two different area codes. i needs me some nursing bras, stat. being unable to pump also meant that my boobs were filled with rocks by the end of the evening - watching a little baby try to nurse on super-engorged boobs is so sad. it's the equivalent of the squirrels who keep valiantly trying to eat the pumpkins - their mouths are too damn small for the everest they're attempting to conquer.

anyway, because of the giant clusterf**k that was us leaving the house (which included forgetting uncle J's present at home - nice!) and the dotytron's colossally poor judgement call to take the MOST CONGESTED AND TRAFFIC LIGHT HEAVY ROAD OF ALL TIME there, we were about 15 minutes late - to a restaurant. in yorkville. on a saturday night. a restaurant that has an intensely axis-of-evil maitre d' and the most s.s. reservation policy known to man. they'll hold your reso for 15 minutes and ONLY seat you once the whole party is there. so of course, everyone else was there except for us. and they were all seated and the maitre d' refused to accommodate us, even though there were EMPTY teppanyaki tables elsewhere - or tables that only had a couple sitting there who had clearly just been seated and could have switched tables with us so that we could all sit together. but no. so we were all dejected and the four of us sat on the sushi side. you know who was totally unflappable throughout the whole situation and made us look like a star? this guy:



we made the best of it though and it ended up being a really fun time. we were so mad at the restaurant that we were being hilariously jokey about occupying the table for AS LONG AS WE G-D PLEASED and ordering one dish at a time and maybe doing a dine and dash (we didn't).

can i just say that smckay is an amazing person? her ability to get s**t done and mcguyver a situation is simply beyond. the little guy blew a** at the resto and i wasn't going to change him but smckay scoped out the situation, determined that there was a narrow sliver of counter that we could use between the two sinks in the women's bathroom and we hustled him in there. once there, the counter was SOPPING wet (because they had those stupid sinks that SIT ON TOP OF THE COUNTER - i hate those sinks!) and the paper towel dispenser was all jammed up. smckay breaks into the paper towel dispenser, thinks about throwing away the key to give the ol' finger to the restaurant and their stupid reservation policy, but decides against it, and we strip down the little guy who has sharted EVERYWHERE. she grabs his backup outfit and i'm in the middle of using a billion wipes to clean up the mess when she suggests that we wash off his little butt in the fancy pants yorkville sink ON TOP of the counter. so we do. much the amusement of the two nice ladies who came into the bathroom to pee and found that the whole hand-washing area was taken up by a nuclear poo, a billion wipes, soggy paper towels, a baby who'd practically been sponged-bathed in the sink, and a stinky diaper.

then we trooped over to lolly's place and hung out there, so in the end, we did get to spend time with everyone even if we were put into the sushi-side internment camp of yamato. baby's first experience in yorkville, what what!

watching everyone coo and cuddle the little boober made my heat melt. he got passed around from hand to hand and this morning i got all weepy looking at all the photos from last night, seeing everyone holding him and thinking about how he doesn't even KNOW how lucky he is to be born into an extended family of people who love the crap out of him just because he's around (and showing no overtly a**hole-y tendencies - yet.) i seriously was tearing up telling the dotytron how lucky the boober is and the dotytron was like, "well, it's our job to let him know how lucky he is to have this network, and to feel sympathy for people who don't have this sheer wall of love surrounding and supporting them." wise words, dotytron. i'm so excited to share the next phase of my life with these amazing people we have in our lives - to love the crap outta their kids and smush the 2nd generation of us and our connections and to see the little boober grow up with this crew of friends - this is the stuff that makes life so amazing and miraculous. to see these connections continue to grow through time, to see relationships and friendships deepen, to see the love your family and friends will have for your kid just because YOU made this little being happen - it's the best. seriously the best. like love transformed into a giant polar fleece slanket giving you the hug you need to face the cold winter of life.

so many lucky buttons gathered together!

fin.

chubalubalub

randy macho man savage pose! incidentally, the dotytron determined a long time ago, that the "bananarama bo bama" song that you sing where you insert someone's name and riff on it (do you know what i'm talking about?) unequivocally DOESN'T work when you use the name "randy macho man savage" - it's the one exception to the rule - you know, the bananarama bo bama song rule.

well, feeding like a demon is causing SOMEONE to chunk up. he's a little less scrawny chicken in the limbs and his torso and head are getting all filled out. it makes him even MORE kissable than he was before. we love kissing him. my life is like a pulp science fiction/horror movie now - i birthed something whose appetites far exceed mine. for the past three nights he's been only up twice in the night - we're hoping the good luck streak continues.

in other news: i fired off my midterm today. the prof made a special allowance and gave me a take home, open book version of the mid term. i had to answer more questions than my classmates who did the in-class version. it felt good to get back into the groove of academic b.s.-ing - my specialty. i did 2/3 of it last night and finished off the final 1/3 this morning in an hour or so. it felt like a re-entry into the real world and it was nice knowing that i could cross another activity off the school checklist, and that i could manage to do it with the boobla khan only being less than a month old. i'm feeling pretty optimistic about my abilities to stay on top of this degree during mat leave.

in OTHER other news - GUESS WHO I SAW TODAY during my daily constitutional with master star eyes? THAT MEDIA PERSONALITY that was hitting on me in the grossest way imaginable earlier this year. convergence! there was a stabbing around the corner from our house (it was an isolated domestic situation, no worries) - actually, the story is kind of hilariously wonky. the dude accused of the stabbing was out on bail for another stabbing! and the people he stabbed are thought to be the people who posted bail for him but then wanted to withdraw. the people who got stabbed are okay, which is what makes me saying "lol!" okay. ANYWAY, i stopped with the stroller and was trying to ascertain what had happened when i met the dude's eyes. he looked at me, i smiled in a friendly fashion, and then HE PROCEEDED TO PRETEND NOT-KNOW ME. you know how you can tell when someone totally recognizes you and then makes the call to pretend not-know you? this was a clear cut case of that. ah well, the most important thing is that he knows i was preggos. it was becoming a running joke that i hadn't run into him at work since starting to obviously show and then the chicken boo came early so i didn't get to stake him out and act all nonchalant about my knocked-up state. best!

on tuesday night i made us a pretty boss dinner. i roasted delicata and acorn squash in a high oven in rendered pancetta fat with torn up sage leaves and garlic and then tossed this, the reserved crispy pancetta, some pasta cooking water, and parmesan cheese with whole wheat pasta. i also made us a wintery salad of chopped belgian endive with pan-roasted pears chunks, dried cranberries, and toasted walnuts in a maple vinaigrette. i'm loving dried fruits and nuts in wintery salads lately - i used to hate the idea of dried fruit in things but i've totally come around:


tonight and last night were leftover busting nights in attempt to rid fridge of backlog...however, as a treat to myself for getting my midterm done, i made chewy chocolate chip cookies with skor bits in them:



i've got some movie reviews and book review for yous...but in the meantime -

roll call of awesome:

the it gets better project and the outpouring of support for this initiative makes me cry. more correctly, the fact that this project had to come about to give hope to LGBT kids in freakin' small minded towns who are being bullied by total a**holes who are terminally unhot, uncool, and giant losers makes me cry. it's beyond upsetting to me that awesome kids are letting losers determine their lives and don't have the support system to know how those po dunk jerkwads are po dunk jerkwads.

i dressed up the boobla khan in a pretty flaming, cruising-the-strip-in-miami onesie today and the thought of him being bullied if he turns out to be gay infuriated me. for his sake, i'm glad that he's going to grow up in toronto, with me and the dotytron for his parents - because i know we'll support the f**k out of him and that if anyone ever messes with my kid, i'm going to make their lives a living hell. i'm really good at that. and yes, it will probably embarrass the hell outta my child to have to witness his parent dressing down and verbally harassing ANOTHER child, but you don't mess with me and mine. i will mess you up good. mark my words.

i just wish all these underdog kids everywhere had someone like me in their corner.



on a somewhat related tip, "rainbow connection" is one of the best songs ever written. hand's down. this also makes me cry.

fin.

sad halloween

halloween was a total bust this year. well, not completely, but i totally dropped the ball to the point where i felt like a bit of a failure in the halloween spirit department. no signature pumpkins (and this year's contenders were going to be AWESOME - i'd spill the beans but i'm going to recycle the idea for next year, so you'll just have to wait with baited breath), no costumes for me and the dotytron, no costume for the boobla khan, pretty crappy cut-out decorations...ugh. i was definitely not in full form. i mean, i have a good excuse, but i still feel like i could've gotten my shiz together a bit more and pulled something together.

friday night we laid low. it was a bitterly cold day so the dotytron came home right after school and we snuggled in flannel jammies and ate big bowls of beef stew with roasted garlic mashed potatoes:
saturday morning i made us homemade sausage'n'egg mcmuffins with whole wheat thomas english muffins which are CRAP to eat on their own. it's like they're shockingly bad, considering how amazingly wonderful and the pinnacle of english muffin-ness the non-whole wheat thomas english muffins are. anyway, i lightly toasted 'em and sandwiched them with bob evans sausage, and over-easy egg, and grated cheddar cheese. muy bueno:

then we set up the stroller and walked down to queen street and the dotytron got a coffee from one of the ten bajillion gourmet coffee places in leslieville and we promenaded and basically assumed the mantle of the leslieville yuppie stroller brigade. yikes.

we came home and the dotytron convinced me to order popeye's fried chicken because he feels that since i entered the second trimester, i've been way less binge-y with my eating than in the entire course of our relationship and he's apparently really missed eating crappy takeout. so i indulged the poor boy. this involved the usual (3 piece, dark meat, spicy meal deal with mashed po' and cajun gravy) and then i went all FUBAR and ordered the MARDI GRAS CHEESECAKE. you know, cuz popeye's is known for their DESSERTS. oy x a billion.

sunday we had brunch with my family at joy bistro which was hilarious because big d was in fine form and was being adorably big d. this involved telling my mom to shut up and stop interrupting and making cracks about me and my stepmother and then directing a billion questions a minute about cell phone plans at s-dawg. it also involved this awesome exchange, the impetus for which was big d requesting the name of our plumber:

s-dawg: "didn't we have a plumber? what happened to that guy - i forget his name, he was black, and he used to call me steven"
big d: "oh i know who you're talking about. he wasn't black and he wasn't a plumber"

lol!!!

we came home, had a visit with S & A and then dr. rei came over and the dotytron shaved and turned into baby dotytron for movember and we had classic m-r-i times at our place high. it was hilarious. we talked about a billion different things, ranging from the serious to the trifling. a big discussion concerned where we were going to order in for dinner. we floated the idea of the burger's priest, which i've talked about before. i had thought the name was just being cheeky, but when i checked out the website to look up the menu, i found out that the religious angle was way more jesus-fish-y than i had previously assumed, complete with links to christian sermons and quotes from numbers under the tab "the gospel." so then dr. rei and i got all skeeved out at the politicizing of our burger ordering and it became a question of whether or not they were also against the gays or not and if we should order from them and the dotytron went all hilarious and called us out on the arbitrary insertion of anti-religious bias into our burger ordering which culminated in the line, "i can guarantee you that the burger's priest guy doesn't have the money OR THE POLITICAL CONNECTIONS [to actualize any kind of christian agenda]" lol! it was the most impassioned defense of a good burger couched in a critique of the arbitrary and provisional nature of the intersection between capitalism, consumerism and politics that i've ever heard.

there was also some hilarity around giving out halloween candy because in the year that our costco overflow from last year has been sitting around the house, somehow someone (probably me, because, as the dotytron accused, "you don't respect candy because you don't even LIKE candy") threw some candy canes in the bin and dr. rei mistakenly uploaded a candy cane on a neighbour kid and i was kind of embarrassed about it. then, we had a band of total chinese immigrant kids show up at our door (the kind where some of them aren't even in costume because they don't get the holiday at all, and where one of the kids politely thanked me with a: "sank you!" - so cute!) and one of the kids studied the bin, and then actually said, "hmmm...candy cane" and CHOSE a candy cane. it was hilarious.

my mum is really the best. she may not be "nurturing" in the typical white mom way, but she's not a white mom, and she can deliver where it counts (ie. if you want a threatening lawyer-y cease-and-desist letter written on your behalf). in this case, she went to pac mall and bought us beard papa cream puffs, which i'd only heard about recently from my friend mhui. they are AMAZING. assuming you like really rich pastry cream (yes!), delicate choux paste profiteroles (yes!) and OVERSIZED, OVERSTUFFED portions of both of the above (yes yes, a thousand times, yes!) so good. so creamy. apparently there are locations where you can get the cream puffs warm and the pac mall location was mobbed - super long line ups. so worth it. why are the japanese the best at oh, i don't know, EVERYTHING?!??!

tonight for dinner i made us matzoh ball soup with lots of root veggies, dill, tender chunks of chicken, and dilled matzoh balls:

we had the dessert we were supposed to have yesterday, a pear franginpane tarte tatin with an oatmeal crust, warmed in the oven and served with a dollop of whipped cream:

in other news - do you think they could've swapped babies on us? look at this kid - he's so his own person. he doesn't really look like me OR the dotytron:

what are the chances that don rickles was having a baby the exact same night as us, at the exact same hospital? i'll let you decide:




fin.

the secrets of the universe...

i know why babies sleep so much. it's because they know the secrets of the universe. all this knowledge we spend our whole lives forgetting, only to be reintroduced to them again when we enter the hereafter.

last night in bed, with the little chicken boo sleeping peacefully in the bassinet beside me, and the dotytron doing his night time reading, i had one of those moments where i'm suddenly made aware of my own mortality. that i will die some day. isn't it weird that you can live each day and forget the gaping, yawning, awful totality of that immutable truth? i call those moments having a "mortality thought" and because i'm a godless infidel and because i'm a lucky button and because i'm so grateful for all that i have - the thought of those end moments, of the great nothingness or unknowable-ness of what lies beyond, fills me with fear and sadness. i wonder what it's like to be faced with the knowledge of your own mortality - to stare it in the face. you hear about people who can meet it with grace and i wonder how that's possible? how do you make peace with leaving everything you know behind?

i always cry a bit. cry at the certainty, the inescapable nature of the final act, the one thing other than being born that we all share in common. for some reason, the dotytron doesn't get as perturbed as i do about it. i think it's because he's more open to the secrets of the universe, the magic of the cosmos, his unshakable faith in the great spirit in the sky/energy/lifeforce and all the rest of that stuff that i usually dismiss as juju mumbo jumbo.

the dotytron always tells me that this cycle of being born and dying is important and necessary. that we wouldn't appreciate anything if our lives weren't finite. that nothing we have would be as precious if we could live forever. and intellectually, i know it...i just can't believe it with all my heart. i'm too tied to the material world, i think.

but then, i'll watch the little chicken boo and i come a little closer to being able to give myself to the magic and mystery of the one big question. this little being started as energy - the endless division of cells produced this little guy, and he'll end his life as energy and what's more magical than that? what speaks to the beauty of creation more than that? how can you doubt the big bang when we produce big bangs each time we bring another life into this world?

i listen to his soft snuffly breathing when he's deep in sleep and i see his eyelids flutter and his little gassy mouth twitches and i feel in my bones that he's reflecting on the secrets that he was born with - the secrets of the universe, of epistemology, of ontology, of morality, ethics, and every big issue we grapple with and mess up through the course of our lives. i see billion of years of exploding stars and black holes and the deep dark nothingness before it all began in the whorls of his little perfect ear, in his little rosebud mouth, the long fingers that grip mine with an intensity and strength that belies his bandy, scrawny arms and legs, and the dark swirls of downy, tufty hair on his head. it's easier to be okay with our limited time on this earth when you see what we're capable of and what we're returning to. when i watch the little star eyes while he's sleeping and dreaming, it's easier to reconcile myself with the great beyond - to know that i'm going to be privy to the secrets of the universe again and get full access to an understanding that is only hinted at in my baby's sleeping wonder.

the universe is pretty smart stuff, guys.

back to the material, mundane world. tonight we had rosemary beef stew for dinner. with a roasted garlic mash that i threw some jersualem artichokes into. more of those cherry oatmeal walnut cookies for dessert.



fin.

if i was going to get hitched anyway...

i might as well have gotten hitched to a really great guy. way to go, me of 2009, way to go. and while we're at it, way to go, me of 2001 (for having the good judgement to recognize a good thing when i see it), way to go.

tuesday night we were settled into bed for the evening and out of nowhere, the dotytron gives me a handmade card that he crafted when he arrived early at his after school program. it's SUPER after school program crafty. like, 2 pieces of coloured construction paper glued together (it gives the card a nice amount of body) with some relief work cut outs on the front (in the shape of a sun) and writing in multicolour clicky pen on the inside. pretty amazing. it was also hilariously addressed to "my hawaiin mama" - he only realized the spelling error after it was done. and along with the card, which was really sweet, i got an early xmas prezzie! i am now the proud owner of my very own ukulele. he got me a really nice one, too! not a $20 cheapie - this one is really nice wood. the ukulele present has been in the works for a while - the dotytron believes that the instrument matches the particular childlike baby chicken character of my singing voice. lol!

monday night i made us irie pumpkin stew, with coconut rice'n'peas with stewed beet greens:

tuesday night we had leftover lamb and lentil soup made by momma and poppa d. with warm baguette and butter and a quick pickled cucumber and red onion salad - it was PERFECT rainy, cold, fall day food:

tonight i made us a pork, tofu, and chinese stir fry greens (so labelled by the good folks at our CSA) in a chili black bean sauce with brown rice:

here's your chicken boo photo of the day. my sis totally freaked me out today by mentioning that he's going to be THREE WEEKS OLD on monday! wtf!? in 11 months he'll be walking! time is going too darned fast...i'm starting to see the appeal of 19 kids and counting...you want them to stay at every stage of their babyhood forever. what you really want is 1 that stays a baby and 1 that gets older so you get the best of both worlds...this year is going to fly by...*sniff*

it's blurry...but that stinkeye is classic and 100% his mater.

academic book club monday night was DRAMAS! i showed up late because i was hitching a ride with another lady in the club and we had to wait for the dotytron to come home with the car seat butt. we missed all the tension but one lady is dropping out! what the?!?? there was some interesting discussion about parenthood - the group is pretty much split. there's me and J on one side, who feel next to no anxiety about our parenting decisions, and on the other side are the mums who are all super-stressed out and analyze everything they do for fear that they're going to mess up their kids. i told them, "the way i figure it, kids are pretty resilient - look at those ugandan child soldiers! if those guys can bounce back, anyone can" lol! so i figure, as long as i can keep my kid out of child soldier territory, that's a pretty good yardstick to be measured by.

fin.

a weekend of firsts

the little chicken boo had his first two restaurant outings in one day yesterday. it was epic. friday night was a bit of a bunk night - he was up every hour on the hour. my mum is like, "he's so smart! on the hour!" and i'm like, "if he wasn't so cute, i would have strangled him." so the dotytron and i hatched a game plan to engineer maximum day time napping yesterday. this meant that for lunch, the boobla had his first ever asian legend outing - this achieved a couple of things: a) we got to eat asian legend and b) the msg-pork-starch explosion meant that we k.o'd for a solid 2 hours once we got home. we basically just ate, napped, and then ate again - making it the best darned saturday i've had in a long time.

supper club was delicious. restoran malaysia doesn't serve alcohol - i guess there's a big muslim population in indonesia/malaysia. the food was tops - we ordered everything to share - we had a bunch of curries, some rotis, green papaya salad, delicious garlic green beans, a noodle dish, cashew chicken - it was epic.

one of the other supper club couples have a 3 month old baby who apparently was giving them troubles in the beginning. he cried solid for the first 30 days and they were rehashing war stories of how hard it is and how they never get sleep and how showering is such a luxury and how the cry of a baby is enough to make you go into panic mode and how it's supposed to trigger a hormone in the mother that makes you pick the baby up. i don't think i have that hormone. lol. i'm always like, "let him cry it out - he's gotta get used to life." or, i'm always like, "the diapers are super-absorbent! don't change him for another 2 hours!" (thrifty housewife? you betcha!)

anyway, i feel bad because our friend L pointed at us, and said, "they say parenting is easy!" and i do feel like we've had an easy go of it so far. yeah, it's rough when he's up every hour on the hour, or when he's cluster feeding, or this morning when he was at the boob for 2 SOLID HOURS and my boobs were all wizened and sad-boob about being milked dry. but i don't really think it's all THAT bad *knocks on wood* *avoids tempting the fates* the thing is, i think my classic survival strategy is that i really sweat the small stuff. the big stuff rarely phases me. so, i'm more likely to get worked up and super anxious and panic attack-y about making sure we do our laundry during the non-peak hours to take advantage of the cheaper hydro rates than i am about the fact that i'm a mom now. it's wack. i seriously will go apoplectic if the dotytron doesn't line up the corners when he folds the sheets - but 4 hours of sleep? no problemo. he's really a good little boobla, too - all things considered. left to his own devices he has a schedule of every 3 hours to feed and he really only cries when he's got an upset tummy or if he's hungry. i dunno - it hasn't been THAT cray-cray so far. we've been able to still see people and do our grocery shopping and make cookies and go to supper club, so it hasn't been all THAT brutal.

i felt REALLY bad when the dotytron mentioned in passing about how he read this study that the key to parenting is containing your anxiety because babies are like dogs and cats and will pick up on your stress and then in turn, get more riled up. after dinner i was like, "ummm...way to make it seem like the other couple were bad parents for not containing their anxiety, buddy" and he was like, "yeah, i felt bad about that - awkward" lol! the thing is, knowing the dotytron, he wasn't trying to be an a-hole, he was just passing along something interesting he came across - unfortunately, the side effect of that information sharing was that he came across as a censorious a**hole, judging other parents for stressing out their kid. lol!

it's been a rainy sunday thus far. this morning we came back downtown, did our grocery shopping en route and i made us fried green tomatoes with peameal bacon and a poached egg with warmed up leftover cheddar sage biscuits for breakkie:

for dinner, we had dr. rei's pozole that she brought over, gussied up with some chopped avocado w/ lime, some crushed tortillas, and some sour cream. we also split a rib eye burrito from chino loco:



i also made us cherry oatmeal cookies from the baked cookbook:

this is the chicken boo photo of the day:

i call this outfit his hospital orderly look. the dotytron made me laugh like a mofo because the other night, he was wearing it, and i was like, "look at what a hospital orderly he looks like!" and the dotytron did this nerdy voice and said, "would you like me to change your bed pan?" and to this day, it cracks me up every time. as dr. rei has said, we thought we liked making up dialogue for movies - making up dialogue and speaking on behalf of the boobla is 10 bajillion times more fun, especially when you're doing it from the perspective of a nerdy, effete, hospital orderly.

fin.

maternity leave diaries

so far, so good. it takes me a billion years longer to do everything, but i'm finding the days are FLYING past, which wasn't what i was expecting at all. i think it's because the non stop schedule of the boob show (every 3 hours, on the hour) and the duration of the feedings (anywhere from 10-30 minutes if he's being a greedy goompa) means that you do one task and then it's time to feed. it's like, put on the laundry, feed. do the dishes, feed. answer emails, feed. and then before you know it, the dotytron is home from work and it's dinner time and since we go to bed at like, 9:30pm now, the day is done. the one thing i'm having trouble fitting in is my readings for school - i basically front-loaded all my public admin readings so that i'm caught up through to the midterm on november 3rd, but i haven't done a lick of my constitutional law readings. whoops. i'm tempted to take this week off. anyway, i'm slowly finding a schedule that's working for me and the little chicken.

all that being said, two nights ago he was up from 11-3pm every 40 minutes wanting to feed for 7 or 10 minutes at a time. i broke down into tears and totally understood why sometimes people shake babies. I'M NOT GONNA, i'm just SAYIN', aight? no need to call CAS just yet.

our first outing yesterday was exciting (not). library and then ceili cottage for the CSA. whooooooo. today we're going to extend our scope and try to hit shopper's. we basically LIVE at shopper's now. although my friends G and Mhui hepped me to this online drugstore, well.ca which is an online drugstore with FREE DELIVERY, NO MINIMUM. wtf?!? talk about BEST! apparently it's Mhui's hubby's cousin's company and the kid is a real go-getter. he made brickbreaker - the one that's on the blackberry. these kinds of "celebrity" sightings seriously make my day. it's like when i met the guy whose cousin made the popeye's biscuit recipe. it's like standing in the shadow of giants, for me. lol!

i've been doing a little bit of cooking here and there, even though people have been amazing about bringing us delicious food - this is what we've had lately:

the dotytron made us turkey noodle casserole - total old skool styles. we're talking cream of mushroom soup in there, egg noodles, mayonnaise, celery, mushrooms. so good!

i made cornbread to go with a chili i made (not pictured) so the next morning we had a real french canadian breakfast - toasted corn bread with butter and maple syrup and peameal bacon.

dr. rei was a true bff and made us a delicious borscht with chunks of beef. it was soo good!

to go with we had a mesclun salad with gorgonzola-stuffed, pancetta wrapped figs

this is an awesome breakfast. you take leftover stuffing, pat it into cakes, brown the cakes on both sides in olive oil and butter, and topped with a (preferably) runny fried egg. so so so good.

fall/winter = prime time cookie baking time for me. i made us snickerdoodles.

this is almond frangipane stuffed, challah french toast with maple syrup poached apples. it's based on something i saw popping up on food blogs just before thanksgiving weekend, which was brioche smeared with frangipane and baked in the oven. the sandwiching method didn't work out so well, truth be told. i think this will work better as a baked french toast - next time.

sunday was a goosetang dinner. we had takeout from bamiyan kabob which is fast becoming one of my favorite restos. i had the sultani combo, which features kofta (ground beef kabob) and a skewer of barg (filet mignon kabob) and we also got this potato-herb stuffed flatbread which was divine.

for dessert on sunday i made us fried apple fritters. i used macintosh apples in the filling which was a mistake - they cook down to mush and made the batter overly wet. next time i'll know better. i slathered the thing in toffee bourbon sauce and ice cream, so at that point, you'd eat a dirty diaper and think it was delicious.

here's your chicken photo of the day:

he's starting to smile!

the dotytron is making my heart explode every day. last night, i left him with a crying chicken while i heated up my dinner. i come back, and the dotytron announces to me proudly, "my new technique for quieting him down is to assault him with kisses." me: "does it work?" the dotytron, "not really, but it definitely confuses him for a little bit." *demonstrates by showering the boobla with kisses all over his face and torso* *rainbow daggers in my heart*

fin.