Frivolous (But At the Same Time Vitally Important) Question

Okay, here goes:

Denim harem jogging pants with high tops, yay or nay?

I think I'm gonna go for it.  We'll see how this shakes down.

I recently splurged on my first grown-up lady powder blush and it has CHANGED. MY. LIFE.  My go-to Benefit Benetint is good, but it kind of dries out my skin, somehow, and sometimes the flush was a little subtle.  I went with Nars blush in Torrid, which is a darker, deeper pink with a little less glittery bits than their all-star product, Orgasm, which is the blush that's supposed to look good on everyone.  It did look good on me, but this deeper tone works better with my darker skin.

I also scored the score of life!

This coat retails for $420 at J. Crew and I nabbed it (in excellent used condition) for $100!  It's such a lady coat.  I love it.  I was on the fence for a bit because I wasn't sure the sandstone colour would suit my skin tone and I was kind of heartset on a grey, but this looks and feels so luxe.  I'm obsessed.  You know I loves me a deal.  Combine a grown-up lady coat with my addiction to the thrill of second hand clothing finds, and this is a big, big score.  It looks so good with my skinnies and runners!  Obsessed.

Dr. Rei gave me a gold, Nars eyeshadow pencil thing and all in all, I've been really feeling myself lately.

I'm very loved up on my network of people at the moment.  Friday was my day off and I had brunch with my new friend, N, who is a brilliant, beautiful, woman of colour doing interesting research and has amazing style to boot.  Then, I had a massage and my RMT went to a book launch and Chester Brown was there and we both had a moment of being all "ewwww, he's so gross!!!" and she made a crack about how, if she ever saw Seth, she'd knock that porkpie hat right off his head and I felt SO GLAD that I know someone who knows/appreciates/can make that joke.  I so want to meet Chester Brown so I can ask him if he knows he's gross.  That's very important to me.  It's really hard to tell from his work.  He's very honest about the the gross things he does and the gross ways he does them, but there's a certain flatness in the delivery and a lack of self-reflection that also makes it seem like he doesn't know he's gross?  Like, if you were gross the way Chester Brown is gross, shouldn't you be contextualizing/feeling guilt/wanting to ameliorate your grossness?

To wit, I recently read his comic, Paying For It which is about a period when he became a client john, during this tumultuous time in his life when he was still technically the significant other of Sook-Yin Lee, and was living with her, but she was pursuing a relationship with this drummer (!) and eventually moved that drummer into their apartment (!) and effectively ceased to be Chester Brown's partner.  But he still lived there for a while.  Anyway, as with The Playboy, I appreciated Brown's honesty, but that doesn't make his dealings with the prostitutes and his editorializing any less gross (he's very superficial when describing the prostitutes).  I get we're all superficial, and he's entitled to that (maybe?), but at the end of the comic there's a big position paper on how he feels prostitution should be legalized, but nothing about his own sexism and grossness and situating that in any critical, self-reflexive, trying-to-be-a-better-person way.  It was just icky.

Related, we started watching this show, The Girlfriend Experience, which is tangentially related to the Steven Soderbergh movie of the same name.  It's shot in Toronto (but isn't set in Toronto) and it features Riley Keough as this law school student who takes a demanding internship and becomes an escort.  It's shot in a very dark, dim, moody, Soderbergh-y way and has that same, voyeuristic, detached tone.  It's not hugely compelling but the episodes are only half an hour and at this point, we're mildly interested.

Last night, as we readied for bed, the Dotytron was reading Paying for It and I was reading my own thing and I suddenly had the thought that guys secretly might want the escort type experience...like they really just want to see themselves pandered to, and have this blank slate woman to reflect themselves back, so I decided to try.  This is not going anywhere sexxxay, don't worry.  I mean, so much of the time I feel like we barely even listen to each other (I mean, we do, but not about mundane shiz).  So I thought it might be a good way to focus and really pay attention to my partner if I adopted the persona of someone who is basically being paid to listen to you.

The character in the Girlfriend Experience always has this blandly interested expression on her face and speaks in a coolly detached, neutral voice (again, very Soderbergh-y) so I affected that and turned over to face the Dotytron, and the exchange went like this,

Me: *Adopts a cool, demur, low tone* "You're reading the Chester Brown?"
Dotytron, reading, "Yeah,"
Me: "What do you think about it?"
Dotytron: "I don't know!"
Me, soldiering on, still with the low voice, "You can tell me anything, you know"
Dotytron: "AGH! WHAT?!!? WILL YOU SHUT UP!?!?"

LMAO.  At that point, I told him what I had been trying to accomplish and we both laughed at what a colossal fail it was.

Not very scientific though.

A narrow house me and Merrick came across on a walk

Black sesame steamed milk!!!

Two babes, now with babes, a little older, a little wiser, a little babe-ier

 I'd be remiss talking about how loved I am on my peeps if I didn't mention as always, the inimitable Dr. Rei.  We went to see Rihanna on Wednesday and had the best time of life.  A long walk, Banh Mi Boys, followed by black sesame steamed milk, then Travis Scott and Riri giving the best show ever - so many medleys and so many hits!  I love her.  She's such an open and real performer.  I love how imperfect she is and how she owns that.  It was such a fun night of dancing and women being amazing.  Love!

We went to visit my sister this weekend and it was filled with the usual: Cracker Barrel, Delmonico's, playing in their backyard, picking up all the goodies, cousin shenanigans:

Little Little Cuz put on these fake glasses and went around claiming he was an "old man." The old man's name?  Timothy, of course.

I bought Twin A a pair of tights because he's obsessed with mine.  Anytime I wear tights, he comes up to me and touches my leg, "These your tights, mama?" and our caregiver told us that he likes to pull his socks up as high as possible.  I got him these and he loved them so much.

These are the perfect high-tops for a short legged person like myself.  Wahhhh - they were too big!!!  They come in men's sizes so I put my considerable research skills to use and tracked down a pair in my size.  Can't wait til these are on my feet! The style is the Vans Sk8-Hi Slim.  Pretty ubiquitous, but the colour is hard to find.  It's a cream colour which is easier to wear than the more readily available bright white.  They're sold out everywhere!

 Good hair. Solar flare. 

Nature is the bomb.

Sister selfies. This is AFTER Twin A barfed on me at Brian's USA Diner. Sorry Brian, we owe you one.

This is a picture of how Twin A sleeps.  He's hardcore into the sleeping with his eyes open in the creepiest way imaginable, tip.

Cousins gonna cuz.

Back at home on Sunday night...Twin B being a maniac.  I was trying to capture him knocking himself on the head like Donkey Kong while making those grunting noises, but then it turned into him doing that disgusting stuff with the food because he's a nutjob.

Snapchat fun.

Last Monday was one of those epic comic working mom days.  Our caregiver was going to be late, so I had planned to stay home an hour to drop off the Big Yam at school, and then meet her back at our place for a twin hand off. Running late, I was upstairs trying to throw on some clothes and brush my teeth when I heard Twin A shout, "HE BARFED!!! LINDSAY BARFED ON THE CARPET!!!" and while, like most witnesses, he was a little unreliable when it came to the details, he got the gist right.  But I had to get the Big Yam to school, so I bundled everyone up, and shoved them all in Eddie VAN Halen, and then listened helplessly as Twin B barfed AGAIN.  Then, because we were late, I had to hustle all three out with me and carry the barfy Twin B in my arms to the office for a late slip, before delivering the Big Yam to his classroom.  At that point, I called it a day and took the rest of the day off so our caregiver wouldn't have to bring the twins with her to pick up the Big Yam from school.

Of course, as I'm learning about Twin B, he needed to barf the sickness out of his system, pass out for a solid, deep 2 hour nap, and then he woke up from said nap and behaved like usual.  It's a very intense, odd, methodology his immune system has, but it's pretty consistent.

Then, that night, bedtime, we hear a thump from our bedroom and then Twin A starts wailing...but that's par for the course, until he ran out and we saw that he had blood streaming down his face and had a small 1.5" cut on his forehead.  So I had to take him to the ER, which was a s**tshow (it is true what they say about ER's being the busiest between 6pm and midnight).  We were triaged and then I think the nurse didn't believe me when I said there were no signs of a concussion or loss of consciousness, because she sent us to the waiting room of the damned.  By the time we got to the WROTD, we had already been in the hospital for 2 hours.  Some people in the WROTD had been there for 3 hours at that point and still hadn't been called.  Finally, because I am nothing if not a good advocate for my own health care, I was like, "the last time we were here we were taken to another area where they do stitches and fractures?  Can I go there?" Which got us fast-tracked to that waiting room, but I had the misfortune of dealing with a doctor bro who told me he was in the middle of switching over with another doctor, who would be there in "5 minutes" and since the freezing agent takes 20 minutes to set in, and new doctor is the one doing the stitches, that I should just wait.  Well, cut to 45 minutes later, and I finally said to bro doc, "Uhh, if the freezing agent takes 20 minutes to set in, can we at least start the process?"  

Then, when new doc finally showed up, she was pushing for the glue for Twin A and I had to say, "Nuh-uh, last time he picked that out the next day," and push for stitches, which Twin A slept through, because my kids are champions at the doctors.  Twin A slept through the stitches, but even better, slept through them injecting a needle full of freezing agent into his forehead.  It was pretty gross.

The upside is, the stitches lasted all of 2 days before he picked those out, too.

Oy.

Fin.

Deoxyribonucleic Acid

As a birthday present to the twins, and to ourselves, we went out and bought a DNA test for the Wonder Twins.  Almost everyone who met them didn’t believe that they were “identical” twins (in twin talk, the technical term we were given for our guys was “monochorionic [subset of monozygotic – one egg – means they share a placenta] diamniotic [each in their own amniotic sac]).  They came out looking very, very different (refresher below), with Lindsay always kind of looking like a party turtle and the Quincess always looking like a sweet, introspective little elven scholar.   So we threw down for a DNA test, swabbed their cheeks, mailed it off, and the results are: 1,678,126,819:1 that they are identical twins, and the probability that they are monozygotic came back at 99.999999%.

CRAZY.  That means if one of them committed a crime they could pin it on the other one.   AND NO ONE WOULD BE THE WISER. 

 Pensive, and tired at their brother's spring concert, where the music teacher likes to do the annoying thing of using the kindergarten kids as pawns to keep the parents there for the whole show.  It's the worst.

The other night, in bed the Dotytron asked me which one of our kids was the least like us.  Whenever we do this exercise, we always think about our answer, then simultaneously blurt it out on the count of 3.  For some reason, this practice has facilitated decision-making in our household for years and years.  When you’ve been together as long as the Dotytron and I have, and your pheromones are all mixed up, funny things happen where you start singing a song out loud at random and the other person had just been singing the previous line, IN THEIR HEAD.  It’s probably a mix of biology and culture – we’re moving in the same milieu and that has to have an affect the way our synapses fire and the degree of overlap in our frames of reference.  Anyway, on the count of 3, we both blurted, “Lindsay.” 

Afterwards, I felt SO BAD.  This DNA testing exercise taught me that biology and genetics are just one part of the equation.  Maybe they would have looked identical if Lindsay hadn’t been fatter or if Lindsay hadn’t been sitting on Quincess in my womb or if Quincess didn’t have the stiff neck (torticollis) and the head flattening and the small ear.  There were so many environmental factors that changed the way their shared DNA expressed themselves in physical traits, why wouldn’t it be the same for other traits?  Like their personalities?  From the day they were born we’ve been boxing them into little categories – Quincess is the quiet, cerebral one, Lindsay is the boisterous, kinetic one, and if you’re painting with a spray gun then yeah, maybe that’s all true, but then you create this world of comments and expectations and immerse them in it and maybe they start to become what you say they are, not because they were like that intrinsically, but in the same way those Japanese cube watermelons grow into the box they were put into.

I don’t want to do that to my kids.  But is it inevitable?  In the same way that living, loving, and being with the Dotytron for almost 15 years has made us into this freaky mind-melding machine?  Maybe that’s just what it means to be in a unit – regardless of the relationship.  You start a new office, you take on some of the attributes of the work culture there.  You’re in a marriage, you start to absorb the other person.  You make a family, and the electrons that are moving around each person’s atomic core, their intrinsic, unchanging and unchangeable selves get swapped with everyone else’s electrons and that’s what holds the structure of your family in place – these atomic bonds (grade 11 chemistry is really reaching here, it’s been a while).  Maybe that’s what happens.  Maybe that’s inevitable.  Maybe.  I just want my kids to be able to grow into whatever shaped watermelon they want to (within reason). 

An early birthday celebration for the Wonder Twins

Family bonds came to the fore this past weekend.  We went down to Geneseo and my mom came down and so did my brother, Bruce Wayne.  It had been a while since we’d all been there at the same time and it was so fun.  We were only missing Big D and my littlest brother.  I love my family. 

 

My mum. "STEEEEEE-RIKE!"

The idea was to spend the weekend in Geneseo betting on ponies at the Belmont Stakes (which we did last year on the babies’ birthday, and won 10-1 odds on our winning bet) and hopefully pad their RESPs like we did last year.  Well, last year we bet against the favoured horse and we did the same this year, although we shouldn’t have, given that the odds were favoring American Pharoah 3:2.  Anyway, we tried to get all fancy this year and ended up losing so we’re going to regroup, and next year, just place a simple bet on the horses who have names that we like. 

We also celebrated the Wonder Twins’ actual birthday down there, and ate a lot, and hung out a lot, and I picked up the best muumuu of life that I bought off of Etsy that has upped my happiness quotient by about a million.  This mission also included us delivering our queen size memory foam mattress to my sister, which was no small feat and involved me going into beast mode, wrestling the mattress out of our bedroom at home, down the stairs to the main floor, and then holding  it in place in the most ungainly fashion while we wrapped it in duct tape.  Then we smushed it into the trunk of the van.  It was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.  Never underestimate what I’m capable of in beast mode.

Brothers in batik

The Wonder Twins at 2.  SO MANY WORDS.  Lindsay picks up a new word or five a day, seemingly.  He loves our neighbour, Grace and her daughter, Evelyn, whom he calls Ev’lee in the sweetest voice.  When he goes outside he asks, “Gayce?” and then when he sees her he goes running over with his bow-legged leprechaun run and gives her a giant hug.  It’s pretty sweet.  We hear a lot of “self!” and he’s very independent and wants to try doing new things and loves pretending to skip and jump rope.  He finds Quincess pretty funny.

 

Quincess Harry Potter

Quincess isn’t picking up words as rapidly as Lindsay (or he might be, but doesn’t like saying them aloud), but he is full of jokes, one of which consists of saying: “hot dooooooog” whenever I ask aloud what we should eat for dinner and then cracking up.  He’s a scrawny little muscleman and loves to hang off of things and be a pretend gymnast.  He generally practices safety and asks for “hand” when he goes down the stairs.  His little voice is the so sweet and dear and when he does something funny he has a way of darting his eyes from side to side rapidly to gauge the audience reaction that’s so funny.  He’s a little imp in every respect. 

The two are starting to become more aware of each other and it’s the most heart-warming thing listening to them giggle and chatter and screech when they’re about to go down for a nap/bed.  In the pic above, you can see how charmed Lindsay is by Quincess and vice versa.  Lindsay does bully Quincess a bit but Quincess gives back what he gets almost as often.   Quincess loves eating sweets and basically smashes cake into his face as fast as he can, whereas Lindsay shows great enthusiasm for cake, shouting, “CAEK!?!!?!  CAEK!!!” whenever he sees one, but being highly tentative and not very interested in eating it.

At this age, they’re both better eaters than the Big Yam was, probably because their diet is strictly controlled by me.  They love rice and pasta of all varieties. 

This summer, barely started as it is, has been a good one so far.  We went with our neighbours to Doors Open Toronto and checked out a subway repair yard and best of all, the RC Harris Water Filtration plant, which is a beautiful art deco building that was featured prominently in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of the Lion.  Public infrastructure should always be so beautiful. 

Neighbours and buds since birth

 We took JJ and S’s kids out with the Big Yam for a night out to give their parents a break.  We got tickets to a U of T astronomy “planetarium” talk and ate a dinner of hot dogs and French fries and then got ice cream from Sweet Olenka’s in Kensington market.  Just look at this adorable crew:  

We’ve been outside playing almost every night the weather permits.  The kids are knocking on each other’s door, lollipops and freezies are distributed, whatever the reigning street craze (currently jumping rope and double dutch) has to be explored with parents AND kids joining in.  Last night we got most of the kids going in some whiffle ball and because I find making giant bubbles one of the most relaxing experiences (it’s my version of tai chi), we had that going as well:

We are going on a long weekend camping trip with our neighbours.  I know, I know.  It sounds like hell, but I think the kids will enjoy it so much it’s hard to say no.  Plus, it’s a good chance for us to practice camping and try it on for size in a low stakes way before we invest in full-on portage-style outdoorsing. 

Last week we had our friend Pingy in town and so we got to have dinner with her and the Roomie and the Roomie’s new baby twice in a week.  There were long, long group therapy sessions about intensive mothering and domestic distribution of labour and how the Roomie and I are controlling freaks (what L’Armi calls “faux easygoing”) when it comes to anything in the domestic sphere and division of labour. 

This past spring was often…tense between me and the Dotytron.  The Dotytron thinks that I finally reached my breaking point or the point at which the amount of things on my plate finally overwhelmed my superhuman coping/organizational/project management capacity.  A Master’s degree on mat leave?  No problem.  Massive kitchen and bathroom reno with 3 kids?  I got this.  Massive reno, 3 kids, financial constraints, and a new, challenging job?  THAT DOES IT.  I had nothing left in me to give, no more softness or patience and it showed.  I didn’t want to have conversations – I was in full military delegation mode and my expectations were high and tolerance for deviation from my expectations nonexistent. 

Anyway, now that the renos are mostly done, we’ve bought a replacement Captain Save-A-Ho (who is LITERALLY a replacement Captain – we bought the same car, but like, 5 years younger [still minimum 8 years old though] and a manual version), and summer and its languid promise of beach days, cottage vacays, and Micelli Mondays, I’m much more relaxed (or, as relaxed as I get) with only two major stressors on my plate (new job – to be discussed in the future, and the kids…always the kids).

While visiting my sister I was my niece’s “running buddy” on a 5km race she did.  I had fully intended on getting some practice runs in beforehand, but it didn’t happen.  I’m proud to say that I finished the 5km (letting my niece set the pace) and didn’t feel the need to stop, or walk, and could have gone faster and made better time (but I’m not a jerk – this was about my niece, not me) after almost a full year of no running.  My working theory is that I because I generally handle stress well, my body is pretty conditioned to be in flight or fight mode so my ticker is either in a) good shape or b) in brutal shape from unnecessary wear.  I’m proud of my niece for finishing a 5km (something I didn’t do until I was in my early 30s) and it inspired me to get my butt in gear and start running again, if only so that I can justify to My Fitness Pal all the pies I plan on making/eating this summer.

I’ve been slacking on the food pics lately.  Don’t think this means I will EVER STOP POSTING FOOD PICS.  I’ve been food pic strong for forever!  OG food pic proponent! 

Seized soft shell crab season by the..shell?  These are fried, and put on olive oil toast with old bay mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, bacon, and sliced tomatoes with boursin and Hawaiian black pepper

Roasted asparagus, proscuito, poached eggs and hollandaise toast

Black bean burgers with red pepper feta dip

We made ravioli one night - ricotta pea in a pancetta sauce - time consuming and semi-worth it

Papardelle with scape pesto, a fried egg, and pine nuts.  

One of my favorite Hawaiian meals: moco loco.  Spam, on white rice, topped with a fried egg and canned gravy.  Delicious.

Me, and my muumuu, and my favorite wiener dog smyzeing his eyes out

Fin.

Amirite?!

I try to resist gender norms, but seriously, guys with colds are the suckiest, giantest babies of babydom.  Admittedly, the Dotytron doesn't come from strong stock.  He's a delicate flower produced by a parental lineage of delicate flowers.  I've never heard someone complain MORE when they have a case of the sniffles.  It's all boohooing, and dramatic, public neti-pot irrigation, and huddling under blankets and really, I'm like, "the degree to which you are removed from being an immigrant could not be MORE APPARENT right now."  

The world grinds to a standstill.  He was going to take a sick day on Monday, and then our caregiver called in early Monday morning because her friend/roommate was having a baby, and oh yeah, her friend/roommate is here alone (her partner is still in the Philippines) and is of a somewhat advanced maternal age, and this is her FIRST child.  You know what?  THAT lady is going through something.  The Dotytron?  Not so much.  Anyway, I had a big interview on Monday, so I couldn't stay home, which means I heard even more moaning and groaning about HOW HARD it was going to be to be home with the babies all day and "don't expect me to take them to the drop-in centre" and I was luckily distracted from being completely enraged (newsflash: they're YOUR kids, too, remember?!) by my interview to comment that, OH YEAH, THIS WAS EVERY TIME I WAS SICK ON MAT LEAVE, YA DUMMY.   Deal wit it.

This is why white, middle class Canadians haven't accomplished anything of note, like, ever.  Because they are giant baby diapers about regular life.

I am teasing a bit, but I also want to note that I came home to: a disheveled Dotytron trying to put dinner together (dinner which consisted of warming a frozen soup **I** had made in advance, and assembling a mashed squash toast **I** had made in advance), after no less than 3 different phone calls to my cell clarifying things (I had already sent him detailed instructions during the day), in a kitchen that was almost completely upended, and a tiny Quincess placidly hacking away at a D battery on the floor with a phillips head screwdriver.  My Discerning Coyote friend noted on Facebook that the Quincess was probably minutes away from completing his perpetual motion machine, which is probably true, though no less dangerous.

We had dinner at our friends' JJ & S's house last Saturday night, and JJ noted, as the Dotytron and I po-go'd in and out of our seats throughout the night to: feed babies, close the door to the basement, bring babies down from bar stools they had clambered up onto, remove glass jars from baby hands, change diapers, and so on and so forth, "this is the most labour-intensive time in parenting."  I COULDN'T AGREE MORE.  Quincess is full-on walking now, and while Lindsey isn't as keen and loves being carried more than anything, they are irrepressible imps who climb/destroy/reconfigure/disregard anything and everything.  We've started having to be more disciplined with them, which means that I've started to get quite stern with Lindsey.  He likes to chuck his food off of his high chair tray so the other night, I told him quite firmly, no, and if he did it again, he wouldn't be able to eat with us.  He's only 19 months old, so of course he didn't get it, which means I had to turn his high chair away from the table and the Dotytron and I desperately tried not to crack up at the sight of his big, open, Lindsey-Lou-Lou face craning around and being all confused and mildly dismayed.

There have been some very funny Big Yam moments lately.  Like:

The Big Yam, spying my discarded bra on the bed: "I'm going to wear these boobies!"  Puts it on, and then: "it fits perfectly." Strutting around, he pauses, "I'm a...babysitter" (with a tone of wonder).

The other night, while we were debriefing from an evening that featured a bunch of fireside chats, punctuated with time outs and screaming (both).  Me, probing, "Do you think you had a good day?" Big Yam: "No."  "Why?" "I had to do a lot of dealing. With you. About me."

We drove down to visit my sister this past weekend and drove down with my mum in the car.  She was sitting in the back with the Big Yam and as we pulled across the border, asked if we'd seen a show called "Border Security" which shows people trying to smuggle stuff across the border?  I guess?  I don't know, we don't have cable.  She asks us if we've seen the show and is explaining it when the Big Yam replied, "No.  We don't even know what you're talking about."  LOL!  The best is how he answered for all of us.  So good.

The Dotytron hosted an inaugural Bourbon Night two weeks ago.  People (all guys this time) paid a small amount to get pours from 6-7 bottles in his collection, food, beer, and their name entered to win a bottle that was raffled off.  It seemed to be a good time.  Our buddy is a chef at a local barbecue restaurant and HOOKED the Dotytron up.  He served smoked chicken wings, ribs, brisket burnt ends, smoked duck tacos and fixings, barbecued jalepeno poppers, cornbread, pickles, baked beans...it was unreal.  My ex bf came over and had a visit before I made myself scarce and went out.  It's funny reconnecting with people now that I'm a fully realized adult (or something like it.)  I'm just not fussed about stuff any more.  I don't even know why I lost touch with some people.  It really is true that when you hit your prime 30s, you just don't have room in your life for anything extra.  Living is too much of a slog to give into the dramas.

My ex bf reading Lenny a story.

This weekend was fairly chill.  We went down to the States, I got my George Nelson bubble lamp (swoon!) fixture for our basement.  We ate more than we should.  We caught up on movies and played charades.  I attended my niece's hockey scrimmage and complained the ENTIRE TIME about how I don't see the point of sports (a bit of an over exaggeration) and how I could never see myself actually CARING about how my kid's sports team does.  It's just not in me.  Anyway, it was a good time.  The Big Yam loves being with his cousins.

The two cousins off on a mission to Mars.

 Lenny was so pleased with his little cowboy hat that we shelled out $15 in the Cracker Barrel "General Store" to get it.  He loves wearing it and has been chasing it around the house - "hat. Hat. hat."

An osso buco, polenta, gremolata dinner recently.

Freezer wedding soup with a mashed squash toast based on a Smitten recipe.  I used kabocha squash, halved, drizzled with oil and salt and pepper and roasted in an oven until soft.  Then we mashed the flesh with some salt and pepper and spread it on ricotta-smeared toast and topped it with caramelized onions and a drizzle of good balsamic.  This was a BIG hit.  Huge.  All three kids went to town on it.  The key was toasting the toast in a frying pan (oil both sides and then toast over medium heat until crunchy on the outside but still soft-middled).

A recent breakfast - leftover bacon-wrapped smoked jalepeno poppers (spicy!) sliced on top of avocado toast, topped with a fried egg.

Rice cooker soy sauce chicken thigh rice with dried shitakes, Chinese sausage, and garlic sautéed choi on the side.

Fin.

Road Trippin'

We survived our first road trip as a giant family of 5.  My packing list was fairly intense and we only went 3 hours away.  Specifically, to the United States, where we could presumably buy everything we might need/have forgotten at home.  As you already know, I love packing up a car like nobody's business.  Packing up Eddie VAN Halen?  BLISS.  Modular, organized, capacious bliss.  I couldn't have been happier.  WE HAD SO MUCH ROOM LEFT OVER!  Ugh...just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.  I'd say that 40% of my week-at-the-cottage-with-the-family fun is made up of car packing and list-making anticipation.  It's a sickness.

Prior to our departure we were the victims of anti-big-family discrimination for the first time.  After our final midwife appointment (tear!) last Thursday morning, we were emboldened and decided to try to have brunch at a local favorite, Lady Marmalade.  We roll up, and the restaurant is pretty full, except for a 4-top in the corner. The server sizes us up and says, "Table for 2..and 2 babies." The server looks around and tells us it's going to be at least a 20 minute wait.  I glance at the empty table and the server catches my eyes and says, "Oh there IS a table available, if you can squeeze yourselves in there."  We figured she didn't want us to occupy a 4 person table when there were only presumably 2 of us who were going to eat and run up a bill.  It was kind of galling.  It's like, seriously lady, we always order like, 2 entrées each.

As an example, before we left we went out for dinner with Dr. Rei to Caplansky's to fulfil a three day promise to the Big Yam that we were going to go out for hot dogs and french fries, and ketchup, and ice cream:

That's how much food we ordered for 3 adults, 1 toddler.

Not pictured: the ice cream sandwiches we got at Baker Bots.  We picked up Dr. Rei from work in Eddie Van Halen and then went to Caplanksy's and then to Baker Bots and then we dropped her off at her house.  The Big Yam said to her, "Thanks for coming over" (!!!!!)  So cute!  LOL!  Yup, we live in our van now.  Then he said, "When I wake up in the morning, I'm going to play with Auntie Rei again."  It was hard telling him that he wasn't going to see Auntie Rei tomorrow after all.  Sometimes he can be so sweet and innocent and dear.  There are those moments when he says stuff like that where the Dotytron and I just meet each other's eyes and feel our hearts rend a little.  It's hard to remember when he's screaming "NO!" at the top of his lungs what a sweet little boy he is.  The weekend before, our street had our annual street party.  It was a hoot:

The kids were playing with these things called aqua zookas (basically water guns that aren't shaped like guns) and the Big Yam squirted a little neighbour girl who didn't want to get wet and she started wailing and crying.  We went over to the Big Yam and told him that she didn't want to get squirted and you could see the emotions washing over his big, dark-eyed, open face.  He felt so chastened and bad and his lip started quivering and he yelled, "No!" and started crying.  It was so hard to watch.  You could tell he felt so sorry and his little body just didn't know how to handle the emotion.  I think that's one of the things that's the hardest for us right now when it comes to parenting the Big Yam. How to coach him through the tumult of his emotions? Sometimes he just seems so...unhappy.  It really must suck to be almost 3.  You're just trying to make it in a workaday world.  

The street party gave us mad post-party debrief material.  Proof that the Dotytron is a good sport - he subjected himself to this game, where the dads wore shower caps on their heads that were coated in whipped cream (should have been shaving cream, as we later learned) and their respective kids tossed cheezies at their heads and the one with the most cheezies won:

The Big Yam hucked one cheezie, it stuck, and then he promptly ditched the game and went off to do his own thing.  If you ARE going to do this, I'd recommend the shaving cream, because it holds up to the heat.  The whipped cream started melting almost immediately.  The downside is that a kid might eat a shaving cream bedecked cheezie, but that kid is an idiot and has to get got anyway.

Trite: I can't believe it's August tomorrow!  What the heck?  I feel like maternity leave is going to feel much more real once September rolls around and I'm all by my lonesome.  Except not so lonesome.  My first time on mat leave almost 3 years ago I didn't know that many people who were off at the same time as me.  Now it's an embarrassment of riches...I'm actually mildly stressed about when I'm going to see all the people I want to see.  I have a bunch more mum friends I know around the neighbourhood, a bunch of my friends are now on mat leave, I'm setting up a weekly lunch date with some ladies on my street - it's going to be so much more social than the first time.  It will be so nice...I know the year is going to fly by.

I was looking at the Wonder Twins' faces last week and I started crying (hormones!) at the thought of going back to work.  I had talked a big game during the pregnancy - even considering going back to work early once my work EI top-up ran out and letting the Dotytron take the tail end of my maternity leave.  Looking at their little wee funny faces sleeping on my chest made me consider something I never thought I would have considered - extending my maternity leave unpaid for a couple of months.  Going back to work in June when the Dotytron would be just winding down his work year would be heinous.  This summer has been sleep-challenged and not without its stresses (talk to me about staining our deck some other time), but being home together as a family and being able to do fun stuff like farmer's markets and ice cream walks and Science Centre missions and family pool swims has been the life-affirming, enriching, nostalgia-building stuff that I crave and romanticise like whoa.  The thought of going back and missing a summer of freedom, when the Wonder Twins would be ambulatory (maybe), and right before the Big Yam starts junior kindergarten made me cry.  Trite: it's all going by so quickly!  The Big Yam in school?  What the hell?!  This is probably going to be my last kick at the baby-mania can, which is also heightening my awareness of how ephemeral all this is: the sweetness, and milky-breaths, and googly eyes, and gas-y smiles and all the million other things that make me start to understand the whole, 18 Kids and Counting thing.  Anyway, I have time to think and consider it (hello, I'm only 2 months into my mat leave right now!), but the potential that I can take a couple of months unpaid leave is on the table and worming its way around my brain.

Some random catch-up snapshots from life:

These guys.

And these guys.

"Are you supposed to do that with a Moby?" "I dunno...I saw someone do it on the internet." "Ummm...you can see A LOT of things on the internet."  This photo doesn't capture the moment when Professor Gantok tried to latch onto his brother's head.

Midwife graduation photo.  Love our midwife.

Turtle by day. Paul Giamatti impersonator by night.

Cousins holding cousins.

My sister being her awesome self.

At the children's museum in Rochester.  LOL at how wee Lil' Big Cuz looks and how GIANT the Big Yam looks.  

Sweet, sweet, little mini Dotytron.

I've been cooking, too!  

My friend from high school is in town from Egypt.  We had him over - grilled striploins, garlic swiss chard, olive bread and my homemade tapenade, CSA new potatoes tossed with scape-basil pesto and soft boiled duck eggs, an heirloom salad with burrata and mint/basil.  In case you couldn't tell - I've been cheating a bit on the dairy.  Professor Gantok has been a bit barfy, but he's still gaining weight, so I've been the worst mother in the world and throwing caution to the wind.  

Mini cherry hand pies.  Based on this recipe from Serious Eats.  I had a disk of shortening pie crust in the freezer.  All shortening/lard crusts are balls, guys.  I also had my standard pie crust in the freezer so I cracked and used that (3/4 butter: 1/4 lard proportion).  Not surprisingly, the ones made with my standard crust were better.  I'd say the recipe yields a filling that's too thick - it's not jammy enough.  I know what they're trying to do - they don't want the filling too wet and oozy, but this lacked a bit of the lusciousness that a less set filling would have yielded.  

This is my attempt to recreate a favorite dish of mine from Phoenix.  It's not exactly the same (theirs is cooked in a stone pot so you get crusty rice edges) but still tasty.  I sautéed ground pork with CSA snow peas, cut thin, some scapes (also CSA), garlic, and ginger, and some Korean gochujang (fermented chili paste).  Piled that hot on steamed brown rice, and topped it with mandolined cucumber, julienned nori, and a raw egg for mixing.  It was gooood.

This blueberry almond cream cheese danish cake was meh.  I wanted it to be more dessert-y but it came out more brunch-y and the cream cheese layer was basically absorbed by the cake.  Not my favorite.  Big hit with Uncle Rico though.

Unlike this blueberry recipe - the blueberry pudding cake - basically a big muffin with plump, juicy berries - equally delicious for breakfast or for dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Fin.