Halloweenies

If loving Halloween is wrong...I never, ever want to be right.

Here is my Halloween goon squad, in all their frippery and finery:

When you go to the trouble of making a bespoke custom tailored jacket for a 2 year old, you better believe that you want to maximize your ROI and re-use it.  The Purple Rain-era Prince costume was just as good the second time around.  You know me and my slavish devotion to all things thematically sound, so I had to make Quincess be 2015-era Prince.  A custom toddler-sized afro wig made from a knit cap and black roving,  a Nehru jacket assist from MHui, and last-minute perfectly matching leggings from my neighbour GT helped me pull it off.  

The Big Yam wanted to be a vampire (zzz).  Could I have bought a cape for $5 from Value Village?  Probably.  Would I ever do that?  Unlikely.  He got a glossy reptile-print black cape with red line and a stand-up collar, because I like to make my life difficult for myself.  

I dropped off the Big Yam at school on Friday in costume - turns out that's not a thing (?!)  I felt kind of foolish for a few seconds before coming to my senses and acknowledging that Halloween is for the children, AND the adults, and if you can't be a goofball when you have kids, then what g-d hope is there for humanity?  People who can't be goofs around their kids make me so sad.

I had a day off on Friday so I spent that day visiting with the Roomie and carving pumpkins and doing last-minute Halloweenie type things.  Saturday was all about final prep and the Dotytron fussing over the $20 worth of dry ice he bought.  You would think that, noted domestic miser that I am, I would have kiboshed the dry ice plans, but when it comes to Halloween...all bets are off.  Really, when you see this:

So worth it, right? 

Trick or treating was fun, but exhausting.  All the kids on my street go together, which means a gaggle of parents follows around kids moving at different speeds, yelling things like, "Remember your manners!" and "Don't run across people's lawns!" from the sidewalk.  I took the twins out to just a few houses on our street and then we dumped  them in the basement to watch a movie.  I went out with the Big Yam and was totally knackered by the end of it.  We had to do a mid-run candy dump back at home, before heading to a street in the 'hood where a local real estate agent pays to close off the street and then pays for a fire eater to do a series of shows.  That street goes ALL OUT.  It is awesome.  There was a house with a giant mechanical spider on the roof that was lit up and moved around.  There was another house where they had rigged up fishing line to make a skull pop out of a pumpkin at the street level.  It was all kinds of awesome.

I went back to form with my pumpkins this year.  The theme was "queens"

Bad girl RiRi

bell hooks

Freddie Mercury

Halloween and Thanksgiving spirit is my favorite kind of spirit.  It's just weirdos being weird and creative!  I love it.  

The next day we had a Dia de los Muertos ceremony at the cemetery for Poppa D.  More correctly, the Dotytron, the Big Yam, Momma D and Emdo did something, while I chased the twins through the cemetery and made sure they didn't desecrate any graves (much).  After that, was a Halloween party my neighbour threw.  It was exhausting!  

Although we did get some cute shots that day:

Lindsay's face in the two family pictures, kills me.  Look at what an innocent little bobbin he looks like!  Nothing like this guy:

 Exhibit A: Bam Bam trying to wrestle something to the ground with sheer force of will

After living with him for 2+ years, I can easily say that Lindsay is the most stubborn and willful of my children, which is kind of saying a lot.  That guy is VERY entitled and self-assured and has been seemingly from birth.

Here's a video of the Quincess conducting.  He LOVES pretend conducting more than even the Big Yam did.  Any time the Big Yam plays piano, Quincess will be quietly conducting in his high chair, transported to another place.  The way he does the little cut at the end!  

Quincess has also been referring to the movie Fantasia as "decoration" which is cute in and of itself, but even cuter when you hear it in his little lisping, Quincess voice.

Two weekends ago we hit the pumpkin patch with our neighbour, which officially means we've hit every item on the fall bucket list.  We ate doughnuts, went through the corn maze, walked on this musical bridge thing, saw a meteor crater (this pumpkin patch had an alien-invasion theme - weirdly), went on a hay ride, picked out our pumpkins, shot corn cobs through these hydraulic gun things...basically all the standard stuff (how weird is it that shooting corn cobs through a hydraulic gun is now de rigeur pumpkin patch fare?):

Starbucks has already brought out their red cups which means I officially want to bring out the barf in my mouth.  

That's all for now!

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.

All Of The Lights

For the past 3 years my street has pooled resources and done fireworks in the park for Victoria Day.  This year, the woman who usually grabs them was away, so I did the organizing and volunteered to grab them from the fireworks store.  I can't remember what we spent last year per family, maybe $15?

I went to Kaboom! and it was hands-down one of the best customer service experiences I've ever had. First of all, I walk in, and it's like 3 Asian dudes who must have maxed out at age 22, going to town on a late lunch from Domino's that consisted of a THREE large pieces, a bunch of garlic knot things and wings.  A large pizza per person is SO CLASSY, in my books.  Then, one of those sweet kids agreed to stand outside and keep an eye on the van while the Wonder Twins snoozed so I could shop.  Then, the 22 year old store manager personally walked me around the store and helped me sort out a show.  This guy was an expert.  In the past, I think the woman has just bought those "kits" which are pretty lame - a million roman candles and burning schoolhouses.  SNOOZERS.  This guy made sure my show had a narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end and I will say, that after witnessing the show on Sunday night, à la carte is the way to go.  I went a *little* bit crazy and spent like, $150, but the kid manager totally threw in a million sparklers and gave me mad deals on what I bought.  It was amazing.

People who complain about paying that much for fireworks are also the kind of people who can't appreciate how awesome it is when a kid manager buys his staff a large pizza each.  I would love to work in that environment.  Talk about morale!

We had such a nice long weekend.  Saw friends every day - the Roomie and baby T, dinner with JJ and S, MHui and her fambam, our friends B & G and their new baby.  So sweet!  We went for walks and ate ice cream and went out for a restaurant dinner, all five of us, which is pretty special.  When it goes off well, it's like, TOP OF THE WORLD, MA!  Eating at a REAL restaurant?  That is a feat, my friends.

JJ & S's kids are super-geniuses.  I was being a goofball and I was asking their 9 year old a series of inane questions: "Do you like to eat meatballs?  Do you like to eat giant meatballs the size of your head?" and he didn't answer me, so I said, "B! What, you're not talking to me?" and he said, "I assumed the question was rhetorical."  LOL!  He's NINE.

I can only hope my kids are that smart.  The Big Yam has been trying to figure out a bunch of stuff lately.  "Where does pee come from?"  "Where's my bladder?"  "What belly did Baba come from?"  "What does a Japanese spider crab eat?"  It's hilarious and amazing watching him process your answers.  You can see the wheels turning as he figures out how to phrase his question, and then again once you've given your answer.  My neighbour turned me onto these Youtube dudes called the "Slo Mo Guys" who basically make things explode and record it in super HD and play it back in slow motion.  Everything in that preceding sentence is the manifestation of the totality of little kid fantasies.  When the Big Yam isn't watching hours of ocean documentaries, he wants to watch this:

Meanwhile, the Quincess continues to be such a quiet, clever little lad.  He's like a classic middle child, which is hilarious, because he's the middle child by four minutes.  You basically show him something once and he'll give you a classic Quincess side-eye and then try to figure it out or start to mimic you.  Meanwhile, Lindsay Lou-Lou is, as the Dotytron said the other night, "kinesthetically smart" and then, in a whisper, "the fake kind of smart."  LOL!  Poor Lindsay Lou-Lou.  I don't want to box them in from the time they are babies though, so I will say that, right now,  Lindsay is physically advanced and is very attuned to his own emotions (read: he's very sensitive).

Now, a photo dump:

My garden, 2 weeks ago, freshly mulched and looking fiiine.  

Lendigan just back from the Grateful Dead concert

Happy, crooked smiling Quincess

11 month shot!  So squirmy!

The Big Yam and the babies and I spent all of a gloriously sunny yesterday picnicking in the park.  They've turned out the splash pad water but yesterday was the first real day it's been warm enough to think about getting wet.  Look at that little munchkin' swagger!

21st century manhood

Minds: blown (they can't figure out 2D pics of people they know)

More from our picnic

Lendigan making a run for it

Chicken Milanese dinner on a bed of roasted grape tomatoes and baby arugula

Cinqo de Mayo posole

Meat-free meal - tagliatelle tossed with wilted radicchio and bagna cauda and topped with a fried egg

Mother's day meal: seared rib eyes, brussels sprouts roasted on the grill, potatoes grilled with red onions

That time I ate 2lbs of macaroni and cheese with crispy thyme breadcrumbs

Meat-free meal: roasted asparagus on garlic toast with a fried egg, hollandaise, and leftover thyme breadcrumbs

Stromboli (basically, pizza dough rolled up with sopressata and provolone and roasted red peppers), served with tomato sauce and arugula salad

Alsatian flammenkuchen - caramelized onion, lardon, and crème frâiche on pizza dough.

French chocolate "silk" pie - basically chocolate mousse in a pie crust - I made a pretzel crust but wasn't happy with it.  Next time, will either use a chocolate sablé crust, or the standard piecrust, parbaked.  The filling is worth making again.  Will post the recipe below.

Based on one of my favorite sandwiches from La Cubana - grilled halibut with an avocado-pineapple salsa and a Greek salad.

Fin.

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French Chocolate Silk Pie

serves 10-12

1 piecrust, parbaked

1 c. heavy cream

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

3 eggs

3/4 c. granulated sugar

2 T. water

8 T. unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into roughly tablespoon-sized pieces

- whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form, set aside in the fridge.

- melt the chocolate, stirring until smooth, set aside

- whisk the eggs, sugar, and water together in a bowl set over a pot of simmering water (double boiler style), and whisk until the mixture feels hot to the touch when you dip a finger in it.  Remove, and beat with a whisk attachment or beaters until thickened and cooled to room temperature.

- beat in the butter, piece by piece, then beat in the melted chocolate.

- fold in the whipped cream.

- pour mixture into your cooled pie shell vehicle of choice, then place plastic wrap directly on the surface and chill for a few hours, or overnight.  

- top with additional whipped cream and serve.