Kids Say the Darnedest Things...

Yam and Wonder Twins edition.

I rebelled against regulatory red tape and sent the Big Yam into school on Friday with homemade cupcakes for his birthday.  The line from schools is that you're generally supposed to bring in store bought treats but the idea of bringing in grocery store cupcakes in those little plastic clam shell containers broke me inside, so I said, F**K IT, PREMIER MOM, I'M CELEBRATING THE BIG YAM TURNING FIVE IN STYLE.  I asked the Big Yam how they went over, and he said, (and I quote), "Everyone. Freaked. Out." LOL!

Our household accounts for about 1 million of those 6 million views.

My kids are obsessed with orchestral, instrumental music.  Like, OBSESSED.  The Studio Ghibli anniversary concert is back in heavy rotation, and Quincess has taken to pretending to conduct and he mimics Joe Hisaishi's hand motions and it's freakin' adorable.  Other scores in rotation are the theme from How to Train Your Dragon (which seriously makes me cry when the French horns kick in. Every single time), Peter and the Wolf, and Pirates of the Caribbean.  So. Much. Pirates of the Caribbean.  Whenever we hop in Eddie Van Halen the request comes for Pirates of the Caribbean.  To the point where, last weekend, after we had finished one round of the theme, out of nowhere, Quincess said, "I love Pirates of the Caribbean. I love it."  in his cute little lisping Quincess voice and it was so sweet and pure.  That is his first ever unprompted "I love ___" and it was triggered by a Klaus Badelt score?!  My kids are weirdos.

Not in situ, but still cute nonetheless

Lindsay is very good at showing when he's unimpressed with something (which happens a lot, because he is unimpressed when he doesn't get his own way, and about 98.78% of his life is lived in the pursuit of requesting his own way).  He scowls, his brows lower, he purses his lips and then he talks in a growly, stubborn voice.  The other night, at dinner, as he was getting choosy over which green beans we were putting on his plate, we heard this from him: "No want that one bean. Want this one bean. ALL DAY." In his scowling, pouty, low voice.   LOL!  We died laughing.

Thanksgiving, man.  What's better?  Nothing.  We spent the weekend with family, eating good food, going on nature hikes, thinking about how the two best people in the world (Dr. Rei and Hanbo) got hitched, thinking about how my Big Yam is now five (!!!!!), celebrating his birthday, and getting lit on the good vibes.  It was a good time, though a bit of a whirlwind.

I measured the Big Yam against his closet door frame and the kid has grown about 10cm (close to 4") in a year.  UMMM...IS THAT LEVEL OF GROWTH SUSTAINABLE?!?  He's only FIVE?!??!!!  Is he Andre the Giant?

 On the first of two nature hikes we undertook.  Our attempt to get a decent family photo thwarted by: my crazy hair, my crazy smile, my crazy outfit, the Big Yam's inveterate goofiness, the impossibility of getting all the kids looking in the direction of a camera at the same time without (and oftentimes with) serious coercion

 This 2 photo series cracks me up.  Quincess' mouth is stuffed with one of the Belgian waffles that are a Farmer's Market staple for us

This seriously might be as good as the Xmas card this year gets, folks.

 Love this pic of my sibs and all our SOs

 The Thanksgiving table!  Featuring 15 people all crammed around in my mouse house

 My bird

The plate: my bird, my sausage-sage stuffing, my gravy, Manda's mashed potatoes, my sis' green bean casserole (to die for) and squash puree

One of two desserts: pumpkin pie with salted caramel and whipped cream

The Big Yam's smile!

The Big Yam's birthday cake - chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and salted caramel buttercream

Even though we pooched the picture day outfit, the Big Yam saved us with this hilariousness.  Ummm...why does he look like a 23 year old?!?

 An enchilada casserole that I froze over a year (!) ago, brought out for Taco Tuesday.  It was good.

I used leftover turkey (the sinewy dark meat parts from the drumstick and the firm parts from the wing) in this turkey and wild rice soup.  I served it with my go-to cheddar sage biscuits (I omit the bacon).  The soup turned out very thick and required a lot of thinning with extra broth/water/cream.  Next time, I'd keep the flour portion at 1/4 cup instead of 1/2 cup.  It tasted like the best parts of Thanksgiving dinner, reimagined.

This was my first week at the new job.  I love having a private office (!) and the work is interesting, although because I worked right up until last Friday, my head is in two places...this weekend will be a nice chance for me to decompress and get myself back into the headspace.

Fin.

Ups and Downs

Let's start with the good news: we had a fantastic time at the cottage.  All my siblings save C-Hova were represented (he had dental school duties) and our cottage was mad blingin'.  It was only around 2 hours away and we could get there without having to hit the cottage gridlock on the 400.  It had a big swatch of sandy beach, a bunch of water toys, a ground-level giant rec room and a second floor living room so we weren't all on top of each other and we had some place to send the kids, wi-fi, satellite tv, and the water was shallow for at least 75 feet out from the shore, so we could relax without worrying (too much) about the kids drowning.  Here are some snaps:

LOL at how giant the Great Gazoo's feet look in this pic

Elton John?

The arms were my idea

Here's the bad news: we slept in a king sized bed while we were there and got used to it.  I did the number crunching to see how much it would cost us to upgrade to a king (mattress, bed frame, 2 sets of cotton linens, 2 sets of flannel linens, 1 duvet, 2 duvet covers) and it was more than I want to spend at the moment.  Although we could probably sell our current frame for a good price and maybe our mattress too...still not worth it.  It would be a bitter pill for me to swallow to get rid of our frame - it's a mid century beauty with narrow, tapered legs and I haven't seen many of those around.  King sized mid century frames I never see.  So we'll stick with being squished for now.

Good news: first day of school/me home alone seems to have gone really well.  I got the Big Yam to daycare only 15 minutes late, and this is after he slept in like whoa.  The Wonder Twins did their longest sleep stretch yet - from 9:30pm - 4:30am and didn't seem too fussed about me ripping them from their peaceful swaddled slumber and throwing them in their car seats for the daycare ride this morning.  Our daycare provider said that to make it easier for me, I could call her from outside of the house and she would come out and grab the Big Yam so I didn't have to unpack everyone, which is so sweet of her.

At the cottage, the Dotytron and my sister convinced me that I need to keep the Big Yam in daycare full time, so I frantically called J to let her know.  Lucky, because she was interviewing someone this week to fill the other half of what would have been his part-time slot.  I talked to her today and told her that we would pay full-time even though I'll probably only have him in 4 days a week and she is refusing my money so we're in the middle of negotiating.  She's so sweet.  We are so lucky to have her.

Bad news: leading up to the first day of school was kind of fraught.  The Dotytron and I got into a classic Dotytron-Lagerfeld scuffle because he was a bundle of nerves and I was being insensitive to his nervy bundle.  He was on edge last night and I was trying to figure out what City of Toronto programming I should sign up the Big Yam for.  I asked him if he thought basketball or soccer was good and he was being weirdly negative so I got snappy in return.  The Dotytron's point: putting the Big Yam in basketball is a waste of time since he hasn't shown any interest in ball sports.  My point: he hasn't shown any interest because we haven't exposed him and this will give him a chance to try it out.  Let's just say that the argument culminated in me peevishly saying, "If you had YOUR way the only skills he'd learn would be from the Halloween Spooktacular!"  (actual name of Halloween crafting program).  Saying the word "spooktacular" during an argument is its own reward.

Finally rounding out the bad news, the Wonder Twins had a follow-up ultrasound to check up on the cysts in their brains that were first detected when they were in the NICU.  The Great Gazoo had some teeny ones, but Prof. Gantok had some bigger ones.  While we were at the cottage, I got a call from my doctor saying that the Great Gazoo's cysts had disappeared, but that they didn't know about Prof. Gantok's.  I was concerned and then even more so when I came home to find that he had been scheduled for another brain ultrasound.  I didn't know if it was because they didn't get proper images the first time, or if the cysts had gotten bigger.  I called my doctor today and he said that the cysts in Prof. Gantok's brain were still there.  One had either disappeared or couldn't be found, and there was a new one.  The problem with the diagnostics is that ultrasound is an imprecise tool, so the new one could have been there all along, or have just appeared.  The same could be said for the one that "disappeared" - maybe it just wasn't found this time around.  They are in an area of the brain (the ventricles) that have to do with the neurons that coordinate motor skills.  The worst case scenario is that it's periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) - a type of brain injury common in premature infants deprived oxygen to the brain that can cause cerebral palsy, developmental delays, and behavioral issues.  You can find out more (if you are so inclined) from this article here.

Low birth weight (less than 1500g) and mechanically ventilated premature infants born at less than 32 weeks' gestation are at the highest risk for PVL.  The Wonder Twins were both more than 1500g and cleared the 32 week marker (just), but they did have to be mechanically ventilated for a time.  My doctor said that the presence of cysts are just one part of the picture.  He, our paediatrician, and the paediatricians at the neo-natal follow up clinic will also be on the lookout for other things - like low (muscle) tone, if Prof. Gantok favors one side of his body over another, difficulty feeding, etc.  So far, he doesn't show any of those symptoms.

*knock on wood x 1 billion*

SO SUCKS.  We have to just keep hoping for the best.  For right now, he certainly seems like a regular baby.  Although having the talk with the doctor is making me second guess everything.  Like, maybe that's why he looks so scared all the time?  Maybe that's why his eyes are darting around all the time?  Maybe that's why he's needier than his brother?  You can go crazy looking for things to be wrong, especially when you're prone to hypochondriac tendencies like I am.

I'm no doctor, but I can prescribe lots of hugs and kisses and smushes and cheek-eating.

Cutest little turtle, ever.

Chipotle-lime marinated pork (a winner!), zucchini blossom fritters, steamed carrots with mint butter. And the WORST corn I've ever eaten.  We bought it from the Farmer's Market.  I think it was feed corn.  The WORST.

We've gone back to mostly dairy-free, healthy eating since Sunday.  It's felt nice, although I'm ravenous all the time and I miss all the dessert eating at the cottage.  I've been feasting on peaches and nectarines a plenty though.  GAH.  They are SO GOOD RIGHT NOW.  

Fin.

The attack of the killer cat hand

...the thrilling tale of how an over-testosteroned cat almost ruined my weekend. Wednesday afternoon I was sitting out on my neighbour's front lawn doing the usual after-work street hang thing with the Big Yam. The Dotytron opened our screen door to ask me something and I guess Smudge, our cat got outside, immediately saw Lil' Bit, our next door neighbour's cat and started going buck wanting to eat him. Now Smudge is truly the gentlest cat around, INSIDE the house. He routinely sits passively as the Boobla Khan mauls him and cheerfully pulls his tail and yanks out handfuls of his fur. But, outside in the world, he goes a little insane. So I separated the two kitties and then tried to hustle Smudge back into the house, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. He was so amped up that he turned around and chomped down on my hand, pretty deep, before running into the house. This whole exchange took about 2 minutes. Later on in the evening, as I was eating dinner with our Discerning Coyote friend at Bairrada - my hand started swelling up like crazy and it hurt when I lowered it below my heart level - like the dickens.

Thursday morning I called to make an appointment with my doctor, just to see what was going on - when the receptionist triaged me over the phone and I said "cat bite" she immediately got me an appointment for later that afternoon. I wasn't going to keep the appointment, but am I glad I ever did! Dr. T was scaring the bejeezus out of me and totally stoking the smoldering embers of my hypochrondria. He said that the bite was definitely infected and that he was very glad that I came to see him when I did and that he was going to start me on oral antibiotics but if that didn't work then he wanted me to go IMMEDIATELY to the hospital as the next stage was INTRAVENOUS antibiotics. WTF?!???!! He was saying stuff like, "I want you to have a very low tolerance for seeking emergency help if anything changes." !!!!!!!!!! Who knew?!? He also gave me a new tetanus shot (even though I'd had one just 5 years prior) and he called me on Friday and he wanted me to come back first thing Saturday so he could monitor the situation.

Is that insane or what? I was like, what the hell? Who knew cat bites were so serious? Apparently because cat's teeth are so sharp and thin, they can puncture really deep. Their mouths obviously harbor a lot of bacteria, which means the bacteria can be deposited quite deep into the hand and infect tendons. Hands are also considered "high risk" areas for animal bites, because they don't get great blood flow (extremity) and the network of tendons, musculature, etc. is so complicated, which is why he wanted to re-up my tetanus immunization and why he wanted to make sure the infection didn't spread. So he drew a mark around the redness on my hand and told me to go straight to emergency if the redness spread beyond the outline or if the swelling increased or if I broke a fever. Insane. I couldn't believe it. But when I came back on Thursday and told my neighbour, she said her friend got a cat bite on the hand and it spread to his elbow with his forearm all swollen in like, a couple of hours!!!!!!! So let that be a lesson to you - cat hand is no laughing matter.

I was especially bummed about cat hand ruining my weekend. We had plans to go with Supper Club to the Island for a picnic - luckily, by Canada Day the swelling had greatly reduced and the redness had retreated somewhat. So we loaded up the Chariot and biked to the ferry docks which OF COURSE were INSANE with tonnes of n00bs also going to the Island that day. The lineup stretched all the way back to Queen's Quay. Luckily, everyone is going to Centre Island and the Ward's Island ferry was empty. Unluckily for everyone else, they were all crammed onto the Centre Island ferry like sardines, not realizing that all the islands are connected and that the difference is, as our buddy Fox says, "purely psychological." No matter - we sat on the sandy beach of Ward's which looks onto the Leslie spit, facing away from the city and it's lovely. It was a bit of a hipster hang - everyone around us was like 20nothing and look like they ambled out of an American Apparel ad, but it was a hot, sunny day and we picnic'd like kings. Evidence:

The Dotytron and our friend R pulling daddy daycare duty - Dotytron is sporting a women's sun hat.

Master T sporting Liz's sunglasses

Liz holding T and looking radiant

T's buddy, D.

We left the island in the early evening and had grand plans to go to a lobster boil hosted by B's work friend down the street from us, or to catch drinks with Fox and his gf, but by the time we got home, showered, bathed and fed the Big Yam, we were all exhausted. So we had the roomie over for Pakistani take out and front stoop hangs with the neighbourhood kids. It was a lovely way to spend Canada Day, even if we were asleep by 11pm. I love the feeling of being sun drunk - lying on a blanket in the sun all snoozy and lethargic with heavy limbs. Like you could sleep the whole day away...it's one of the few times I let myself be lazy.

I know I've said it before, but I really think I live on the cutest street in all of Toronto. On Thursday evening a few of the neighbours rounded up their kids and we all walked to the ice cream store together in a little caravan - toting kids in strollers, walking, kids pushing other kids on plastic buggies...it was the cutest!!! I love my street - so lucky we have this.

We headed up to Markham after I got the a-ok from the doctor on Saturday - after begrudgingly spending the night downtown on Friday. We hung out with my sister and her kids and celebrated Poh Poh's 89th birthday:

It was bittersweet. I came home last night all sad and on the verge of crying. Sunday was an emotionally draining day. My sister and I had breakfast with my dad on Sunday morning - an airing of the grievances if you will, that was cathartic but still taxing. Then we had a physically draining excursion with the kids to the splash pad in Markham, and then dinner for Poh Poh at Big Mouth Kee.

I was sad when I came home because I was remembering previous year's celebrations of my Poh Poh's birthday - when Kung Kung would organize a giant banquet and book out the whole restaurant and it was a big to-do with like, 9 or 10 tables of guests and a full day of mah jong. This year was a quieter affair - Poh Poh still played mah jong but the cake cutting during the "afternoon tea" portion was much more subdued. It's natural, I suppose - since Kung Kung was the driving force behind all the ostentatious gaiety. But I was just sad. Then I started remembering how ungrateful I was and how I was a jerk one time to my grandparents (I was a jerk MANY times to my grandparents but I was remembering one time in particular) and I started feeling so guilty about awful ways I behaved as a kid and remorseful that I never had a chance to tell Kung Kung I was sorry. This has been a hard year - with Poppa getting sick around this time last year and Kung Kung passing away...it's definitely had a lasting impact on me. The Dotytron and I were talking about it last night - your 30s are such a transitional time. We have experienced so much joy and love from having the Big Yam and maturing into our relationships with our family and extended friend-family network and at the same time, as you get older the reality of it is that you're going to start losing more and more people and that's just the way it is. I was sad last night because I wasn't sure if Kung Kung died knowing that I loved him and was grateful to him for everything he ever did for me.

It's so weird how these random moments can fill you with guilt after the fact. When we were prepping for my fatburger shower last year, I had filled a piping bag with frosting for the mini cupcakes and my sister perked up and said she wanted to try piping the frosting on. So she was doing it and then I saw that she was getting frosting on the floor of the dining room and she wasn't wielding the piping bag properly so I kind of hustled in and took it out of her hands and took over and I'm like, FILLED WITH GUILT about that to this day. For being such a jerk and being so controlling and bossy and perfectionist when my sister had done SO MUCH for me and was so excited for the arrival of the Big Yam and had been so amazing about throwing me a shower and going so above and beyond. She continues to do so much for me. And look at me. I'm an ingrate. I barely did anything for her when she got married and when she had Miss E because I was a no-good 20 year old raver and an underpaid slave drone in the restaurant industry, respectively, when those seminal events happened. Ugh ugh ugh. Soooo guilty!

Sis - I love you the mostest...and even though I won't cut and paste Facebook status memes out of principle - I hope you realize that you're the best sister to me and I feel guilty all the time for not being half as good to you.

See? I'm an emotional wreck. I don't know if I'm hormonal or what. I'm a total suck now. I blame a combination of: turning 30, the loss of 2 great men in my life in the past year, having a baby, my own maudlin sentimentality, and watching a David Simon series (remember how I got when I was watching The Wire regularly? Treme apparently has the same effect).

The plus side of going to the doctor's on Thursday was that they had a table set up for the East York Senior's services network or something, which has volunteer opportunities for people to connect with and help seniors in the community. So I think I'm going to sign up. There's stuff like visiting seniors in their homes or taking them to appointments. The Dotytron: "That's great beebs. But are you just going to cry the whole time?" (I hadn't thought of that. Note to self: get a handle on crying about old people before volunteering with old people organization).

Here are some shots from the splash pad - I have the cutest niece and nephews in the world. Little Big Cuz was not feeling the water so much:

Thursday night's dinner was boss. Pan fried smoked cured pork chops from the mennonites (it's like eating a thick piece of english bacon/ham), new potatoes boiled and tossed while still warm with creme fraiche and scallions, and sugar snaps steamed and tossed with sesame oil from our CSA.

Finally, here's a video of the Big Yam doing his new fish mouth thing while eating. It's the cutest - he does it at the 23 second mark. He's also showing off his "slap the table" technique for more food. We're trying to do the baby sign language for "more" but he much prefers yelling at us and slapping the high chair tray with his hand. Incidentally, baby sign language is kind of weird. There are a bunch of signs for stuff that has NO PRACTICAL PURPOSE! Like "cow" or "butterfly" or "blueberry." I don't need my kid to tell me when he sees a cow! How is that ever going to come up? I think we're going to try for "more" "water" "please" "poo" - you know, the communication that makes MY life easier.

Our friend Pingy is in town so we're hanging out with her in the afternoon. The drop-in centre we usually go to is closed for the year, but one of the parents organizes a Monday thing that runs all summer in a nearby park with a splash pad, so I think we're going to go to that this morning. Our pool is opened so we have TOO MANY possible things to do during the week now. Yay summer! Bye bye sad, hello being grateful and loving life and the awesome people in it!

Fin.

I'm coming home

My youngest brother, CHova, is 10 years younger than me. That's a pretty big age gap for siblings and it meant that we lived parallel, concurrent lives - under the same roof but at entirely different stages, spaced too far apart to share experiences and be contemporaries. I've always felt badly that for most of his youth CHova was practically an only child, at home alone, in the crumbling estate that is my family's house in Markham, with my mom and Big D (two people who are notorious in their complete and utter inability to understand adolescence). Bruce Wayne has always stepped up and I'm glad that my brothers have each other for besties. It makes a big difference.

CHova has turned out to be a really good kid. He's smart, hard-working, responsible, funny and socially at ease. And he's cool. It's nice to have a sibling who's cool and stays on top of shiz. I sometimes look at him and marvel at how he turned out - almost against the odds.

At Kung Kung's funeral, CHova came out of nowhere and gave one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard in my life. It was funny, it was poignant, it was heartfelt. He told stories about my Kung Kung and how one of the things he'll always remember is how my Kung Kung stood up for him one time when he was just an 8 year old kid, when an older dude cut in front of CHova in line at McDonald's. He told another story of how my Kung Kung took him to see Gladiator and they emerged from the theatre in the pouring rain, how my Kung Kung looked at him, paused and said, "I guess we better make a run for it" and how Kung Kung outran him to the car. CHova closed his speech with the chorus from "Coming Home" - a song I'd never heard before that day...and now whenever I hear it I cry. And yeah, I know it's Diddy and I know it's kind of cheesy, but Skyler Grey kills it and the sentiment gets me every time. When I think of my Kung Kung and Poppa and Grandpa Reid and well, every old person in the world going home, with those words ushering them into the great beyond, it's unbelievably bittersweet.

All this is to say that I love CHova and I'm proud of him.

I'm continuing to experience family dramas with my dad and it's annoying and most of all saddening that someone could be so lucky as to have my siblings and I for family and not give a rat's. I look into the Big Yam's cute little face (seriously - how he is so cute? Cute expressive eyes, cute button nose, cute little mouth, cute little teefs, cute chubby cheeks, cute straight eyebrows, cute round head - there isn't a single feature that ISN'T cute individually and when put together becomes the apotheosis of cuteness) and I'm just sorry that my dad chooses to miss out. And I think of how awesome it would have been for Kung Kung and Poppa and Grandpa Reid to know this little being that they're a part of.

But they're home. And when it's my turn to go home I'll tell them how grateful I am for my family.

Fin.

*sound of trumpets*

THIS IS MY 1000TH POST! what the eff?!? that's 1000 ruminations, revelations, reflections, and general wind-baggery. what started as a begrudging, mocking fulfillment of an assignment for library school that i regarded with a high degree of disdain has produced this...this...well, i don't know what this is. but i know some people read it (some actual, non troll bot flesh-people at that!) and for that i'm grateful. although truth be told, this regular outlet for my opinions and observations, and archive for the general chicanery that is my life, has come to be pretty valuable and i'd probably continue even if my readership was non-existent (right now it's a hair above non existent).

you'd think i'd try to make this 1000th post count with some kind of introspective talk about how blogging has dragged me up from the doldrums and provided a guiding light in my darkest hours. but no. you'd think i'd maybe have a super-fantastic giveaway with which to reward my loyal readers. but no. this blog gets zero sponsors (i'm not gonna lie: i'm a little surprised about that.)

nope. you're going to get more of the same. the usual mixed bag of what i did on the weekend/random ephemera that usual heralds a monday round-up post in these here parts.

the weekend in geneseo was a blast. buffalo was hit with about 2 feet of snow and our usual exit onto the interstate was closed as a result...so all of thursday was spent with me feverishly refreshing the new york state thruway website, to see if they had cleared the snow and if our exit was open. no dice. so i had to find an alternate route. this was somewhat high stress, made all the more so because of the fact that our printer was refusing to print the entirety of the google map showing the alternate route. so i had to resort to the hand drawn map. it was a little fraught. it was our first long drive with the boobla and the conditions, while not dire, were less than ideal, and the only thing we had to guide us was my hand-drawn map. well, i have to say, i really earned my spot as chief ensign navigator on thursday night. hand-drawn map was THE BOMB and we totally rocked the alternate route AND managed to drive through amherst, which is the nicest, prettiest, cutest, most old-timey part of buffalo you've ever done seen. as the dotytron said, driving around and looking at all the beautiful, old houses dolled up for the holidays, "i'm getting a christmas boner right now." i can't even describe how beautiful it was. every house was bedecked with wreathes, with twinkling candles centered in every window, and swags of lights softly illuminating the snow-hushed night. so pretty.

little big cuz turned out to be little little cuz. he's lost a lot of weight - but he is very cute and has a baby pterodactyl voice that's kind of hoarse and raspy and charming. i kind of think he looks like a teenager already...he's got a mild case of the baby acne and that with his general oversized features makes him look like he's going through adolescent awkwardness.> he's also SO PALE compared to the boobla. it's insane. i'm always thinking that the boobla is looking more and more like a white baby and then you do a side by side and it's shocking how asian the boobla looks:

and how GINORMOUS he is by comparison...he's only 1 month older!!! i'm sure the size differential will plane out eventually, but master T looks like a 1 year old compared to little big cuz's scrawniness. so now master T for the time being is known as big big cuz...but something tells me it won't last for long.

here's another shot of little big cuz - sdawg dubbed him kreacher:

and here's a shot of the cousins holding each other in various permutations:



the last one was from our failed attempt to round up all the kids in their xmas gear for a group photo. photographing groups of children means that you have to accept that one or all of them will be in tears or looking cray-cray. it's too hard to wrangle them otherwise!

i also completed a new chapeau for the little boobla - it's called the "aviatrix" hat and it serves the double purpose of highlighting his chubbo cheeks AND making him look hilarious:

i bequeathed the old gnome hat to little big cuz and knit a new gnome hat for the boobla, to accommodate his rapidly expanding noggin.

finally, this is a pretty hilarious series from brian's usa diner:



it's pretty reflective of a person's journey at brian's. first you're like, "what's the big deal about this place anyway? why are people lined up?" and then you see the portions and you're like, "i get 2 eggs, toast, 2 kinds of meat, and 2 GIANT pancakes for $5.99?!?" and then you eat the food and you're like, "this place effin' rocks!"

it was a lovely weekend, but way too short...although i'm glad to be back in my hometown...where i can recalibrate my insides with some healthy (or healthier) eating.

i'm supposed to be doing a 15 minute research paper presentation on wednesday, with my powerpoint slide deck due in by tomorrow. gulp.

tonight for dinner i'm making us a lentil curry with apples and raisins, with steamed brown rice and maybe some chard mixed in.

fin.