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.

By The Way...

It looks like we are on the tail end of another round of sickness that swept through Casa Dotytron Lagerfeld.  Two Fridays ago, I packed up the Wonder Twins for my weekly round of grocery shopping.  I pulled up in front of our vegetable/fruit store, and heard the unmistakeable sounds (followed by the unmistakeable odour) of Lindsay Lou-Lou garfing in the back seat.  In his car seat.  He had eaten cottage cheese for breakfast.  I'll leave the rest to your imagination.  After unloading the contents of his stomach, he promptly slumped over and fell asleep.

I came home, and then he proceeded to evacuate from his bottom end.  It was epic poop-splosion times at Dotytron-Lagerfeld high.  Like, diaper changes that required full body showers (him and me) and outfit changes and the whole rigmarole.  Then, while I was running Lindsay Lou-Lou through the wash for the second time, a naked Quincess, who had just emerged from the shower, was cruising around on the floor of their room, sans helmet, and decided to faceplant on the non-rug-covered portion of the floor.  This resulted in him evacuating his sinuses and a next-level bloody nose, and me frantically Googling "how to tell if baby has a broken nose."

I got everyone cleaned up, and sent the Dotytron very angsty, caps-lock heavy texts to the effect of: COME HOME NOW. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. DON'T DELAY. SEND HELP. SOS SOS SOS.  The Dotytron came home, things settled down, we went to bed.

Next day was our high school friends baby shower.  It was so nice and so much fun.  It was all people we've known since, well, high school with some newer crew in the mix.  I've been told that I tend to do a lot of nicknames for people - the Wonder Twins themselves have a rotation of 5 different nicknames on the go at any given time.  I suspect it's something from my Markham high school days.  It seems like everyone had at least a nickname or two or three.  I had a buddy who was known by his last name initials, by the nickname "C**shot Wolfie" and by the nickname "Dirty Vagina" ("Diva" for short).  We have a buddy we STILL refer to as Fox, which was the spirit animal name he was given in some weird pseudo-Wiccan ravine naming ceremony that happened in like, grade 10.  Anyway, that's all to say that when I meet someone for the first time named Brian and then promptly start to refer to him as "Bri-Bri" or "Bri-Bro," it's a cultural thing.

Now that it's been safely gifted, I can show off the quilt I've been working on for the past, oh, 10 months or so.  Once I get going on a quilt, it's not slow-going, but this one nearly did me in.  It was supposed to be an alternating yellow and white herringbone pattern (like this quilt) but of course, me being me, I made a mistake cutting out the pieces so they were all angled incorrectly and then I measured and calculated wrong so I ended up having to jerry-rig my own design.  In the end, I'm fairly happy with it.  I like the back a lot more than the front, but I need to tighten up my actual quilting skills - I had some bunching issues.  I've started work on another and am totally into quilting as my creative/crafty outlet at the moment.

Anyway, we go to the baby shower, come home, hang out with Dr. Rei and Hanbo, get completely obliterated and owned by the co-operative board game Pandemic, laugh a tonne, go to bed.  The Big Yam comes into our room to sleep.  In the middle of the night, he wakes up, and a slow but inexorable river of garf starts to come out of him.  It was the grossest.  Parenting is NOT for people who have bodily fluid issues.  I used to be one of those people.  I used to say that poop was my nemesis.  I'm not saying that now I'm so inured to poop that I'm all, "ain't no thang" about it, but I will say that situations that I had thought before having children, would have broken me, haven't.  So there's that.

The long and short of the sickness briefing is, the Dotytron was the last member of the family to get it and he's getting over it now.  As usual, I was relatively unscathed which meant that as usual, I was feeling simultaneously smug about my immune system and put-upon by the fact that ONCE AGAIN, it was up to me to hold everyone together.

On Saturday morning, apropos of nothing, while we were enjoying a breakfast of waffles and bacon, the Big Yam said casually, "By the way...how was your night out?"  It was beyond funny (though somewhat cruel, seeing as how our "night out" consisted of eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream and passing out at 9pm on the couch).  He's such a little professor sometimes.  And other times, like this evening, when we discovered him standing on his step stool, peeing from on high into the toilet, and pumping his arms to this weird affirmation: "I...am smart!  I...am smart!" (to an audience of no one - he didn't know we were watching him), he is more like a particularly boorish member of Animal House.

Last week our friend Pingy was in town, I met up with a friend from the Canoe days for lunch at a newish Cuban restaurant on Roncesvalles, I interviewed a wackload of prospective contractors, I went with my mum to another orthotics check-up for the Quincess, and my mum stayed over and helped with the kids while I went to my first annual general meeting for the not-for-profit community complex that runs one of the early year centre (in addition to seniors, teen, baby, and newcomer programming) that the Big Yam frequents.  Here's the thing about my mum: she will rarely babysit if it means that the Dotytron and I can have a night out to ourselves, or go out for dinner...but tell her that I want to join the board and want to attend an AGM and she's THERE.  As I've mentioned before, my mum is a community organizer par excellence.  She is a constant inspiration to me for her commitment to holding the government accountable for her pet projects (mostly related to hospitals and health care in Scarborough), and her commitment to getting people engaged and becoming active participants in community initiatives.

I was too late to get on the board of the community complex, but fully intend to serve a two year term the next time openings become available.  I consider this a stepping stone to my school board trustee ambitions.  I feel like Canadians are so spoiled in certain respects.  Our generous and comprehensive social programs allow people to abdicate responsibility to the state and expect the state to pick up the tab for everything.  Maybe it's all the university academics I'm around all the time, but I hear a lot of griping about how this, that, and the other thing should be better funded.  This was made all the more clear during my last Academic Book Club session, when we discussed Orange is the New Black, the memoir upon which the Netflix series is based.  The deplorable state of prisons and the lack of rehabilitation opportunities and the futility of America's war on drugs was hashed over in detail.  My point is this, though - you can't sell prison reform to people.  Given the choice between prison reform and like, health care, people are going to pick health care (and given the choice of health care or higher taxes, unfortunately most people will pick complaining about health care and lower taxes).   The simple fact of the matter is that there aren't enough funds to cover all the things that people want, and we as citizens have to step in with at best our dollars or at the very least our time, to take up that slack.  We can't just expect the state to be able to provide everything.  Because then you live in Sweden, and while I love Scandinavian design, I do not love Scandinavian racism.

We started watching the Kroll Show and are big fans.  This skit exemplifies everything wrong with Europe and North Americans who are obsessed with Scandinavian countries. They cut out one of the best lines, which is when he's like, "We like to complain about Israel and the West Bank but then also treat our Arabs terribly."  LOL!  

Probably my favorite skit - Too Much Tuna.  

La Cubana on Roncesvalles.  We had the corn fritters, served with a spicy aioli dipping sauce, some yucca fries, and because I am crazy, I got two medianoches: the "traditional" with ham, pork, and gruyere; and the guava glazed beef shortrib (in my defence, I ate half of each one and brought the rest home to the Dotytron).  If this is what Cuban food is like in Cuba, I don't know why I've been so resistant to go to an all inclusive there!  Just kidding: everything I've heard is that the food in Cuba is terrible.  But North American renditions by ex-pats?  Sign me up!  Everything here was absolutely delicious.

I wanted to take my mum to Seven Lives on our way to Quincess' doctor's appointment, but it was closed, so thanks to an Instagram tip from my Discerning Coyote friend, we hit up Pancho Y Emiliano, which occupies a second floor space on Augusta in Kensington Market, right next to La Tortilleria.  We had the baja fish tacos, which were good - battered fish served with a crunchy vegetable topping and drizzled with a spicy mayonnaise (fresh, grassy hot sauces are available at the table so you can adjust the heat level on your own).  

Chicken pibil tostada.  I love a tostada, but not the best for sharing.  I find that chicken-based tacos always taste kind of watery and same-y  This was good, but not as good as the fish taco.

The pastor tostada was TERRIBLE.  Most pastor tacos feature slightly dry pieces of pork mixed with pineapple (pastor is usually prepared like a schwarma, with a big pile of pork rotating on a spit, topped with a pineapple).  This was almost like, stewed pork, heavy on the beans and gravy, light on the meat and pineapple.  Not great.

A favorite spring dish - tempura battered haddock, artichokes, and lemons (fried lemon is SO GOOD) on top of a bed of arugula, drizzled with tartar sauce.

Crab carbonara with pappardelle.  Pappardelle has been my noodle shape of 2013/2014

I made a "broken" skillet lasagne - basically instead of layering all the elements, you make a quick sausage tomato sauce in a big skillet and stir in broken lasagne noodles and cook the noodles in the sauce.  Then I dollop on ricotta and top with mozzarella and throw it under the broiler.  I found it tasty but my mum was meh about it.  I can tell when my mum is "meh" about one of my dishes because she doesn't try to brazenly pack up all the leftovers for herself.  

Roasted asparagus, on top of scape pesto and garlic butter broiled toasts, with poached eggs and hollandaise.

More slow-cooker Asian ribs and cornbread, broccoli slaw, and steamed green beans.

A salted caramel chocolate pudding cake.  From this recipe, but simplified (I basically dumped all the cake ingredients together, instead of putting all the components in separate bowls and then combining them).  The next time, I would reduce the amount of espresso powder in the sauce - the coffee flavour overwhelmed the other ones.  This was so good I'd make it again in a heartbeat.

Last night's shrimp and grits and okra.

March Broke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fried artichokes with a lemon zabaglione

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

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

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

Dinner/baking catch-up:

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

Made churros for Mardi Gras as well.

And funnel cakes the next day?  Why not?

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

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

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

Fin.

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Gluten Free Lemon, Almond, Ricotta Cake

serves 8-10

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

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1/4 c. lemon zest

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

2 1/2 c. ground almonds

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

flaked almonds & powdered sugar for topping

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gastrointestinal Fortitude

Or lack thereof.  And then, and then we got a round of stomach bug through the house.  Huzzah!  So far me and the Big Yam have been spared.  Lindsay Lou-Lou got it first, and was a sad, barfy sack yesterday.  It was tragic.  He barfed for about 4 hours and then was so tired that he was extra slumpy and cuddly.  There is something uniquely tragic about when your kid is sick and can only stare dull-eyed into the middle distance.  That being said, I took him to our doctor's urgent care clinic (another point for the family health team model!  Urgent care hours until 8pm Monday through Thursday!) and he was obviously flirting with the doctor and smiling and being the sweetest, so the doctor thought that it was just a reaction to something he ate.  This is before the Quincess was felled and the Dotytron, last night.  In case you're keeping track, this is night three of heavily interrupted sleep.  In case you're keeping track, this is the third individual visit to the doctor's this week, by a member of Casa Dotytron-Lagerfeld.  The Big Yam: finger infection!  Me: possible thrush but just a hurty boob!  Lindsay Lou-Lou: possible food reaction but more likely stomach bug!

[Edit: Got a call from our doctor's office yesterday afternoon, as it turns out, the strep throat swab they did came back positive.  A-mazing]

Clear eyes, strong hearts, people.

In between loads of laundry, let's talk about better things.  Things like: how amazing the Big Yam is right now.  Usually as the bed time routine draws to a close, I lie next to him and we put our noses together and have a talk.  I was telling him that I loved him, and he said he loved me, too.  I asked him why he loved me, and this is what he said: "Because you're exactly as I are."  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, did I mention that I'm most likely getting a late-stage tattoo?  Haha.  It is to honour the Yeti, as tattoos were really important to him, and it's also a way for me to recognize those I've lost these past few years.  In terms of what I'm going to get, that remains to be seen, although I can totally see how it can be a slippery slope.  These are the general areas I'm thinking of:

Something linear and geometric

Or, something to honour my beloved cat, Smudge

A delicate floral, maybe?

Or maybe something in a stylized script.  Johnny Cash's Flesh and Blood has been on my mind lately (as you can see in the video above).  Trying to put it into the lullaby rotation.  The Dotytron just came home sick from work yesterday and I showed him the video and he welled up.  Proud Baba.  

Getting felled by sickness all around lightened up our weekend considerably.  I had the pleasure of going tobogganing with the Big Yam and then taking him to his dance class.  Guys, he tries so hard.  It's the sweetest.  Watching your kids navigate the world is heart-breaking.  The Big Yam is so sweet and has so few defences to protect him.  He's a pretty guileless kid.  We were at the play space with our neighbour and her daughter.  We were joined by our neighbour's friend and her daughter.  As soon as the other girl showed up the girls stuck together and started to shut the Big Yam out.  He was set on playing chase so he tried to run around with them, and the next thing I knew, one of the girls was saying, "Big Yam, nooooo!" and I went to intervene and he was standing there, all bashful, arms akimbo, not really understanding what he had done wrong.  I asked what had happened and he said, "I was - I was just trying to catch her" and it was the saddest little moment.  He's not generally malicious or a precocious kid - he's very innocent and I hate the fact that this innocence is going to be stripped from him, little by little, as the years go by.  Because you're exactly as I are.

Last night we ordered pizza, hung out, and watched Frozen together (review to come).  Tonight we had a pancetta, squash, and kale risotto, my version of the Olive Garden salad for dinner and will be snacking on cheesecake brownies while we watch the Wolf of Wall Street and I knit.  Sounds like a pretty perfect evening for a family of sickies.

Fin.

Felled

We were felled by sickness this weekend.  From Thursday until about Monday, we were pwned.  The Big Yam was running a high fever for about 4 days but we've been burned so many times by taking him into our doctor's and being told to relax that we rode it out.  Even though he was a royal pill.  Even though he didn't want to eat anything.  Even though he was coughing and was having wheezy breaths at night.  Because the Family Health Team model is the best, they have walk-in clinics on the weekends for patients.  We took him to our doctor who took his temperature, watched his breathing, listened to his lungs...and sent us to the hospital so that he could get a shot of ventilation to help his bronchials dilate.  Whoops.  Major parenting fail.

Brave little Boobla.  He wanted a photo taken to show Nana his cool mask.

We went to the hospital, he got the mask, was like, instantly better and we got prescribed antibiotics to handle the pesky bit of pneumonia he was fighting.  Then we felt like the worst parents ever for letting it go for so long to the point where a normal cold turned into pneumonia.

The Dotytron has been battling what they think is sinusitis for the past couple of weeks.  He'll think he's on the upswing and then he ends up feeling worse.  So he got antibiotics as well.

Pregnant nurse was holding it down with a heavy-duty assist from the Dotytron, which was necessary, since we needed all hands on deck to deal with a fractious, screaming, wilful, miserable, Boobla.  He was so unhappy.  He wasn't eating and he was so cranky that we basically just threw whatever he wanted at him (translating to non-stop Thomas and Friends and Yo Gabba Gabba! episodes), which has since come to bite us in the butts since he's feeling better but still acting like a despot.

A family of sicks is just brutal.  I can't wait for us all to feel better again.  So much laundry!  So many cancelled fun plans!  So much stir-craziness from being cooped up in the house!  So much knowledge of the island of Sodor and Sir Topham Hatt!  I say: enough!

There were elements that were pretty sweet, though.  The Big Yam was being a total sucky with me, which was nice.  We did Sleep Away Camp  for the past five days and he'd wake up disoriented and sweaty and yelling/moaning that he wanted to cuddle, which is pretty cute.  He also asked to be "cozy" all the time on the couch and wanted me to sit all slumpy next to him.  He also napped on me a bunch which was hot and twisty and uncomfortable, but also divine.

Twoandfourmonths is a strange, wonderful, perplexing, challenging, strengthening age.  It is screaming tantrums on the floor and dinner time stand-offs that seem to last hours.  It is parents angrily putting a kid in time-out/cool-down, and it is wilful little beings discovering their agency by dissolving into tears and insisting (at the top of their shrill little lungs) that they "want yogurt!" and in the next instant that they "don't want yogurt now!" (repeat x a million).  It is also watching a little being become more of an engaged individual, more funny conversations, more personality emerging, more of everything that is good and will make you laugh in wonder at this person you first brought into your home as a slumping mass of goobery, wall-eyed drool.  It is remembering when their little mewling cries sounded so loud and laughing at yourself for your own naive ignorance.

When he has his tantrums our new method is to take him upstairs to his room or to another spot in the house until he's ready to calm down and talk to us and tell us what he wants without screaming/yelling.  Then we wait and listen until the screaming stops and go in and tell him that we don't understand him when he screams at us and that it's not a nice way to talk to people.  We do this with a combination of distraction/diversion.  The distracting/diverting comes in handy when you go into the room and he's calmed down for a bit but can easily be set off again (kids hold grudges!  Little grievances are a big deal when your world unfolds from a perspective of 2 feet tall).  It helps us, too.  Especially when our nerves are frayed, as they were this weekend with everyone feeling a little off, we all needed a moment to take a break, take a breath, and kind of centre ourselves in silence.  This works about oh, 0.0043 percent of the time.  Haha.  Just kidding.  It's got a slightly higher success rate than that (very slight).  It all passes.

This whole weekend made me think about the notion of community, how it emerges in sometimes the most unlikely of places, and how it behooves us to be okay with asking for help and sometimes, more importantly, accepting the help that is offered.  Those are two that I continually struggle with.  When I was laid up with sciatica and the Roomie came over to watch the Big Yam and run me a bath and make us lunch, I spent the whole time apologizing profusely for being a burden.  Her general response was a firm, "shut up."  I am notoriously self-reliant.  I don't generally ask for help and have trouble accepting the help that is offered.  I don't want to be a burden.  But when I saw the offers that came in this past weekend in response to a FB status update documenting our state, it gave me pause.  The Roomie offered help, neighbours offered help, my mum offered to step in and provide emergency Yam-watching services, and our dear, childless friends in the neighbourhood, B & G, sent a sweet email asking if there was anything they could do.  In this case, there wasn't anything any of those people could do, but it just made me realize that this whole living in a city business is hard work, whether you have kids or don't.  And life has a way of getting unmanageable, for everyone.  

Granted, it happens with more frequency with people who have kids, but seeing the effect caring for Poh Poh had on my mum and Big D, even if you don't have kids, elder care (and we all have parents) is a growing and pressing issue in contemporary society.  As is any situation in which your health is compromised.  I think it's important to remember that people don't offer help unless they're willing to follow through with it (unless you're some kind of weirdo sociopath, but you can't do anything about those kooks).  It's important to take people up on those offers because it keeps the good will and community-building flowing.  I've realized that it's important for me to take the seat that's offered on the streetcar, even if I don't want to necessarily sit, because I don't want that person to not offer the next time there's a preggo huffing and puffing in the streetcar aisle during rush hour.   It's important and okay to need help sometimes and to take people up on their offers of help without feeling embarrassed or like you're imposing.  Life is hard work.  More hands make it easier.

Anyway, the point is: let me and the Dotytron watch your kids if you want a night off!  We LOVE hanging out with other people's kids!  Way better than your own!   Friends should just set up a swapping schedule - once a month you each take turns watching each other's kids so that the people can have a grown-up meal, without the extra cost of paid babysitting (although bless our teenage babysitter's heart).

Last night's dinner of gruyère, fontina, and aged cheddar fusilli'n'cheese with toasted thyme panko breadcrumbs.  I hoovered this meal.  There is magic in them there cheesy carbs.  Magic, I tells ya!

In other news - we have reached the capacity on our chest freezer.  WHY OH WHY DIDN'T WE BUY THE BIG ONE?!?  Knowing that I always, always, always cook enough to feed a small army and knowing that a supply of frozen foods will be super-handy once the twerps arrive, it was a major tactical error.  Ah well, live and learn.  

Right now we've got some Mexican tortilla soup that's waiting for freezer space along with some of tonight's dinner - a sausage, lentil and swiss chard soup that I made from a Smitten recipe (my changed being that I doubled-down on the amount of sausage, skipped the extra olive oil-garlic drizzle, and grated pecorino on top instead of parm).

I need to figure something out and soon, lest I be overtaken by delicious, frozen, home-cooked meals.

Fin.

You'll have to excuse me...

I'm not at my best.

So, it turns out the Big Yam gave me the hand, foot, and mouth disease.  NOT to be confused with foot and mouth disease, which is what cows and other cloven-hoofed animals get (so like, goats and horses and Tim Curry in Legend).  This has been a lesson in poor parenting.  Last week the Big Yam was waking up crying in the middle of the night so we brought him into our bed for a bunch of what we call "Sleep Away Camp" and I was kind of stressing because I thought he was just getting into the habit of it and didn't want to sleep in his own bed.  THEN he got this weird speckly rash on his butt.  THEN he had pretty bad cold symptoms (cough and runny nose) and he probably had a fever but we didn't check because we're the worst.  THEN he complained about having a "boo boo mouth" but I totally told him he was faking.

BEST MAMA EVER.  LOL!  So the worst.  On Friday, when I discovered I had FIVE cankers in my mouth, I naturally assumed that I had mouth cancer and hypochondriac me was already tearing up thinking of the Dotytron raising the Big Yam alone and how I was going to control their lives from heaven or hell.  Then I realized I'd had a stressful week (I had a job interview on Tuesday for a job I REALLY REALLY REALLY want but so does like, everyone in Canada and will most likely not get, meaning this will be my 3rd consecutive failed job interview) so that was probably it, but I was still like, that's kind cray because I usually handle stress well.  I also started getting weird blisters on my feet so I was like, "I should stop wearing stockings and kicks."  Anyway, I dragged Dr. Rei EVERYWHERE on Friday during lunch looking for Listerine to gargle with which burned the hell out of my mouth and gave me temporary relief.

Then on Friday night we had S & P over for dinner and suddenly I got these pin-prick blisters on the palms of my hands and more blisters on my feet so I started freaking out.  I went to the walk-in clinic that my doctor's office holds for patients (by the way: super hooray for the Family Health Team model, province of Ontario!) and the doctor was like, 100% hand foot and mouth.  By the way, at this point, my tongue is like 30% ulcerated and I'm in constant pain and talk like I'm brushing my teeth all the time.  The good news is: the virus clears up by itself in about a week.  The bad news is: there's not a lot they can give you for the fact that your mouth is on fire.  She told me about this juju Doctor's Book of Home Remedies bulls**t that consists of rinsing your mouth with equal parts Benadryl and milk of magnesia but that barely works.

In summary, my kid had hand, foot, and mouth and we did the following:

a) ignored him
b) told him he was faking
c) stressed about how we were going to "wean" him off of his only source of comfort (Sleep Away Camp)
d) sent him to daycare

BEST!  Apparently only kids and babies get this virus but occasionally it makes the jump to immune compromised adult humans (so in addition to not getting the job, the stress from the interview gave me s**t mouth, great).

I spent the weekend starting The Vampire Diaries which is pretty bad but also good because it features the signature teenaged Karl-Lagerfeld plot bait that is "the-bad-guy-who-falls-in-love-with-the-heroine-and-is-somewhat-but-not-fully-reformed-of-his-sexy-brooding-misunderstood-badness" (see: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, EVERY HARLEQUIN ROMANCE EVER).

Then on Sunday we went to Canadian Tire to pick up Christmas lights for the front of Lil' Ugmo and I basically had a melt down and LEFT before paying to sit in the car in fulminating, sullen, tear-filled silence while the Dotytron paid for the purchases with the Big Yam.  Here is the context: EVERY YEAR the Dotytron complains about how we don't have a plan for our lights and how he doesn't like them.  Every year, I've put them up.  So this year I was like, let's do it up proper.  We go, and the Dotytron did this thing that he does where he gets all weird and super-unhappy about shopping for anything that's not a pick-up for his Tele or like, vintage records, and was all abdicating responsibility for the decision-making and I got super-frustrated and then gave up and had a meltdown which resulted in: leaving the Big Yam and the Dotytron in line to pay for our purchases to sit in stony silence in the car, followed by tears and lots of f-bombs at the house.  IT WAS CLASSIC HOLIDAY SEASON ME.  BUT ALSO CLASSIC HOLIDAY SEASON DOTYTRON.  Because I'm the one dealing with both families and making sure that people get presents and making sure that things get made for his family's various holiday potlucks and also getting stuff for the Big Yam and making sure that he gets a special holiday.  So yeah.  All the equality stuff I was rhapsodizing about in the previous post goes out the windows during the holidays through a combination of: being a psycho, lack of delegating, lack of communication, and internalized martyrdom.  Anyway, in order to mitigate that stuff I'm going to put him in charge of contributing something for the Doty family Christmas.  And otherwise delegate stuff out so that I'm not the only one responsible for the MAGIC OF THE HOLIDAYS.  I hate myself for even talking about that right now.

Related: I find it weird when grown adults get amped about presents.  I just can't wrap my head around it.  It's so not me.  I'm of the school where if you want something, you go out and get it your own damn self.  I guess there is the case to be made for stuff that you want but will never get for yourself?  But I dunno...all the things I want, I'll get.  The notable exception being: one of these head massager thingies

which totally feel amazing and that I totally want but can never justify getting for some reason.  Although last Friday while I was dragging Dr. Rei around everywhere, she was like, "It's $5. TREAT YO' SELF."  So I did.  See how simple that process was?  I get that it's one thing when someone sees something in some Moroccan bazaar that is PERFECT for that other person and that other person is never going to be there to get it themselves and so they buy it as a present.  I totally get that.  Or when it's motivated by you seeing something thoughtful and going and grabbing it in the moment.  I just don't like the whole, birthday and Xmas need to produce manufactured pressure.  I just took a look at my own list of "stuff I want" and yup, I plan on getting all that stuff someday.  I'm trying to think of what I would want someone to secretly surprise me with and I can't think of a single g-d thing.  What can I say, I'm a self-reliant, endlessly practical person.  

I served P & S this gorgeous pork & poblano stew from the slow cooker - we destroyed it.  I served it with salsas, corn chips, and shredded cabbage.  There was supposed to be avocado too, but stupid Chinatown bargain basement avocadoes were mad bargain basement.  

For dessert: coconut tres leches.

Saturday night's dinner was similarly divine (though it doesn't look like much). Turkey tetrazzini - turkey and egg noodles and mushrooms with leftover gravy-jumped bechamel and leftover brussels sprouts folded in, baked with a crispy panko topping.  Casserole love!  

Served with bacon roasted carrots and parsnips.

Last night's dinner was inspired by April Bloomfield's cookbook, A Girl and Her Pig.  I made us ribeye with chimichurri, roasted broccoli with lemon & garlic, duck fat roasted potatoes (!!!!!) and sautéed mushrooms.

Tonight I get to dine with SMckay!

Fin.