David Attenborough, Junior

The Big Yam has lately been obsessed with watching episodes of that old BBC Series, Blue Planet on Netflix.  It's his go-to, and we're willing to indulge him (during his allotted TV/iPad time, of course - i.e., only on weekends) because the worst thing that happens is he's learning a s**t tonne about rando ocean creatures.  As in the video below, where he recites a little lecture on the migration habits of Atlantic lobsters, which he has pulled word for word from the series.  He's also watched so much of it, that he's picked up little David Attenborough-isms, which you can hear in the way he says stuff like "Atlantic lobster" in a stuffy, Brit voice.

"The increasing warmth is the cue for an Atlantic lobster to start on a long journey.  She spent the winter 250 meters down, far beyond the reach of the storms.  But, it was cold down there, and now she needs to find warmer water, so she's marching towards the shallows.  They however, are 150 kilometres away.  After a month of walking, she finally arrives at her favorite sandbank."  

Other choice Blue Planet-derived Big Yam funnies: he's been going around talking about how "blue whales don't have butts!" "crabs don't have butts!" but his most consistent assertion in his treatise on the existence of butt-less sea creatures has been "lobsters don't have butts!"  Cue to the other night, when he was nattering on about lobsters not having butts, lets out a GIANT fart, gives some side-eye, smirks, and says, "I guess lobsters DO have butts."  

We're a little unsure how to mediate his absorption of the amoral vicissitudes of underwater life.  He's watching a lot of carnal violence and coitus (shrimp and coral coitus, but still) and we're not sure whether it should be addressed.  Last night, he was watching a segment where an orca is shown in stunning slow-motion detail, eating a grey whale baby (technically known as a "calf" - we are ALL LEARNING THINGS).    In a direct parroting of David Attenborough's narration (though far removed from DA's sombre tone), the Big Yam said, "The killer whale has gotten its prize!" The Dotytron tried to insert some empathy for the plight of the grey whale baby, "Yes, but the killer whale is eating the grey whale calf.  It's dead now." The Big Yam: "The grey whale did not get its prize."  LOL.

Low key times at Casa Dotytron & Lagerfeld high this weekend.  Our friend A is visiting from NYC so the Dotytron went to his show on Friday night, chilled with him again on Saturday, and then we had our friends B & G over on Saturday night for dinner.  Sunday I took the Big Yam with me out and about while the Dotytron treated Momma D to her birthday present  - which was a special breakfast with the babies followed by watching a week's worth of Coronation Street with her.  The Big Yam and I had a pretty fun day - we helped do the Earth Day clean-up at our local park, we went to swimming lessons (where he was a giant pill and I had to be stern with him while all the other kids in the change room averted their eyes and cowered in fear), then we rode the rails (streetcar and subway) to do some errands downtown.  

The wind rustling in the background and the eerie creak of the swings, in addition to the babies (save for the Quincess' last-minute animation) disaffected demeanour is so funny to me.  It's like a Terrence Malick film.

The Quincess is a mischievous little Bonobo monkey.  Periodically, when we leave the Wonder Twins to do their baby scrum on the floor and run wild while we're in the kitchen cooking or something, we'll hear Lindsay unleash a very girlish, high-pitched wail/scream, which generally means that the Quincess has back-arched his way over to Lindsay and ripped the toy he was playing with out of his hands.  It's so funny because Lindsay is so much bigger than Quincess, but somehow, Quincess is surprisingly strong and Lindsay's always getting owned.  Lindsay also has a very classic "dismayed" face, that's kind of like classic exaggerated clown, which makes his anguish all the more laughable.  Then Quincess will give us a very bland, serious, look and basically, the long and short of it is: I could watch the Wonder Twins show all day.

I've all but finalized the haggling for the appliances for the kitchen and have almost finished winnowing down the haggling for the bathroom/kitchen fixtures.  I realize I'm not being very strategic about the process.  I'm not viewing Lil' Ugmo with the jaundiced eye of someone who only sees their house as an asset.  I doubt that future potential buyers would care as much about a 36" Wolf range, but I've lived SO LONG without a proper gas stove and I am not planning on moving in the next, say, 10 years, so I'm going to TREAT MYSELF.  My hot dog and KD game (which is going to be most of what Friday Night Takeout Night will consist of come 3-kids-in-childcare times in September) is going to be NEXT LEVEL.  

I will say it has been nice to sit and stew over a kitchen/bath remodel for the almost-five-years we've been living here.  My tastes have changed over that time frame and I've lived in the house and have a better vision of what I want Lil' Ugmo's best self to be.  A friend was curious about what the original bathroom sink was going to be.  For those of you with the coin to spend, I would encourage you to get the Duravit Vero:

My preciousssssss.

With some brass fixtures like this picture?  GET OUTTA HERE.

So beautiful.  Yeah, I get it.  It's a f**king sink.  But like the our Paleolithic ancestors in the caves of Lascaux, I believe that your home should be beautiful.  A space that reflects you.  Listen, we are all stardust, so why not make our brief time in the corporeal realm one in which we spit our Sensodyne toothpaste into a beautiful wall-mounted sink with brass fixtures?  

Speaking of being stardust, You Are Stardust is a recent picture book that we borrowed from the library, one that I consider worth owning.  Canadian made, beautifully illustrated with wonderfully tactile DIORAMAS, this book talks about how we are all connected by our stardust ancestry.  It's beautiful, poetic, and inspires the reader to situate themselves on a continuum that encompasses dinosaurs, pollen, our oceanic roots, and our future in the stars.  The cadence of the text is thought provoking, informative, and rhythmically comforting.  I highly recommend.  

Last night I took Dr. Rei out for her birthday.  My friend B's restaurant, Porzia, does a Monday $33 prix fixe that is pretty good value and a whole heap of food.  You each get an appetizer, then you share a pasta, and you each get a main.  Half priced bottles of wine, too, although we didn't avail ourselves of that.  We also went a bit buck and ordered an extra vegetable dish, and a hamachi crudo (as I've said before, and I'll undoubtedly say again, I love me a crudo).  It was A LOT of food.  But it was delicious.  My friend B is, as Dr. Rei so eloquently put it, a bit of a babe show:

He's always been super-nice, decent, and has good taste in 'chunes.  Nuff said.  Hard to find in the cooking world, which runs thick with weirdos, pumped up machismo, and small minds (more often than not, that dizzying cocktail in one person).  Also, total babeshow.  So is his wife.  

I didn't take any photos (for once), because I was too busy catching up with one of my favorite people in the world.

Fin.

Mood Boards

I've been running around like mad lately trying to price out a potential kitchen/bathroom renovation.  It is a LOT of work.  I've found a contractor who gave us a good price on labour and rough materials, which means I've got to source all the special stuff - fixtures, tile, appliances, lighting, kitchen cabinets, etc.  First up - let's see some mood boards, shall we?

I used to think I wanted shaker style cabinets with contemporary, long pulls.  White cabinets, grey floor, grey counter.  Something like this:

As I sat on this, and as I realized that Ikea is probably my best option in terms of price point for cabinets and that I wasn't super into their version of the shaker style (I like a narrow, very clean profile), I started finding myself veering towards flat front cabinets with contemporary tab edge pulls (like in the last two photos).  I'm thinking white cabinets with a slight gloss (Ikea's Applad fronts), light grey tile floor, and a white/pale marble influenced counter with maybe flecks of grey, likely in a caesarstone/silestone composite quartz.  Some open shelving, in medium-warm toned natural wood stain, as in the middle photo.  With all that neutral up in that piece, I've been heart set for a long time on a colorful, graphic backsplash.  Originally, I wanted to carry through the grey-acid yellow-white thing we have going on in the main floor of the house, but then I saw this tile and fell in love:

This tile probably costs a billion dollars a square foot and is obviously out of my reach.  I did find a rectangular tile with a raised prism pattern in a shade of blue/teal that I very much liked.  I think with the rectangular floor tile, the white expanse of the cabinets and all, it's going to look very stark and the raised dimensions of the tile will add some nice texture (I hope).  

The bathroom I'm basically ripping off my massage therapist's bathroom.  LOL.  I hope she doesn't mind!  Very basic - subway tile alcove bath, modern fixtures, a sink/console combination (no vanity), white open shelving and baskets for storing our unsightlies, wide wainscotting, marble hex tile floor:

That's actually the sink/console I'm eyeing

Running around to a million stores has been educational for me, in the sense that it has underscored how weirdly reluctant people are to HAGGLE.  1st rule of being a Lagerfeld is: PAYING RETAIL IS FOR SUCKERS.  Don't do it!  What the f**k are you paying these f**ks for?  To call up the manufacturer and place an order for you and then charge you a mark-up to make that phone call?  Gimme a break.

As an example, I have a small job I wanted done in our enclosed porch.  Basically, we have framing separating us from our neighbour's enclosed porch, and tacked onto the framing is basically like, cardboard, so you can't screw in any coat hooks that can take any weight.  The job is simple, rip out the old stuff, throw up some drywall, some beadboard, and a shelf, over an area that's about 12'x5'.  The job is so small that most of my contractors don't want to do it, so I found the name of some dude on a local community recommendation site and checked his work online.  I have him by, and he looks at the job, showing up with a business card with PAPYRUS font and reeking of butts (basically, he doesn't give you the white-glove customer service experience).  He comes back and quotes me $900.  NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS.  I was like, um, no.  I told him straight up that was more than double what I was willing to spend on labour and I ask him what his hourly rate is.  He writes back that he had included a bunch of time for "staining and finishing" (even though I had shown him pictures of what I wanted and it was white!  I had also specified paint-grade poplar!).  He tells me that his hourly is $50/hour (still high) so I said I'd pay him his hourly to a maximum of $350.  He INSTANTLY writes back "done. I can start on Friday."  !!!!!  LOL!  I felt a little bad about Carpenter Jim being such a sadsack and asked the Dotytron if he thought it was okay that I was lowballing to that extent.  The Dotytron was like, Carpenter Jim brought this on himself.  The sad thing is: some people will actually pay the $900!

Emboldened by my successful recent negotiations.I am officially the scourge of retailers.  Look, if an appliance store takes a mark-up of say, 20% ON EACH ITEM purely for the service of liaising with the manufacturer, then they can get that 20% on ONE item from me, not all.  Further, I'm of the belief that they should be okay getting a tighter profit margin on me, because so many rubes are willing to walk in and take the initial quote.  

The question of the hour now, is whether I can justify getting a 36" gas range.  I'm old school - I want a range that's as close to a commercial one as possible - which means: no fancy self-cleaning, no fancy dual-fuel, just gas on gas.  No computer to break down, no "multiple oven modes."  On, off, simmer, high.  No griddles!  No grills!  No wok functions!

TIME WILL TELL 

In typical me fashion this post has taken me a solid week to put together.  Thus far, our long weekend has been splendid.  Our friends H & A were visiting from Cleveland and stayed with us.  It's been so nice - like a proper do-over of our squandered March Break.  We ate, we played Pandemic (and won!), we hung out, the boys drank bourbon, my street had our annual Easter Egg Hunt, we went for dinner at Playa Cabana Barrio Coreano:

How cute is my street?  

On Saturday night, the Big Yam came downstairs, and asked me, "Mama, where does the Easter Bunny live?" trailed by the Dotytron giving us the "What was I supposed to say?!?" face and shrugged shoulders.  Parenting Tip: try to anticipate these kinds of questions so that your story checks out and it's consistent.  We said Easter Island.  We don't have a house where the Easter Bunny comes and gives out mad stuff.  I saw one of the Dotytron's cousins had this giant set-up for their kids with Easter baskets and matching mom-and-daughter Hunter rain boots (!) and a strider bike from the Easter Bunny.  WHAT. THE. F**K.  Are you f**king kidding me?  NOT A THING.  I love that the Big Yam has no concept of want.  He got owned at the hunt and came back with the fewest eggs and then asked to open one, ate a chocolate, and then promptly forgot about them in favour of watching BBC's Blue Planet on the iPad, which is his new obsession.  

Belated 10 month Wonder Twin growth pic

Looks who's doing THIS now?!? Lindsay Lou-Lou basically learned to crawl about two weeks ago, and then promptly started doing what you see up there, all the time.  Quincess continues to do his backwards inchworm/sliding on the back of his head technique.  He's really fast at it, so I'm beginning to lose hope that he'll ever learn to crawl properly.  He turns and pivots and kicks off from a stationary object when he needs extra leverage.  He'll stop and check to make sure he's going in the right direction and then continue on his way.  It's hilarious, but also not physiotherapist approved.

Says you.

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.

FUN

We've had a solid couple of weeks of everyone being at an amazing age.  Me, the Dotytron, the Big Yam, the Wonder Twins - we've hit a groove where everyone is just super-fun and it's so rewarding being around them.  Having said that, I expect things to take a nosedive like, in the next five minutes, but for now, we rejoice and are grateful for what we have.

I recently joined the Toronto Parents of Multiple Births Association (which is saddled with the horrible acronym, TPOMBA) because when I was going through that rough patch in late January, I had heard through my chiro that they would send you free help or like, someone would come and help hold a baby or tidy your house.  So I was like, a $40 membership is obviously worth that to me, so sign me up!  Then I started calling the links they sent and the people on the phone were like, "Uhhh, do you feel depressed?  Do you think you're a danger to yourself or your children?" and I was like, "If you put it that way, then fine, feeling stressed about how I'm going to execute a Monday night tempura-battered haddock, fried artichoke, and lemon dinner doesn't qualify me" (as I'm chatting with the phone cradled against my shoulder while cutting out quilt sashing).  ANYWAY, membership to the group allowed me onto their Facebook page and as usual, uptight parents be stressin' yo!  

Here are our tips for getting your baby(ies) to sleep.

1) Swaddle

2) a dark room, a noise machine, and a cool house temperature (so they don't overheat with the swaddle)

3) binkies

4) don't go buck trying to make the house completely pin-drop quiet (like the Roomie, who whispers when her daughter is napping, even though she's on a separate floor of the house).  My logic on this is: the womb is hella noisy!!!

5) let your baby figure out how to self-soothe around the 4-6 month mark.  Remember that some babies just need to get some ish out and cry a bit before they settle.

6) and NEVER, fall in love:

Technically, you should cue this to the 3:10 minute mark, whenever you've preceded the video with the words, "...and NEVER, fall in love."

Bedtime routine is the Dotytron's speciality.  He's way better at it than I am, mostly because I lose patience and have a tendency to be all, "Mama needs her ME time" and just dump the babies and let them cry and come back when I've decided that it's an adequate amount of time for sleep, even if they've spent that entire time crying.  This results in tragic scenes like the way the Quincess' face gets all puffy and his eyes get small and he looks like he got beaten up from crying so much (this is mostly because the Quincess produces mad sinus fluid so when he cries, all those pockets get filled up with mucous and so he looks like he's having a sad allergic reaction - an allergic reaction to sadness?)  

Anyway, this method has always worked for us.  Around the 3-4 week mark, when we've started giving the baby a bottle a day, their last feed of the night (anywhere from 8pm - 10pm) is a giant, MEGA bottle of pumped breastmilk.  We basically carb-load the f**k out of them.  Then, we swaddle, put them in a dark, chilly room, and put the sound machine on and we've found that they can generally sleep very long stretches and will only get up once to feed.  Nap schedules are very routine.  If I'm at home, I find that up to a year and up, babies are up for 2-3 hours, and then need to nap for 2 hours.  Recently, I discovered that I'd been following a 2-3-4 method with all of my boys.  That is, after they're up for the morning in the morning, the first nap is two hours after they're awake for the day.  Then down for 1.5-2 hours and then up for 3 hours, and then down for another 1.5-2 hours, and bedtime happens about 4 hours after they awaken from afternoon nap.  Naptime at home is very structured along that timeline and pretty scheduled.  The routine doesn't vary - swaddle, binky, cold, dark, room, let them cry it out.  Most babies, if they've had a decent night's sleep, get tired according to that schedule, and the key is to not miss those signs of tiredness and align yourself with their natural schedule.  It's bad for everyone when you over tiredness happens (take it from someone who goes apocalyptica.)  

All that being said, I'm not OCD about nap/sleep schedules the way some people are.  Those are the people you never see out of the house past 7pm or who can't go out for dinner or lunch at a normal time because they're so wedded to their sleep/nap schedule.  That way lies a prison-life, to me.  So I'm all about the schedule, with flexibility.  As long as most days, one of the naps during the day is in the crib and is a proper nap, then I'm okay to continue living my life and letting them catch some interrupted z's in the stroller or their carseat.  Whatevs.  I gotta do me, you know?  Same goes for the bedtime.  As long as most of the time, they're in their crib according to the usual routine, some deviation so that we can go to friends' for dinner or have a night out and not be stressing is okay.  You just have to realize your/their limitations.  So yeah, it might break bad and there might be some tired, cranky, crying babies.  Generally, you ride that out, strap them into a carseat, put them upstairs in your friend's house, and they'll pass out eventually.  You can always wear them in a baby carrier if they're making your life hell, and they'll pass out that way.  Basically: you have options.  It's all a compromise and it's all about understanding where they're coming from, and the babies understanding that you gotta treat yo' self sometimes.

Anyway, enough about that.  Photos!

Another from the edition of the Great Gazoo having a toque stuck to his head

The dainty little Quincess does this sweet move when he's eating where he delicately holds his hand in front of his mouth.  It looks like he's a demure Chinese girl hiding her chewing from the village matchmaker, but I think it's his way of keeping the food in his mouth while he slowly and fastidiously chews.  Either way: it's the cutest.

As is this little scene!  

The Big Yam requested a cape so that he could be Elsa.  So I clipped a piece of fabric to his shirt and had him wear his birthday crown while he slowly paraded around the house and had me periodically adjust his cape.  Cutest. Thing. Ever.  After doing this for 10 minutes or so, he looked down at his chest and said, "But, but Mama, I need boobies.  Elsa has boobies."  WAY TO GO WITH YOUR FEMINIST MESSAGING, DISNEY.  COMING THROUGH LOUD AND CLEAR.

Buds.

The definition of the word "fartsacked"

Leonard looking like he had just been bawling (which he had)

Quincess showing off his hick, one tooth.

Fin.

Blue Moon

The Dotytron has been obsessed with Beck's new album, Morning Phase lately and I wasn't feeling it as a whole - it's too sad and wintery and morose for me, but one of the songs that immediately grabbed me is Blue Moon.  So gorgeous.  Perfectly encapsulates this never-ending winter and grey days slowly bleeding into more sun and slightly warmer temperatures and green shoots in our garden and the promise of bike rides and beach picnics and shorts and low tennis sneakers.  I will say that the album makes for good listening while sitting on the couch at night with a quilt piled on your lap hand-sewing binding on.  Maybe the Dotytron is wearing me down?  Sewing binding on a quilt is one of my ALL TIME favorite tasks.  It makes you feel like SUCH a pioneer (and y'all know how much I love playing at pioneer life).

Guys, I just bought a jean shirt and it's CHANGED MY LIFE.  Summer uniform!  I'm going to wear it as a jacket over all my hippie sundresses and love life.  I also bought these sneakers:

I'm picturing a summer uniform of jean shorts, t shirts, and one of my many billion summer dresses all paired with these.  They're pretty cute, I must say, and I like that you can throw them in the wash.

I'm not ready to say goodbye to winter foods (I never am), but I am ready to stop worrying about losing gloves and putting a billion layers on squirmy babies.

This braised barley dish with fried eggs & parm is exactly the kind of winter food I don't want to say goodbye to, just yet.  Adapted from this recipe, and made slightly less virtuous with the addition of crisped pancetta cubes and the use of frozen beef braising liquid to cook the barley in.  So good!  I love kale.  

Sour cream peach pie.  A little watery from the frozen peaches, but I still ate the whole thing (not the slice, the whole PIE) because I'm not one to look a gift pie in the plate (new expression, trust).

My mom and youngest bro's birthday cake - a golden cake (from Smitten Kitchen, here) and a salted caramel Swiss meringue buttercream.  

Friday night was crunch wrap night and we all couldn't have been happier.  Especially the Wonder Twins, who acted like they had never tasted food before.

Sunday morning breakfast was my long longed-for blintzes.  Served up very non-Kosher with English bacon.  

Fish tacos!

Fin.

Playing Favorites

Me to the Big Yam: "Do you have a favorite baby brother?"
Big Yam: "Yes. Lenny.  I love Lenny."
Me: "You mean you don't love Quincess?"
BY: "No. I don't love him. I love Lenny."
Me: "Awww, you're making Quincess sad!"
BY: "I don't love him.  I love Lenny."
Me: "C'mon!  He's your baby brother.  He loves you so much."
BY, exasperated: "Fine. I love him." (clearly appeasing)

The Big Yam has been full of bon mots lately.  In order to get us to stay in his room longer at bedtime, we've been getting really plaintive, "Pleeeease?  Please, Mama?  It would make me so happy.  Just one more minute, pleeeease?"  The other day, we watched a documentary about the complete overhaul of the New Orleans school system in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which saw the failing public school system switched over primarily to charter schools.  One of the principals of a charter school made an assertion that I support.  That is, if you set a high bar of excellence and establish excellence as your de facto expectation, children will rise to meet it.  Setting the bar low is my nemesis.  Anyway, I started getting panicky about us being too "soft" on the Big Yam and succumbing to the namby pamby, indulgent, everyone-gets-a-prize-for-showing-up school of parenting that's so prevalent nowadays, so I said to the Big Yam: "You're going to university!"  He immediately looked up from the iPad (where he's been obsessed with a deep ocean episode of Blue Planet lately), and said, "No I'm not!"  The Dotytron laughed, and I started inwardly freaking out a bit.  "YES. YOU. ARE."  The Big Yam replied, wailing, "I thought I was going to kindergarten!!!"  LOL!

Aside: a 3.5 year old who is already working on a David Attenborough impression is pretty hilarious.

I went to the drop-in centre with the babies yesterday and because this drop-in centre doesn't insist on shoes off, I bring a big blanket to put the babies on in the baby area, to protect them from people tracking all their gross outdoor shoe detritus all over the baby mats.  This old grandma walks in, and STOMPS in her winter boots all over the blanket as I'm inwardly doing a slow motion, "Nooooooooooooooo!" and frantically trying to gather the blanket out of her way.  It made me physically recoil.  WHITE PEOPLE ARE THE WORST FOR THIS!  I will never understand why they think it's totally okay to wear their shoes inside, ON CARPET, especially when they know that there will be babies mashing their faces into the floor and gumming up all the dirt, dog poop, and who knows what else in that same area.  Meanwhile, white people are the first to freak out about whether their pork is cooked enough, but think it's okay to literally track s**t into the house. End Russell Peters-style rant.  Ha.

The weekend was pretty chill.  We ordered from the newly opened Mother's Dumplings on the Danforth for Friday night take out night.  I dunno.  I think the dumplings are pretty overpriced and were mediocre at best.  Everything was just lacking that certain finesse and delicacy that I've come to expect from places in the 'burbs.  I went to see the Veronica Mars movie which was DEEPLY satisfying.  I had been really worried that based on the vitriolic fan reaction to the much-maligned third season, series creator Rob Thomas was going to play the "auteur" card and try to continue along the path out of some misguided sense that he knew better than the fans.  10 years is a long time to let things fester, especially when your baby project gets cancelled.  However, I was pleasantly surprised in that he delivered a movie for the fans.  Seeing as how it was fan-funded, I could see that being a savvy business strategy, but it does call into question the whole process of crowd-funded projects.  If your shareholders are rabid fans, then what leeway do you have to tell the story you want to tell, as the creator?  All that being said, the movie was like a quality beefed up episode, and it was super fun to watch in a theatre filled with 'heads.  All the old favorites were trotted out and my only regret is that we didn't get to spend more time with some of them.   Kristen Bell must have shot the movie shortly after giving birth, because she clearly has giant breastfeeding cans.

At dinner with JJ and S, JJ mentioned how her sister-in-law had to go down to her (grade 6) kid's school at lunch, to sign him out so that he could go on a "date" and take a girl off school property to eat.  JJ asked me if I would ever do that, and I can say, unequivocally, without any fear of back-peddling at a future date, HELLS, NO.  Uh, seriously?  Since when would a kid of mine have time to be thinking of romantic relationships?  In between piano lessons, swimming lessons, junior astrophysicist school, Chinese school, and generally fostering a thoughtful, reflexive, and critical worldview, my boys aren't going to have time for romantic pursuits.  That kind of dreck leads to your kid being a fedora-wearing, low-achieving, slacker.  Look at my parents!  They severely limited my opportunities for social engagement and look how well we all turned out!  Am I socially stunted?  No!  If anything, my social skills are off the chain!  Why?  Because rather than exercising them in the no-holds-barred arena of ACTUAL social interactions with my so-called "peers", I was able to injest and assimilate idealized versions in all the books I read as a kid.

I recently finished Guy Delisle's graphic novel, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City.  It's a classic Delisle travelogue/memoir about the year he spent in Jerusalem with his partner (who was stationed there in her work with Doctors Without Borders), and their two young children, from 2008-2009.  He encounters many instances of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and while he doesn't side openly with the Palestinians, the depictions of some of the actions of the settlers in the Jewish settlements and the injustices and power wielded by the Israeli government in the checkpoints limiting movement by Palestinians certainly does make you, the reader, deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian situation.  Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  It helped to make me more informed of an area of the world which occupies a great deal of headline/news space, but about which I didn't know very much of depth.

As I read so many children's picture books, I'm going to start reviewing some of those here too, for those of you who have little ankle biters of your own, or are looking for good books to buy for your friends/relatives who do.

Monster, Don't Eat Me! By Carl Norac and illustrated by Carll Cneut.  Apparently this author-illustrator duo are Belgian, and all I can say about that is...it makes a lot of sense.  This was a Big Yam library grab.  As I've mentioned, he's starting to be more afraid of the dark and is obviously going through some monster-scary-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night developmental stuff at the moment.  Alex, a little pig, is caught snacking between meals and is chastised by his mother.  On his way to wash up, he gets nabbed by a monster.  Who should kids fear?  The monster?  Do all monsters have mamas?  The story is whimsical and the drawings are beautifully detailed and fantastical, with shades of the dream-like world of Chagall, but rendered in precise line and autumnal tones.  

There are beautiful, odd, hidden characters and details on every page.  It's like Cirque du Soleil but way less grating.  I loved this.

Jon Klassen is pretty well-known in the children's book world.  He's won at least one Caldecott, if not more, and you will generally recognize his work (he does illustrations for other people's stories, in addition to his own work as author/illustrator), by the very modern, naive, flat, and sly looking animal characters that populate them.  This is a book about a bear's search for his hat, and the tricky woodland creature who made off with it.  

To me, Klassen's work generally falls in the category of "the books you want your kids to like, versus the books they actually do like."  There's something a little sly, deadpan, and a shade dark about them that flies over the kid's head.  The humour definitely speaks more to adults, or at least kids who have been weaned on some kind of sardonic pop culture content that will give them the tools to pick up on the jokes.  I love the visual style though, so while this isn't a huge hit with the Yam at the moment, I'm hoping that it will be some day.

Video of the Quincess doing his inverted inchworm crawl.  Accessorized with a bonus knitted toque stuck to his helmet.  

St. Paddy's meal of oven-baked mustard & brown sugar crusted corned beef, with sautéed cabbage, honeyed carrots, and champ

Last night's dinner of braised barley & kale with eggs & grated parm

Sour cream peach pie

Fin.