Since We're Talking About Food . . .

. . . I thought it'd be funny to post one of my epic food fails. This is from a month or so ago. Don't ask me WHAT posessed me, I guess I got thoroughly overexcited over the thought of being a housewife for a year and had a fit of intense domesticism (is that a word? It is now), but anyway I decided to try to make homemade pasta for the first time ever with nothing but some flour, eggs, water, a rolling pin and my hands.

Now, bambino was still pretty small at this time, so poor Shawn was downstairs the whole time watching babe while I was frantically mixing and kneading (and kneading, and kneading . . .) and rolling (and rolling, and rolling . . .). It was kind of fun, but by the end I was covered in flour and sweat, and my hair formed a frizzy halo to frame my extremely frazzled face (again, why exactly did I think it was a good idea to try this in the heat of summer with a newborn? I dunno, I do crazy stuff like this sometimes). So, how did the pasta turn out?

Hilariously!

I think I may have made it a hair too thick . . .

The outsides of the noodles cooked okay and were what I could call pasta, but the middles didn't cook after I think a half an hour of boiling. It was supposed to be spaghetti, by the way.

Oh yeah, and what did we have with our Godzilla spaghetti?

Sog balls

Now I am perfectly capable of making meat balls, but once again the domestic itch overwhelmed me and I was determined to find a way to use the okara (left over soybean pulp) from making our own soy milk. So I chucked it in there thinking it would round out the meatballs nicely and, well, yeah, they looked like little puddles before I spatula-d them to death. The combined meal once I added the pasta sauce looked a little more appetizing, and the soggy meatballs tasted okay, but the pasta was definitely an epic fail.

The next time I get the urge to be Martha Stewart, I'm going to grab a glass of water and have a lie-down until the feeling goes away.

Not Green Eggs And Ham, But . . .

What goes with a cold? Chicken soup of course! And what do you get when you put purple carrots in the soup?

Purple Chicken Soup

Ha ha, surprise! Didn't see that coming. And in case you're wondering, though we seem to have a reputation for having weird food, no we don't usually have purple carrots in the house, but I bought a bag of carrots from the farmer's market, and the assorted coloured carrots were the same price as the regular orange ones, so what the heck.

That soup was delicious by the way. Shawn made it for us.

Babies Don't Keep

Just thought I'd share this poem that's been making the rounds of the internet mommy message boards that I frequent. It kind of makes me weepy, it's so beautiful:

Babies Don’t Keep
by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

Okay, camera's loaded with pics, software's all installed, here we go, check out this cute fella:

Say, is that a new camera Mom?

Like his outfit? It's a size 9 months. Yep, 9 months. He is one looooooooong baby. He is way above the chart for length. He's 71 cm (28 in), which is the 99th percentile for 6 month olds. And he's only 3 months old. Good thing we have that really nice convertible car seat my Mom bought us. He'll be outgrowing his infant car seat very soon, I think.

So for the last week I've been fooling around with the camera, taking lots of pictures and videos. The problem is Jackson is very fascinated by the camera, so you get lots of pictures like the one above where he just stares interestedly and, much more boring, whole videos of him quietly staring interestedly at the camera. But I've got his number:

(I'm loud, I know. Next time I will definitely hold the camera farther out.)

Baby also got his first cold this week :( He learned what the snot sucker was (I believe the correct term is bulb syringe, but that sounds like something a drug-addicted tulip would use, so I say snot sucker, it's much more descriptive). He is NOT a fan of that thing. AT ALL. I just hope I get faster and sneakier with it. He doesn't mind the saline drops, though.

Jackson's also started teething. One of his favourite poses is this:

Nom nom nom

He's kind of young to be teething though, he hasn't really figured out how to bite on things, he just sucks on them, so he gets frustrated sometimes. But despite the teething and the cold, he still is quite the happy cute munchkin.

What A Great Visit

I just realized, I DO have a picture for you:

Isn't he so cool?

This was sent to me by Great Grandma Joyce. It was taken during her visit with us early in September. She and Great Aunt Judy and Great Uncle Stu came for a visit, and to see the fair in Armstrong. It was a great visit! (haha, get it? Yeah, the kids tell me my jokes are lame all the time).

What A Slacker

Sorry for the lack of update, I've been wanting to have more pictures to put up. My dinosaur camera, however, eats batteries faster than my cats eat tuna, so after taking 3 pictures and a 30 second video, the batteries were done. That will all change soon, however, thanks to my lovely new birthday present from Brian and Cathie! They bought me a lovely, shiny new camera!

Now if I could just figure out the darn thing . . .

It's really good. I was taking random pictures all over the house, trying to trick it into taking a bad picture. Didn't work. Refused to be blurry or grainy. Even with the lights off and moving animals. This is the perfect camera for me . . . idiot proof. Well, once I figured a few things out . . .

So like I said, I'm walking around the house, trying to outwit a camera (hehe, here's a black cat in a hallway with no lights on, wow, what a nice picture, hmm, okay, something harder . . .), I take 11 pictures and it tells me it's out of memory. What?? No, they bought me a huuuuuge memory card. So, upon further investigation (and reading the manual) I discover it's set on 14 megapixel. 14!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who needs that many megapixels, ever??? I am high on the possibilities! Do you realize what I could do with this camera?? I can take pictures of people and turn them into billboards that have perfectly defined nose hairs. This is soooooo cool!!!!

Anyway, that and the memory card wasn't pushed all the way in and it was using the camera memory. Once I adjusted the settings and pushed the card in it was good for 2500+ pictures, so look out! Soon you will have all the cute you can handle.

Car Cookies

These are pictures from last year, but I never did get around to showing anybody the photographic evidence.

So for those of you that don't know, the Okanagan gets HOT in the summer. Like 37 degrees in the shade hot. So one day last year, shortly after we moved into the house we rent now, as Ben and I were coming back from our morning walk, I noticed this funny mark on the sidewalk. It looked a lot like the remnants of a fried egg that someone cooked on the sidewalk but it stuck (I guess they forgot to use Pam). So it got me thinking, the car gets really really hot in the sun, like an oven. I wonder if you could bake cookies in there?

Well . . .

TA-DA!

Were they actually cooked? Yep. Were they crispy and yummy? Well . . . not so much. They were more dry on the outside and done on the inside, but we DID cook them in the car. Probably shouldn't have eaten them after, but hey, cookies.

Recipe for Car Cookies

1 tube Pilsbury cookie dough

Directions: Drop from spoon onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 hours in very hot car. You might want to plan not to go anywhere - you could drive in some shade and your cookies won't be done, or go around a corner too fast and wear your cookies.

BTW - the car smelled awesome for weeks after this :D

Getting So Big

I can't believe how quickly he is growing! We weighed him last weekend and he weighed almost 14 lbs! And he is already in 6 mo size sleepers because he is sooooo long. Look how big he is:

Happy in the Moby wrap

His legs are all folded up, so you can't tell how big he really is, but my hands are on his bum, not his feet. We were getting ready to walk the dog in this pic. He looked up at the sky the whole time, just like in the pic. I don't know what's so fascinating up there, since it was cloudy and dusk, but sometimes he'd suddenly smile and almost laugh, looking at the grey clouds. Silly baby.

Cutie Patootie

Some of you have seen this already, but we got a little video of Jackson groovin' on his play mat a couple of weeks ago, making a few good coos and gurgles. (Sorry about the crackly sound, I guess I was too close to the mic, lol)