day one

10:49 on a sunday night, i should probably be sleeping. at the very least i should probably go put the clean sheets on the bed instead of writing here. there is always something else that i should be doing. that i should have done. i slept in this morning until after 10, i can live on the edge and stay up a little tonight. now if only i had something interesting to say*. i take that back, i think i have a lot of interesting things to say, i am just not certain how one goes about saying them. practice and perfect they say.

i got ambitious tonight. it happens every now and again. usually it involves me coming up with some kind of creative project, completing a quarter of it before opting for a long hot bath and wine instead. sometimes i go back to the project, usually i don't though, which is why i recently purchased a bookshelf that houses, almost exclusively, my unfinished projects. i guess you could say that the shelf itself is a finished project though, i mean it got put up and has stuff on it, can't ask for more from a shelf. my ambition tonight though was of a culinary nature.

i periodically get together with a couple of friends and have a cook off. we drink booze, chop vegetables, and eat chocolate covered bon bons. in the end we have 12 meals to take home for our freezer. we each bring the ingredients for six of each of two meals. we wear aprons and talk about mad men. i think it is just as much about connecting with a past that doesn't exist anymore as it is about the food. it has been awhile since we got together though, and my freezer was empty, so i decided to have a party of one, well one and a lot of food. i didn't talk about mad men (although i might have had a moment where i thought about don draper) and there were no bon bons, but i had the booze and there was plenty of chopping.

when i first started working at ubc i was a clerk b in the admissions office. there was no clerk a, so b was as low as it got. my tasks were primarily made up of opening mail and filing dockets. it took zero skill and almost no mental effort on my part. i think it might still be the best job i have ever had. the filing was my favourite. hundreds of envelopes coloured coded and numerical waiting to find their home, the perfect spot just for them. there is a rhythm to filing that i never appreciated before, a meditation to it. my thoughts seemed to flow easily through the act. i am sure that if i had to do it for the rest of my life the story would read different, but i knew it wasn't forever, just a term position of 5 months, and i loved it.

chopping is not unlike filing. when chopping is combined with watching jon hughes' movies, it can be downright spiritual. so i chopped my way through some kind of wonderful, and sauteed for most of pretty in pink, and now my freezer is full. time to oneself to simply get lost in thought is a rare thing when you are in possession of two toddlers, but then maybe i don't have to tell you that? it is why i love my commute everyday, and also why i love cooking.

the end result was (and i include this list here as i have tried all of these recipes and they are great, so maybe you would like them too):

3 chicken enchiladas**
3 spinach cannelloni
4 jars of chorizo spaghetti sauce
2 chicken pot pies
4 mexican lasagna***

now take a moment to imagine what my kitchen looked like after this. the stovetop alone was enough to make me want to run for the hills. so tell me, do you have any good recipes for the freezer? (and if this seemed to end abruptly it is because i am feeling guilty about the sheets!)

*although incredibly riveting, this post is not the most interesting thing i have to say (i swear)
**this is all cream and no veg so i add corn, red pepper and peas
***if you make this please note that her recipe makes enough to serve and entire congregation at her church, i am not kidding, well ok, i am kidding a little, but it is a LOT

squish it

cohen and i sat down for a little snack this afternoon. i didn't realize at first, but it was all orange, and i had put cohen's on a blue plate. blue and orange, a winning combination. looking at the plate i felt compelled to photograph it. it's one of those things that happens to me from time to time.

this is the photo

seems serene, doesn't it? everything was going alright, until we bit into our oranges and realized that they were pulpy and dry and everything an orange shouldn't be. i threw mine away, cohen had other plans. turns out he thought he should make orange juice.

also, because the last two have been about cohen, i will include a photo of the little lady, if for no other reason then i liked this one. she's a feisty one that ada.

in a nutshell

snow, snow and then a little more snow. winter boots and long armed mitts adorning little hands as snowballs were thrown and snowbanks toppled.

spinach and ricotta cannelloni with garlicky caesar salad and red wine eaten in quiet without interruption as the children slept soundly in their beds, awaiting santa on christmas eve. butter tart squares and mom's shortbread with milky sweet cups of coffee for dessert.

grandma reading cohen's new christmas eve book, alphabeasts, by the light of the tree.

late night bailey's on ice and reading in bed

grandma and baka pulling still sleepy children into their bed as i slept just one half hour more

eggs benedict with perfectly runny yolks and crispy fried potatoes, glasses of orange juice filled to the brim.

cohen opening his gifts one by one as ada napped, his excitement brimming off of him and spilling on everyone around him. each toy was given plenty of playing time before another package was opened, the process taking all morning and part of the early afternoon despite there only being 9 gifts.

ada unsure about paper ripping and box opening, her brow furled as she watched on from a distance. stuffed cow we named jersey (despite the fact that it is a holstein) = ok, stuffed doll with hightop boots and curly hair = no thank you, take that thing away please.

a visit from my brother and his kids, the sounds of laughter and joy echoeing down the hall from cohen's bedroom

juicy roasted ham, scalloped potato's and baconed sprouts with a glass of pinot grigio and the good candle sticks lit in the middle.

tipsy after dinner walk in the snow with both mothers to buy coffee cream at the all night corner store, a stillness in the air

head hitting the pillow hard after a day spent with the love of family.

it was good year, i hope yours was too.

as is the custom around here, the slideshow is up. if you are new to this game then there are two warnings: 1. it is 200 mb and may take up to 10 minutes to upload 2. it is just pictures of my family and it will last almost 14 minutes and be set to cheesy music (although this year i didn't give the music a lot of thought and just put the songs that other family suggested, so it isn't as cheesy as years gone by). having said that though, if you have nothing better to do, or happen to be family (or are friends that are like family) then it just might be your thing!

it wouldn't be a highlights reel without some photos, and of course by now you know where you can find the rest.

a liquid cure

after a couple of weeks of holding, twisting, licking, shaking and tipping, today she finally figured it out. oh how her eyes lit up as cohen's watered down juice hit her tongue. she's got perseverance, i'll give her that.

6 months

the fact that it is now 9:30 makes me feel pretty cheated. i mean what the hell? i swear five minutes ago i was eating dinner, but it was more like three hours, two baths, one incredibly long hissy fit, teeth brushing, story reading, kisses and then more kisses, some feet stomping, and then laying beside the smaller one until she fell asleep, and then the back and forth with the other until finally, dear god finally, we are done. i shouldn't have said that, i know, and if you are a parent then you know it too. it will come back to get me every time, but for right now, in this minute, i am free.

today was ada's half birthday. i guess that is another way of saying six months, but the whole half thing makes an excellent excuse for cake, not that i need an excuse, i mean i am an adult which means i can have cake whenever i like. this one fact is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going, well that and knowing that there is a cold beer in the fridge. so happy half birthday to ada, yeah! i have this great video of her crawling, and i had every intention of getting it off the camera, uploading it and putting it here for you, so many lists. i'm with klay, let's just get rid of those damn things. the video will be here before you know it and just think now you get to have suspense as well, and it isn't even your half birthday! this means she beat cohen by almost three weeks in the crawling department. lucky me. it does make for some good times now though, i will put her down in cohen's room and then him and i will be down the hall eating lunch and we wait to see how long it takes her to get there. it really isn't as mean as it sounds.

six months of course means eating solid food. i started a few weeks ago, but have been fairly haphazard about the whole thing until this week. even now it is just once a day at dinner. all that spooning and shoving and shoving and wiping and airplane noises and googly faces. it seemed so exciting the first time. all the wondering, will he like this? will he like that? now it is, oh yeah i have to steam some veggie or cut up fruit on top of cooking, i wonder when i can just feed her what we are eating? i can tell you that it will be a lot sooner than it was with cohen. i am all about the easy in this world of difficult in which i live. so far she loves the food, not just the spurting of it everywhere, but sometimes actually eating it as well.

blogging has been on my mind, with lots of things worthy of writing bout crossing my path, but lately sewing has taken over my free time (hopefully i will be able to share some of that with you soon), as well as staring blankly at the wall in the evenings in the hopes of recharging my brain. speaking of which, i taped about 13 hours of television from last night, and today at the superstore (ahh there it is again) i bought general tao chicken flavoured ripple chips to go with my dark ale, because really how could i not? seriously, it is going to be, like, the best friday night ever. righteous.

so many things to do, each day is something new

there is no baby yet, in case that is what you are here to see, but that doesn't mean things have been boring, oh no.

there have been bad seventies cop mustaches (and it took 5 tries before i got a picture where he wasn't laughing, i mean what kind of cop laughs, i needed serious!)


and homemade bread (made by someone other than me to boot!)


plus today it actually felt like spring for the first time and we spent the whole afternoon outside enjoying it


so although there isn't a wee one in my arms yet, and my bladder is still under attack, things are alright over here.

oh and for those of you that are worried about marko's personal aesthetic, this is what he looked like today...phew