Sweet Yet Sour

Catching Up

Sunday, December 11th, 2011 | Anna, Henry, Updates | 5 Comments

There comes a point when it’s been so long since the last time that I blogged that I feel overwhelmed with the amount of things that I have pictures of and stories about.  That’s where I’ve been for a while, but I’m going to head right in, try to make it as short as possible and catch everyone up on the goings on at our house.

First, I have no pictures of Cash because he’s basically back to his normal self after his toe amputation – sleeping all day on his bed until it’s either time for a walk or time for a meal.  He seems perfectly fine after the loss of his toe – although he’s not liking the booties we got him to protect that toe nub from the elements on his walks.  But he’s a Greyhound, he expresses displeasure so quietly it’s hard to notice at all.

My last post was right before Halloween, so we’ll begin there.  The week before Halloween the kids and I found a yard in our neighborhood with lots of leaves in the grass and they could not resist playing in them:

Kids in Leaves

It’s always such a struggle to get them both to look at the camera!

Anna in leaves

Following that, over the weekend, Mike and I painted Anna’s room.  My mom came up to watch the kids (thanks mom!) while we painted her room per her request “pink and purple”.  Here we are almost done:

Pink and Purple Painting

The next day was Halloween and the beginning of a week off from work for Mike – our own little “Staycation”.  We went to the Denver Botanic Gardens and the kids had a great time playing in the children’s garden and having a picnic in the grassy amphitheater.  That evening our nephew came to our house for some trick-or-treating and we managed a few pictures of the three of them before they ran away in search of sugar.  Anna had requested to be a “pink and purple butterfly” (sense a theme here?), Brendan was a mummy (his mom made the costume!) and Henry borrowed Brendan’s old Zebra costume.

A Butterfly Fairy, a Mummy and a Zebra

A butterfly fairy, a mummy and a zebra walk into a bar…

Anna had been asking for a while to go to work with her Daddy on the bus and the train.  Mike drives most days, but when he has the time he likes to walk two blocks, pick up the bus and then take that to the train station.  From there it’s a short train ride and walk to his office.  So, one morning we packed Anna up with her backpack (full of books), her lunchbag (with a breakfast snack) and Mike up with his backpack and they headed off to work:

Off to Work

After they rode the bus, train and walked to work they had a little breakfast and then I came to get Anna.  She had a great time!

Henry is a good napper (I’m hoping I don’t jinx myself with that), but sometimes he naps so hard that he has some awesome hair afterwards:

Best bedhead ever

I took the opportunity to take a picture of my beloved boys – they’re both so gorgeous!

My Boys

Anna loves to take pictures with my camera and sometimes she grabs it and takes loads of pictures.  Here are the results of one of her picture taking episodes:

Self Portrait

The Artist's Brother

The Scary Monster!

This is either Mike’s Elvis impression or he’s working on a fart…

Nice one eh?

And last, the most artistic of the bunch:

The Artist's Dinner

I call this one “Toast”; I’m sure it will be worth millions some day…

Henry can’t take pictures of his food, but he does like to do other things with it, like throwing it, smashing it or putting it in his hair.  He’s watched me plenty of times putting lotion on my face and one day he decided that his ketchup would work as lotion.  I got some good pictures before I stripped him down and put him in the bath:

Rubbing on the Lotion

Scary Ketchup Monster!

I think that’s it for now! We’re mostly caught up! More posts later!

Art for Sale

Thursday, October 27th, 2011 | The Daily Special | 1 Comment

A few years ago a friend asked Mike to put some of his photography up on the walls of a business that she was opening.  Mike had plenty of beautiful shots that he taken in recent years, so he spent a few hundred dollars getting a nice selection of photos framed.  We had thought that there might be a possibility that some of them would sell to clients of the business, but none ever did.  Last month, Mike’s friend decided to close her business and asked Mike to come and retrieve all his photos.

They are beautiful photos all of them, ranging from some of Mike’s close-up photos of plants and flowers:

Merry Go Round

To his nature photography photos, like this one that he took in one of our favorite places in British Columbia:

Mystic Beach

All of these photos, with their simple black or brown frames are now occupying our office/guest room.  I love these photos, but we don’t have room for all of them on our walls, and some of them we already have up.

I’m also terribly proud of my husband’s photographic talent – the man truly has an eye for this stuff.  In the past few years his time for what used to be his favorite hobby has dwindled to nil.  Now his photography is limited to the few photos that he takes of the kids, when he can, generally with my camera.  And while I think that Mike knows that these are beautiful photos, he would never offer them up for sale and if he were to sell any to family or friends, it would be at such a discounted rate that it would barely cover the cost of the photo.  He’s generous that way; my friend Jen recently convinced him to sell her a set of four photos and said “take into account your value as an artist” when she asked for the price.  (Wait to go Jen!)  It was the first time in a long time that Mike asked anyone for more than $50 for a photo.

Below are the links to the framed photos on Mike’s photography website.  I know it’s a recession, and art is not the same as food on the table, but still, just in case they would look better on your walls than in our office or basement, take a look…  I’ll sell them to the highest bidder…(with Mike’s approval – of course!)

1. Another Wavy Leaf
2. Gerbera
3. Wave
4. Anna is Sleeping #3
5. Anna is Sleeping #5
6. Sunday
7. Merry Go Round
8. Mystic Beach
9. French Beach II

Oh, and feel free browse all of Mike’s photos on his blog – all of them are available for framing and sale!  (I’m shameless, I know – but I’m also the proud wife of a great photographer!)

Chocolate Framboise Cake

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011 | Cooking | 2 Comments

This month’s Have the Cake challenge is “cooking with carbonation” – there have been suggestions for cakes with Guinness, Dr. Pepper, and Coke, but I wanted to do something a little different.  I thought originally I could do something fun with one of Mike’s beers, but right now all he has is a pale ale and I’m not sure that it would go well in a baking challenge.

Now that Mike has been homebrewing for almost three years, he’s turned me into a kind of beer snob.  Not that I drink beer much, but I am now much more appreciative of the many different tastes that beer can offer in contrast to the standard American lagers like Budweiser, etc.  A few years ago Mike introduced me to a style of beer called “Lambic”, which is a Belgian beer traditionally made with fruit added during the secondary fermentation.  Lindeman’s Framboise is such a Belgian lambic, which has been fermented with raspberries thus producing a rose-pink colored beer, with a slightly sour raspberry taste.  After giving the baking challenge a little thought I decided to make a chocolate cake with Framboise since I love the combination of chocolate and raspberry.

Lambic Bottle

Using a recipe that I found on Smitten Kitchen for a Chocolate Stout Cake that she turned into a bundt cake, I replaced the stout with Framboise and made the necessary adjustments for my above 6,000 foot altitude.

Chocolate Framboise Cake:

1 cup Framboise

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (reduced 1 1/2 sticks – 3/4 cups for high altitude)

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups all purpose flour (increased to 2 1/4 cups for high altitude)

2 cups sugar (reduced to 1 1/2 cups for high altitude)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

2/3 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter or spray a bundt pan.

Bring 1 cup Framboise and butter to simmer in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat.  Remove from the heat and add the cocoa powder, whisking until it is smooth.  Set aside to cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl to blend.  Beat eggs and sour cream with hand-mixer or stand mixer to blend.  Add the beer-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat to combine.  Add the flour mixture and mix briefly on a low speed until blended and then fold the batter with a spatula until completely combined.  Pour batter into prepared bundt pan.

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean – about 45 minutes at high altitude and less for sea level – about 35 minutes.  Allow cake to cool completely in the pan and then turn it out onto cake plate or rack.  I drizzled mine with chocolate Ganache and finished it with fresh raspberries.

The chocolate cake with Framboise produced a wonderful cake with a raspberry taste that is not overpowering but seems to bring out the chocolateness of the cake.  The evening that I finished the cake was an evening that Mike and one of his homebrewing buddies, Chris, were at our house planning their next brew day.  I served it up to my husband and his fellow beer snob, hoping that it would meet their expectations.  As Mike said after he took his first few bites, “Bring a diaper, because you are going to crap your pants.”  Ah…sheer poetry from the hubby! How nice!

Toeless

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 | Updates | 3 Comments

In 2007 when Mike and I first got our beloved Greyhound Cash, he was only weeks from running his last race.  In those weeks he had been at a foster home with a family and their Greyhounds learning about the off-track world.  Things like stairs, glass doors, furniture, etc. were all new to him.

In those first months we learned that he loved walks, but loved even more going up to the baseball field at a high school near us and running.  We could close all of the gates around the field, take off his leash and collar and he would run full tilt.  It was great to see him run; he would run counter clockwise in a circle for several laps and then quickly tire out.  It was almost like owning a thoroughbred horse – it even sounded like a horse race when he ran!

Now that Cash is 8 years old he has already been slowing down and while he still loves his walks, the last time we took him to the baseball field he just wandered around and peed on the fence.  Last week however, Cash injured himself badly enough that we may never see him run like he used to again.

Thursday night Cash came in from the backyard with a limp.  Upon closer examination I could tell that one of his back left toes was not angled the way that it should be and was also bleeding.  We taped him up, gave him some pain medication and then took him to the vet the next day.  (The absolute chaos that was me taking the injured dog and two kids to the vets – which took an hour and a half – is an amusing tale for another day.)

Long story short, Cash dislocated the end of one of his toes in what the vet seems to think was an incident involving Cash getting his toenail caught in our deck.  The options are either to have a surgeon attempt to stabilize the toe, or to amputate the toe.  This is a weight-bearing toe on his foot, so the vet was hesitant to recommend amputation, but after reviewing Cash’s case the surgeon recommended amputation – which has a much shorter recovery time.  And so on Friday we will send Cash off to surgery and say goodbye to one of his toes.   Here’s hoping that the poor boy will be able to recover quickly and walk better soon.

Cash has always had lovely running dreams where he barks, moves his legs rapidly and whips his tail around.  I’ll be sad if he won’t be able to run around like in his racing days, but I’m glad that he will always be able to dream of winning all those races. (He did actually win 10% of his races – not bad!)

Lavender Contender

Friday, September 30th, 2011 | Cooking, Wedding Cake Try-outs | 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I blogged about the wedding cake try-outs, mostly because I (and the family) got a little “caked out”.  There was a time when I was making a cake a week and I think it was wearing on us – except for Henry – who loves to point at whatever is on my cooling racks and say, “Cake! Cake!” So I took a little break for a while, but now I’m back on the cake making wagon…

So far in the wedding cake try-outs we’ve had a Sour Cream Filled Bundt Cake, a Caramel Peanut Cake, a Sourdough Chocolate Cake, a Lemon-Raspberry Cake, a Chocolate Ganache Whipping Cream Cake, and a Sourdough Almond Raspberry Cake.  The bride and groom have tried every one and have tried several of the cakes more than once.  We seem to be narrowing down what they like and perfecting each of those that they really like.  The hits so far have been the Sourdough Chocolate Cake, with a combination whipping cream/cream cheese frosting and coconut on the outside and the Sourdough Almond Raspberry Cake.

Here’s the problem, both of these cakes involve chocolate.  We’ve decided after several tries that the Sourdough Raspberry Almond Cake tastes best with a smattering of both chocolate Ganache and whipping cream in between the layers.  So that still leaves me without a “chocolate-free” option.

I decided that perhaps I should return to lemon cake, but find a different version of than the one I made previously.  I also thought I would try making up a sourdough lemon cake, just like I had with the Sourdough Almond Raspberry Cake.  In my searches I found just the cake recipe to get me excited about experimenting with another cake – a recipe for a Meyer Lemon Cake with Lavender Cream.

I decided that I would just follow the “idea” of the recipe (it’s impossible to get Meyer lemons here) and make a Sourdough Lemon Cake, use the recipe’s lemon curd filling and make a lavender whipping cream frosting.  The original recipe calls for a dusting of powdered sugar and the lavender cream for “dipping” instead of frosting and you know me – I like to go whole hog on the whipping cream!

This week I began attempt number one at this new cake.  It was fun to try, didn’t come out perfect, and I definitely have some things that I can work on next time.

First I made my usual sourdough cake batter and allowed it to ferment.  Then I creamed sugar, lemon zest and butter in a bowl.  I then added just a touch of lemon juice to the butter and baking soda and salt to the sourdough batter.  Then I alternately added the sourdough batter and 2 eggs until the mixture was well blended.  After that I put the batter into two 9-inch cake pans that had been buttered and lined with parchment paper and baked them.  The cake baked up fine, if a bit low, and so I went ahead and made the lemon curd for the filling.

After the lemon curd was finished I began work on the lavender whipping cream.  I crushed a tablespoon of dried lavender flowers with my mortar and pestle:

And then brought them to a low boil in a pan with heavy cream:

After that I removed the pan from the heat and strained out the lavender.  I learned that this needs to be done not just with a normal strainer, but with either cheesecloth or in my case, a flour sack cloth. Otherwise, the cream takes on the look of cream with dirt flecks in it and that does not look tasty.  The lavender steeped cream then went into the refrigerator for 2 hours.

Later that day I spread all of the lemon curd in between the two cake layers and then began beating the whipping cream in my stand mixer.  When I thought that the cream had reached the “stiff peak” consistency I stopped the mixer, threw the whisk into the sink and began frosting the cake.  I quickly learned that I had not beaten the cream enough, as it was sliding off of the cake!  So I put the bowl back on the mixer, washed the blade and began beating the cream… again.  Here’s where I made my big mistake, I set the mixer on high and walked away to do some more dishes.  When I came back to the mixer my cream had become chunky and had begun to curdle.  Trust me, there were some words said that I was glad that the children weren’t around to hear…

At that point, I had to give up on the cake and let it sit overnight until I had a chance to make it to the grocery store the next day for some more cream.  I made a second batch, watching the mixer more carefully this time, and finally got the job done and the cake entirely frosted.  I’m thinking that this cream might curdle a little more quickly than normal cream because of the boiling process, so I’ll have to be careful every time I make this cake.

The cake itself tastes great, with the bright, even slightly sour, taste of the cake and the curd contrasting so wonderfully with the lavender whipping cream.  The cake was a little “spongy” as Mike described it, and so I’ve decided just to make a normal lemon cake, perhaps even the one from Dorie Greenspan’s book next time I make the cake.  I feel like I’m putting my sourdough to enough good use for the wedding with the chocolate cake and the raspberry almond cake.  I might cut more layers in the cake, spread the lemon curd out a little more thinly (it’s pretty zingy the first day) and might add some of the lavender whipping cream in between the layers as well.  And I’m going to try some different things with the lavender whipping cream to try and make it a little less likely to turn into butter.

All-in-all I really like this cake and am excited to make it again next weekend, when I will be bringing it to a dinner party at the bride and groom’s house.  Here’s hoping that the second attempt turns out even better!

Henry at 18 Months

Monday, September 26th, 2011 | Henry | 1 Comment

Last week Henry reached his 18 month birthday, which means we can finally say his age is 1 1/2.  This little birthday was marked by an appointment with our pediatrician and some shots, hooray!

Normally Henry is an adorable, happy little boy, as seen here:

Henry at 18 months

However, as soon as I brought him into the examination room the switch for “grumpy, fearful boy” was activated.  Henry held tightly to me and we barely got him weighed and measured.  Good news is we did get him measured: Henry weighs a little over 22lbs (7th percentile) and is 31 inches (25th percentile). The grumpiness continued through the appointment when the doctor arrived but then truly came to a crescendo when the nurse brought in the box containing the syringes.  I tried getting my flu shot first to show Henry it was okay, but that didn’t help and we had to hold him down screaming for his two immunizations.

The poor thing wore himself out so much that he slept on the way home in the car (a rare morning nap) and then continued sleeping in the car when we got home.  I didn’t want to get him out of the car, so I just left him in the car in the garage with the windows open while I mowed the front lawn.  Completely slept through me mowing the lawn 10 feet away from him! He finally perked up after I woke him up and gave him some snack.

This week Henry finally has another tooth (that’s a total of 7 now) and looks like he has got another one on the way.  He’s working on lots of words these days, like “Daddy”, instead of just “Dada”, and is continuing to repeat “tactor” on a regular basis; Henry’s dad got him a little plastic John Deere tractor that he can push around which he loves!

And just to show you that he’s truly a daddy’s boy, here he is emulating daddy:

Henry emulating Daddy...

Henry has shown an increased interest in sitting on the toilet these days and likes to say “pee, pee” while doing so.  The other day he insisted on reading a magazine, so I gave him one of Mike’s Woodsmith magazines.  I wonder where he gets it from…

Icebox Cake Redux

Friday, September 23rd, 2011 | Cooking | 1 Comment

When I was a child my favorite birthday cake was an icebox cake that my mother would make with chocolate wafers and whipping cream.  Using the whipping cream as glue between the wafers she would stand them up on their sides, form them into a loaf and then slather the whole thing with whipping cream and keep it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  By the time the birthday celebration rolled around the wafers were as soft as cake and so delicious!

Then a few weeks ago my mother called me all excited about an episode of The Barefoot Contessa that she had just watched. Apparently Ina Garten makes a delicious Mocha Icebox Cake, and uses a spring form pan – hooray! – no more delicate loaf making! Ina, who is not afraid of fat (yay!) also adds marscapone, kahlua, cocoa powder, etc. to her whipping cream – yum!

So when this month’s Have the Cake challenge turned out to be Icebox Cake I jumped at the chance to make my own version of Ina Garten’s icebox cake. As much as I love the sound of it, I skipped the marscapone, and because I was taking the cake to a dinner party with kids (including my own) I also skipped the espresso powder and kahlua.

My version goes like this:

In a stand mixer or with a hand mixer mix until it forms stiff peaks:

3 cups of heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup of sugar

2 Tablespoons of cocoa powder (I used the really nice Dutch stuff)

1 tsp vanilla extract

I lined the side of my spring form pan with butter and then parchment paper.  On the bottom of the pan I made a layer of chocolate wafers (the Nabisco “Famous Chocolate Wafers”), filling in any holes between the round cookies with broken cookies.  I then spread 1/5th of the whipping cream mixture on top and continued layering until there were 5 layers of cookies, each covered with whipping cream.

Layering the icebox cake

After the cake had spent 24 hours in the refrigerator I grated dark chocolate and white chocolate on top for a finishing touch.  Here’s the finished product, ready for devouring:

Finished cake

The cake was pretty on the outside and on the inside and tasted absolutely delicious:

Yummy!

We completely decimated the cake, several people going back for seconds (including myself).  I love my new version of icebox cake and may never go back to the old loaf again.  So delicious!

The Fruits of My Labors

Sunday, September 18th, 2011 | Cooking | 4 Comments

I generally refer to these two as the fruits of my labors (trust me – I labored):

Labor 1

Labor 2

However, this summer, things like these have been the fruits of my labors in the kitchen:

Summer Labors

Pictured above is some of what I have been laboring over this summer; in the center are peach turnovers, and then from the left is peach jam, peach butter, bread-and-butter pickles, dill pickles and pasta sauce. Besides what is shown above I have also made a batch of raspberry jam (all of it either eaten or given away by now), peach pie, strawberry rhubarb crisp, and I have a peck of pears that I plan on using for a batch of pear/applesauce for canning this week.

For the past few summers my sister and I divided between our families an organic fruit share provided by Grant Farms.  Each week, starting in July and going generally through to November, we get a ration of whatever fruit is ripe locally.  This year we signed up for the “double” fruit share and also a half preserving share.  The preserving share was 5 shares of whatever we chose – fruit or vegetable, in a large quantity (generally about 20+ lbs).  So far we have gotten 4 of our shares: rhubarb, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peaches.

One of the things that I remember most about summer when I was a child were the days that my mother would can peaches.  She would buy an entire bushel and spread them out on the floor of our basement on a white sheet and then when they ripened she would spend a day (or more) canning the peaches.  The entire house would smell deliciously of ripe peaches and then the kitchen would be unbearably hot while my mother blanched and canned them all.  I carry with me a vision of her deftly sliding peach halves into quart jars that would delight us all winter.

But until recently, canning and preserving have eluded me; partially because when my mother did it canning seemed like a real chore.  Last summer I made apricot jam and canned on my own for the first time.  This summer I have been a canning fiend and feel that I have finally gotten the hang of it.  One day a few weeks ago my mother, my sister and I had great fun making and canning huge batches of bread-and-butter pickles (with two very different recipes) in our kitchen.  This was on the same day that Mike brewed not one, but two, beers in the garage and his friend Chris came over and brewed a third!  The house was a beehive of activity and it was great fun!

I have had several friends ask if I could instruct them on how to can and so I decided to have a “Canning Party”.  It’s scheduled for this coming weekend and I’m planning on having everyone help make a batch of jam and sending them home with a clearer idea about how to perform the boiling water canning method.  I am crossing my fingers that the farm does not send out our last portion of the preserving share this week.  It’s 45 lbs of cabbage, per Mike’s request, which he plans on making into sauerkraut.  Sauerkraut, due to the fermentation it requires to make it “sauerkrauty” cannot be canned, and thus would only complicate matters in what I’m sure will be a very busy kitchen this weekend!  Anyone who wants to come over for Rueben sandwiches with a side of coleslaw when we do get the cabbage, please let me know – we may be having a “Cabbage Party” too!

“Then I’m The Pirate…”

Thursday, September 15th, 2011 | Anna, Henry | 2 Comments

Recently Anna and I were having a “discussion” about who is the boss in our house.  The conversation was spurred by the fact that she was yelling at her brother for climbing up onto the dining room table.  I informed her that I am the boss and it’s my job to tell Henry when and if he needs to get down from the table.  Anna retorted, “No, I’m the boss!” and I suddenly relapsed to being a 3-year-old with her and yelled, “No! I’m the boss!”.  Anna yelled back, “Then I’m the Pirate!”  Fine with me!

Age 3 is maddening sometimes, despite these funny moments.  The 3 year old brain is testing any and all boundaries and thus will listen to instruction and reject it almost immediately, just to see what happens.  But Anna is still pretty darn cute about 70% of the time.

So far we’ve survived three actual days of preschool (which meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-11:30).  On the first day I asked Anna if she liked school and she said, “Yes”.  But then later when I asked her if she had any friends at school she reported, “Yes, but not all of my friends are nice.  The boy with the red and black shirt pushed me.”  So she sweetly thinks that all of her classmates are her friends, that’s good right?  Tuesday she reported that she liked school and the boy did not push her – but today he was back to his old antics and had pushed her again.  According to Anna’s report, the teacher, “gets mad” at the boy – so I’m not going to get involved, but it’s hard to have my little girl’s early days in preschool marred by another kid.  Here’s hoping he keeps his hands to himself!

As for her true friends, this evening Anna informed me while eating some of my homemade Cinnamon Brown Sugar ice cream that, “I love ice cream very much.  You know who else I love very much? Timothy!”  I had hoped that some member of her family would be in that statement, but she spent all of yesterday morning at playgroup with her best buddy Timothy and has been declaring her love for him ever since. Seriously, how cute are they?

Timothy and Anna

It’s a little too early to start planning the wedding or anything, but it is nice that Anna has a best friend that she truly adores and has a great time playing with every week.

Henry also loves ice cream – when he heard me say ice cream tonight, he immediately went to the kids’ dish cabinet and brought out a spoon for himself.  He raised his spoon high above his head and said “geeki” or something like that…

Yogurt Power!

This was him with some yogurt that he was working on getting into his mouth a few days ago.  Yogurt 1 – Henry 0…

Lately, however, Henry also loves tractors.  Henry has a “Touch and Feel” book about tractors, and when he sees a tractor, or anything resembling a tractor (backhoes, bulldozers, etc.) he says in a gravely voice “tactor!”  I’m not sure why he feels the need to lower his voice when saying “tactor”, but it’s adorable nonetheless.

As he approaches 18 months, Henry’s language skills are really picking up steam.  He has about 25 words that are either close approximations to real words or understandable words (at least to his parents).  Tonight, while reading him one of his bedtime stories, “Night-Night Little Pookie”, I read the line, “There are gentle winds blowing and stars all above you…’ and Henry blew some air out of his mouth when I said, “blowing” and then pointed to the star in the book and said, “tar”.  Sometimes it is the best part of my day when Henry kisses me and says, “Night-night”.

I’m also proud to say that Henry is doing really well with me dropping him off in the recreation center nursery for a little bit while I exercise.  The first day of Anna’s preschool, which was the first day that I dropped him off there by himself, the nursery staff reported that Henry, “Got a little sad, but got over it.” And he’s been doing great ever since then when I take him there after I drop Anna at her preschool class.  Still, Henry is ecstatic to see me when I come back after an hour and that’s really great too – Henry is a great little hugger!

Granted, Henry is also trouble – last week on a trip to the grocery store the kids were in the plastic car part of those heinous car carts eating their free cookies when I heard a scream from Anna.  “Henry bited me!”  So I retrieved her from the cart, to discover that Anna was covered in her own cookie crumbs, and also had a big wet spot on her chest (ringed in wet cookie crumb) from where her brother did indeed bite her.  While explaining that she was “sharing Henry’s cookie” (read “attempting to eat her brother’s cookie”) Anna continued to cry and then wiped a HUGE booger all the way down the long sleeve of her dress.  Pro that I am, I continued to select the graham crackers I needed from the shelf during this ordeal, because seriously, I’m a busy mom!  We were a lovely sight at the checkout, let me tell you – although I did manage to roll up Anna’s sleeve and thus encase the offending nose secretion…

So yeah, kids are cute, sometimes really frustrating and gross, but there are good times to be had and also great pictures to be taken, as seen here:  (Please enjoy the pictures, because the real things are slimy, smelly, snotty little creatures… But I love them!)

Cuties reading

Kids in the water table

Kids in the tent

Anna’s First Day of Preschool

Thursday, September 8th, 2011 | Anna | 3 Comments

After what seemed like months of anticipation and preparation, today was finally Anna’s first day of preschool.  She’s been excited for months now about going to “real school”, so much so that Anna stopped wanting to go to her summer classes – she complained they were “boring”.

It’s always surprising to me how quickly time flies with kids.  One moment they are happily playing in the sink and the next they are obviously way too big to play in there anymore:

Just a little too big...

Instead Anna is now volunteering to help with the dishes in order to get a little sink time.  Granted, this is with limited success on the actual cleaning of the dishes.  In this instance Anna pretended the wash cloths were mermaids and sang a little mermaid song:

Anna "helping" with the dishes

Cute, but not so much of a helper…

For the past few weeks I have been trying to prepare both Anna and Henry for the new routine.  Every Tuesday and Thursday morning (the days that Anna will now go to school) we have been going to the recreation center where Anna’s preschool is held.  I would drop them off at the nursery, where they got to play on the same play equipment that Anna will now play with for school recess, and I would go and hit the cardio machines.  On our way in and out I would point out Anna’s classroom and last week I was able to let her go into the room and show her the little back pack cubby with her name on it.

Tuesday we went to the classroom, met her teachers and Anna got to explore the whole place.  So today when I walked her into the room, Anna confidently hung her back pack up in her cubby, found some toys she liked and said, “Bye Mama”.  I’m sure there will still be some adjustment issues for the next few weeks, but it was as good as I could have expected it!

And for her first day of school I was able to con her into letting me choose her clothes – a rare feat indeed.  A few months ago my mom brought up some dresses that she had made for me when I was a kid and there’s one that just about Anna’s size.  I proudly put her in my old dress this morning, despite the 70’s style, and snapped a photo of my little girl heading off to preschool:

Anna's 1st day of preschool

And just to prove that I actually wore this dress, here’s an old picture of me at about the same age in the same cute dress my mom made:

3 year old Dorrie

Now that she’s a big school-going girl, this will probably be the last school day I’ll be allowed to pick out her clothes, but still it was nice the one day!