Sweet Yet Sour

Henry – 3 Months Old

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 | Henry | 1 Comment

Henry turned 3 months old on Monday.

Here is Henry looking at his sister, whom he absolutely adores:

Henry and Anna

Everytime Henry sees Anna he smiles; too bad Anna does not feel the same way most of the time.  There are times when she likes him, and then there have been a few times when she has hit him in anger over me paying attention to Henry.  I’m sure my older sister would say, “That’s what he gets for being the youngest.”

Henry also is able to hold his head up pretty well and was able to pose with his dad the other day:

Mike and Henry

Henry is generally sleeping better these days, but that can be attributed to some acid reflux medicine that he has been prescribed.

Henry is getting to be a more active and cheery boy, he smiles a great deal and is starting to make all those fun little baby talk noises.  It looks as if he is to be cursed with my pale skin and I’m waiting to see if he will be similarly cursed with red hair.  Those of us who were called “Firehead”, among other things, when we were children do not wish a redhead’s childhood on anyone…

At his last check-up, which was supposed to be a two-month check-up, but ended up being a 12 week visit, Henry did great.  He weighed 11lbs 9oz and is 23 3/4 inches long.  Growing quite well really!

At around this time babies begin to grab at things and Henry is getting quite good at reaching for (and sometimes grasping) the toys above him on his playmat.  I took some video of it today, in hopes of also getting the cute noises he makes, but instead discovered that my camera has been dropped far too many times (by the two-year old who will remain unnamed) for the audio to be clear anymore…  He’s still cute in the video anyway:

Soon Henry will be rolling over and really starting to move – should be fun to watch!

The Seven Year Soy Sauce

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 | Cooking | 5 Comments

Seven years ago this August I bought a 1 gallon can of soy sauce.  I have finally finished off the last bit of this huge can of soy sauce and it makes me a little sad…

Seven Year Soy Sauce

You see, seven years ago my friends Pete and Stacey asked me to cater their wedding rehearsal dinner.  I jumped at the chance to do a little free-lance catering, even though at the time, cooking for 65-70 people sounded a little daunting.  They were so great to let me, an unlicensed cook, serve dinner to their friends and family.

In preparation for the dinner I shopped at a bulk store and it was there that I purchased the 1 gallon soy sauce can.  I was using the soy sauce for my sesame soy chicken, which turned out to be a hit at the dinner and ironically, was how I finally finished off the can.  Here’s the recipe:

Sesame Soy Sauce

1 Tblsp sesame seeds

2 tsp grated ginger

2 Tblsp honey

2 Tblsp soy sauce

Toast sesame seeds in a pan and add to the remaining ingredients.  Mix together and baste on chicken breasts or tenders (about 1lb of chicken) before and during grilling.

The wedding was held at a beautiful home on a hill outside of Winter Park.  This meant that the day of the rehearsal dinner, me and my CR-V, packed with four coolers and a lot of food hiked it up to 9,059 feet.  I had spent the two days before baking and prepping all of the food that could be prepared ahead.

Here’s the menu:

Veggie tray w/onion dill dip (my dip, bulk veggies)

Toasted french bread w/Ricotta herb spread

Romaine salad with avocado and orange, served with orange honey dressing

Garden salad

Gazpacho

Burgers

Grilled shrimp in citrus marinade

Grilled chicken w/sesame soy sauce

Key Lime cheesecake

Strawberry shortcake

Freshly squeezed lemonade, Homemade Ice Tea and Sangria

I had written down what time I needed to start prepping, in what order everything needed to be done and had made little cards for everything I was serving that included the name and the ingredients. (My sister had just been diagnosed with a wheat allergy and I thought it best to tell people what was in everything.)  Even though I was not a professional, I felt like I was that day!  The next day, the actual caterer who provided the wedding food didn’t have labels!  And best of all, no one got sick from my food (that I know of anyway).

I was so gung ho that I even made fresh whipping cream for the strawberry shortcake!  I don’t think I would have been able to pull it off myself; I had help peeling avocados, cutting oranges and strawberries and someone’s Uncle Randy stood at the grill all evening cooking the burgers, shrimp and chicken.

Seven years later, Pete and Stacey have two adorable little girls, Siena and Aniela, and a man that I had just started dating is my husband and the father of my two children.  Amazing!  That soy sauce saw me through for a long time and a lot of stir fry, sesame soy sauce and other meals.  Farewell to you my giant gas can of soy sauce!

First Day of “School”

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 | Anna | 4 Comments

Okay, so it’s really not Anna’s first day of actual school, but it’s a school-like activity…

Today was Anna’s first day of pre-pre-school!  This summer I signed her up for a class called “Two Times the Fun” for 2-3 year olds.  Anna attends on Wednesdays for an hour and the class description clearly states, “Parents do not attend”.  Whohoo!

It’s a pre-school prep class where the kids get used to being in a classroom with teachers and do things like art and singing.  I couldn’t resist telling Anna that she was going to school and she was really excited – she insisted on wearing her little backpack that came with her doll.  We packed some snack and a sippy cup of water in the backpack; she wanted to pack crayons and balls in there but I told her that they would have those at school.

As excited as she was Anna was good enough to sit for a picture or two:

First day of "school"

And just so I could get a picture of the girl with the backpack, here’s the side view:

Anna with Backpack

When I took her to the class room the teacher asked if this was Anna’s first class and then said, “Is she going to be okay?”  But Anna was already running into the classroom without even a goodbye to me!   All that going to the drop off day care place has really paid off! Anna distinctly said this morning as we were talking about school, “I’ll not cry.”  Okay by me!

The class is only an hour, so I headed to the grocery store with Henry (who decided aisles 4-16 were a really good time to do some crying).  When I came to pick her up the teacher told me that Anna did very well, but never took the backpack off… Oh well!

And on our fridge is the result of today’s class:

The Artiste at Work...

Note the artistic finger strokes! The bold choice of color! I think we have another Gauguin on our hands! Not that I am at all biased…

The Empress

Friday, June 4th, 2010 | Anna, Updates | 3 Comments

Many times a day I refer to my beloved Anna as “The Empress”.  Part of the um, “joy” of her being two is a very “I am the boss” attitude.  On a moment’s notice Anna will decide that I’m doing something she doesn’t like and feel the need to order me around.  Phrases such as, “Mama sit there.” or “Mama no singing!” are common.

So here is the Empress’ update…

Anna is very verbal, very independent and very active.  She turned two on April 5th, and it was just too close to the birth of her baby brother for us to be capable of hosting a birthday party.  We waited a few weeks, called a few people and decided to have a little party at our house on the 17th of April.  But the universe had different plans for us.  A few days before the scheduled party we discovered that our beloved Cash had fleas, and that they were quite frequently jumping on us and in the carpet.  Exactly what I needed with a newborn in the house! So, we canceled the party at our house and began a huge clean up/flea killing campaign to rid us of this nasty pest.  The myth that there are no fleas in Colorado is a truly a myth!

Since we had already told Anna that she had a birthday coming up, we gathered a small group of family, met at a local restaurant and I made strawberry cupcakes with sprinkles for the birthday girl.

Anna's birthday

With the new baby in the house, Anna has learned that crying is a good tool for mommy manipulation.  She’s fond of grabbing my camera and playing with it, and if you try to take it away from her, you get this:

Anna crying

Most of the time she just gets fingerprints on my camera and aims the camera the wrong way.  And almost all of the pictures that she does take are fuzzy pictures of her fingers, but every once in a while she gets one that looks pretty good.

Anna's self portrait

This summer I have a full schedule for our active little girl, including a music/singing class on Mondays (a woman with a guitar sings and we sing and dance along), a pre-pre-school class for an hour on Wednesdays (parents do not attend!) and tumbling class on Saturdays.  In between all that we are going to try to fit in lots of visits with Anna’s friends.  We had a visit from Piper and Laura the other day and I got a shot of the little girls hanging out at Anna’s art table:

Anna and Piper

Anna’s climbing has reached new complications as she is often getting herself in situations I’d rather she not be in.  The other day I heard “Mama, come get me!” from her bedroom and rushed in to find her hanging on to the top of her bookcase, unable to figure out how to climb down.  Fortunately for me, when we moved the bookcase into her room I had had the foresight to have my dad and Mike anchor the bookcase to the wall.  I was Anna when I was little after all, I knew she was going to climb it eventually…

Yesterday, I came into the living room to find Anna opening the back door and saying, “I’m going outside, okay?”  The back door had been locked, but Anna had deftly moved one of her little chairs over to the door and unlocked both the handle lock and the dead bolt and let herself outside.

Last week I was listening to her usual morning singing routine that she does after she wakes up when all of a sudden there was screaming and crying.  Again, I rushed into her room to find that she had climbed up the side of her crib and gotten herself stuck trying to get out.  So, the decision was made to make the leap to a “big girl” bed.  We removed one side of her convertible crib, put up a gate on her bedroom door and spent last weekend dealing with the fall out.  Anna really enjoys her new independence, she frequently gets up out of the crib and plays with her books, stuffed animals, etc.  This is the destruction in her room after Sunday afternoon’s nap:

Anna's bedroom after a nap

Monday afternoon’s nap didn’t actually happen as Anna instead just played in her room.  Monday night we figured she would be tired and go to sleep pretty quickly. Ha! Instead, she played for 2 hours and then was up every time that we were up with Henry.  At midnight while I was feeding Henry, Mike went into Anna’s room to find her at the window with the shade up looking out and singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.  Adorable, but all that wakefulness made for a grumpy girl the next day.

With her new baby brother in the picture Anna is often a little more grumpy anyway.  She does not like all the attention Henry gets and often tells me to put Henry down or stop feeding him so that I can play with her.  It’s a little heartbreaking since I would like to give her more attention, but it’s simply not possible.  She’s a little helpful with him; she likes to put his pacifier in to make him stop crying, but she’s also treating her dolls like I treat Henry.  She often changes the diaper on one of her dolls and the other day decided to pull up her shirt and “feed” her doll – once she even pulled up her shirt when I let her have Henry on her lap! I’m sure this will get better when I have to feed Henry less often, but for the moment, Anna is learning to deal with the fact that I simply can’t give her my full attention.

But Anna is adorable and smart and will always be my favorite little girl.  Every once in a while out of the blue Anna will say, “I love you mama” and there’s nothing you can do but love those moments!