A mama with a camera

Taking a picture that captures kids’ cuteness takes skill and perseverance. If you’re like me and don’t have much in the way of photography skills, it takes extra perseverance to compensate for the lack of skill. Mostly, what I get is a huge pile of OK pictures—our March folder has 274 pictures in it! Every now and then, however, the fates align and I get a little gem of a photo like this:

…but most of the reason for any good picture I take is that my subjects [kids] are exceptionally good looking. Thank goodness Canon makes such a great Auto setting!

This week I had the epiphany that little girls don’t have to wait till Sunday to wear cute dresses!  Rose has grown out of her newborn sized clothing, and now she has started fitting plenty of her dresses. I am such a loungewear addict that it seems weird to dress up my little girl if I’m just in sweats, but I’m quickly getting over that in the name of ADORABLE baby girl clothes! Rose has a much larger wardrobe of cute clothes than me anyways!

Ha—this face makes me laugh

Is this even possible? It happened today: they were both smiling, and I captured the moment! Even though Jay’s faux-smile-grimace is kind of goofy, this is my star picture of the week. I only wish I had removed Rose’s pants—I kept them on her till the last minute to keep her warm, and I ended up taking the best picture while she had pants on under her dress. Oh well!

Brace yourself for a little example of my… photo-perseverance:

**Question: what did parents DO before digital cameras?

Jay wanted to hold hands with Rose. So sweet!

When Jay had had enough, he left. Rose started tipping over.

I wish my feet were that cute!

Rose is 7 weeks old already!!

Trying to smile while concentrating on centering the camera and protecting Rose from Jay = dazed expression on Shaina.

As you can see, I try to live with moderation in all things except digital photography. Oh, and peanut butter.

Too LONG!

I have been wanting a haircut for MONTHS, but I haven’t been in the mood to dedicate a portion of our little budget to my HAIR of all things. I would rather use the $20 on something more exciting, like a new dustpan or some sweet glass Pyrex bowls for our kitchen. This month, I managed to squeeze all 3 of those things into our budget!

I have had my eye on these beauties for a while. They are awesome. And so useful. I try to set a little dinero aside for kitchen improvements each month. One month all I could manage was a set of silicone whisks. But man I love those guys. Bit by bit, I am stocking my kitchen with lovely, quality supplies. Jeff thinks it’s funny how excited I get about new kitchen gadgets, big and small. I LOVE kitchen stuff!  I can’t resist rejoicing about them each time I use them!

If you think I’m weird for getting so happy over some glass bowls, you’ll definitely think I’m crazy for loving this dust pan so much! We have  had the same stupid, warped old dust pan for the past 3 years. I had to push down on the middle of it to get the dust to go in—not underneath—the dustpan! It finally cracked when Jay dropped it one too many times. YAY! I invested 4 whole dollars in this awesome tall dustpan. Since our vacuum only does carpets, we have to sweep our hard floors all the time. This dustpan really makes sweeping a breeze! Oh the small joys in life.

OK, I’ve put it off long enough. Here’s the “before” picture (pre-haircut, that is). It had been almost a whole year since my last hair cut!

Annnd the after-shot. The lady straightened it so it looks especially CHOPPED. It’s so nice to have less hair to handle! I walked a few blocks over to one of the 500 salons in this little town, sat in between two interesting women who were getting their hair painted, and endured half an hour of rather vapid conversation about lyposuction, laser treatments, and botox. And you wonder why it’s been almost a year since I had a haircut? Salon-talk is SO not me!

Freedom! for another year…

And now, for the REAL reason anyone reads this blog:

Irresistible sleeping baby Rose: droopy sleepy cheeks! She grew out of most of her size newborn clothes this week. Maybe that means she’s old enough to start sleeping more at night now? Last night she only woke up once between 10pm and 7am! That was NICE. Let’s keep it coming, Rose!

I had a fun little video of Jay, but it’s not working right now. So later, gator!

Could I have some ice, peas?

On Monday, I went on my first run with the double jogging stroller—or the TRUCK, as I like to call it. It is heavy! Tuesday morning I woke up and I could barely MOVE my left elbow without excruciating pain. I thought it was from holding Rose in a weird position or something until I walked to the grocery store pushing the Truck. Then I realized that the way I was holding handle and pushing one-handed torqued my elbow in a painful way. Injury #1 of the week.

Now, for injury #2. First, here’s some background: I have been a runner for 14 years. I ran cross country and track for 4 years in high school and 4 years in college. Somehow I made it through all that intense running without ever having to stop because of an injury. (pregnancy may have stopped me, but not any injuries!) Unbelievable as it may sound, I have never had to STOP during a run and walk home due to pain. Until this Saturday, that is.

SATURDAY: I mapped out a nice 3 mile loop and started running. Right when I was at the farthest point from home (of course), my heel started hurting. I just kept running, because I’ve had little niggles before and they have just gone away on their own. Not this time! After 2 miles, I had to admit defeat. I walked the last mile home with my painful heel in tow. It hurts! I can only walk on my tippy toes without pain. Grumble. I have only run 5 times this year—I’m not ready for a break yet!

What does any of this have to do with generic frozen peas? Jeff has had to ice various limbs and muscles during his marathon training, so we dedicated a bag of frozen peas for that purpose.

Tuesday night I pea-iced my elbow. Miracle! Wednesday morning, the pain was GONE!

So last night I had hopes of more magic peas healing my injury over night. Sadly, this one seems to be slightly more intense than the elbow was, because it’s still painful and puffy. With enough icepeas, though, it’s bound to get better soon, right? In the meantime, I will be on my tiptoes!

How to melt your Mommy:

It HAPPENED! Rose started SMILING at us this week!!!

We still have to work pretty hard to coax a smile out of her, and she has to work kind of hard to figure out how to work her smiling muscles, but she’s getting better every day! It’s one thing to get Rose to smile, and another thing to capture it on camera. These pictures don’t quite do her little grin justice, if you can believe that!

Jeff is good at smile-extraction.

We still love this guy too, of course! It seems like every time I start going a little crazy with the camera on Rose, Jay reminds me that there is work to do—he starts doing laundry, sweeping the floor, or in this case, vacuuming. Thanks for keeping me grounded, Jay!

The power of The Flower:

Just thought you’d like to experience it in live action:

Rose is pretty good at balancing that gigantic flower, don’t you think?

Bare Babies

Look at that round tummy! And that cute round belly button! Ok, and those cute round cheeks! Rose had her first REAL bath this week: the kind where she lays in water and gets all wet all at once. She liked it ok until I started actually washing her…

…but her least favorite part was getting dried off!

Jay is such a goofball sometimes! We think he’s cute when he runs around in just a diaper, Tarzan-style.

That bath wore Rose right out. I love how her hair gets all fuzzy and sticks straight up in the back after it’s been washed. And I adore the peaceful face of my sleeping baby!

Happylips! When Rose is happy, she gets this content, almost-smiley expression right around her little mouth. I call it her happylips, and it’s my favorite Rose face so far.

Rose seems to be kind of trying to smile just a little bit these days. Yay!

Jay has been working in the yard with his Dada this week.

Little strong neck

I may have mentioned this before, but… my kids make me happy!

On the run again

That’s right, I’m on the RUN again! I went on my FIRST run in nearly 10 months this Thursday (on St. Patrick’s Day, as planned). I’d like to say that I felt great, but since it’s been 273 days since my last run, it’ll be a few weeks (or months?) before running will feel great again! I ran for 20 minutes, and covered roughly 2 1/4 miles. That was faster and farther than I thought I’d be able to go—yay! Currently, I am sore in places that I didn’t realize were even necessary for running. But, running is how I “find my center.” I already feel more “at peace” and more like my NORMAL self than I’ve felt in 273 days! I love it.

[post-run-triumph picture]

Even though my legs were aching and my lungs were gasping after the first 5 minutes of my first run, it was still invigorating to go out in the crisp, sunny spring morning and breathe lots of fresh air! My snot rockets caught the sunlight and glistened in shimmery golden arcs toward the ground. No dogs chased me (miraculously). My new shoes felt comfy. The dew sparkled on the grass. The morning was still and peaceful. So even though running didn’t feel all that great, going on a run sure DID!

Sweet Success

There is something super-satisfying about trying out a NEW recipe and having it turn out to be DELICIOUS, or as Jay would say—“tatey!” (tasty)

Once Rose was born, my pregnancy-induced queasiness finally vanished, and guess what—I actually CARE about food again! Food is one of my joys in life, so it was a big trial to go through 9 months of hating it. Glad that’s over! I have been celebrating the return of my normal taste buds (and non queasy stomach) with a few new recipes. I have a lovely, big America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, which is where lots of these yummies came from. Not to be prideful or anything, but they have turned out rather well! Here are some of my recent successes:

Chicken noodle soup and rolls: I have never made my own chicken broth before, and it was easier than I thought it would be. It tasted as good as it smelled, too!

Dessert: chocolate chip banana cake with peanut butter frosting. Mmmm. It reminds me of my brother-in-law Jesse’s goofy song: “When you’re feeling kinda hungry, got a rumble in your tummy? There’s an answer, its very simple: peanut butter banana!” He used to sing that non-rhyme rhyme while making a peanut butter banana sandwich back in the day. Anyway, the cake was so good that I made it again a few days later when we had more black bananas (Jay has been slacking off in the banana department!)

I make bread at least 2 times a week so this isn’t a new recipe, but this batch was especially handsome. Also, some of you wonderful, flattering people have asked for the recipe:

Since a certain little Rose limits my computer time, I just took a picture of my recipe rather than typing it up. I got it from my Mom, who got it from her Mom. And it’s my favorite bread EVER. We never buy bread. The Kitchen Aid mixer makes this super easy to make! [Notes: The yeast: for wheat flour, use 1 T of yeast, and for white flour, use 2 1/4 tsp. My favorite white-to-wheat ratio is 1 3/4 c wheat, 3 1/4 c white. Weird, I know, but after many different combos, this one is the most wheat I could add and still keep the bread soft and moist. And you let it rise twice in the bowl—step 5 is kind of hard to read. Oh, and you have to roll each loaf out with a rolling pin--or smoosh it out with your hands--to pop the air bubbles. Then roll it into a loaf, pinching the seam shut, and put it in the pan to rise. I hope all that made sense!]

Oven fries—another America’s test kitchen masterpiece. They were almost gone by the time I got around to taking a picture of them! I couldn’t believe how REAL they tasted! They even fooled Jay, who never eats potatoes. We had them with juicy mushroom bleu cheese hamburgers on homemade buns. MMMM. Who needs Red Robin anyway? Those burgers were definitely gone before I took pictures!

Every now and then I get lucky and take an ok picture of food. This little beauty is a peanut butter Rice Krispy Treat with powdered sugar, chocolate chips, and peanut butter on top. I adapted a few Rice Krispy Treat recipes to come up with this one, and it is my favorite easy way to satisfy a peanut butter/chocolate craving!

My last culinary success almost deserves its own separate post: French Bread!!

I just made it today, and I’m still kind of shocked that it actually turned out! It was crisp on the outside and tender on the inside and yummy all over. This was a pretty tricky recipe to tackle, and I ended up combining a few baking techniques from Julia Child and the America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks because I don’t have all the intense equipment to make even more authentic French bread. Warning: someday I will!!!

Is this dinner or a research project? These are all the massive cookbooks I had out while making dinner tonight. SO worth it.

I made the French bread to go with French onion soup (another NEW recipe for me). Here’s what my stove looked like at one point this evening. Yes, that is a chunk of brick on the front burner. I may or may not have gone out to our… work-in-progress of a back yard and extracted a brick from a junk heap for my bread baking (I washed it thoroughly, don’t worry). My recipes said that French bread needs to be moist for the first 10 minutes of baking to make the crust work.  The idea was to heat a brick up and put it in a pan of cold water in the oven to create steam around the baking bread. Well, I somehow didn’t heat the brick up enough so I ended up having to melt my face (and arm) off while painting water onto the loaves in the nearly 500 degree oven! No wonder the French word for bread is pain!

 

I hope this isn’t plagiarism… but here’s the recipe for the French bread. It was an adventure! [I couldn’t figure out a good way to explain it, so if you want to read it, just click on the picture to enlarge the recipe]

The finished product! My knife wasn’t sharp  enough to get nice authentic, deep slits in the top, but if you squint you can see them! These were supposed to be baguettes, but they puffed up really big. Thankfully my resident French cuisine expert of a husband reassured me that this is just like a normal loaf of bread in France, even if it’s not skinny like a baguette. He also said that it was the best French bread he’s had on this side of the Atlantic! Blush. I’m speechless!

This is what my recipe said to do with the bread and French onion soup: put the bread on top of the soup, and melt Swiss cheese on top in the oven. It was marvelous.

Is your mouth watering yet?

*Side note: cutting up that 3 pounds of onions for the soup was AGONY! I went through at least 10 tissues (my eyes and nose were streaming!), and my eyes didn’t recover fully for a whole hour afterwards. Dante definitely should have dedicated a circle of his Inferno to slicing onions!

**Side note #2: If you want any of these recipes, just tell me and I’ll post them—I didn’t want to be too boring by putting a million recipes on this already-long post. But I’m very willing to share the JOY, I promise!

Je suis boulangère!

And since no post is complete without them…

Love that little sweetface!

…and that one too!