I Have Feet!

Hey! Turns out that my foots are for something other than toe-sucking. No, really!

Isn't it exciting? I'm vertical!

Awesome!

For days I've been feeling like I can't hear out of my right ear. So I finally went over and saw my doctor.

Yup, she said (I'm paraphrasing), you've got fluid behind your eardrum. Great. Great. Grrrr...

So now I'm on anti-inflammatories for my shoulder/back, antibiotics to prevent an ear infection, and Mucinex-D to try and drain out that water. At this rate, I hardly need to eat - my tummy's full of pills.

I'm having a pity party with my cup of tea. Care to join me?

Why I Love Discount Stores

Toy-a-Palooza 2009 is not yet over. Today we stumbled across this baby in the local Kid-to-Kid:

Yes, it's a door toy similar to the one Iain enjoyed at the Pink House. There are fewer bells and whistles, but it's got a working mail slot, a Dutch door, a mouse hole, shutters, a peephole, and a working doorbell. Iain loves it.

As you can see, we set it up by his tent, so he can properly regulate people entering his office.

The doctor is: IN. Consultations 5 cents.

Please note, above, that he is ringing the doorbell and using his hand-held phone at the same time.

So why do we love discount stores? Because for $58, we bought this toy, plus four pairs of pajamas, plus four pairs of trousers. Yes, 8 pieces of clothing and a large toy (that sells for about $70 new), for a skosh under $60. When you consider that a common price for a set of new pajamas is about $15, that's a steal, steal, steal.

We need help coming up with a front-door sign for Iain.
The first idea was "Iain's House: NO GIRLS."
Charles added: "Except Callie."
But then I thought perhaps Iain would prefer to go for more of a Miami club vibe:
"Ladies Free, Gentlemen $50 cover charge. Proper ID required."

Twitter Power

Over at Dooce, the power of Twitter has been unleashed. Un.Leashed. It's a pretty amazing story, in case you've got 20 minutes (the post is Loooong, friends).

Long story short: the author bought a brand-new washing machine right when she gave birth to her new daughter. The machine broke a week later, and after a month of incompetent repairs the local company and the corporation (Maytag) were unwilling to help her in any reasonable way. So she Twittered her rage. Presto, chango! Results. And a little dash of generosity from a rival corporation (Bosch) to boot.

Even the comments are hilarious. Example:

"hmmpfff... my great great great grandpa was a german, mormon cro-magnon, antivaccinating, squirrel-loving man who lost his head in a horrible accident while scrubbing his britches against rocks down by the river.

HOW DARE YOU!"

I recounted the entire story to Charles, and he said, "I guess Maytag is off our list." Uh, yeah.

But what really makes me sad is that it wasn't enough that she'd waited a month. It wasn't enough that she had a tiny baby generating huge poos. It wasn't enough that the machine was brand new. She had to Tweet to a million people before anyone at Maytag gave a rat's hoot.

The other thing that makes the post so hilarious (and that explains the comment above) is the way Dooce talks about the hate mail she gets. No matter what she says, she gets mail telling her she's an insensitive jerk. Ah, teh interwebs.

Caught!

Oh No! The Mom caught me having a nice time at daycare! There I was, sitting nicely at the table with my friends, eating Smarties and enjoying the fact that I get to sit next to My Callie. And without warning, the Momarazzi popped out of nowhere and took my picture. My cover is blown.

Free Bird!

Iain loves the MP3 player. Loves it. This afternoon he was carrying it around his room, patting it. He also loves to turn up the volume on the radio, so he can rock out to whatever (half the time it's Mozart).

Above, video proof of his musical interests, taken just after his bath. He chose to wear the monkey shirt to sleep in, and you can see he must be fresh out of the bath since his hair is actually brushed.

In case you are worried about Iain's caloric consumption, here's what he ate today:

Breakfast: one slice of wheat toast with butter and blueberry jam. Two scrambled eggs. A bowl with banana yogurt plus mango and blueberries. Milk.

Second Breakfast: Orange cinnamon buns. Juice.

Lunch: 2/3 of a banana, a cracker with hummus, and ramen noodles. Milk.

Snack: blueberries, milk, juice.

Dinner: a grilled-cheese sandwich, mandarin oranges, milk.

Is Shooz?

I likes this item. What is? Looks like...shooz. I likes shooz. I try on:


Not fitting. Also, why only one?

Cholon

We're both still sick, with Charles coughing and me sniffling our way through the day. Happily, teh interwebs offer a way to work (and occasionally divert oneself) even in your jammies.

I've mentioned the blog Eating Asia before, but today's post is really above and beyond. They traveled to Cholon, the Chinese quarter of Saigon, and posted a series of photos from the visit. I love the little dog, and right after her the trio of smiling men.

Check it out.

My Tomato Harvesting Method

Iain does not think tomatoes should be harvested when ripe. In fact, he's not really that interested in them as tomatoes. He figures they're basically just tiny balls that grow (quite conveniently) on a bush on the porch.

I Got Places to GO!

Outta the way! I got to walk (holding a hand, please).

Let's go over here. Ok, now over here. Here!

Screen door, hah! Nothing will deter me from going where I want, now that I know how. Watch out, world.

Everything is a Toy

Gotta...reach...my...block! Gottagetitout! Urgh!

What's he playing with? Oh, a pastry bag. Because here at Chez TastyBits, we play with whisks and colanders and pastry bags and measuring cups and all sorts of other culinary tools. You'd be surprised how much fun you can have with a pastry bag.

Meh

I have a cold. It's the common cold, I suspect, just like the Giant Microbe above. Yes, toys based on bacteria and viruses. I think it's genius. And they don't stop at Rhinovirus - you can get all sorts of icky things, including Yersenia Pestis (aka The Black Death).

So little old me spent the day sneezing and blowing my nose and sniffling pathetically. But I managed to greet my new students and to set the ground rules for my courses and to pass out syllabi and generally to conduct Day One tolerably well. Thursday, the real fun begins.

Meanwhile, Himself had a nice morning with The Dad, then went off to daycare to eat pretzels and play and generally enjoy the doting attention of all his (many) ladies.

Oh, and he took a couple of steps.

A Nice Day

Today, I napped at daycare, and ate my lunch and devoured the snacks (3 servings in the morning, 2 in the afternoon!), and "did arts," and played, and made silly putty, and learned some more sign language, and went outside, and generally had a nice day. When The Mom came to get me, I was sitting at the table with my friends, eating Smarties and relaxing.

The Mom sat down next to me (on the floor), which was pretty cool until Callie bogarted her lap. That's My Mom, Callie.

But, overall, it was a nice day. And when I got home there was hummus and garlic foccacia and black plums and milk and a bath and dancing and doggies and that was pretty good, too. The Dad took me for a walk around the house, and I stood all by myself twice for a couple of seconds. So maybe I won't have to crawl to college.

Norton Parker Chipman

Norton Parker Chipman, graduate of the Cincinnati College of Law

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Here's how my work goes: I have been working on my book for years. And for much of that time, there have been people I need to know more about. People who left almost nothing of themselves to history and yet who were important at a crucial moment in my story. One such person was James Redpath. How wonderful when I found a brand new biography of him last year. And it was a great book!

But poor, ignored Norton Parker Chipman. No such luck for him. Despite being a Civil War officer (Union), the prosecutor of Henry Wirz, and Washington, D.C.'s delegate to Congress, Chipman got a whole lotta nothin' from historians. Until now. A lawyer in California has written a book about Chipman.

As you might imagine, when I learned this I was about as excited as historians get. I slowly arched an eyebrow and thought, "wow." Ok, not really. What I really did was...look up the publisher and ask for the author's email address.

Success! And when I asked him whether Chipman had papers, he said YES! And when I asked him if said papers contained any correspondence from my fella, he said YES!

So I spent part of today on the phone with the California State Library in Sacramento, talking with a lovely archivist in the California History room, confirming that there are 16 volumes (more like scrapbooks) of his accumulated stuff. And contained somewhere within those scrapbooks are letters to/from my dude. All I have to do now is hire myself a little research assistant and get him or her to go transcribe them (microfilm? Ha! Photocopying? Ha!! Digital photography? Double HA!!). Whee!

Farmer's Market

Saturday in late August brings: garlic focaccia, local eggs, locally-produced feta, corn on the cob, bell peppers, tomatoes of various stripes (in some cases, literally), tiny baby squash, purple pole beans, cherry tomatoes, Korean pears, apple fritters, and a healthy morning outing for The Mom and The Pasha.

Closeup on those tomatoes and baby squash? My pleasure:

Some of the tomatoes are already dehydrated in the oven, bagged and frozen for this winter. The corn and cherry tomatoes have become a corn salad, using also basil I grew and the feta cheese. The squash await their fate...

Hi!

DUDE. This morning I took off my diaper. Whee!

Also, my shoe size changed. I'm a 6 now.

Lost in Translation

I love Foodgawker. Love, love, love it.

This morning, I saw a recipe that looked great: little filo cigars with a crushed nut and honey mixture inside. Perfect for dessert, especially considering that I have a box of filo in my freezer.

One problem. The blog is in Portuguese. So I chose English from the drop-down menu and...got something kind of interesting. Directions like, "coarsely chop the fruit into a robot." Uh, ok. And "after cold are crispy." Great! I love things to be crispy after being cold.

The comments are even better, probably because they're colloquial. For instance, "I can only say that I loved! But if you do this here at home, disappear in a second and all for my tummy, because the spaghetti is not going to the ball with nuts." Also, "Already arrived in the wacky Jamie, still had to show me that too! This is really to give out the silhouette of a person...hi, hi, hi! My round shapes are starting to get vigordino!"

I'm going to just wing it using the Portuguese. I can figure out most of it, and basically you pulse everything, roll it up in a cigar shape, then bake until golden. No problem. The English is worrisome - I wouldn't want my round shapes to start acting up. The spaghetti is NOT going to the ball with the nuts. Ever.

Oh No!

[Zoooom! Neeeaaarrrrrhhh!!]


Ground Control! Ground Control! This is Airbus MDB1298, requesting emergency Hudson River landing! We have sucked a goose into our jet engines and WE'VE GOT TO LAND THIS BIRD!!

[Jet stream blows, courtesy of Dad, through heroic pilot's dainty curls]

Maddie's Fam spent some time up in Massachusetts. Apparently, much fun was had, some produced by The Dad, whose imagination knows no bounds.

Date Night!

All day today at daycare, it seemed like Callie knew something I didn't. She kept smiling at me and mouthing, "later..." ??

But I had a good day, anyway. I had breakfast with The Mom at home (2 scrambled eggs, one whole piece of toast with butter and jam, blueberries and milk), then I had breakfast again at daycare (cereal and milk), then I had morning snack (crackers), then I had lunch (chicken salad - yuck! - and fruit and veggies), then I had afternoon snack (fruit bar), then it was time to go home.

Oh, and I "did 3 arts." I made a doggie head, I colored on a drawing of a rabbit, and I pasted colorful shapes onto a piece of black construction paper. It was fun. I'm creative.

When The Mom came to fetch me, she smiled at Callie in a way that made me suspicious. What was all this inter-female winking and nodding?

So imagine my surprise when I got home to find Callie already there!

We drew at the easel together. I did not feel the occasion required shoes.

We shared the crayons. Sort of.

Callie is very artistic. She holds her crayon pencil just so. As you can see below, I prefer to talk a lot while drawing. No idea where I get such a chatty nature. Probably someone way back in my ancestral line.

After we "did art," Callie and I ate dinner (spiral pasta with veggies and cheese, blueberries, plums, crackers with almond butter for me only, and milk), had a bath, danced all funky-funk, and went to bed. It was a great date. I'm totally going to call her again. I might even have to change my Facebook status to "It's complicated."

Surrender to the Maw

I think Iain's feeling better. How do I know this?

Breakfast: scrambled eggs (2), an entire piece of toast with butter and jam, half a box of blueberries ("BuBo!"), milk.

Lunch and snacks at daycare: crackers, vegetables, fruit, graham crackers, milk, juice, water

Dinner: half a box of blueberries ("BuBo!!!"), two whole plums, one bowl of vermicelli with butter, tomato sauce and parmesan, one biscotti with almond butter, two lettuce leaves with balsamic vinaigrette, and one quesadilla. Milk.

Behold the Maw. Ask not what the Maw wants. It wants food, and you had better provide.

Morning Meeting

Good Morning! It's 5:38am and I would like to welcome you to our morning meeting. No, I don't consider this an ungodly hour. I'm wide awake, why shouldn't you be?

As you can see, I have milk, a teacup, a spoon and the phone. This is what a man needs to conduct business. A monkey shirt helps, too.

Oh, excuse me - that's the PM of Japan on the phone. I have to take this. Garcon! More Tea, if you please.

Shhh!

Don't alert The Mom!

I weel sneak over to the Kleenex box. She ees not looking. I weel carefully take it down from the side table...I weel....

TAKE EVERY SINGLE KLEENEX OUT ONE BY ONE AND CRUMPLE THEM ALL!!!

Ha, ha. She weel never know. I am so stealthy.

SOS

We're so tie-tie. We lie here in the sun, shedding. (well, ok, only Juno is shedding) We listen to Iain alternate laughing and screaming his head off. Sigh. We need a break.

Today, he "initiated play" with Callie. That's a good thing, even though in about 14 years it would be a bad thing. So it's all about context. Just like, when Iain throws me half a blueberry that's ok, but when I get up and lick his high chair after he's out of it, apparently that's bad.

And when The Mom wipes his face with a moist rag, that's good. But when The Bobo licks his face with a moist tongue, that's bad. Really bad. Baddest.

I dunno. Having a puppy is complicated. Me'n Juno need to go to a spa for a weekend.

Report from the Trenches

My secret history spy reports on his most recent archival research. You may remember his previous trip to Square State Archives. Or maybe you remember when the history spy visited Peach State Archives.

Now he's in the Land of John Winthrop, finding that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

"The Commonwealth of [Winthrop] requires the adjutant general to maintain the state's military archives, so that stuff isn't in the boring state archives in [Capital City]-- it's in the state military museum in [Smaller Inland City], which is run by the effing National Guard. Their archives are **&&^ STUNNING, and I'll be spending months of my life there at some point, because they have thousands and thousands of amazing documents from the early republic. Which, okay, check it out: most white men were in the militia, so when the middling militia dudes of (Town X) petition the governor for relief from the oppressive and dissolute dandies of the despised officer class or whatevs, you get a whole social picture of the, you know, white guy community. A couple hundred court martial records! Detailed transcripts of testimony! Social picture! Blaaargh!

Anyway, the [Winthrop] Military Museum...is dark. Apparently they don't get many visitors, so they don't turn on the lights. You ring a doorbell to get in. And there are three staffers, only one of whom is an archivist and cares that you're in his reading room. It's a huuuuuuuge 19th-century artillery armory, with gunports and good fields of fire for when the s*** goes down, and the staff wanders off and leaves me alone with my swanky messenger bag and the irreplaceable handwritten correspondence of, like, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. And Elbridge Gerry, who nobody cares about, but still. And so then I have to go to the bathroom, and I wander alone through the dark building and across the wooden drill floor, my footsteps echoing against the stone walls. It &*^^-ing rocks."

This is a good life, dude.

-me

P.S. Oh! Oh! And they just bring out everything I want all at once, so I'm sitting there alone with huge piles of irreplaceable handwritten correspondence from the late-18th century! I must have a trustworthy face, because my god."

Yes, dude. You do have a trustworthy face. And a potty mouth. [Note kettle calling pot black.]

Crayons!

Iain thinks crayons taste good. Or, at least, he enjoys watching me lunge for the crayon and say, "No!"

So I came up with a substitute. They're still crayons, but they're plastic pencil-shaped crayons. You have to twist the base to get the crayon out, and Iain is still too little to do that effectively. So he can play with them (and put them in his mouth) without there being anything to swallow.

As you can see, even though he knows he *can* color with crayons, he'd really rather just chew on them. And since two of those new teeth have now broken through (with one more on the way), he's got a lot of chewing to do.

Sooo Tie-Tie

Here's what post-daycare looks like. Cleo in L'ville put up a super-prosh picture of her daughter asleep in the car, so I had to retaliate. It's a car-photo smackdown!

[EDIT: Check out the you-know-whats in that first photo. That's right: cheeeeeks.]

Homemade Bacon (Not Made by Me)

There was a time when Dr. H spent his days learning creole, talking about post-structuralism, and generally transforming from a student into an intellectual. But even when he was at his most anthropologically sophisticated, Dr. H was always drawn to the earthier side of things.

For instance, he decided he needed some money. You might think that graduate students with funding have money, but you would need to think again about that. Graduate students, especially in central Florida, got nuthin'. So Dr. H sweet-talked his way into the kitchen at a local restaurant. He spent a couple of years churning out cheesecakes and muffins and learning to make all kinds of interesting sweets (often in portions suitable for 50 people).

You know what they say about change, right? So Dr. H now works in SoCal, where he uses math and stuff and helps people understand stuff and stuff. I don't know what he does, stop asking me.

But he still loves the foodstuffs. And the earthier the better. So, of course, he made his own bacon. [Technically, "we" made bacon. I dunno who "we" are, but it sounds interesting...]

He started with 48 lbs. of pork (yes, 48 lbs. He says that's the bacon from 5 pigs. See what I meant about portion size?).

Then he made three rubs with differing flavor elements (like brown sugar and bay and maple).


Then he cut up the meat, put it into plastic bags with the various rubs and marinades rubbed and marinated, and let it cure for 7 days. Yes, a week. You have to turn it over periodically so the marinade/rub does its thing on both sides.

Dr. H has always been a fan of this kind of preparation. Once, in about 1994, he got an itch to make flavored liqueur. That involved a liter of vodka, a pint of raspberries, and the zest of a lemon. Put it all in a brown apple juice bottle, let it sit in a cool, dark place for 2 weeks (shaking gently every day), and strain. Voila! Raspberry liqueur. It was an intense, shocking pink.

After the 7 days are up, you take it out of the bags, wash the meat, pat it dry, and then let it dry cure in the fridge for another day.

Once the bacon is done in the fridge (see above - that's a lot of bacon in the fridge! I'm guessing that "we" ate out that week), you smoke the meat. Dr. H smoked it with apple and pecan wood, and he got the meat up to 150 degrees F.

After that, you remove the skin (apparently this is easier once the meat has cooked) and store it. They vacuum sealed it so the meat would last longer, which seems like a good idea when you make 48 lbs. of bacon. I mean, even I cannot imagine eating that much bacon in, say, a week.

Sliced, it looks like this:

So what's the moral of this story? If someone asks you, "what will you do with a PhD in Anthropology?" you can tell them: Make Bacon! Or, you know, understand human society. But mostly, Make Bacon!

Other Things Picked Up at Daycare

In addition to germs, Iain has been learning at daycare. As you can see above, he finally figured out what crayons are for (other than eating).

He also likes to use them for a game of "Take it out of the case. Put it back in the case. Take it out of the case..."

I think he picked up his new dance moves at daycare, too. Plus, today he asked for "more" using both the word and the sign language move for "please." Hooray for learning and growing!

Baby Steps

Today we have some improvement. Iain has been fever-free most of the day. He went to the grocery with me and saw his friend Effie. She gave him a bit of bread with almond butter on it and he actually ate a little (and threw a mini-tantrum at the checkout when I took away the mangled remains).


Once home, he drank some milk, ate a bit of fruit leather, ate some blueberries, ate a bit of fig, tasted mango sorbet (though he missed the point and let it melt, then licked it off his fingers), and rejected cottage cheese. Since his diet for the last 48 hours has been entirely based on yogurt, this is a big improvement.

Then he actually played for a while. And now he's napping. Let's hope this is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sickie McSickSick Returns to Doctor (film at eleven)

Dateline: Lexington

Today at 4:10, Iain had a fever spike to 103.5. And this was with the Motrin. So I called up our doctor's office.

And let me just take this opportunity to thank Iain for having his little hot flash during business hours. Thank you, son.

Anyway. We drove over there, where they took it again (No one trusts The Mom!) (103.2 on the Forehead-ometer, so there), dosed him with Tylenol, and checked him out. Our regular doctor is on vacation, so we saw his partner, who thinks that the ER doc got the diagnosis a little wrong. Not bacterial pneumonia, but instead a virus in Iain's throat that has gotten down a bit into the lung parts nearest the sternum.

The implications of his disease being viral are, of course, that antibiotics are not going to cure it. This is actually a relief, because it explains why, after 24 hours on antibiotics intended to last only 3 days, he was still super-feverish and so miserable. Nevertheless, the doctor prescribed a new set of antibiotics (same medicine but in a more concentrated form and for more days), plus an alternating fever-medicine regimen (Tylenol, three hours later Motrin, three hours after that, Tylenol. Rinse, repeat).

He also broke the sad news that Iain is going to have a fever all weekend, be a pill, refuse to eat, and generally feel like poo. Awesome.

Did I mention that when he was screaming earlier I think I saw a second tooth coming in? This one's a lower incisor. I couldn't verify, but I think it must be so because THAT WOULD BE THE ICING ON THE CAKE.

Of course, I'm taking good care of Mommy, too. For example, I went to Liquor Barn and bought a bar of white chocolate. See? I could be a doctor.

Jinx!

I got an email this morning titled "What Next?" and now I know the answer:

Teething.

That's right. Iain is not only sick with pneumonia, but he also has a tooth coming in on the side. I'm not sure if all the side teeth are molars, but it's definitely the flat-on-top kind of tooth, not the thin-along the ridge kind.

So he's feverish, coughing, cranky, and TEETHING.

Awesome. With awesome sauce and an awesome cherry on top.

Not The Right Kind of Excitement

So you know how I wanted Iain to go to daycare to make friends, learn new things and pick up a few germs? Because he'd only ever been sick twice in his life and he needed to build up his immunities like other kids?

I didn't exactly have this kind of germ in mind.

Last weekend Iain enjoyed his first daycare cold. Runny nose, fever, cranky, the usual virus routine. No biggie. And he had a doctor's appointment on Monday, where the doctor confirmed the viral/cranky/no biggie hypothesis.

But then, today, he started to run a fever again. He didn't eat at daycare and they said he was "sad and tired" all day. They took his temp in the afternoon but it was only 99.

By six, though, his temperature was 103.8. Ouch.

So I called the after-hours number, sat on hold, left a message, and waited while no one called me back. Then I drove Iain over to the urgent care, which is open until 7. When I walked in, the nurse said, "You're not going to like this."

One does not want to hear that.

Apparently, the doctor was leaving at 6:30 (it was 6:21) and had four patients stacked up ahead of me. So I just said, "Thank you." and left. To go to...

The ER. Luckily for us, the closest ER has a special entry just for babies and children. In 5 minutes, they had Iain braceleted, took his temp (104.4!) and dosed his tiny hiney with Tylenol.

Two swabs and one chest X-ray later, we know that he does not have strep or the flu, but he does have a bit of pneumonia in his right lung. Joy. So he's on a powerful antibiotic and Motrin and hopefully by the time Daddy returns he'll be right as rain.

As for me, I need to go whack myself in the head with a board.

How the Dogs Spend Their Day

[whistling] La Dee Dah, [typetypetype] Doo Te Doo, [typetypetype] What's that barking?

[looks out the window]

Why is Juno levitating? Why is Boris flying with his ears like Dumbo?

What's UP IN THAT TREE?

Staying Up Late, Partying with...Noodles?

Thanks to his exciting new Daycare Fatigue Schedule, Iain eats dinner at about 7pm. This is crazy, considering that his previous bedtime was 7. But whatevs. We're just rolling with the punches here.

What's the meal for which the Little Man arises from his bed? It's something I totally cribbed from Callie's mom.


You boil up a cup of small-ish noodles (here it's a mini version of lumache, which is Italian for "snail" and which is just a little shell-shaped thingy) in very salty water. Drain, then put them back in the hot pot with a bunch of butter (like 2 tablespoons). Swirl to melt the butter and coat the pasta. If necessary, add more butter. (Do not rinse your pasta. You want the starchy coating to hold the butter.)

Once the butter is melted, I toss in a half cup of minced veggies. Here, I'm using the last of a bag of frozen veggies my FIL bought while he was house-sitting. It's green beans, peas, lima beans, corn and carrots. I mince it so that avoiding the veg becomes impossible.

Stir the veggies in, then throw on a heaping handful of shredded cheese. I use a combination of mozzarella and parmesan, because we're being Italian here. Ciao, 'more.

The trick is that by this time the pasta is only warm. The cheese is not going to melt. That's fine, because the whole idea is that you put the noodles in a bowl, pop it in the fridge, and use it later. Little Monkey comes home tired, cranky and hungio? Throw half a cup in a bowl, microwave for 30 seconds (which melts the cheese!) and serve. It's tasty, it's relatively healthy, and you can add whatever you want (tomato sauce, shredded chicken, herbs...).

As you can see above, I added some butter-poached carrots. Iain did not eat them. But they looked nice on the rug. And yes, since you asked, we go through a lot of butter around here.

New Routine

Daycare is kicking Iain's butt. Today, he was supposed to get a haircut at 4:30. He looks like a hippie. And not in a good, hot, Lenny Kravitz kind of way.

But at 4:30, little man was in no condition to let anyone near him with scissors. We tried, but eventually Becky The Hair Goddess had to stop the madness.

So. Basically, we're in a new routine because daycare makes Iain so, so tired. We pick him up around 4:15, then drive back home and hope we just miss the "rush hour" traffic. When we get home, he's so cranky he won't eat or drink or play. We toss him into bed for an hour, after which he wakes up ravenous and we feed him his dinner. Then bath, then bed (again).

Bathtime is fun, though:


I think we need more bath toys (yes, that's Iain's ear on the right):


At least we have one Totally Awesome bath toy. Devil Duckie, you're the one!


For the moment, the new routine is ok. We're just trying to help Iain adjust. And since he had another pretty good day today (nap, food, circle time, no whining), I think he's settling in. But this fatigue at the end of the day is hard to manage.