seattle, part 1

soy sauce

i just had to title this post with my littlest dude's new nickname, lovingly given by my sweet friends' children. so hillarious!

ah, but i’m going through soy sauce withdraw and i haven’t even left yet. it all started on monday...
this was the first week where i put soy in childcare, gasp, all by himself. no brothers, just him... needless to say he was just fine. mama? not so much. you see i’ve made a concerted effort not to put my kiddos in childcare until i thought they were “old enough”. i really wanted to spend the early years home with them, and i feel incredibly blessed that i’ve been able to do just that. but with the increasing amount of work and dwindling family time, i decided it was time. soy sauce will celebrate his second birthday this coming month and he really needs & enjoys the interaction with the other children, and another adult. and, of course, my childcare provider is really the one who makes it all possible. i’m not sure i could have taken the plunge if it weren’t HER! i’m sure i’m no different than all the other mothers out there crying at the thought of leaving their children in some other person’s hands. so having the perfect person really feels like such a blessing.

still, i cried.

and it’s not like i haven’t been putting the two youngest boys in childcare at all before. we started with just a few hours a week in november... but monday was different. first off, it’s a total of almost six additional hours to work. and i’m giving up my only day with soy. on mondays, it’s just he & i.  and it’s the only day  i have with JUST him! typically, we run errands, play at home, and he just generally follows me around all morning while my middle dude is in preschool. he’s my baby.

and so this monday it was official... he isn’t my baby anymore, and family time (& my sanity) is ultimately more important than my need to indulge in him. and it might sound silly, but it was, and still is, kinda hard on me... i went to drop him off that morning and he was excited to see the other kids, completely unfazed by “what day it was” and how disturbed i was. i sat in her driveway and cried. and i understood what so many other mothers have gone through.

and today, i’m leaving him again. my oldest son and i are visiting friends in seattle. yay! we are really excited for a plane ride, and we are going to ride a monorail too (the first time in like 15 years for me... i think i must have just been in high school last time i rode that thing!) and i get to take pictures of one of my best friend's first baby boy—which, as you know, i have a particular affection for. he’s just a couple months old now, and it will be the first time photographing an infant for me... other than mine. so stay tuned! 


and i’m so excited to have time with my son... i guess i’ve just realized that there is so little time spent with each child individually. it’s an important thing to do, so i'll be trying to find new ways to accomplish that. and by the end of the weekend, i’m sure i'll have my fill for some time! lol


lot’s of firsts. good things to come.


here are some pictures taken of soy yesterday. he’s getting so big! he’s in that middle place right now, where one moment he looks like a little dude... and the next, he’s my baby.

holy cow!

let’s start by saying that the entire family has, or has had, strep throat. yay! that means we are quarantined, at least for the first 24 hours of antibiotics. we reached that point at 3 pm today. however, i am still suffering from a sore throat and froggy voice. just in time for our trip to seattle this week! i’m sure i’ll be feeling better by then though!

so yesterday we focused on staying inside, resting up, and doing what we love. that’s right! cooking & baking.

i made a totally awesome recipe for a beef stew type of dish with mashed potatoes that was the perfect comfort food in our time of need. i took some pictures but they really didn’t do the dish justice and my kitchen lighting is totally terrible. in fact, the overwhelming beigeness (is that even a word?) of my house makes for terrible lighting overall. i’ve been thinking lately that it must change... but that’s another post entirely. i think this means i need to get out of the dang house! i might be losing my grip.

oh, but i almost forgot! the dessert! 
i’ve been hanging onto this recipe for quite some time now. not really sure why i haven’t gotten off my bootie and just tried it. but i did yesterday! oh, man. they are called Chocolate Decedence Cookies, and are, by coincidence, GLUTEN FREE... which is why i picked up the recipe in the first place. and maybe it was my perception that gluten free cookies probably can’t be quite as good as the real deal. so, it took me a few months of staring at it, flipping past it, and flat-out ignoring it before i made them.

the Lord knew i needed these cookies yesterday. he saved them for just the right moment.
chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. heaven.
my husband calls them “steamers” for obvious reasons.

Adapted from LemonPi and based on Alice Medrich’s recipe from Bittersweet
here’s the recipe:


Ingredients:

1/4 cup rice flour (I used Mochiko by Blue Star)

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar 2

teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup pecans

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips

2 sheets parchment paper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a small bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together, set aside.  Place 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate chips and butter in a med. microwavable bowl and heat for 1 minute.  Stir the chocolate butter mixture and microwave again for 30 seconds.  Continue to microwave and stir until the chips have melted and your mixture is smooth, set aside.  In a heatproof bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, and vanilla thoroughly and set the bowl over a pot of barely simmering water using it like a double broiler.  Continue to whisk everything until the mixture is lukewarm.  Combine the egg mixture and the chocolate mixture (should be lukewarm as well) stirring until they are well combined.  Add the flour mixture, 6oz choc. chips, and pecans.  Your batter will look like thick cake batter.  Do not fear, after they bake they will look like and taste like cookies!  Scoop dough (it will look very wet and sloppy) into rounded tablespoons on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper 2 inches apart from each other.  Bake for 14 minutes until the surface of the cookies look dry and set.  With the cookies still on the parchment paper, slide them onto racks to cool.  Gently peel the parchment paper back after cookies have cooled for at least 30 minutes. Enjoy!

sunday

today is cold and yucky outside. my littlest dude is producing copious amounts of snot... and we are staying inside.
minding our own business.
and our business is art.
so we painted.

happy sunday.

unexpected supper club

they descended upon me, took over my kitchen and poured me a glass of wine. it doesn't get any better. we always talk about getting together for dinner, planning a big beautiful meal, and, most often, life gets in the way of what each of us loves... preparing and enjoying food with the people we love. i could have easily flaked out because i’ve been knee-deep in work for quite some time now. but, alas, there was no time to wiggle out, and little energy left to make my usual excuses. i don't think they would have listened anyway. that’s what good friends do, they pull you (kicking and screaming) to the things you need, back to sanity, back to what you enjoy about your life... when you need it the most.

we started around 4:30, and by 6:30 we had a table full of fabulous food. central to the mouthwatering menu was this receipe for "Ultimate Beef Braciole". fyi, we decided adding the eggs wasn’t such a great idea. eeewww. so we skipped that part.
gretchen loves to cook—we all do—but her most recent request was to prepare a fantastic meal and NOT have to clean up the kitchen. and, of course, cleaning is equally a part of who i am... as much as cooking, i hate to admit. so i was happy to oblige. my kitchen took a hit, but all was good with that first bite.

great meal, thanks gretchen!


i do have to say, i did make a mean box of spaghetti to toss in her awesome sauce stuff. but then again, i’m not so sure boiling water for a specific length of time and tossing it into a colander counts as “cooking’... contrary to what my husband thinks.


oh, and then there was the popcorn crack. more on that later  :-)


all in all, it was wonderful. good friends, good food, good conversation, lots of laughing... and they put up with my kids.

here’s a snippet of the fabulous eats:
as you can see, D is loving her food, while Scott is manhandling it... ha!

mother of the year, not.

i have had the roughest day with my kids today.

at least i’m honest.


here’s the issue(s):
my kids must have a plan to over-throw me and my make-believe authority over them.   probably.
crazy kids exhausted by mid-week, first week back to school after break.   probably.
kids so in-tune with mom’s hormones and bad mood that i’m literally pushing all of us right of the edge of sanity.   yep, that’s it!

ultimately, it’s always the parent’s fault.

here’s the thing that pushed me over. like i mentioned, this is the first week back to school after christmas break. in an effort to begin all fresh and ready, i washed all the kids jackets, backpacks and tennis shoes. i guess that was a futile and entirely stupid move... because when i picked my oldest son up from school today he was soaking wet, from head to toe, and covered—seriously, COVERED— in mud. mud in the shoes, mud in the backpack, mud up his pants... i didn’t even want to give him a ride home in the car. i nearly made him walk. can’t you just see me? driving along side my son, at two miles per hour, as he walks along the sidewalk. all the while, the other two boys shouting at him through the open window. almost happened.

so i made him sit in the laundry room and watch the washing machine during his very long time-out. he emerged with a note that said “i love you mommy”. i think it was my remark that i was trading him in (kidding!), that actually got that reaction. see? they do listen sometimes!


i could have been more patient today. more tactful. more forgiving. less hormonal. 
i’ll try again tomorrow because, chances are, i’ll still be hormonal. Lord, help me.


anyhow, i thought i’d post a photo today of something i do with my kids that makes me feel great, like a great mom. maybe it’s an effort to remind myself that i do have good days with my boys. that it’s not all mud and back-talk. christmas break was full of the things i love. quiet, lovely, cozy days with just my family. maybe we all just need some time to get back in the swing of being crazy again.

beginning... again

i’ve never really understood the whole "new year" thing, resolutions, fresh starts, new beginnings and all it entails. in the past, the sentiment of january has simply passed me by, same ’ol, same ’ol... but this year seems different.

this past year has been particularly challenging, for me personally, with my health, more work that i can truly handle, kid stuff, and family. but it’s been a pivotal turning point in my life as well. i’ve spent the last year pushing myself to the extreme and, of course, health problems surely follow that lack of respect for one’s self and one’s body.

but it was also a year of letting go of many unhealthy habits and people that deteriorate the person i want to be. i’m a firm believer that the Lord gives us a ton of warnings before he lays down the hammer, and i think the health problems of the past year were a result of my stress and not giving myself any room to breathe...

i must be totally insane.
but at least i have hope!


i’ve discovered this fabulous new thing called “child care”! this is the first year i’ve ever used childcare and, let me tell you, just three hours can buy you a leg-up on your sanity (and your workload)! that means, i can wrap up work before midnight.

i have hope that, despite more impending surgery, i will be as good as new... or maybe like it never even happened. i will learn to balance my work and family life better so the stress won’t have a chance to manifest it’s self again...  i will find the time to take more pictures and i will be inspired. i will drink lots of coffee and eat lots of chocolate and not feel a tinge of guilt, ever.

i’m very hopeful for this new year. i like where things are going. and i wouldn’t be here without the previous, crazy, 365 days... or more. i’m not really counting. but that feeling is in the air again, and this year i’m on-board for change.

and... i will post more to the blog. even if no one is reading it. because it’s become a catharsis i didn’t know i really needed. i just hope i find interesting things to post about!

here are a few pictures i took this very morning.
the frost was so beautiful, and, like i said, i’m inspired!

happy new year!