so we’ve managed to play outdoors quite a bit this week, despite the fact that it’s rained about 16 out of every 24 hours since sunday. today’s actually the first day we didn’t make it out – the winds were so fast that it wasn’t even a good stomp-the-puddles kind of day. and the twits had no school. we were doing good – made pancakes this morning, then they cleaned the toy room, then had a campout under the kitchen table, then there was some lego-playdoh-fusion action – until about 4 PM, when “drawing with markers at the kitchen table” time turned into… *rummage-rummage-rummage* – *snick* – *wild cackling in stereo* – “DO ANOTHER ONE, DUDE!”
looking up from making dinner, i found out that this is the sound of dramaqueen digging in the box of reese’s peanut butter puffs, smashing a cereal ball in a hole-puncher from the arts-n-crafts box, and then he and spazmonkey laughing their asses off as the smithereens fly in every direction. i turned the tv on not long after that.
so. the week in review! there was a dry spell sunday afternoon, and it was kind of warm, so we had to bust out the bouncy house. every kid within a block instantly smelled it on the wind and came running.
with VIDEO, because i’m awesome.
note how the house of squeals and head injuries is leaning? yeah, that wind i mentioned really picked up right before the rain kicked back in. VIDEO!
monday afternoon, evilgremlin had his first football practice. this was every bit as amusing as it sounds.
luckily, the practices are held on a field adjacent to a nice playground, so the twits were pretty cool with not being allowed to play football:
monkeybeef? not so much. he grunted and hooted and hauled ass toward the field every chance he got. luckily, he’s just as entertained by sticks and grass as by football, and easily distracted.
contrast the park district’s manicured grass with our yard, and most of our neighbors’ yards, which are heavy on the trees and kind of sparse on the grass… so there’s not much to distract the boy from hauling ass across, say, three yards. without his shirt on. because he just figured out how to take it off. 14 months old and not even walking yet, you’d think he’d eventually get concerned that he no longer had a clue where mommy was, or where he was, for that matter. or that it was kind of chilly without his shirt. but you’d be wrong! the kids finally ripped off our ailing back porch door last fall, so as i was out practicing my fiddle on the porch and watching the big kids play some form of tag that involved nerf darts, hiding and teams, i watched the baby nonchalantly hop down the porch stairs, take a moment to do the truffle shuffle (i’m guessing this was his victory dance, though it was more “unfortunate” than “triumphant” looking), then meander through the big kids’ feet… and keep going through the next yard… and the next yard… he seemed happy enough to see me when i finally decided he wasn’t coming back on his own, and i had to haul him back myself before he hit the street, but i can’t say he actually missed me. turd.
now, i’m no label whore… but my kids are! every one of them was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the word GAP screaming across the chest. lame… i should be ashamed of myself for both the label-whoring and the kids-in-matching-clothes thing. all i can say for myself is that i’ve never bought a single one… grandparents have kept them all covered. but they really are the most awesomely warm and soft sweatshirts on the planet. i’m actually considering looking for one in my size. (given that, at 5’1″, i wear a boys’ size 12, i’m thinking this is likely possible.)
other outdoor fun for the week included contributing to the compost pile:
(of course i took a video!)
and some lightsaber action:
and some puddle stomping:
(i think he thinks he’s throwing the horns. E for effort, boy!)
the indoor fun included several failed attempts to make a cake in the shape of a hamburger. it requires baking any kind of cake in a deep, round bottomed bowl, turning it upside-down, and then slicing it into three layers. haven’t pulled that off yet for a variety of reasons. but at least the cakes have tasted good. we did, however, totally pull off cookies in the shapes of pizzas:
chocolate chip cookies (without the chocolate chips, since the tops are covered with m&m’s), coconut shreds for cheese, and most importantly, the icing: peanut butter. a little powdered sugar to give it the right consistency, a bunch of red food coloring to give it the right color, but it’s 95% peanut butter. have i mentioned i live for peanut butter?
almost as much as monkeybeef lives for pizza. seriously. like last week, i made an onion-mustard-goat cheese-spinach tart. any of those ingredients sound particularly kid-friendly? right. but it was round, and cut into wedges. so monkeybeef, not known for being the brightest baby you’ll ever meet, ate the living shit out of that. so anyway… i fed him a meal of pizza… and cookie pizza. hog. heaven.
also, handing food to a baby that’s loaded with red food coloring is kind of like handing him a sharpie with the cap off. i’m just sayin. file that away for future reference.
other indoor entertainment included “teaching the baby to sit at the table like a big boy”:
the twits heaped him with praise and kisses, and shared their goldfish crackers with him. and by “shared,” i mean “let him eat the whole bag in about 3 bites.”
and finally, the twits turned watching me browse the web for a new 8-man tent into a lengthy discussion of what tents were for, what camping is, and WHEN DO WE GET TO GO, ALREADY?!?!? when the thunder started in this morning, they decided that was the perfect weather to go camping… under the kitchen table. pussies.
yep… it’s a VIDEO.
no, wait… this is the “finally.” and, finally, we cleaned out the fridge and freezer – i’ve mentioned my hatred of my fridge, right? i bought tahini at the organic food store a couple weeks ago. spent an hour looking for it so i could finish the roasted-red-pepper-parsley hummus i had started. this turned into organizing and cleaning the fridge as well. and it was a treasure-trove of now neatly-organized desserts from the last six months. i found irish stout chocolate cake, pear-maple johnny cakes, a cinnamon-sorghum ice cream i invented and named “mayan sorghasm apocalypse,” rhubarb-eggnog bread pudding, rum-raisin-applesauce-eggnog rice pudding, cherry-chocolate-eggnog bread pudding, chocolate-eggnog brownies, (noticing a patern here? yeah, put eggnog on the list of “foods that rock,” slightly below peanut butter and chocolate, about even with cheese) chocolate-bourbon-pecan pie, cherry pie, pumpkin pie, jamaican rum-coconut-lime banana bread, caramel-walnut upside-down banana cake… (yeah, i’m gonna go eat some more as soon as i finish this blog post. wheeee!) so, we cleared some space in a responsible fashion: eating multiple desserts for lunch, and collecting aerodynamic expired food for composting.
(if you’re feeling smug at this point about how your kid(s) have/will never eat an entire meal of junk, refer to the heading of my blog… the part that says GO FUCK YOURSELF. breakfast was homemade sourdough whole wheat pretzels with cream cheese, apples and grapes. dinner was spaghetti and meatballs and corn on the cob. lunch was awesome. they’ll survive it. promise.)
and monkeybeef helped himself to anything he could rip open with his eight teeth: ONE MORE VIDEO! this was actually pretty civilized. usually, when he grabs one of those damned yogurt smoothies, he punches through the foil top, dumps it carefully on the floor, then gets down on all fours to slurp it up.
so the family fun will continue this weekend… got a babysitter, but she can’t start til next week, so we’ll still get our friday night jam session with the neighbors, but we’re going to have to skip this week’s saturday night outing with our non-walking-distance friends. instead, saturday is going to be a swedish breakfast of rye bread and pickled herring, swedish pancakes with whipped cream and lingonberries, followed by some shelf-building and gardening (translation: probably naps for the big people), then lunch at the sushi restaurant around the corner – because feeding raw fish to almost-five-year-olds is funny! we shall console them with a bento box of tempura chicken “mcnuggets” after they’ve drawn the attention of every other diner with their theatrical retching. then, sticking with the theme of “fun at the children’s expense,” they are going to help us with a massive crawfish boil. if we can find crawfish this far north/inland. which means tomorrow is going to include some more grocery store field trips. wheeee!
and now it’s bedtime! tonight’s tornados missed us by 20 miles – no sweat. monkeybeef passed out hours ago, the twits weren’t far behind, the thunder is tapering off, and evilgremlin hit the “environmental sciences” bookshelf in the basement for the audubon guide to north american weather and is reading up on types of lightning under his blanket with a flashlight, and i hear some cherry pie calling me.
