Things

(1) I apparently don't know the definition of pandemic. It sounds so...dire. And yet:

Cases of Swine Flu in US: roughly 100

US Population: 304,059,724


(2) Someone here is fighting with me about the way toilet paper should hang. I put it on properly and the next time I go in, someone has turned it around. It should hang over, so that if your hand is dirty, you don't touch anything but the paper to get it. If it hangs to the back you run the risk of touching the wall behind it and then the next person does and BAM swine flu.



(3) Landon pooped in the potty 2 days in a row. He's not very good at seeing it coming, because you only get about a 10 second warning, but if you can get him to the potty in time. Awesomeness and lollipops are sure to follow. When asked if he would consider peeing in the potty for say - M&M's. He expressed a liking for M&Ms but then declined the offer, because apparently they are not a good enough motivator to not walk around in your own pee all day.



(4) Landon also put on his own pajama bottoms on last night - which means, I am a shirt, socks and shoes away from not having to dress an extra person in the morning.



(5) I have discovered the best parenting hack of all time. We have a glass shower door, and in order to lure him into the shower, I squirt a little shaving cream on the door for drawing. By the time I have him washed down, he's ready to spray down the door with water to clean it off and get out. Total awesomeness - for now, while it still works, because we all know these things won't last forever.



(6)

A wedding through the eyes of a 2 year old.

Landon here. Mom gave me her camera a few times during Shane's wedding, so I wanted to share some of my pictures. And I'll include some of the ones she took, since mine are limited.

Mom was there. She was drinking her first and only Mojito. I don't think she liked it, because it took her forever to drink it.

And Dad was there too.

Pictures were taking forever so, I set out to find the perfect stick gun. Dad made me put it down, even though he knew I loved it and wanted to run away with it, he said that someone might get hurt, and I really don't want to hurt anyone so, I put it down. That's not to say I didn't go and visit it and mess with it when they weren't looking, but when they looked, I dropped it. Those two have no clue what they're doing.

The ceremony was cool I guess - Daddy was talking, but I couldn't really see him. I was telling Mommy about it and she just kept shooshing me, Aunt Kimber gave me a peppermint, I also made her day by calling her "Kimmie", so that was awesome. Oh and they set up all these chairs for me to run around in, most awesomest obstacle course, EVAH. I mean, I guess that's what they were for, cause no one stopped me.

After the ceremony we went and ate. I conned Grandpa into getting a bunch of stuff to eat that I didn't want. I didn't tell him I had just eaten a cheeseburger Happy Meal on the way there.

Then, I felt the need for a cape. Because capes are awesome. Everyone should have a cape. My cape gives me the ability to fly. You just can't really beat that. Grandma took me out to her car to get a safety pin to make sure my cape stayed on and she gave me this awesome flashlight too. Mom's picture isn't very good here, but she said it's an LED light and the plastic part glows red. You can put it over your eye and push the button and everything looks red. I did that a lot.

Mom said something about cake after dinner and I was super excited, so I jumped off her lap and ran, nay, flew (in my cape) to the parlor. This is the corner of the cake table and the foot of the photographer.

I also got a picture of the cake and if you squint real hard you might be able to see Elizabeth's arm.

I don't know why Mom rushed me in there so fast, I mean, I've seen people cut cakes before. GAH!

They totally surprised me with the ice cream bar though, so Mom and I split each kind of cake and some chocolate ice cream. She seemed kind of antsy about how I was eating my ice cream, and when I was done she made me walk out to the car with her and she changed my clothes again. That's the 3rd time in 2 days that she's stripped me down in the back of Daddy's car - for as far as I can tell - no apparent reason. Not happy about that!

I came back in the party wearing a totally different outfit, it was sooo embarassing, but no one said anything to me. The DJ gave me this awesome glowing bracelet, it's not glowing today or anything, but it did glow all night. ALso, it makes a circle, but you can un-do it and re-do it and un-do it and re-do it and un-do...well, you get the picture. Also, I'm not so good at the re-doing, so I had to keep getting help with that part.

I made friends with this other dude and we ran in circles for a good hour at least, before Mom finally gave me some bubbles. I spent forever blowing bubbles with just Mommy, and then Lane came out and blew bubbles with me too.

When Uncle Shane and Elizabeth drove off, Mommy took me back to the car and she stripped me down again! Totally naked! And put on my pajamas in public! We got in the car and left. I tried really hard to stay awake and keep her company on the way home, but I'm pretty sure I was out within a few minutes. Weddings are exhausting - who knew there was so much to be done?

On Beyond Bovine #18 - Cauliflower

I'm just going to put this out there.

I hate cauliflower. I do not like it. Sam I am.

I do not like it raw, I do not like it cooked, I do not like it when someone dresses it up and pretends it's the same as mashed potatoes, because it is NOT. Don't even pretend it is.

So when I saw this recipe for vegetable cookies that contained other elements I did like, I thought, well maybe it has a mellow enough flavor that this might just be the only way I will eat it.

So I made vegetable cookies. And if you've ever mentioned carrot cake in my presence you will know that I am anti-vegetablizing sweets. Actually I can handle carrot cake, but those people who put spinach in brownies as if a teaspoon of spinach in a brownie they give their kid somehow means it's a vegetable make me crazy - don't ruin sweets so you can feel better about giving him a cookie. Luckily for me these are like zucchini cakes, except not zucchini and not fried. So not like them at all.

Here we go:

I used 1/2 a head of cauliflower, 3 green onions, 2 carrots, and the equivalent of 1 regular sized clove of garlic. When Kay made hers she said they were bland, so I added the garlic, because I'm a garlicoholic. I can't help myself. I often want to add just one extra clove, just in case. I resisted and only used one clove, well 2, but they were small.

I put everything in the food processor until it was finely minced, not like mush, but well minced. My food processor is tiny, so I had to do it in shifts, but it was fine. Then everything went in a skillet with a couple tbsp olive oil.

I sauteed them for a while, until they were pretty tender. If I had to guess I'd say a little over 5 minutes. Then I added 3/4 cup of flour, and stirred it around until it pretty much disappeared.


Then I added salt (not as much as is pictured here, I threw about half of that in the sink, so maybe like a tsp.)


And pepper. I did about 10 twists.



This is the point at which you want to taste it, because you do not want them under seasoned. Once seasoned, I removed it from the heat and added the cheese. I didn't use Gouda, and I didn't measure. I used the cheese we had - mild and sharp cheddar - and I probably used between 1/2 and 3/4 cup.


I mixed it until well blended and then set that aside to cool slightly. Meanwhile, I beat 2 eggs and 3 tbsp milk together.




Once the veggies were cooled slightly, kind of went off recipe here, I wanted to temper my eggs. Kay didn't do this, but I'm thinking I'd have ended up with scrambled eggs if I did what she did. So I took a little of my veggie mixture and put it in my eggs and mixed it well. I then took a little more and did the same thing. Basically it prevents my eggs from scrambling from the heat of the veggies.

Then I mixed everything together and dropped in patties on a baking sheet. Very neatly in exact rows, as you can see. This is the whole batch, I got 12 cookies that were about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. They don't expand during baking, so you can get them fairly close together.

I put them in the oven at 400° for 20-25 minutes.

We used Ranch dressing for dipping.

I gave one to Landon and winced while he took a bite, thinking I was going to get yelled at about how "THIS IS NOT A COOKIE, MOMMY!!!" But surprisingly he loved them, he ate 2 1/2 of them. Which is 2 1/4 more than Clinton ate.

I like them, I was surprised by how garlicky they were considering how little garlic I used. I loved that I could not taste the cauliflower. They do not reheat very well in the microwave, and are definitely better warm.

I'm thinking that I might want to try some other combos. Sweet potato and carrots or maybe pumpkin with cinnamon? As a replacement for zucchini cakes? Adding meat? Kay suggested maybe adding bacon, Clinton thought sausage might be a good addition.

Also considered they might be a good appetizer in a smaller dollop.

Clinton didn't like them, he's not quite the garlicoholic that I am and so I understand that.

But if I have to eat cauliflower, I think this is my preferred method.

Well that was...breaky.

Today is Monday and is completely Monday-like. MONDAY WITH A VENGEANCE!

Landon was awake this morning at 4:45. The jerk. Nothing makes me later than waking up earlier than planned.

I drove into work thinking I had forgotten my sunglasses, which I happened to find on the passenger seat while gathering up my lunch bag. Monday morning eye-pain! For no good reason!

Also, I have no clue where my badge for work is...so I got someone to let me in the building and on my floor and I can't leave the floor unless I go admit my lack of a badge to the receptionist, who will issue me a temporary one - which isn't a big deal, except they turn it off at the end of the day (as well as having turned off my real badge), so I have to tell them tomorrow also if I'm a total moron and still can't find it.

**********

I did enjoy my blogosphere break, in fact it gave me enough relaxation about things to go places and enjoy them instead of taking pictures and wondering how I was going to tell this story and that story and not everything was about this damn blog. And that's how it was in the beginning, and I liked that. We went to Clint's cousin's graduation party on the 18th (super yummylicious crawfish) and I didn't even take my camera out of the car. Never mind scary drive over there with the flooding and the rain, and the ant bites that still haven't completely disappeared 10 days later, it was an awesome experience, to just..be somewhere.

Sween-een

Monkey Back-a-set

Confetti Eggs

The beauty of being 2 is that people will actually come down to your level to let you crack a confetti egg on their head, instead of running away.

Me a Bunny, Go Hop Hop

Taking a break from all the hard work of toddlerhood

Boinga Boinga

Gotta Pink Egg

Toddler Trampoline WWF

I think I need a break

So, there was the unexpected death of another baby of another blogger over the weekend, and I'm just going to take the rest of the week off. I'm wearing purple today for Maddie. Because there's just not much else I can do from here. I didn't read the blogs of either of these women prior to the deaths of their children, but a lot of people did and it has rocked a lot of people. I cannot even pretend to imagine what it feels like to be on the other side of that situation. But between that, and being loaded down like a pack mule at work, it just seems that it's time for a break for me.

My original purpose in starting this blog was to let my family know what was up with us, and to give them a glimpse into our lives through pictures and words. I just don't have a lot of words right now. And the ones I do, I don't generally use on this site. So, I'm setting up auto posting for the next few days with just pictures - and if I'm not feeling up to it on Monday, I'll continue posting a picture or two a day until I do feel like it. And I know I will eventually feel like it again.

Egg Hunting is the New Normal

Over the past few days Landon participated in 4 Easter Egg hunts (that doesn't include the one from the previous weekend). So this morning when I finally got him ready for school as we walked towards the back door he said "Hunteen uggs?" "No, sweetie, we're done hunting eggs this year."

He was so tired last night that he fell asleep on the way home, at about 7:30 ish and didn't wake up until I went to wake him up this morning. I guess that's one way to get out of a bath.

Self Indulgence - Updated

Nothing I say really matters today. Yesterday I went on and on about pollen and its terribleness.



And then I read about a baby who is about a year younger than Landon who didn't make it.



And then this morning I read about a girl who has run away, she was angry and her mom gave her permission to run down the street to release some of it, just like she's done before and this time she just didn't come back. [The very moment I originally posted this, they found her.]



Anything I have to write just all seems so arrogant and self centered. My kid is healthy and alive and I can see him on the cameras at the day care, I know where he is.

Pollen Manifesto

Pollen and I have a rough relationship. We always have. I believe I must have been some kind of anti-pollen activist in a former life, because it seems that pollen has always had it in for me. Starting at birth. Apparently it wasn't until we moved out of the country to a small city that my mother realized my eyes were actually much bigger than she had originally thought.



And it wasn't until I was 11 or so when I had month long headaches that we actually had me tested and found that I was indeed allergic to a bazillion things including, but not limited to, pollen from every tree that ever existed within my eye sight. So my first actual line of defense was allergy shots, which worked for quite some time. And then I stopped taking them. I really don't know why, but we eventually just stopped.



And when I entered college I had a regimen by which I woke up every morning and took a generic Chlortrimaton. It was necessary if I wanted to, I don't know, breathe. I went to the Quack Shack one time for something like pink eye and got a doctor who actually was willing to look me in the eye, unlike another certain doctor. And had the following conversation:



"Are you pregnant?"



"No."



"Do you take any medication daily?"



"Birth Control and an anti-histamine."



"WHAT?!?!? YOU SHOULDN'T BE DOING THAT, YOU SHOULDN'T BE DRIVING WHILE TAKING ANTI-HISTAMINES, THEY PUT YOU IN A HAZE AND YOU DON'T EVEN REALLY SEE ANYTHING!!!"



"Oh, so are you volunteering to follow me around and resuscitate me when I finally fall over from not being able to breathe?"



"Well, um...er...there's a spectrum...and uh...you must be on the low end...and maybe it doesn't effect you that way."



"Thanks, can we talk about my eye now?"



So for the past 3 years I managed to have some kind of pregnancy/breastfeeding bubble surrounding my immune system which was awesome and I haven't taken an anti-histamine on a regular basis since we started trying to get pregnant [3 years ago].



And as of 2 months ago, when we finally gave up the last of the breastfeeding, my bubble has burst - pollen has again shown its ugly face. I have not been well for any length of time in 2 months. Coincidentally tree pollen is at extreme levels according to my weatherman of choice - which he cheerfully tells me every morning. This last bout has been the worst. I am re-starting my daily anti-histamine regimen in retaliation. I will not go down without a fight.



I'm tempted to blame Obama, since it started happening almost exactly when he was inaugurated, and I figured if Bush was responsible for Hurricane Katrina then why couldn't Obama be responsible for the extreme levels of tree pollen? It makes just about as much sense.

Just to be clear, he's not pooping, he's looking at turtles in the pond.

Yeah, this is later than my normal posts, but I've got the writer's block. So sue me.

I should have known something was up

Ok, so a few days ago I posted about the weird cloney cow dairy thing. And while THAT was a big joke put on by Ben & Jerry's. The fact that the FDA is allowing food (meat and dairy) from cloned animals is true. Oh, and they didn't bother adding any kind of restrictions that a company has to even tell you if that's what they're doing. Nice, huh? You may never know.

So apparently I fell for a big old April Fool's joke. Except not.

Why having a regular camera instead of a bazillion dollar camera worked out for me this time.

Saturday was my company's annual Easter Egg hunt for the kids. This is the first year we've actually made it there. So naturally I decided to try to sabotage the whole thing from the very beginning.


Last week I got sunburned so badly while sitting at a cookie booth that I became a leper by Thursday. So obviously, I totally forgot about sunblock for this little event when we left the house that morning.


We stopped at Target and couldn't find our regular sun babies stuff in the aerosol can [killing the environment too! Bonus!], but we found some other stuff that said it had the same attributes.



When we got to the Ranch, I changed his clothes and then didn't read the directions on the sunblock and sprayed him down with it. Head to toe. [Don't spray on face, spray on hand and rub on face.]


Not 5 minutes later he was complaining about his eyes and his entire face was beet red. My guess is that with his sensitive skin he had some kind of allergic reaction to it, I took him into the bathroom to try to wash it off his face [FAIL, it's waterproof, and you can only use so much hand soap on a toddler's face before you're just adding to the problem, since it will burn his eyes too]and fight loudly about whether or not I was trying to kill him with soap and water. (Clint said he was glad there weren't too many people walking by because it did sound like I was beating the crap out of him the way he was screaming.)


He still looked pretty bad, but it was fading, so we went on in to the party. First stop was the Merry Go Round, where he was the first one on and everyone else got on RIGHT AROUND him, therefore deserve to have their pictures on the internet. The thing is, the other half of the merry go round? Completely empty. If I had a better camera you would see he was still weird looking here.



They had this cute little boat thing, you had to be under 36 inches to ride. He loved it. Also still weird looking here too, but luckily my camera doesn't pick up on that...now if I can just teach it to not pick up on my muffin top and double chin, we'd be in business.




From there we went to check in and get a cookie and then it was time for the Egg Hunt. No candy, but plenty of little toys in the eggs. After all the eggs had been picked up, he was bouncing around his basket and dropped one and a little boy picked it up for him and put it back in his basket. Landon had no clue he'd even lost that egg, so he gave the kid a weird look for putting an egg in his basket.



And here's where we begin to make progress. He WANTED to sit on the Easter Bunny's lap and ACTUALLY sat on the Easter Bunny's lap. Awesome. Maybe he'll be ok with Santa this year. You honestly probably don't want to know what the tongue sticking out on the side of his mouth was about, but we gave him some Benedryl shortly after this shot.




From there things only got better. We went and stood by the moon bounce until he decided that, yes, he'd like to give that a try. When he first went in there were a bunch of kids inside and he sat right inside by the door for quite some time. He did eventually crawl to the other side when prompted by both me and Clinton peeking through the netting. Maybe he needs another 6 months or so to get his balance together enough to like the moon bounce.



Last time we had the opportunity to try out a petting zoo he freaked out, but this time was okay with the goats, and super excited about the bunnies!





And the last major attraction was a pony ride. We managed to get him on the stubborn donkey who needed someone pulling him AND pushing on him to get him to move. But he loved every second of it.


After visiting each of the attractions [actually we missed the obstacle course because it was off to itself kind of] we went back to the playground, where they have a little plane. Landon got on the plane and sat between two girls. Two girls were up front. Clinton and I were just beyond shocked at how social he was the entire day. It was awesome. I know I say awesome a lot, but there just aren't any better words for it.



From the plane thing we went to the sandbox where he was intent on making a castle and that's when we noticed how red he was getting. We argued back and forth about whether he should drink something [us] or not [him, clearly he was too busy to be drinking stuff]. At which point we decided to be the meanest parents in the world when we made him leave the sandbox in favor of not being sunburned, since he had no sunblock on anymore. We were just going to go in the building with the A/C to cool him down and drink some lemonade, but he had a fit about a cookie, so we knew it was time to make an exit. [FYI - that's not a sunburn on him, he just gets REALLY red when he gets hot.]




All in all, it was a good day and major progress was made on all fronts.

Monthly Newsletter #30

Dear Landon,

Today you turn 2 ½. 2 and a half. Are you sure you’re not 12 yet? You’ve been here for so long!

You have an endless fascination with families right now. And your imagination is great. A couple days ago you found a baby monkey in the kitchen and the mama and daddy monkeys were in the dining room, so you brought the parents in to be with the baby monkey so they could talk to him. About 5 minutes later you shared a cake you found in the dining room. You are sometimes a baby and sometimes a kitty and sometimes you are a monster getting me. You believe kitties belong outside, so when you found a kitty outside and I told you that we needed to go inside, you set the kitty down. All in your imagination. All awesome.

Somewhere a long the way you discovered magic. There’s a certain ball trick that is in the collection of toys at Grandma and Grandpa Logan’s house that you have always kind of liked. Last time we went down there, you decided that you not only would now require a cape, but also a hat, and a wand. When it came time to leave, you packed everything in your coffee can hat and brought it home with you. You have played with it every day since. You've kind of ditched the ball trick in favor of making things disappear. When you decided that the hat didn’t fit quite right, and I told you I could make you a hat out of paper, you agreed, and when I asked what color you wanted, you said white, and since your cape is white I decided not to bother with asking whether it should be a wizard hat or a top hat – I went with a top hat and you’ll thank me for that one later. I made the main part of the hat and asked if you wanted a brim. You did not. And now I can’t help but think you look a little Pope-like in your cape and hat.

One of your friends got sent home from school with pink-eye the other day and the teacher told me that they thought you had it too. I wish they would have called me earlier in the day and I could have taken you to the Dr. that day, but they waited until I picked you up at 6 – you know, AFTER the doctors all go home for the night. Anyway, I took you in the next morning and we discussed your latest long lasting but not severe cough that I hadn’t bothered with and the decision was not regular contagious pink-eye, but sinus infection backing up and shooting out of your eyes – although still the diagnosis on your bill said conjunctivitis. In hindsight I’m kind of glad it worked out that way, you were miserable and cranky, and if I had just ignored your teacher and sent you to school anyway, you wouldn’t have made it very long. But with just three doses of antibiotics in your system, you were ready to go to school the next day. Well, kind of. I mean, we were back to your regular disdain for leaving the house instead of the monstrous one that shows up when you don’t feel well.

Speaking of which – you are becoming a homebody. When we go anywhere, inevitably about 30 minutes to an hour after we get there, you start whining about wanting to go home. You hardly ever seem to actually have anything in mind once we get there, but you want to go home none the less. Just to be there.

Your love of music is still pervasive. We were watching TV a while back and the Wii Music commercial came on. You have played the Wii music game before; you were pretty good at the trumpet. But you were super excited about the prospect of drums. So I pulled out the drum you got from Grandma and Grandpa Wood and let you have at it. It may or may not have been fairly early on a Sunday morning, and your father may or may not have been sound asleep when I did it. And I may or may not have known that at the time. And I may or may not have some slight passive aggressive tendencies. I just want to sleep in every once in a while, and if I can’t sleep in, NO ONE can sleep in. You’ve been banging on that drum ever since. Your father wants me to admit that it was a bad idea to bring it out. I admit nothing – I’ll put it back up the day he gets up with you at 5:30 or 6 am on a Saturday morning and lets me sleep until 8 or 9. In other words, enjoy playing the drum kid, it’s here to stay.

Love,

Mama

Unintended time capsule

A while back I mentioned the recipes I had been typing up from the boxes of a couple of deceased family members.

I know that a recipe box is never intended to be a time capsule, but it's interesting, what I learned just by reading through and typing up recipes. Some I knew, some I didn't, but there are things people said and used that I don't know if someone just a few years younger than me would know about. I know I was googling a few of them.

Spry - a brand of vegetable shortening like Crisco - no longer made.

Sweet milk - milk straight from the cow, before removing the butter fat - closest available grocery store item is whole milk.

Tender quick - this is something used to cure meats - like salami.

Salad oil - your oil of choice, vegetable, canola, etc.

Moderate oven, fast oven, slow oven - 350°, 400°, 300°

Gas refrigerator - I had no idea these were even made, and am kind of confused as to why the gas part matters.

Some terms I knew; soda = baking soda, ice box = refrigerator, but I wonder how a generation beyond us might not know, or what things we currently use that they will not get. Given the current trend, newpaper clippings may go by the wayside, replaced by computer printouts.

But beyond any of that, my favorite time capsule style item was this sheet, which came from a box of Glad garbage bags: