This week definitely felt like the rut. I had a video chat with a friend and she said that life these days was kind of like, “Lather, rinse, and repeat.”
Halloween is coming up. I’m a little torn about how to mark the occasion. The eight year old loves Halloween, and she has come up with a family costume concept. Last year they all went as characters from The Little Prince – the eight year old was a Rose with a costume courtesy of a costume sale at work; the three year old was the Fox; and the baby was the Little Prince himself – basically a green sleeper and a yellow scarf. This year they will all be weather themed. I’ve finished the baby’s costume, but she will only wear it if bribed with food…
The baby is really into climbing on chairs these days. If the chairs are tucked in or inaccessible, she will pull them out so she can climb on them. I made a comment to the Husband how 75% of my day is pulling the baby off chairs. If I don’t get her off the chairs, she will do one of several things: 1) rock back and forth while holding on to the back of the chair, 2) climb onto the dining table/ her sister’s distance learning table/ any variety of table that is around, 3) get into stuff -the other day she got into my sewing things and started pulling the pins out of the pin cushion, 3) get herself stuck under the table if she hasn’t pulled the chair out far enough, 4) Lord knows what else. I love her persistent sense of exploration, but man is it exhausting to keep up with her. Given that the other two kids were still months from crawling when they were this age, it’s definitely been something I wasn’t quite prepared for.
One thing we started doing is putting the chairs on their sides after meals. It kind of makes our dining room look like the aftermath of battle, with all the fallen chairs.
Being with the kids every single moment, I’m finding myself noticing milestones in more minute ways than before. Like this past week the baby also has started putting things away – if you give her a cup and open the cup drawer, she will put it in. If you hand her her dirty clothes, she will put them in the hamper. I feel like with my other kids, these things seemed to happen more gradually. Perhaps they did, perhaps they didn’t. Either way, I feel like I’m noticing the baby’s lightbulb moments more – the moment when she does something and realizes she did it. And then does it again.
This week’s drawing class assignment was about mapping and siting – that is to say, being able to take proportions and recreate them on the page. We had to set up a still life and draw it. This was mine:
The sippy cup was my initial inspiration – I thought the shape of it would be visually interesting. And from there, I added other feeding adjacent items. But, it turns out that most baby and feeding things are all curves and soft edges. I’m sure there is something purposefully “feminine” in that design, but the homogeneity of line doesn’t make for a very complex still life. So I added the pile of books – which I guess are kind of a feeding item since I do a lot of reading while pumping and nursing. On the whole I’m quite delighted with this little slice of right now life.
I’m really enjoying the two older kids playing together these days. Usually it is some imaginative play session led by the eight year old. Last week, they got good use of the backyard playing things like “Coronation Day” and “Camping”. The latter involved making a “fire” out of overgrown okra pods.
What We Ate:
Saturday: Smoked Salmon and Bagels. It was simple Saturday and this is about as simple as it gets. Bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon, onions, tomatoes, capers.
Sunday: Squash and Apple Schwarma. Ages ago we had a subscription to a vegan meal kit. At the time, the meal kit’s recipes were being developed by Mark Bittman, which was one of the main draws for my wanting to subscribe. Anyhow we no longer subscribe, but several of the recipes that we got from the kit was still use, this one most of all. It is the perfect balance of savory and sweet and a good way to use up squash.
Monday: Stir Fry Bok Choy, Mushrooms, Tofu. Kitchen sink stir fry.
Tuesday: Pasta with Mustard Greens and capers. This is adapted from Dinner Illustrated. The original recipe calls for broccoli rabe.
Wednesday: The Husband cooked. He made some kind of corn, cheese, one pot thingy that we ate in wraps. It was actually quite tasty.
Thursday: Mac ‘n’ cheese and hot dogs. The Husband made post dance class dinner. Although, I think in truth the eight year old made the mac ‘n’ cheese – it was the stuff in the blue box.
Friday: pizza and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It was the eight year old’s turn to choose. She’s been really into seeing all the Star Wars movies. I’m not as into the whole franchise as other people in this house, but I thought this one was pretty good – it was surprisingly funny, which I think is the mark of J.J. Abrams.