In which I wish I was a Fashion Blogger

There is a teeny piece of me that wishes I were a fashion blogger.

Says the girl currently wearing a nursing shirt with a hole in it and a pair of her husband's socks.

But whatevs.

It's just that I find myself wandering around the internet when David is at work, staring at these wonderful, cute outfits other people just throw together and thinking "wow.  I could never do that.  Never."  It just wouldn't occur to me to mix those things together.  Even when I'm doing my absolute best, I look neat and tidy and clean and put together, but not, you know, fashionable per se.

We brought home our new camera today!! Yay!!  So far I have opened the box, wrestled it away from the toddler, figured out how to charge the battery and taken one picture; I have yet to figure out how to hook it up to my computer so be patient, pictures are coming.

Samuel is obsessed with the $2 pack of small, green soldiers that David brought back from the dollar store the other day.  Seriously obsessed.  He wants to 'play soldiers' all the time now; in fact it's overthrown cutting up paper with scissors, playing 'post office' and 'cooking' on the Cool Things To Play chart.  The only thing better is cooking in the kitchen with mama and real food.

But is anyone else completely grossed out by toddler hands?  Eww.  Who knows what they've touched?  And why oh why can you never completely get their nails clean?  Really, children are disgusting creatures.

We have company coming over for supper on Saturday.  Which means that there will be TEN people in this house eating supper!  I've never cooked for this large of a crowd before, but I am notorious for making too much food so I think I'll be alright.  After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in my mind, I decided that we're going to have a baked ham, steamed peas and homemade mac 'n cheese.  I'm really looking forward to hosting a crowd; one of the main reasons I agreed to the recent move is because a larger house means more opportunities for hospitality.

And speaking of food, I broke out the B@by Bullet today and made several trays of purees for Clara, the ravenous child-wolf that she is.  Sweet potato and Honeycrisp apple, sweet potato and carrot, apple and pear, summer squash and tilapia and peas.  A friend on FB asked me if I blended the tilapia, and yes, yes I did.  I blended everything.  In fact, I should have added even more liquid to the carrots because the puree was a bit too thick for Clara Bear.  I also put a bit of olive oil in with the sweet potato and carrot, because I thought it might help boost some healthy fats in the drying winter months, but I think I'll skip that next time; it was quite olive oily.

I also tried the grain mill portion of the BB and made some organic brown rice cereal.  We'll try that for breakfast tomorrow, shall we, Clara?

Terribly enough, today was Saint Nicholas' Day, and we forgot to give Samuel his gift.  So we'll do that tomorrow.  And hey!  We can take pictures of it now!  Yay!

November 18th

 Whilst washing my hair in the sink this morning I started thinking about church, and that got me thinking about the potluck after church today, and that train of thought led me over the hill of self-pity that I had to feed two children solo since David works, before it pulled into the station of social conventions.

Which is a convoluted way of saying that I wonder just how inadequate my offering of chocolate chip cookies is.  I was always told that the potluck rule is to bring as much food as your family would eat, because the idea is to switch foods, not eat something someone else brought.  And I know that everyone always says "Oh don't worry there's always lots of food" but honestly someone has to bring this food of which there is lots.  Today, though, it isn't going to be me.  Last month's potluck saw me bring some sort of casserole thing, I think, and I feel like you should be able to switch between bringing a lot and bringing a little food.  This month is chocolate chip cookies.  It is what it is.

Plus, I saw you wince there when I said I was washing my hair in the sink.  I'll have you know that if I leave my two children to fend for themselves for the amount of time it would take me to have an actual shower, they will destroy something.  And cry a lot.  And no I don't want to bring the baby into the bathroom in her carseat so don't suggest that.  And no the toddler won't sit and talk to me while I'm in there either.  And don't suggest that I shower at night, either, because if I go to bed with wet hair I wake up looking like...well, let's just say I couldn't go out in public without a hat.  And no, I don't own a hair dryer.

Plus, washing your hair in the sink is so nice because the water is close to your scalp and you get a little massage.

I'll leave you with two more things to ponder.

1)  Could I make a play kitchen out of a television hutch as easily as everyone says I can.  'Everyone' being, of course, Pinterest.

2)  Is making gourmet baby food a hipster thing to do?  Or is it a very hipster thing to do?

Looking back over the past four months...

I cannot believe that my sweet, wee baby, who I waited so long for, is over four months old.  She's a big girl, she is - tall and plump and sturdy, as Samuel was.


Samuel, 6 months old.

Look at that face.

And now I have another one just like it:


Clara - less than a month old.

Gosh, God gives me cute children doesn't He?

But they grow up so fast.  It's the one downside of kittens and babies, they grow up too quickly.  And so this little person

Clara - 3 days old

Has become this person

Clara with Daddy - August, 2012

Way too soon.  Too soon.  We all think so.  Look at that chin, I tell you.  She has Daddy wrapped right around that plump little finger.