Only a month and a half late

We blessed Clara May 2. And here are the pictures. I wouldn't have bothered posting them so late, but I wanted to brag on my sweet grandma.

The dress Clara wore my grandma made in 1950, before the birth of her first child. It was worn by my mom, my two aunts, my sister, two of my cousins, and me. I ended up with the dress as the youngest female grandchild. And now Clara is the third generation to wear it.

The dress is slightly yellowed with age; our best efforts to whiten it got it to an antique white/cream color. 

But the delicate hand-embroidered flowers are as beautiful as ever. My grandma also crocheted the lace, copying the pattern of the lace that was used on her own blessing dress, from 1928. 

 My grandma is a crafter extraordinaire. She has made innumerable beautiful things with her hard-working hands. I didn't inherit the patience to learn those skills. I'm a reluctant sewer. An amateur crocheter.

But at least I did inherit the ability to appreciate the beauty and in this small dress, so painstakingly created. And I'm glad I could give my grandma and my daughter this gift, to pass along this small piece of our family's heritage.

Different ways of looking at a weekend

Imagine that you were strapped to a seat, unable to free yourself. Your only access to food and water depended solely on your captors' whims, and entertainment is slim to nonexistent. Your pleas to be released are ignored. This goes on for an interminable amount of time. It may, for all you know, go on forever.

Torture, you call it? My two-year-old would agree. Parents, though, call this a vacation.

We went to Moab last weekend. It's a four and a half hour drive. Nathan was capable of being good for only about half of that time. We went through a lot of snacks. The books we got from the library to take with us I now have memorized. And we had a lot of crying and "I'm done!"

But we made it. And we even had a little fun in between the torturous drives and too-long hikes.

We had a family reunion in Moab, so we figured, why not? I've been needing a vacation. I forgot that vacations with kids aren't really vacations.

We went to Arches and saw the sights. We did the requisite Delicate Arch hike.

We got to play with very fun cousins, who put up with us for the most part.

We had a great time at Sandy Arch. It started to rain just as we were making the short walk to the canyon. So as we started to run to the shelter of the cliffs, everyone started streaming out of the canyon, running for the shelter of their cars. Foolish people. Don't they know it only rains for about five minutes in the desert? Once the rain stopped we had the arch all to ourselves to play in the lovely piles of sand that give the arch its name. Nathan had a great time inching down the hill on his bum and calling it "sliding."

And we even stayed (mostly) dry through the crummy weather. Nathan had a great time climbing mountains and playing with all the kids. One day we stopped for lunch in Arches and Nathan started playing on a nearby rock. He climbed it for a while, and then he sat down and said "Sit the potty." and then pretty soon, "Flush it!" He has sat on the potty exactly twice. It's good to know he's got an imagination. None of the other kids wanted to play on that rock once it got named the Potty Rock.

Clara is less of an adventurer. Turns out she likes warm bottles and clean diapers, thank you very much. The campground had warm water, so that wasn't a problem, while we were out doing things we had to get creative. But she did have fun. Clara didn't smile until she was over two months, so when we played with her she would just look at us seriously. We used to joke that our solemn baby was looking at us disapprovingly, thinking that she was so much more mature than her silly parents. She smiles a lot now, but doesn't laugh much. It turns out though, that we're just not that funny. My cousin Paige caught her in a silly mood and had her giggling like I've never heard before.

So we made it, without any sunburns or major injuries. And we even had some fun. And I call that success.

Day Out With Thomas

While we were trying to decide what to do with our long weekend last Friday, Fate stepped in. I'll bet my sister-in-law didn't know that she was Fate. She called to say they had an extra ticket to ride Thomas, and would Nathan like to come?

Would Nathan like to come? Do mice like cheese? Do fish like water?

So Nathan went. His first big outing sans parents.

 They rode the train. They met, as Nathan told us, "Thomas Hatt."

 They played games.

This is possibly the best picture of Nathan. Ever. It captures his mischievous joyful busy self perfectly.

And best of all, he got to do it with his super-cool cousin.

While he was gone, we were left feeling a little bereft. And when, while driving, we saw a fire truck WITH THE LADDER FULLY EXTENDED, there was no one to enjoy it. We were like "Oh, wow! We never see that! See that, Nathan?" And he didn't. I guess you can never have it all, can you?

A big thanks to Mike and Erin, for taking our son for a wonderful time, and giving us pictures so we could enjoy it secondhand.

This story is a few weeks old, but I never got around to sharing it. So, what else am I to do during a humdrum week where nothing's  quite happened? It's only Tuesday, so hopefully we'll have some fun adventures soon.

I was gone, so my dear husband was doing bathtime solo. An amazing feat. This is the story as I heard it:

While he got Clara all bathed and dressed, Nathan was busily getting into things. As Levi came back into the bathroom, Nathan was earnestly emptying a small bottle of baby wash onto the toilet lid. "Oh, a mess, I'll have to clean that up later," he thought.

Now, as you know, a dirty boy is a smelly boy. And so Nathan was smelly. So smelly, in fact, that he peeked inside his diaper to see if he was poopy. He looked all clear, so he lifted him up and deposited him in the tub. And the stealth poop, that had been lodged in between his little bum cheeks, that had been the source of all the smell, floated up into the bathwater. Yuck.

Levi was less than happy. As you can imagine. Nathan, sensing the commotion, immediately wanted "duck," his bath towel. So, the kid was rescued, the tub drained and rinsed, the poop disposed of. Nathan was appeased by turning on the shower (he loves the shower). And the kid was cleaned.

Then Nathan had to be coaxed out of the tub. This can take a while. He finally agreed to get out of the tub, so Levi picked him up, wrapped him in his ducky towel, and sat down to dry him off. And where did he sit down? On the toilet lid, of course. The lid that was covered in baby wash.

Levi told me this story just before bed that night. I laughed so hard I got the hiccups.

Oh, the power of a blog

In the interest of fairness, I ought to tell you that the very next day, after reading my post, my husband fixed the computer. Windows is now functional.

And now I know that blogging has the power to effect change. It's so empowering.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

Finally remembering to post this for you all. I used kind of a combination of the two recipes, to make it vegan and avoid using any sugar. And they were still super delicious.

Sweet Potato Biscuits
2-3 med. sweet potatoes (1 1/2 pounds)
1/2 c unsalted butter
2 T brown sugar
2 T white sugar
1/2 t salt
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t ginger
1 1/2 c flour
1 1/2 t baking powder

Heat oven to 400. Wash sweet potatoes, poke with fork, and microwave until tender. Once cooked, mix with butter. Beat in sugars, salt, and spices. Let cool 15 min. Stir together flour and baking powder with fork. Add flour mixture to potato mixture, combine well with fork. Roll out on floured surface into 8x8 square 3/4 in. thick. Cut 16 2-in. square biscuits. Place on greased baking sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes, until golden on the bottom.


Vegan Sweet Potato Biscuits
1 c cooked sweet potato
1 c flour
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
4 T oil
1/4 c. toasted sunflower seeds.

Mash sweet potato (if using canned, make sure it is very well drained); add oil. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together. Stir dry ingredients into sweet potato; add sunflower seeds. Roll out and cut into biscuits. Bake at 275 15-25 minutes.

I've made the first recipe a few times, whenever I have sweet potatoes on hand. It's good enough to be dessert. Seriously.

What I did a couple weeks ago was substitute the oil for the butter and honey for the sugar in the first recipe, because I knew it was super delicious with the spices. So, there you go. Happy experimenting.

More awful cake, please.

Sorry, anxious public. I know I've been keeping you all in suspense. I will post blessing pictures later, once two (2) things have happened:
1. Somebody gets me the super awesome pictures they took for me (hint: Linda).
2. Somebody fixes the computer so I can access Windows again (hint: husband. I can only do so much on Linux, and I've got an editing job coming up.)

So, to tide you over until then, here's what's been going on.

• Clara, as of last Wednesday, weighs 10 lbs 10 oz. That's exactly two and a half times her birthweight. She is nearly 24 inches long, which places her in the 35th percentile for height. As for weight, she's still in the zero-th percentile. But the doctor is really pleased with her growth, and so are we.
• Clara is also learning to reach out and touch toys. It's been fun to see her develop her skills.
• We've taken away The Companion. Wait, this is a blog, and Nathan can't read. We've taken away his Binky. And after a few rocky days at first, we can now shut him away at eight o'clock, and the next I hear from him he's happily playing at 7:30. It's wonderful. I worried about doing it so much at first, but it turned out (like all the other things I worry about) to be not so bad as I had feared.
• This morning I offered Nathan some coffee cake, leftover from my yummy Mother's Day breakfast yesterday. He then promptly informed me that he would like some awful cake, please. I think it's a conflation of waffle and coffee cake. So we had awful cake, and it was very delicious.
• I am a wonderful wife. For my husband loves technology, and so for his birthday I got him a techie gadget he's been talking about for months: an HD tuner he can hook up to the computer and record digital TV--ergo, a homemade DVR. He was very excited and has been tinkering. He's gotten it to work, and there's a recording waiting right this very minute for me to watch it. And I'm sure that very soon he'll work out the bugs so that Windows will boot again. If it weren't for me and my dependence on Microsoft Word, we'd probably never use Windows again.
• I have a wonderful husband. For Mother's Day he got me a rosebush and two (2!) Agatha Christie novels.
• I may possibly be addicted to Agatha Christie. Lucky for me, there will very soon be new Poirot and Miss Marple episodes on Masterpiece Mystery Sunday nights. And my husband can record them for me.