Food for thought

Not having a refrigerator for a few days (sucks) and has had me thinking a lot about food.  

I like food.  Well, I don't like food, I LOVE it.  [As a side note: I make many references to Pixar movies in my emails and blog posts that Woody thinks are esoteric and no one gets.  Like when I wrote that email awhile back about Maya crawling & the title was, "we've got ourselves a crawler" clearly referring to Cars when Mack (the semi-truck) is hauling Lightening McQueen (race car) to California and the four hot rod cars pull up alongside a very drowsy Mack and say, "we've got ourselves a nodder" and then start playing Kenny G music to make him drowsier.  Deb, c'mon, you got me on that one, right? Anyway, that last sentence is a nod to Ratatouille when Linguine (the kid/chef) says to Anton Ego (food critic) "you're skinny for someone who likes food" and Ego replies, "I don't like food, I LOVE it."] 

Anyway, now that I have finished school and have an abundance of free time, I find that I want to spend it all in the kitchen.  I want to cook and bake and create.  Unfortunately, I have two little guys that don't enjoy food as much as I do and scream 'grody' (baby sis) and 'yuck', 'icky', & 'that's bisgusting' (Owen) when they come to the dinner table. 

But, I am so inspired by Alice Waters lately and her approach to food and cooking.  She suggests buying seasonally and looking for the freshest, best looking produce (or meat, bread etc.) and not messing with it too much.  A little olive oil here, a little roasting there and voila, a tasty, delectable dish.  The cookbook pictured above is wonderful and we've (just Woody and I) enjoyed many delicious meals (my mouth waters thinking about the roasted eggplant and tomato pizza).

OM?  They like their food processed.  Frozen waffles, oatmeal, cereal, crackers, Dora-shaped mac-n-cheese, frozen mini pizzas, chicken nuggets...you catch my drift.  (Of course, I am the one responsible for what is on their plates..Sigh..)

But there is hope.  They both like most fruits, yogurt, hummus, whole wheat cous cous, brown rice, fresh muffins, and Owen will eat a pile of green peas (not baby sis).   This spring and summer my goal it to increase their consumption of vegetables.  So, the picture below shows our new garden.  Woody built it and OM and I started a whole bunch of seedlings in little pots that we'll transplant soon and since farmer's market has finally started we'll be buying lots of veggies to plant from there too.  I cannot wait!  I'm hoping that the 'garden to table' approach will be the magic that gets them to enjoy fresh veggies as I do.

Below is a photo of my new black beauty (there will NEVER be a true black beauty like my beloved nissan pick-up [who, by the way, is living large south of the border in glorious Mexico...my friend's dad bought her and even had 'black beauty' painted on her and refers to her as black beauty..viva Mexico!!]) but my new fridge is big and the doors open all the way in the badly built space because we upgraded to french doors...hooray!!

Bon appetit...buen provecho...happy eating!!

Bunny rhymes with sunny...and honey.

It's sunny and 80 degrees!!  I'm wearing shorts and a tee shirt, no shoes!  Few things make me happier.  To fully enjoy the glorious sunshine we went to the zoo today.  For a Monday it was packed but Oregonians know the sun-filled days are few and far between so you have to take advantage of it.  We went with one of Owen's friends from school, Scott, and his mom.  So fun.  And did I mention it was glorious outside?  

A couple of weeks, maybe a month ago, Owen started connecting the sounds of two similar words (e.g., shoe/true) and would tell us they matched.  To which I would reply, yes, they rhyme.  Now he uses the word rhyme and he notices pairs all the time.  Today we ate some bunny crackers as a snack and I mentioned about a million times how sunny it was so he said, "mom,  bunny rhymes with sunny...and honey."  I love him!

Baby sis pointing to the bear down below.  See it?  She's knocking our socks off with her four and five-word sentences.  "I fun @ Eli's house" (we went to Eli's bday Saturday); "I take boots off"; "I pinch Daddy's face"...and many more.  I love her too! :)

The sweet and not so sweet

These photos of OM leaving New Season's market captured an incredibly tender moment when Owen spontaneously grabbed Maya's hand and said they needed to hold hands b/c it was dangerous to cross the street.  Ahhh, so sweet!  He held her hand all the way to the car.

The last two photos capture another spontaneous moment when they both decided to pick their nose at the dinner table. Ahh, how not so sweet!  When I grabbed the camera Maya started digging for gold to get a good one.  Yin and yang I guess.

We  have a busy weekend of farmers market, selling diapers, bday parties, visiting newborn babies, going to see Monsters v Aliens and, unfortunately, shopping for new refrigerators and electric lawnmowers.  Documentation to come...

Bug Explorers

Yesterday we watched Sid the Science Kid on PBS and it inspired me to go outside (since it was finally sunny!) and find some bugs for OM to check out.  The show was about magnification so I located a couple of magnifying glasses too and when Woody got home we overturned some bricks in the backyard and saw lots of rolly poley's, worms, and various other bugs.  Both Owen & Maya held the rolly poley's and I'm afraid Maya have squished a couple a bit too hard:(

Another idea I like from the show (I don't really like the show very much overall but yesterday's was good) is having a question box.  When Sid (the science kid) asks his parents a question they write it down and put it in a box.  I think that would be fun to look at at some point down the road.  

The creative side

In my efforts to be a more present, involved mother in OM's life, I've made a few discoveries. Despite my best intentions, it's hard to change who I am at the core.  My three biggest areas of improvement (as Woody would put it) are my cleanliness issues, control-freak issues, and taking things way too seriously issues.

Allowing OM free access to markers, pens, stamps, paints etc. is, well, messy.  It's hard for me to encourage them to create when I don't want them to get stuff everywhere.  But it is so cool when I do b/c Owen, my sensitive, doesn't like to get down-&-dirty kid, put his whole hand in some foam paint today and totally dug it.  Interestingly, baby sis wasn't that into it.  Then we moved on to coloring the sliding glass door and Owen rubbed his hands all over it and seemed to really enjoy letting go of his own cleanliness issues:)  I of course washed their hands thoroughly when we finished but I'm hoping we can all keep feeling free and intensify our exploration, despite the mess.

Regarding my control-freak issues, I feel like I'm always telling them how to do stuff instead of letting them figure it out.  After baby sis continuously dips her paint brush into the water instead of the water colors I always feel like I need to tell her the "right" way to do it.  So, who cares?  She wants to "paint" with just water, more power to her!

OMG, the last one, MRS. SERIOUS, is bad.  Considering I married a goof-ball husband and have two hilariously entertaining kids, you'd think I'd relax.  But maybe b/c I'm the mama and feel obligated to worry about every absurd thing, I forget to laugh sometimes.

BUT, I'm happy to say I'm working on all of it and hopefully OM will grow up to one day say their childhood was filled with joy and happiness (& creativity) and they love their mama to the moon and back (as Owen puts it:)

Ba Ba Black Sheep vs. ABCD

We've heard back that the last video from Maya's class was successfully viewed so hopefully this home movie will work as well.  

You've probably noticed that I changed the template/layout.  I was having trouble reading the other one (even tho I really liked it) and I feel this one is easier to view.  I'd love any feedback!

A whole bunch of bagels

Owen, the kid who always tells me he doesn't want to eat too much because he doesn't want to grow up and get big, told me today that he wanted to eat a whole bunch of bagels.  He was HUNGRY he said and needed to eat a lot!  So, we stopped by Albertson's on our way home from the play gym and bought a bag of mini bagels that he and baby sis happily chomped on while we made our way thru the store.  Baby sis ate about three bowls of cereal this AM and she drinks all the milk too.  It's adorable.  It's nice to have one child who will sit down at the table and eat breakfast while I drink my coffee.  

These two photos are from the play gym @ the rec center by our house (where they take swimming classes).  Today Owen was having fun crashing his tricycle into Maya, and she liked it too.  They play really well together out in public.  At home, it's a different story.