interlude

just a little tease of snow

the real snow

Our snowy family interlude is over....Charlie's family came for Thanksgiving and were greeted by our first snowstorm of the season. Exciting if you don't have to leave the house, not so much if you have to pick up your parents at the airport on a hugely busy day when the entire city has gone snow-mad. With reason this time at least. Usually it's a general "sweet nellie, one inch of snow!" hand waving, but this time there were full on slow-motion ballets of cars smashing into one another, impassable hills, and traffic traffic traffic. It took them most of the evening to get home but thanks to the Yeti with his snow tires it was accomplished. That car once again earned his keep, getting us in and out of our unplowed and iced over neighborhood to pick up Charlie's sister and niece from the airport.
The Yeti got pressed into service one more time on Thanksgiving. Our friends had to park at the beginning of our neighborhood and I drove down and ferried them up to the house. We enjoyed a frenzy of food and kids.

I have mastered the double baby carry. They are a little cramped and there's some complaining, but it's two babies hands-free! And what's that in the background?

Then there were people holding babies, feeding babies, wandering around the mall and people watching on black friday, the fireplace always going, and Christmas being allowed to unfurl in the house. We have a strict no-holiday rule that releases on the day after Thanksgiving. We both love the holidays so much that it's hard to wait sometimes. Then on friday morning, the huge holiday playlist was accessed on the ipod, I put on socks with candy canes on them, and we went to pick out a tree.

Yay! Let Christmas 2010 begin!

cheesecake

Liam contemplates bubbles

Liam loves baths. He wiggles his feet and stares wide-eyed at the washcloth. Dash is more suspect, squinting or throwing his arms out wide for rescue. It is undeniable that they both require bathing now, because their accumulation of neck rolls and propensity for......collecting things in them.

Dash finds bubbles vaguely threatening

So every few days, when one is sleeping I slip the other one into the kitchen sink. It's also the only time I see their entire bodies. It's cold outside, and even though the house is warm they're bundled in footie pajamas and onesies. Neither is a fan of cold air on their delicates, so diaper changes are a speedy affair. In the bath I actually get to see entire little boy bodies. It's fun!

pop quiz: can you tell which boy is which?

I'm a STAR!

tasty relaxation

Harry lays a pet-me trap in the kitchen

It's Charlie's favorite time of the year to cook: fall. Recent experimentations have been delicious. He tackled his first souffle the other night. It looked beautiful coming out of the oven, full of fresh herbs and cheesy-ness. We had to take turn feeding babies to eat it, so by the time it got onto my plate it was a bit deflated but still good.

souffle!

An even better creation was his italian sausage on Sunday. Our local butcher had just enough fat-back in stock. It's spicy, because we like things that way. The first application was with orichette kale and aged parmesan. We both ate heaping bowls. Pasta in the fall, when it's been dark out for hours, is just the thing. Bonus: there are three more pounds sitting in the freezer. Yay!


In the relaxation category: my view from the kitchen table. After I get up in the morning and Charlie's gone off to work, I put my little netbook there and hope that in the next four or five hours I'll manage a cup of coffee and some reading. It's usually with one baby on me, which is fine. Much of the time I'm either feeding babies or sitting with both of them in my arms trying to make everyone calm (thanks, streaming netflix on my ipad... there are few things you can do with no hands).


But sometimes, like right this very minute both babies are not really asleep but entertaining themselves in the other room and I'm drinking a very strong cup of coffee and looking out at the trees. I love how once the leaves have turned and fallen, you notice that the trees never really are naked. They've always got a fuzzy coating of moss to keep them warm.

stylish boys

ready for an outing

For those of you not in the knitting-know, a bsj is a Baby Surprise Jacket. It's a pattern invented by legendary knitter Elizabeth Zimmerman in 1968. It's actually one of the easiest things in the world to knit, being all stockinette stitch and knitted in one piece. The fun is in the piece itself. Zimmerman was very math minded, and when you follow the pattern it's like driving down a dark road with no headlights with her giving you directions. You just have to follow it. You knit and knit, and increase and decrease and end up with a freaky misshapen lump of yarn that is somehow going to be a sweater. Then you lay it down and tuck in some edges and suddenly there it is. A cute wee sweater with really natty diagonal seams on the front lapels. Seam up the shoulders, put on some buttons, and you're done. I've made many of them for babies I've known.

Liam sports Krista's bsj

perfecting his fashion expression

Dash has a fashion forward sweater with removable placket

why yes, I look good.

One of the things at my baby shower that made me teary were the presents made from my crafty friends. And remember, everything came in sets of two! Now that is a lot of work. The boys have crocheted afghans for their carseats, another set that they use when napping, and a set given to me at the hospital by a group of little old ladies who make blankets for preemie babies. And then there were these sweaters from Krista. She's the kind of knitter I want to be, who always uses the most beautiful yarns (even if they are simple and practical) and turns out items that look even better than the pattern pictures. She made one bsj and another contrasting sweater for the boys, and they are finally big enough to wear them. The yarn she used is so soft that the boys could wear these sweaters naked if they wanted to.

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Mom's been asking to see a picture of both boys face-on. Liam often cooperates, but Dash is notorious for turning his head to the side and gazing off into the distance. Here is a series to show you how incredibly difficult it is to get the boys to hold still and look at the same place at the same time.

problem: there are so many in this photo, including the steak in the foreground.

Crazy baby! Dash is pretending not to know him.

As good as we are going to get. It was a damn good steak too.

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And here's just a video of Dash being super cute.

bananarama

Thank you, babies, for taking a nap this afternoon that was long enough for me to make a batch of jam. I read the recipe the other day and it seduced me with the serving suggestion of eating it on toast with peanut butter. Peanut butter and bananas on toast are just about culinary perfection. A way to preserve that and have it without having to rely on the capricious when-is-the-banana-perfectly-ripe threshold? Divine!

For some reason I had it in my head that bananas had no pectin and would be a brown mess during preserving. I was wrong on the pectin, and brown-ness was avoided with the addition of a generous amount of lemon juice plus a secret ingredient that I had never used before: fruit fresh. I'd read about adding vitamin C tabs to jam, but never tried it. Magically, the jam retains the sunny creamy color of a ripe banana. It's a little dark because of my other secret ingredient, a dark rum that Gary brings back from Cayman. The texture is smooth and creamy, with little bits of banana for texture.


Result: I found myself standing at the kitchen counter, turning my "is it set or not" taste of the jam into me eating three straight spoonfuls and having to resist eating more straight out of the jar.

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From last night: the boys were fractious and demanded to both be held. Liam really didn't have any idea what he was doing with that arm, but it sure looks cute.

Daylight saved

the king of the gnomes approves

One of the best things about a house full of infants: lose and hour, gain an hour, whatever. It's all the same to me! I have very little idea of what time it is these days. I can tell that it's dark outside a lot more now, as we tumble into the fall season. Usually it's also the season of ibuprofin, when I spend hours and hours in the yard putting plants to sleep for the winter and raking some of the 5 billion enormous leaves from the broadleaf maples that surround the house. This year though, the boys forced me to hire a yard service. Besides the boys, that's the best thing to come out of all that bedrest. I never would have been able to justify spending the money on it. Well truth be told I really did enjoy the crazy workout of the fall season. But there's absolutely no time for it now.

chickens enjoying the fall sun

Where I was going with this is: our yard has never looked so awesome. The wind blows and the leaves fly and on Tuesday afternoons I look outside and it's immaculate. Last week they trimmed down all of the ferns and hostas.

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Cuteness persists indoors as well.

First entry in the category of "completely unsafe locations that an infant will happily sleep, thus necessitating constant supervision but it's not really that bad because the child is asleep." : on a living room chair, covered by Charlie's pajama pants.

second entry: Dash; laundry basket.

Liam thought that I was going to help him set up a MySpace page to pick up eligible infants in the Seattle area, so he posed in front of the fire.

Still life with sleeping baby and brussel sprout hash. Not pictured: shrieking baby in other room

Dash squints in your general direction

seven weeks

Liam resorts to cannibalism

The boys have been on this planet for seven weeks now. Their biggest achievement so far? Eating! They still want to eat about every two hours, and go from sleeping or happy to Instant Rage Must Eat. Yesterday I was getting the two of them changed, knowing that they'd be hungry soon. My tandem change routine involves laying them both in the pack and play, then taking them out one at a time to fix up, then stacking them side by side back in the pack and play, picking them both up at the same time and walking into the living room.

Yesterday, halfway through changing Dash he pegged at HUNGER and started screaming. I got him done as fast as I could and moved to Liam, who also started shrieking. He's been experimenting with a new wail that sounds like a rusty barn door being abused by a crazy farmer. Let's just say....it's loud. Nature dictates that Liam must be changed, so I soldier through the clamor and get it done.I can't help it... I begin laughing, because it's just so damn loud in here.
At this point both boys cannot remember eating any time in the last seven weeks and have gone to defcon one. I get them stacked together and lean in to pick both up. Up they go, and I have a little head on either shoulder, looking up at me and loudly accusing me of being a horrible mom. I'm laughing harder now.
Then they both have the same idea at the same time. Mid-wail, two heads start flailing back and forth and I feel hot little mouths on either side of my chin and suddenly two crazy babies are sucking on my chin trying to get something, anything out of it. This of course does not work but it bought me 20 seconds of silence to carry them to the living room, plop Liam in a boppy pillow and drape Dash over my lap, and insert the bottles of life giving nectar.

Sudden silence and two sets of hazel eyes gazing up at me in adoration. Luckily they don't seem to be holding the long wait at their favorite restaurant against me.

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Seven week pictures, as usual meant to display the differences and they somehow end up making the boys look more and more alike.

it's obvious to me which is which, but many people seem to be getting confused

swing your partner round and round

Dash on the left, Liam on the right

Some of their crazy little animal sounds are so funny.