Five minutes

After dinner tonight the boys were in a particularly good mood. This is five minutes of them doing their thing. It's a little bit funny, a little bit zen, and a little bit mind-blowing the types of entertainment they can consume in a five minute stretch.  I often say that keeping them entertained is like working for a king who loves beheading his jesters.

At 1:45 you can hear them having a little click-fest, one of their favorite vocalizations. Budding anthropologists, already speaking !Kung.



Obviously all it takes to keep them happy is dinner, a partially dismantled jungle exersaucer, a big bouncy ball, a changing table, a table, a toy phone, an empty yogurt container, an empty egg container, a couch, a bunch of board books, and each other.

At least now you can see how the room can go from picked up to chaos in under 10 minutes.

Trappin

I was getting sorely tired of doling out individual O's of cereal, so enter the Snack Traps. They are my attempt to free-feed boys without getting treats strewn absolutely all over the house.

Elapsed time to learning how to use snack trap: 5 minutes, with me showing them how and then pulling pieces of cereal to the top so they reached down for it.

Time to deciding that whatever is in your brother's trap is much tastier than what is in yours: 6 minutes. 

Sanity was restored.  

 Liam appears blameless.

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Images from Italy:

We visited many churches, the most interesting being this one made by Massimilano Fuksas, the Church San Paolo. It was completely still and quiet, and the clear sunshine of the day was I think exactly what he had in mind when he designed it. Floating shapes within shapes.

 

 

rosy cheeked

I am trying to enjoy these days where the boys are relatively adventurous about trying new foods, since I know the days of only-toast and nothing-but-bananas are ahead of us. I've managed to get them to love kale, and we kept getting these luscious bunches of beets in our CSA box. My dirty secret? I really don't want to clean up the aftermath of eating beets. As an adult I can barely make it through a salad that has beets in it without getting stained fingers and possibly something on my shirt. I was not looking forward to people thinking I was some freaky Twilight fan who tried to get her babies to look like vampires.

So...I got creative. I roasted a big mess (literally) of beets and pureed them. Then when Charlie made a batch of waffles I had him reserve half of the batter and add a bunch of beets to it. The result was something that looked like it could be crowned with the title "Martha Stewart's Red Velvet Waffles." These things were gorgeous! Intense purple red. And the boys saw waffles and they hoovered them up. They actually tasted quite good, just not the sort of waffles you'd have with butter and syrup. There will be some experimentation in the future with adult Red Velvet Waffles, perhaps with some poached eggs on top and goat cheese.

But for now, mission accomplished. The boys ate a bunch of beets and the only thing left in the end were smiles.

To illustrate, here is Liam displaying his free-form sign language. He does one thing: when he wants more of something, he uses his right hand to whap-whap-whap against the table top. It is usually rather gentle but if I'm not paying enough attention it turns into slams. Dash, on the other hand, signals his desire by raising both hands in the air and opening and closing his fists like an eager crab.




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Images from Italy:
As with many trips, Charlie and I spent our free time playing cribbage. Bliss!

Dish towel, meet your destiny

Dishtowel of the breads of Italy, bought in Italy, now covering rising loaves of semolina sourdough in my kitchen.

One year cocktail party

It's been a year and the boys are bigger and all of those predictable wonderful things. I'm jet-lagged from a trip to Italy so I'll just leave you with this for now: no nap, just a cocktail party.

Hot Chicks

We have one extraordinarily well-fed bobcat in our neighborhood. When I brokered a deal with my friend a few months ago to raise some chicks to teen-age size, we still had five hens. As of this morning we were down to three.  Enter: The New Girls.

Six new hens. Two blue andalusians, two rose comb brown leghorns, a black sex link, and a silver laced wyandotte. Unfortunately the coyote found my americanas especially tasty so I only have one blue egger left. These girls are going to spend the next month in the coop with no outside time, and then I'll start to let them out and see what happens. 

It's now that I'm very happy that I built a coop big enough for them to fly around in so I don't have to feel too bad about locking them in. They will just have to survive on a steady diet of layer pellets, scratch mix, and all of the delicious greens from our garden and leftover produce. Poor things!

The boys enjoyed some time in the sunshine while I got the new chicks settled in.

Doughboy

Did I just spend three weeks on the East coast with the boys and loads of family? Yes! But for right this minute, let's talk pizza.

The dough recipe: Bread Baker's Apprentice
The toppings: an amalgam of simmered tomato sauce from the other night plus a dose of fresh tomatoes and onions pureed till smooth, fresh mozzarella, basil leaves, and dried red peppers
Temperature of the green egg: 650F

Both of us had a craving for Neopolitan pizza, and being nowhere near Italy this was our best bet. The dough was a little slack after 2 hours second rise on a hot summer day so it wasn't exactly toss-able. A little too thick but not too bad.  Six minutes on the grill, then cut up and devoured. 

 Before cooking

After cooking

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In other topics, Jeff and Suzanne brought us this sun after a trip a few years ago. It hangs on a tree outside the kitchen window, and on certain sunny mornings the light actually bounces off of the back of it onto the tree and gives it an elfin glow.