will&amelia

news

Amelia started preschool today.  she gave us kisses and skipped off without a backward glance.  after we pick her up we (the kids, nana, and I) are leaving for the cape for a few days, so Amelia will miss one day of school.  When we get back I will have lots of pics to share, including some of a major project finally finished!!!  In the meantime I am really excited that I am getting away for a few days, with nothing but one book (Heat, by Bill Buford, which is a library book that I need to finish cause someone else has it on hold and I am sure that that person is cursing me!!) and one knitting project - none of the stress that I create for myself by having so much going on at one time. okay, maybe two books...  anyway, have a nice week!

new lists

i added two new lists on the sidebar, one of wonderful shopping sites, and the other of craft blogs that I like to visit...  these are some wonderfully talented and very prolific ladies - I don't know how they manage to finish so many projects!!   I love visiting them but I get very jealous!!

bunny

This bunny (I like to think of her as Cecilia) was made from a pattern from the Wee Wonderfuls put-together book.  Isn't she cute?  She has her own little toy bear.  Cecilia went to a new home Sunday, as a belated birthday gift.

finally!!!!!!!!!!

Here is A on her birthday, with the pink-frosted cake, as promised.  As it turns out, she didn't like the frosting (7-minute icing, from The Joy of Cooking), I guess she prefers buttercream.  Now, however, she thinks that it is pink frosting she doesn't like, so when the time came to frost a cake for her party, she wanted white.  And here is a shamefull secret - I went and bought two cans of Duncan Hines frosting at the grocery store!  Full of trans fats and all sorts of disgusting stuff!!  And it was so satisfying to just scoop it out of a can and not have to make it!  So there!

Mr. Will also enjoyed Amelia's party, and he was not so picky about the frosting.

A couple days after A's birthday we went to the Bronx Zoo.  Here is W asleep in my bed that morning (we had to wake up both of the kids, though usually they are awake much earlier than this.  go figure)  he is THE SWEETEST THING ON EARTH.  I would like to devour him.

Here is another cutie.  it is hard to believe that in the wild she might attack you.  I wanted to bring her home.  During the winter she and I would cuddle on the rug in front of the fire, while I buried my fingers in her thick fur.

Amelia got a big-girl bike for her birthday.

I am working on figuring out flickr, and then I will have like a zillion pics you can see.

mornin'

good morning...  sorry, camera is in my car i think, which matt drove to work, so no pics right now...

the walk never happened, too hot i guess - just my children and i wandering all over the capital area, sweating a LOT, and then we couldn't even go on the carousel at the park because something called the family resources center had rented it for the day.  not that the thing was full anyway, there were like 9 people on it, and aren't we a family? but no we couldn't go for a spin.  when we were getting back in the car we spotted one other leche lady, also wandering about, wondering "what the hell?".

we are at home today.  amelia seems to have forgotten how to play, she goes from aimless wandering to aimless laying around to aimless naughtiness.  willie, that paragon of cuteness, is currently playing peek-a-boo by himself with an old scarf.  i think i smell a poop, the 2nd so far today...  the trip down to the laundry room in search of a clean diaper seems like a long one...

have been feeling down about this nursing school thing, and thinking maybe i should look into the direct-entry route to midwifery?  i kinda wanted to go the nurse-midwife way just cause it is the more mainstream, and therefore legally/politically easier, route. 

another frustration:  I keep having ideas about sewing clothes - I learned about these new simplicity patterns by a designer called wendy mullins,  i really like them, but where do you buy good fabric for clothing?   all i can find is crap that i wouldn't wear in a million years.  i think you need to live in like nyc or something in order to find anything decent.

alright, enough complaints for now.  my children need some attention...

sleepless

hi lovies, i should be sleeping but it is really really hot in my house and i just can't seem to settle.  I PROMISE new pics in the next couple days, but we have been busy... 
Amelia had her 3 yr doctor appointment today - she is 26 and a half pounds and 35 inches, putting her at about 25% for height and 20% for weight, which is higher than she was at 2.  the doctor asked her what she had for breakfast, and she said "chips" - I was horrified, but it turns out that she did get ahold of a bag of barbecue potato chips this morning that her father had left out in his man cave down in the basement. 
I have been making berry "hand pies" as the recipe in gourmet magazine calls them, to sell at a bake sale at Bushnell park tomorrow in honor of worldwide breastfeeding week (as an aside, I am convinced that little bits of something are falling on me and it is freaking me out - some sort of sleep-deprivation induced hallucination, I hope).  Anyway, all my hand pies leaked; I hope they are not too messy for people to want to buy.   I tried one, and if I do say so myself, they are pretty dang yummy.  We breastfeeders are walking in the morning from the capital building to the park for a picnic and fund-raiser. 
On a related topic, I tried raw milk today for the first time, and it is a revelation.  I expected it to taste sort of barnyardy, but it is sweet and creamy and delicious.  To use a beverage analogy, the crap I've been drinking all this time is the Boone's Farm of the milk world.  I am SO HAPPY that I live in a state where raw milk can be sold, cause you know, you can't get the stuff everywhere.  Severely misguided lawmakers have banned it in quite a few states.  The think is that to sell raw milk, you have to have nice healthy animals - to sell pasteurized, homogenized milk, you just have to have a cow that is still breathing.  Also raw milk usually comes from jersey cows, which give smaller amounts of creamier milk, whereas big dairies making pastuerized milk usually have holstein cows which give lots of lesser quality milk.

alright, my eyes are closing of their own accord - i am gonna take advantage of this and try to get some blessed shut eye before one of the babies wakes me up!!!!!!!!