The Heathen Housewife

It is a tradition in our house (as in many houses with small children so I’ve heard) for our children to go through extreme picky phases with food.

Now that I’m eight years into this parenting experience, I’ve learned to take this particular issue in stride. Having a menu planned out in advance helps, since I can point at the menu and say “It’s what we’re having”.

Tonight’s dinner is quesadillas. Sophie saw me making them and immediately went into tantrum mode.I shrugged it off, smiled and said my usual. After all, she’s pretty much refused to eat all the meals I’ve cooked in the last two weeks – except the boxed mac n cheese we ate on Tuesday.

After a few minutes, I caved when she said she’d rather have rice (brown rice already cooked and in the fridge) with a slice of cheese. I’m not *always* *completely* unreasonable, so I shrugged my shoulders and heated it up. We are headed out to swim team practice in a few minutes, and I secretly wanted her to eat something before her workout.

The moment the plates hit the table, the tune changed to “I hate rice. I want quesadilla!” Dammit, after eight years of parenting, I really do know better than to fall into that trap. She’s eating the rice, under much protest.

Again, let me point out that she’s clearly not in the middle of a growth spurt and is neither fat nor skinny. I am not depriving her in any real way.

I think I’ll wait for dinner till they’re asleep and I can eat whatever I choose to throw together in peace.

Just one of the many tasks I’ve been doing this week in preparation for Julie’s birthday party. I cut out about a bazillion little paper flowers for a craft project our guests will be doing.

This is the first time I’ve hosted a birthday party at home since Julie was one year old. I think I have enough activities planned to keep a bunch of eight year olds entertained for two hours.

Now I just need to bake the cupcakes and finish cleaning the house…

Well, this week has pretty much flown by – BUT! I am right here! I am blogging! I have a whole mish-mash of stuff to show y’all today, but we’ll start with the crazy cooking. Stick with me – there’s a bit of knitting at the end.

With the school year restarting, along with a confluence of a giant harvest of veggies from my garden now that the weather’s cooling off and a giant realization that we got into some really bad eating habits over the summer (mostly of the eating-out variety), I realized it was time to start some meal planning and hard-core cooking.

There’s a thing about cooking – the more you do it, the easier it gets. In my house, cooking often involves large batches of things that freeze well and can be reheated weeks later so that the family will not realize that they are eating leftovers – something they outright refuse to knowingly do. You might be amazed at how creative a lazy and/or frugal mom who wants her family to eat healthy, whole foods can get with hiding things in the freezer and bringing them out on nights when she is too tired or rushed to cook from scratch. So you get on a roll, and you only have to really cook a meal from the ground up a few times a week. Until you start eating out all the time and deplete the stuff you’ve stored in the freezer.

So this week, I’m playing catch-up. I’m making new yummy dinners, and I’m using up some of the awesome vegetables that have been soaking up the sun in the garden all summer. I planted all kinds of stuff this spring, as I have in many springs past, and it’s always a craps shoot what’s actually going to grow. This year, the bunnies ate the lettuces and the peas and most of the beans. For some reason, tomatoes just don’t seem to grow for me the way they grow for other people – maybe it’s because I consign them to the pots that hide the ugly old-growth elm tree stumps we were too cheap to have ground down a couple years ago, and then I go on and forget about watering them more often than not. What I *did* succeed with this year were the potatoes, the carrots and the kale. In plenty. Sure, I got a few lousy peppers and a handful of soup beans, enough cucumbers to keep us satisfied through July and August when they weren’t turning bitter. (Why do they turn bitter? I hate that!) There were even a few zucchini squashes before the plant thankfully did a rot and die thing that kind of made me happy – I mean really – I’ve always hated zucchini. It’s pretty much only good for zucchini bread, which you’d have to be crazy not to love. And now I’ve gone off the deep end of rambling tangents! Welcome to my world.

Pictures sometimes keep me focused. Let’s pull some out. Sunday morning after I cleared away the newspaper and breakfast dishes, out came my binder of favorite recipes, my calendar (to figure out which nights we would actually have time to eat), and another cookbook or two just for good measure. I swear, thinking ahead is not easy for me, but once I get organized and sit down for a bit, I’m not too bad at it. A menu list and grocery list were born, and I raced away to the grocery store while Joe kept the kids busy.

Or maybe they kept him busy…

Sunday afternoon, I made one of my favorite all-time dishes, which Joe also likes and the girls – well, Julie ate it with a pretend gusto just to make Sophie look bad because she flat-out refused to touch it and instead went to bed hungry. It’s this awesome dish of deboned dark-meat chicken, calamata olives, dried apricots and dates and a bunch of spices simmered in chicken broth till it’s practically falling apart, and served on a bed of quinoa. I know, it sounds less than kid-friendly, and a bunch of you are gagging right now, but you have to believe me that I have been training my kids to eat weird food since day one, so they damnwell keep eating it now. And I swore I wasn’t going to pass on my parents’ food issues to my kids – I’m just making new ones up as I go along! Here’s what the chicken dish looked like:

There’s nothing in the picture to show scale – that’s the serving dish. I learned in our early childhood parenting classes that for some reason kids are more likely to eat what you are serving if you put it in a fancy bowl and serve it onto the plates at the table. I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but we do it just in case it helps.

Oh, and for good measure – here is a picture of Sophie taken just yesterday, which will show you that she is clearly a healthy and generally happy kid who is not being slowly starved to death. And also will show you that she just lost her first tooth, making her even cuter than she was before.

Okay, and then Monday we had a super-easy korean noodle soup that involves boiling noodles from a packet, mixing a salty broth packet with cold water, hard-boiling some eggs and slicing up some cucumbers. So easy it barely even counts as cooking. Just don’t tell my husband that. Also, I baked a chocolate cake from scratch as in there was no boxed mix or frosting tub involved even. You already heard about that.

Tuesday, the girls had their first meeting of swim team, which meant I had an hour to get them off the bus, fed and back out the door to get to the swim facility in time. This is going to happen twice a week for the next several months, and I have *got* to have a plan of action for these nights. This time, I boiled some of those tiny cheese ravioli from the dairy section, tossed them with a bit of olive oil and dried basil (funnily enough at Julie’s request) and called it dinner. Oh, I put out some raw vegetables and gave them apple sauce squeeze tubes on the way home. They were thrilled at the pre-packaged treats!

Wednesday, I got my game on. Once Sophie had hopped the bus to Kindergarten, I headed to the garden with kitchen shears and went to town cutting the giant leaves of kale that had grown back after last month’s harvesting – mostly for the freezer. By the way, kale is this amazing super-vegetable that I choose to believe will help offset a lot of the poorer food choices we make if only we can actually bring ourselves to eat it. I’ve got three good recipes that my family actually loves, and they’re eating them all this week. The biggest drawback is that you have to wash all those giant leaves, carefully making sure there are no spiders hiding under their bumpy fronds, trim the woody stem off, and cut them into bitesized chunks. This is time consuming, but I spent an hour and got a huge pile processed relatively quickly when there were no children pestering me for – well – everything.

Last night we had these awesome turnover things that I forgot to take pictures of. You buy frozen puff pastry (yes, I know, not from scratch and I refuse to read the ingredients list because I know it’s bad and remember! I’m off-setting it with kale!) I brown a pound of ground beef, some onion and garlic, then add in a ginormous pile of kale, which cooks down to a much smaller volume – but ends up being about half the overall mixture, then dump in a bunch of crumbled up feta cheese and some lemon juice once the mix has cooled off a bit. This becomes the filling to the turnovers. I make a giant batch – enough for at least three or four meals – which justifies the time and mess required to make this meal. Some I bake right away, some I put in the freezer unbaked for brand-new meals later. Also, if I have leftover puff pastry, I usually make some kind of dessert thing with fruit filling – last night we had peach ones made with a peach preserve stuff I cooked up earlier in the summer. There you have it – my entire family ate that meal and liked it. yeehaw!

Today, I used up the other half of the kale I’d processed yesterday. I make this awesome soup with chorizo sausage, beans, tomatoes, a ton of carrots turnips and potatoes and of course kale.  I know, you’re sick of the K word. me too. Let me show you some of the beautiful carrots I dug up outta the ground…

The red things there really are carrots – they’re just one of those cool heirloom varieties. They’re orange on the inside, and they taste pretty much like regular carrots only maybe a little spicier – or maybe I’m just choosing to believe that. I apparently got a little carried away with the carrot seeds this spring – this is only a tiny portion of the carrot harvest – we’ve been eating them for at least a month, and there are more in the fridge. Soup also takes a lot of time, with all the peeling and chopping, but my kids BEG me for this soup. It is Julie’s favorite. Plus, a pot of it goes for several meals, and it hides well in the freezer. I also baked popovers, and let me tell you on a cold night, you pull that leftover soup out and put a pan of cornbread or popovers with it, and the family is happy.

I could hardly believe how much kale was still left after all that cooking, so I threw it with some olive oil and made kale chips for afternoon snack. My children eat it like candy. Weird, I know. But deliciously so.

Whew! Tomorrow night we’re having crock pot roast beef in an attempt to finally use up some of the last of the side of beef we bought in spring 2010, with garden potatoes and carrots and onions, and Saturday we’re having red beans and rice with the extra kidney beans I cooked up for today’s soup. And that is WAY more than you probably needed to know.

Meanwhile, on Sunday I snapped this picture of my current knitting project sitting on the counter with my smart phone and my ipod – all the fun toys I wished I were playing with instead of dutifully planning healthy meals for my family. Then I realized how incredibly tacky it felt to be carrying my lovely project around the house in a plastic bag when I had all kinds of beautiful project bags and baskets loitering in my office.

I still haven’t spent nearly as much time with my knitting as I would have liked this week, but at least now it’s in a pretty basket.

There are lace and beads involved, but that’s all you get till it’s done and I can spread it out.

Yesterday we celebrated Julie’s eighth birthday. 8. It’s been a journey, I’ll tell you that. The baby years were tough on both of us – she with her food allergies and constant discomfort, me with the normal new-mom stuff, plus the baby that wouldn’t stop crying no matter what I did to try to make it better. Somehow, we survived the hardest moments. We managed to enjoy the bright ones. Gradually, things got better. At this moment, I’m totally in love with my kid. I’m so proud of who she is, all she does, the hurdles we’ve overcome together. All this in only eight years. I can’t really express what I’m feeling right now in words, but this will have to do.

So I’ll show you some pictures instead.

Uncle Dave came over to eat dinner with us – Julie had requested Naem Yung, a cold Korean noodle soup that we all love to eat. He had to go back to work, but stayed long enough to watch her open some presents. I think the one from Sophie, a book and set of toys for playing Restaurant with their American Girl dolls, was her favorite. Joe and I gave her the jean jacket, pens and sketch book she’d asked for. She was mildly excited about those too.

I’d baked a cake while she was at school – Sophie “helped” with that. I scrawled on Happy Birthday Julie with the decorator frosting, but decided to throw some candies on the sides of the cake rather than attempting additional decoration with icing. We invited our neighbors over to eat cake and ice cream with us – because it’s more fun that way and because I can  NOT have that much cake around the house without eating it. As it is, there is a hunk left just right for me and the girls to share after school tomorrow and it will be gone. Perfect.

We all sang “Happy Birthday,” Julie blew out the candles after a long moment of thought over her wish and about five puffs at the flames. I used the same chocolate cake recipe I always use – it’s the one on the back of the Hershey’s cocoa tin, and it totally rocks. Julie had asked for chocolate cake, chocolate frosting and chocolate ice cream. Now there’s a girl after my own heart. We all ate, the children played, the grownups chatted and drank their coffee. We are so lucky to have such fine neighbors. They are the best kind of extended family.

When I kissed Julie goodnight, I asked her “did you have a nice birthday?” And the answer was yes. I could not ask for more.

Man, it has been so long since I last posted on this blog that I almost don’t even remember how to do it. I’ve been itching to blog regularly again, but have been so busy living this amazing life that it hasn’t happened till now. I think I’ll have a bit more free time this fall so hopefully (and I know, I’ve said that before) I’ll be able to not only blog more often but also put out some new patterns that have been rattling around in the works for some time.

For now, I’m going to do what I do best, which is a massive photo dump with some of the highlights in our family since last I shared. Ready? Go!

Sophie and I said a tearful goodbye to preschool. We’d spent three wonderful years with this team of teachers, and mostly the same kids and moms too. Teacher Margene is better than you can imagine, and Peggy has the best hugs – she’s gotten more knitted things from me than any other person outside my family and it’s because she appreciates them so much and because she’s so full of love. Stacey was the parenting teacher – the moms and/or dads met once a week for support and advice, and I learned so much about being a good parent from them! Srsly. I cried.

Julie landed the lead role in her first grade musical. She played Tiger Shark in Go Fish! – She was the shark that wanted to be friends with everyone. That kid – I am so proud of her. She knew all her lines, all the songs, spoke clearly, hit her marks, and enjoyed herself pretty much the whole time. Being involved in this little production really turned a light on inside her.

Of course the whole family came out to see her. Because the play included all of the first graders and the kindergartners too, there were two dress rehearsals and two showings because you can only fit so many chorus kids on a set of risers at one time, and there are AM and PM kindergartens. I was there for the whole thing, video camera and tripod and all. Again with the tears. So proud. And now all the other parents know Julie as “Tiger Shark” – which is not a bad thing to be known for when you are a first grader.

The end of Julie’s school year arrived, and with all the volunteering and hanging out during the play production, Sophie and I were almost honorary members of her class. We volunteered at the funfair on the last day, which basically meant we hung around and participated, although I did paste a couple of bandaids on, wipe away a few tears and squash a few antisocial behaviors – none of these on my own children mind you. I love this picture because it shows the best of my girls’ relationship. They really do love each other, are very close and play well most of the time. They also love to yell at each other and bicker over the tiniest of things.

We signed the girls up for soccer this summer because I never had a chance to play team sports and regret it deeply, and because hello staying active, making friends, coming home so tired that they actually fall asleep at bedtime. Sophie was very excited to participate, although when five-year-olds play soccer, it mostly involves standing around the ball and shoving each other until the one kid who has older siblings comes along and kicks it into the goal. It was so cute I almost died watching.

Julie – ahh, my darling Julie. She had to be persuaded to give soccer a try, and never did admit to actually enjoying it. We got her to buy in with a bribe. Yes, I’m admitting it here. We went to the store, bought one of every flavor of Gatorade, and told the girls that they could each have half of a new flavor every time they played a game. Worked a charm. And for the record, Julie did enjoy playing goalie, especially when she managed to stop a ball, and she even managed to kick the ball once or twice while out on the field. I’m calling it a win.

Also, we lucked out with two awesome volunteer coaches. Julie’s coach taught them this fancy little bow to perform at the end of each game. Both of their coaches were firm but supportive unlike a few we saw just screaming at their kids the entire game. Not cool for an in-house, non-competitive local soccer league.

Fred. Fred the chocolate lab is now quite big. He’s still very much a puppy, but fully potty trained and pretty obedient. He will chew up anything he can get in his mouth. The dog has destroyed at least ten pairs of flip-flop sandals. I kept saying “This is the last pair I’m going to buy this summer!” And then he’d get ahold of another one and c’mon we live in flip-flops during the summer, so off to Target we’d go for another pair. Every morning I wake up to him by the side of my bed, front paws up only because he is not allowed on the furniture. He is like a snooze alarm – one that wants you to play fetch with his duckie toy from which he has removed all the stuffing or his monkey which no longer has arms. I love the little shit.

This was the perfect Summer of the Pool for us. We had plenty of weather hot enough to actually enjoy being at the pool – which is not always guaranteed in Minnesota. The girls finally both swim well enough that I don’t have to worry about them drowning themselves. Best of all, they both discovered a love for water slides and diving boards, which gave me a chance to sit my hiney on a lounge and admire them from the side of the pool for half-hour stretches. The following pictures were taken on my cell phone, so you’re going to have to squint and use a little imagination bear with me.

Here, if you look past the creepy man walking to get back in line for the diving board with all the children, you can see Julie in free-fall from the drop slide.

Here’s Sophie getting ready to jump off the diving board. Every single time, she’d look over to me for confirmation that it was really okay for her to go now. The first day she decided to jump off the diving board, I wasn’t entirely sure it was legal for a five-year-old to pull this crazy stunt, but the lifeguard said if she could swim in 12 feet of water no problem. Off she went, and I stood by the side of the pool ready to jump in and yank her out but the worst that happened was me yelling at her for dawdling on the way out. It was pretty crazy watching her stand in line with 6-foot-tall teenagers.

And here it’s Julie’s turn on the diving board. I know, I’m beating a dead horse, but you can’t imagine my satisfaction at seeing them have so much fun doing what I enjoyed doing all summer at that age.

Finally with the pool pics, there’s Sophie coming off the drop slide. Eventually, the novelty wore off and they wanted to spend most of their time in the shallow side of the pool pretending to be mermaids or dolphins, spelled with jaunts over to the giant sand play area, which I only agreed to when the temperature dropped below 90. Because I’m mean that way. There were many afternoons spent at the pool till right before dinner time, when we’d rush home, eat something and head right back out for soccer. Did I mention that each girl had at least one practice and one game every week for ten weeks? Julie had two practices a week. That’s a lot of soccer!

Moving on…twice, Joe and I rode our bikes to the new stadium to watch the Twins play. The first time I learned my lesson about not stuffing myself on junk food so much that it hurt to peddle my bike on the way home. Damn nachos and their evil neon orange tasty-licious cheese substitute. That may have been the most fun Joe and I had together all summer long. I want to publicly thank my brother and sister in-law for taking the girls camping in the grandparents’ back yard, giving us the first night alone together since – you’re not going to believe this – Julie was *born*. That’s right. Seven and a half years.

This picture is really bad – totally out of focus and all, but it completely captures the girls’ reaction to our local fourth-of-July fireworks display.

I love this next picture. Julie participated in her first kids’ triathlon in July, and the look of satisfaction and pride on her face as she came down the finish line shoot is priceless to me. I wasn’t sure she would actually do it – the day before we spent several hours preparing equipment and convincing her that she would really survive the trauma of having to wear a swim cap for the ten minutes before and during her swim. The day of the race, she was cool as a cucumber and sailed through it. And she wants to do it again. Coming from the kid who complained non-stop about soccer all summer, this is pretty great news.

We signed the girls up for a week-long theater camp since Julie had enjoyed her experience at school so much, and Sophie is always eager for anything you suggest. They ended up in the chorus of a very cute production of Frog and Toad All Year. We now have the Broadway version soundtrack on constant loop in the van’s CD player, and it’s a good thing the songs are funny because I pretty much always have one of them playing in my brain.

Every child should run around in the pouring rain at least once per summer (especially if you get the chance to do it on a warm day without lightning.) Fred seemed to enjoy it too.

The next section of the post is all about me and my athletic pursuits. Two years ago, I finally started working out again, and was lucky enough to find a group of gym-rat friends that have not only kept me coming back for more, but motivated me to do things I never would have thought possible. I can run 12 or 13 miles on a long, slow distance Friday. I can run up and down hills on trails through the woods. I can swim two miles in open water no problem. I can actually enjoy pushing my body to new limits. Just don’t listen to my inner fat girl complain, because that’s what she likes to do when she’s not sitting on the couch eating Ben and Jerry’s.

In July, a bunch of us – nearly 50 – headed to Chisago Lakes and participated in a triathlon there. Many of them did the half Ironman. I “just” did the sprint – my second. It was a great day, and the best part was finishing in plenty of time to cheer in my friends as they finished their races. I’m near the center of the back row of this picture, just under the sign.

In August, I did another triathlon – again with a few people from our group, but this race for me was mostly about comparing my times with the same race (YWCA Minneapolis) as last year. I managed to shave 10 minutes off my overall time, and I am proud of that. I worked for it. Which is why I think it’s okay to show you way too many pictures of the day. First, Julie and Sophie crossing the finish line with me. Sophie is pouting because they were waiting for me at the finish line, and I was so focused on finishing that I forgot to stop for them. We circled back around and crossed the finish line second time, but she hadn’t quite gotten over my mistake at that point.

Here we are a few minutes later – everyone’s happy. A big part of why I work out and stay in shape is to be a good example to them, and it’s working.

Here I am during the run. I really need to work on my speed for the run. I know I can do better. My coach is pushing me to do speed work at the track, and I was motivated to work harder on it after this race – it’s just hard when my heart rate hits that upper threshold and the panic attack starts to set in. I need to work on the mind/body part of the game.

I really feel like I slammed it on the bike during this race. I have a new bike this year – the one I rode on last year is a very heavy, big leisure bike. I rolled together Christmas, Birthday, Mother’s Day and Anniversary presents to get this one which is not all that fancy, but it does have the clip-in pedals and is much lighter. I also gave that portion of the race every ounce of oomph I had, because I knew I would hate myself if I finished the bike part slower this year after having spent all the money on the fancy new bike. That part of the race went really well, and I even caught up with one of my teammates who’d started several waves earlier by the end of the bike. Also? This year I can actually show you the picture without cringing because my gut is not hanging down to my knees like it was in the pictures last year. This time I saw the camera and sucked it in in time.

And the swim. Yes, I’m showing you these pictures in reverse. The swim was the first part, and my strongest of the three sports.  I work out with this amazing group of athletes – most of them run marathons, several have completed full Iron Man triathlons. It is an honor to be allowed to tag along with them. I’m just going to go ahead and say it, though, in the pool, I’m one of the five or six fastest of our group and it feels good to be good at something.

Even if I look like a big dork coming out of the water with my thunder-thighs bulging out of my swimsuit. Also? I’m developing that swimmers’ neck and shoulder thing where my neck is kind of too big for my head because of the added muscle. It’s worth it.

The thing about getting into working out again – it takes a lot of time. I spend two hours at the gym most week days – usually two swims and three runs. This summer our group ran outside, but because of childcare issues, I’m back inside for the fall now. It takes a lot of energy too, and usually by the time the girls are in bed, I’m utterly exhausted and barely have energy to sit and knit, let alone write about it. I’ve made a life choice to give up some things in trade for another.

One of the benefits of all this time is making friends with really nice people in real life. Many of them are also moms of kids around the same ages as mine, and my girls have become friends with their kids too. It feels so good to be part of a wild pack of bikers or runners, seeing the people we pass by looking at us with – admiration? envy? awe? – that’s what I’m choosing to believe they’re feeling. I lost a bunch of weight last year, and having those women notice as I slimmed down and tell me how proud of me they are – well, that’s worth the time and the effort.

I’m front-right in this picture – midway through a trail run in the urban wilderness of Golden Valley. There’s some really good runners in that group, and darn if I don’t just about fit in with them.

Fred even got in on the running action a few times. On Mondays, we’d run from the club to a school track that’s actually near my house, so I’d drive him and the girls over to the club, drop them in childcare, run Fred the couple miles back to our house, join the group back at the track and run back to the club. He is one happy dog on those days, and tired too.

I feel like I could have lived this summer forever. I loved spending the time with my girls. They are at the perfect age -we can talk, laugh, tell jokes, help each other out, compromise. I feel like I fell in love with them both all over again this summer. These are the days I want to hold in my heart forever. (sniff sniff) Summer does eventually have to come to an end, though.

We celebrated Joe’s birthday with a raspberry-peach cobbler as he is not a big fan of cake. It’s funny – one of my Facebook friends commented that they would have made a crisp instead, so I responded “me too, but Joe asked for a cobbler and it’s his birthday” and then Joe piped in and said “I really wanted a crisp too, but I couldn’t remember the word for it.” Ha! He is one year away from a big birthday. Time passes so quickly…

Because Julie started second grade on Tuesday. There was much deliberation on the outfit – it was just cool enough for her to wear some of her new fall clothes, and she desperately wanted “snail piggy tails” like her friend Ana, who played the Snail with the Mail in Frog and Toad.

And then – THEN! Sophie started Kindergarten on Thursday. Sophie has always been my easy kid. I realized as she started school that I have taken that for granted too often. I want to grab back all the moments when I could have read her another book or sat and colored with her instead of folding laundry or whatever it was I was doing. She has grown up so quickly. She is beautiful and fun, and it will be strange having her gone all afternoon during the week.

She’s enjoying herself so far, though, and honestly so am I – I spent the last two afternoons running around cleaning the house, liberated to do so once there was nobody yelling at me to fetch or do or take them or feed them or clean up or stop the dog eating their toy. I have big plans to get lots done during those afternoons this school year.

For now, I am busy planning a fabulous birthday party for Julie – the first time I’m hosting one at our house. There is a fairy theme, and I would like to do a whole post on the details of that in a couple weeks. I’m also in the middle of writing up a new shawl pattern so that I can teach it in a class this fall. There are beads! I will get to the spinning and knitting next time. For now, I’m off to bed. If you’re still here, thanks for reading!

I thought I’d finally earned the priviledge of going to the bathroom by myself with both of my children old enough not to scream and pound at the door…

But there’s not much Fred seems to enjoy more than laying at my feet by the potty. Plus, just like with a toddler, I know he’s not destroying the rest of the house while I do my business.

If you’ve been to the restaurant where I’m sitting right now, you will instantly recognize their cupcakes.

Sophie attacks a cake almost as big as her head -knife AND fork required. Oh, and let’s not even consider the high quantities of artificial coloring present.

Julie can make a cupcake disappear in the blink of an eye. The hair is a little scary – she’s desperately trying to grow it out and simultaneously refusing to brush it. I’ve chosen not to battle this one for now.

The girls participated for a third time in the “Fun Meet” at our local swim school. They both tried hard and had fun, which is what matters.

That, and it gives us a great excuse to go out to dinner and avoid cooking on a Sunday night.

I’m stealing a few minutes to write up another quick post from my phone while Sophie’s in ballet class. Can I just say how lovely it is to sit quietly for a bit with nothing to do? I have been walking dogs and cleaning up messes all weekend. I’m so glad the visiting dog is going home today. What a bitch (pun SO intended!)

Meanwhile, I’m all relaxed and happy after my workout this morning. I wore the new workout top I got as a birthday prezzie from my sister-in-law this weekend. It was so exciting to open up a gift that I wasn’t expecting at all, and to find something I needed, and liked in the right size. Every time I wear it I’m going to think of her and smile about my awesome new SIL. Thanks, Jinnie!