First Real Haircut

This is the twins' first real haircut, not in a salon, but in "Onya's" kitchen, cut by a former hairstylist friend. The cut was more noticeable on The Boy, for his hair had been looking rather shaggy. Actually, so was The Girl's. See this "before" photo from a few weeks ago. Incidentally, that's black bean burrito dinner aftermath.

Eye Candy

A Labor Day Weekend to Remember

On Thursday, I went to the dentist only to find I need to have some gum grafting done. The recovery from this kind of procedure is the worst. On Friday, whilst out grocery shopping, I got stung by a bee for the first time and was then followed by another bee into Tar-jay. I was running into the store, arms waving wildly while pushing the stroller yelling, "Ack! Get away!" People looked at me like I was a mad woman. 30 minutes after the sting, I checked to see if I was still breathing. I was, so I'm not allergic. My first survival instinct was to suck out the venom, which I did.

There are now 24 more days of no-weight bearing for Kip's foot. I continue to trudge on steering the ship alone as best I can, keeping the dust/fur rhinoceri at bay so the babies don't trip over them and crack their skulls. He met up with the final straw that broke his back Saturday night, meaning that the less-than-firm mattress had finally done him in. At 3am, I heard some thuds and groans, got up to find he had moved to the floor to try to get some relief. 2 hours later, we were both still awake. I've been sleeping on the couch during his recovery, and despite wearing earplugs to drown him out, I would just be dozing off and then startle awake with another "Aughhhh!" from the back bedroom. The last time I went in to see him, at 4:30, I looked at the clock and said, "Fun...the kids will be up in 2 hours." Thankfully I'd gone to sleep at 9:30 the night before. After a few pain killers, Kip found relief and was able to sleep for a while. He somehow managed to get up and out to the livingroom in the morning and wanted to help feed the kids. He arrived in nothing but his undervest and skivvies. I retrieved his shirt and shorts, and he had his shorts on the floor around his ankles. I took pity on him and pulled his pants up for him. We were both laughing about the situation. Heating pads and ice packs and some yoga stretches helped the pain immensely. Oddly enough, the previous day, he spent most of the day in some kind of trance, looking like Nick Nolte's mugshot for most of the day. We don't know why he was so tired on Saturday...perhaps from a week of hobbling around on crutches.

After breakfast, I whirled around moving the queen size mattress (by myself) off the bed and replacing it with the aerobed inflated to ultra firmness. The kids napped from 11am to almost 2pm, miraculously, having spent most of the morning in the cage. I escaped the rest home atmosphere to go to our friend's annual Labor Day picnic with the kids. We had fun for a few hours. Monday was more solitude and baby wrangling, finished off by Kip and I watching 2 episodes of "Twin Peaks." Woo hoo! We know how to party, huh?

True Love Mush

Now that my human pot washer is laid up recovering from foot surgery, I don't get done clearing up after the meal until about 7:30. The kids play with pots and pans in the kitchen with me while I work. Afterwards, the three of us go into the livingroom to play. Last night, I put some music on and decided to slow dance with the babes. Kai and I danced to Etta James' "At Last" and I sang along but started to get teary. If you read the lyrics, you can see why. Seda giggled in the background. I was too lost in love to sing while dancing with Seda.

At last
My love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
Oh, yeah, at last
The skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clover
The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to rest my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known
Oh, yeah when you smile, you smile
Oh, and then the spell was cast
And here we are in heaven
For you are mine
At last

Saturday Entertainment

It's been ages since I made the world's best vegetarian stuffed grape leaves, so I finally carved out some time to do so this past weekend. Yum yum. We had them with some muhummara and hummus. That recipe isn't the one I used, but you get the idea. Pomegranate molasses is the key ingredient, for which there really is no substitute. A bottle of the stuff lasts forever though.

Then after dinner, we played with some blocks and went out to the back yard. Kai is on foot, Seda still prefers to hang out. And she cries if you remove a dried up dead leaf from her grasp!

On the Stove Again

My love of cooking has recently returned with a vengeance. I go on various tours around the world in my kitchen and have now docked in the Mediterranean for a while. The beauty of the geographical location of this particular body of water, is the influence of different countries' cuisines on each other. My new favorite cookbook is something my mother found at a garage sale, and I pilfered it from her shelf: Moosewood Restaurant: New Classics by the Moosewood Collective. Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, NY, is not known for mediterranean cuisine, but rather vegetarian cuisine that back in the 70's revolved around sunflower seeds, sprouts, all vegetables, whole grains and the like. Regardless, I've made several recipes from this book and they've all been good. Here is Pine Nut Pasta Cavalfiore, with the arab influence of saffron and currants...a mostly traditional Sicilian dish.

The twins ate this too, minus the pine nuts. Last night, I made beans and greens, which requires no real recipe. The twins ADORE the wilted olive-oiled greens! That will become a regular mealtime fixture during my summer receipt of Italian braising greens and swiss chard from my mother's garden.

Now I'm off to peruse more recipes in this book and to do some risotto research and development.

Time Keeps on Slippin', Slippin'...

We are 13 months old, and almost walking!

I was thinking yesterday morning about how from the moment I got home from work Tuesday night to the moment I went to bed, I had only sat down for about an hour. And this was in the span of 4 hours! Geez…where did the time go? Changed a couple diapers, reheated dinner, made salad, ate dinner, bottled one kid, did laundry, put some garbage out, swept patio, put kids to bed, prepped some veggies for kids’ lunch, went up and down the stairs a thousand times…ugh. We don’t do baths on the two days I work. I don’t really know how we could squeeze that in to the evening routine on the days I work. I’m a morning person, and baths are always done in the morning.

I realized on my last weary trek back up the stairs that if I still had a job that required standing most of the day, I would have died long ago. I have also, in recent weeks, fallen into the trap of staying up too late because I cherish having two hours of me time before bed. But this has caught up to me. I need to take a break from these late nights, and by late I mean 10:30 or 11, and recharge my batteries with some good old-fashioned 8 hours of sleep. So my new goal for the next few nights is to be in bed by 9:45 and asleep by 10. The kids wake up at 6, and there’s no way to delay that.