Gimmesanity

It started with a quiet breakfast, just me and my thoughts as the Bean took her morning nap.

Picking up a new skill for a potential new project. It’s not perfect, but I’m getting there. In the meantime, I have a new coaster.

Sharing a post-nap banana with this toothy beauty…

…before going out to meet a new friend.

Internets, meet beautiful baby Jacob.
I’m honored that he’ll be coming home in this.
Also, I wanted to keep him, but his mom said no.

Then, it was off to pick up Monkey from school, hang out as a family, and then knead some pizza dough for dinner. There’s something so cathartic about making dough from scratch.

This became one veggie pizza and one pesto, chicken, and ’shroom pie. Yum.

Now, the babies are asleep, the apartment has been picked up…mostly. It’s time for some knitting, a movie, and a few snuggles with my Alan on the sofa.

Hi, I am an impossible color to photograph accurately.

Hope your day was fabulous, too.

Monkey goes to school three days during the week. That leaves us with two weekdays to figure how to be creative and not destroy the apartment. This week, we decided to try making some new foods.

First, hummus, because Monkey asked for it.
Seriously.

This was super easy and very, very delish. Basically, we threw a can of drained chickpeas (save the water!), two minced cloves of garlic, a sprinkling of cumin, salt, about 4 tbsp of toasted sesame oil, and the juice of half a lemon into a blender and gave it a whirl. It took a bit of pulsing and some extra tablespoons of the bean water to get it to the right consistency. Monkey was not a fan of the loud blender, but she had fun dumping the stuff in and then eating the hummus with her pita.

Yeah, we made pita, too.

This was easy, and fun, and really only time consuming at the very end. Monkey was amazed by how much the dough grew. We used this recipe and cooked it on our pizza stone and it worked out great. Since we didn’t have paper bags in the house, after taking them out, we placed the hot pita on a cookie sheet and covered them with a damp dishtowel for a few minutes to soften them up. Once they had cooled, they went into a zip-lock bag. I thought we’d have some for the next day (we got 13 pitas total.) But, um, yeah, we ate them all in one day.

I blame these two for finish them off:

Ohai! I have two wee toofers now!

After lunch comes my favorite time of the day - naptime!! Monkey read quietly in her room while Bean was busy spooning with Curious George.

Don’t you just want to nibble on her?

We’ve been doing lots of cooking and baking around here.
It’s cold, we can’t go outside, and we’re hungry.

Also, I’ve been battling a stomach bug. Lots of visits to the bathroom and laying on the sofa moaning and feeling miserable about my lot in life.
We needed to do something. Something that required minimal effort on my part.
That was when I remembered this bookmark.
With about 20 minutes total hands-on time, we had a batch of very delish pretzels. I got 13 out of the recipe, and baked them for 7 minutes. Perfect.

I’m going to crawl back under the covers now.

Thanks for all the sweater lurve. You guys rock. Oh, and if you think I looked thin in those pics, wait until you see me now. Two days of nothing but bread, tea, and seltzer…I’m going to need a cheeseburger after I’m over this.

We made these muffins last week, and, yowza, they were delicious.

As we were baking:

Monkey: I LOVE blueberries.
Me: Me too! What other berries do you like?
Monkey: I like raspberries.
Me: Mmm, those are good. I like blackberries.
Monkey: Me too!
Me: You know what berries mommy doesn’t like, though?
Monkey: What?
Me: Dingleberries.

I’ve been battling a headcold for the past few days. Seems that after Alan’s return from his UK tour, my body decided to go ahead and just crap out on me. He’s been home for a week now, and that’s about how long I’ve been sick. My head is producing copious amounts of snot in a very alarming shade of ectoplasm green.

However, that didn’t stop me from making this:

That right there, folks, is one fine turkey meal. Seriously, it rocked. Alan and I make an awesome tag-team…even if Alan did manage to oh-so-conveniently hurt his hand in an attempted mugging in London so he was kinda-sorta unable to help wash the mile-high pile of dishes in our sink. But, we won’t be talking about that, OK?

Moving on…

I had to keep the Monkey busy today because I just wasn’t feeling up to taking her outside. No, I wanted to be miserable inside, thankyouverymuch. So, out came the tub of beans from our pantry, some glue, and a whole lotta paper.

We made portraits. On the bottom of that picture up above is my homage to Alan, playing his guitar with beans for music notes. It was fun. You should try making some bean art, really.

Monkey helped me with my self-portrait:

This kept her busy for like over an hour. A divine hour of sweet, sweet silence.

Afterwards, we had fun watching Bean munch on her new chew toy:

Look! Her hair is finally growing in!

This was a gift from some friends that came over for Thanksgiving. Bean has a love/hate thing going on with Chan. Seriously, I need to remember to take a video. She’ll happily gnaw away on Chan’s boob-head for a good twenty minutes or so. Then, suddenly, something will totally piss her off and she’ll start yelling obscenities at him. See those flared nostrils she’s got going on? That’s how it all starts.

Hours of fun for us, I tell you.

So, let’s recap my week:

snot
turkey meal
keeping Monkey busy
watching Bean yell at boob-head

Oh, and snuggling…lots of snuggling. Did I mention that Alan’s back? =)