After five+ years without being seen by a dental professional, I finally made it in for an appointment last Thursday. Since my teeth had been a bit sensitive for awhile and I had heard some crazy rumor that the rule of thumb is you lose one tooth for every child, I figured this visit was not going to go well. Since for the first time in our married life we have dental insurance and the exam, X-rays, and teeth cleaning are covered at 100%, I could actually make it in without being pre-empted by husband’s teeth falling out of his head or children needing to be seen. Yay!

Guess what? No cavities! Moowahahahahahaha! I feel like I’m eight and got a good report from the dentist. Five years and no cavities! Some of my teeth were rubbing together and chipping off the enamel, which was why they were a bit tender but there was no decay at all and the enamel got fixed yesterday.

Tomorrow I’m taking all four of the girls. The younger two have never even been to the dentist. I have this feeling that their reports are not going to go as well as mine… Probably good that they’re going in though.

In other news, the kids are off school this week (remember we are now on a year round school schedule so their off weeks are all wacky) so Georgie is spending the week at Bunya’s house (Bunya=George’s Mom) for his birthday. Our house has been extremely quiet. The girls play trains and computer and dolls and other quiet things. It’s weird. It’s very nice, but very weird. I’m starting to miss Mr. Rambunctious.

On the other hand, Trinity and I went out with Grandma (my Mom) last week and today Anika and I went out with her. Both of the girls seemed to really enjoy having a little bit of special time with just Mommy and Grandma (well, and Henry but they like that too). We went to Hanna Andersson and they each got a hat and mittens set that was on clearance for $4 and they bought it with their own money!

I didn’t even realize Trinity had brought her money with her until she came up and said, I have this much money and I’m buying this and this. Ummm, ok. Knock yourself out! She seemed pretty proud of herself. So was I.

Georgie sounds like he’s having a ball. He’s been going swimming with Babunya (Hubby’s Grandmother) and to the Dollar Store with Bunya. And Bunya, being the genious that she is, has apparently found that a good way to keep him busy is to hire him for $1.50 an hour. I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s a diligent worker and loves having a mission so I’m sure she’s getting her money’s worth. He told me he’s decided he wants to always keep $10 in reserve in case a new Bionicle comes out so he’ll have money to buy it right away if he wants it. Good plan!

Guess that’s it for around here. Starting to think about Christmas. Yikes!

Rachel

Georgie is ten! His birthday was Sunday, and somehow he has made it to ten years old. I gotta tell you, every day from the time he was eighteen months to four and a half, I wondered how in the world he was going to make it to the next day without me strangling him. Now here he is, all big and ten. He’s gotten to be quite the charming boy too.

Georgie’s favorite show has been Mythbusters for a couple of years now. He talks about it all the time, records every episode that airs even if he’s seen it twelve times, watches it as often as possible, and talks about Adam and Jamie (the leads) as if they are his friends.

Well, Adam and Jamie apparently have a live show that they are doing in a whole four cities, and Portland is one of them. Of course we had to take him to that. He was so excited and told us over and over that this was the best birthday present ever. The show was at the Schnitz, which is a beautiful concert hall from the ’20’s that was designed in the Italian rococo style with sort of filigree all over the walls and ceiling.

Georgie obviously listened to the entire show, but spent most of the time looking all around the building at the lovely architecture. Here he is in front of the Schnitz (the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall to you non-Portlanders who have never heard of it anyway and don’t care at all) with his Mythbusters tee shirt on:

Such a happy boy! That’s the camera strap he’s trying to strangle himself with there. Really adds to the picture, don’t you think? After we got home, I was making dinner and decided that since it was his birthday I would make him a quesadilla with no meat for dinner which apparently is a big deal in the Georgie-verse (usually they have ground turkey and jalapeno and onion in them, to which he loudly objects).

When I called him in to hand him his plate (kind of an informal night) and tell him it was plain cheese, he got a huge smile on his face and said “Oh no. You didn’t” and started laughing. Yes, the Mommy-ogre who normally forces him to eat meat can occasionally be generous. Who knew it would be that easy to make him feel special? Anyway, Happy Birthday, happy boy. May you grow in grace and the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. I love you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, here is a picture from today of Anika’s major event. When she came in to smile at me and tell me that look! she could turn her tooth all the way around backwards, I told her she had to pull it out or I would (I told her this after I was done grossing out). This was the result:

Nice tooth in her hand. Pretty funny listening to her talk. And if you have thirty seconds that you don’t know what to do with, you can watch this lovely video of Anika and Kyra showing off their mad kung fu skills. Such talent.

Monday night as we were all loaded into the van trundling down the Babunya’s (a.k.a. “Hubby’s Mom”)  house for dinner, I could have sworn I heard the word “damn” ushering from my darling eight-year old daughter’s lips. Not only that, but it was being pronounced in the same way you would hear it from a sitcom tartlet proclaiming, “damn, that is one fiiiiine looking piece of man-meat there” or some such stupidity designed to elicit an undeserving laugh.

Since no fiiiiiine looking men were around other than her Dad and brothers, she’s all of eight, and this is not a common vocabulary word at our house for people who are under twenty and have not just smashed their thumb with a hammer, I thought I’d just double check to see if I heard correctly.

Me: Trinity, what did you just say?

Trintity: Oh, was that a bad word? I wasn’t sure.

Me: Yes, please delete that from your vocabulary. Do you hear me or Dad saying that?

Trinity: No. {pause…. pause…. pause….} Mom, is “fish paste” a bad word?

Fish paste? Fish paste??? Well, technically she does have a point. Her Dad and I don’t usually say that either, so if you’re a kid I suppose you could make a case that it does fall under the test for swear words. Fish paste! As usual, we have SpongeBob to thank for that.

Actually, all of my favorite expletives come from SpongeBob, and usually I hear them first from Trinity using them in normal conversation. “Oh Barnacles! I can’t find my other shoe!” or “Faithy ate my sucker. Tartar sauce!” Last week I was in the room when the kids were watching that goofy show. I looked up just in time to hear SpongeBob exclaim “Holy Shrimp!” in regards to something or other. Hmm, come to think of it, I wouldn’t really like to hear that coming out of my kids’ mouths; but I thought it was pretty funny. Barnacles!

In other news, my children have discovered a new obsession. Since it doesn’t involve inane television shows, destroying property, making enormous messes, my having to drive them all over creation, or anything expensive, naturally I’m delighted!

Our friend was selling an air soft gun and some ammo at her garage sale this weekend, and the kids wanted to buy it but didn’t have the $10 they needed to do so. So they decided to hold a little fundraiser of their own.

After hiding out in their rooms all morning with a “Keep Out” sign posted on the door, they emerged with their new creation: a box that they had cut to open up into a display case for all the bead necklaced, bracelets, and rings that they had spent the morning stringing. These, they announced, they were going to sell to passersby from a card table in the driveway.

Remembering my own lemonade stand days which involved lots of sitting in the hot sun making no money, I was skeptical. However, they had clearly spent considerable effort on this endeavor and I try not to discourage them from things that would keep them occupied outside for awhile.

Ten minutes later, they had made three dollars! Some guy had bought three bracelets for his three daughters. By the end of the 45 minutes they were out there, they had made six bucks. I was shocked! Now they’re hooked and have been going out every day to do this. They bought the air soft gun (the pellets had sold), and are now saving up “just because.”

Since this year we are doing school in the afternoon instead of morning (which I like wayyyyy better), they have been doing all their homework and chores in the morning diligently and quickly without being reminded so that they can run back out and sell some more. They’ve already figured out what their best sellers are (bracelets), had to change materials a little bit to make them fit better, and figured out that if they post signs on either end of the street or stand out there with a sign they get more customers.

Guess I’m going to have to get them going on alternate selling venues. What a bunch of goofballs!

Rachel

Ahhh, I love fall. Have I mentioned that? Okay, so the weather
outside has been ninety degrees, but I don’t care. As of last week, my fall
decorations are up and I’m ready. My Mother told me today that I needed to take
them down. Dream on! I haven’t gotten sweaters out yet, at least.

George’s 37th birthday was Monday. In honor of that, yesterday
morning we woke up to discover that our charming children had gotten up early
and made a special breakfast for Daddy. They had put on the tablecloth, set the
table, lit a candle, and made….. French toast and hard boiled eggs! Not like
toaster French toast either.

We have one of those Jenn Aire ranges where two of the burners
are removable and can be replaced with a griddle. They had changed that out,
made the batter, dipped in the bread, and fried up the toast. All by themselves
and all without burning anything including themselves or each other!

From what I gather, this was Georgie’s idea and mostly his
project (he’s almost ten) while Trinity (8yrs) and Anika (6yrs) helped.
Everything was delicious! Apparently they couldn’t figure out what temperature
to put the griddle on so they were scrambling around looking in all the
cookbooks and trying to find it on Google (!!). None of that worked, so Georgie
guessed and actually got it right. Miraculous!

Other than the fact that George’s birthday was the day before
the breakfast, George likes neither French toast nor hard boiled eggs (which we
didn’t point out to the children, of course), and we were out of syrup, we had
quite the lovely birthday breakfast. What a bunch of sweeties!

Rachel

George’s youngest brother Jon got married on Saturday. Four of the kids plus George were in the wedding, and George’s brother David and his family were up from Arizona. Their kids are around the same ages as ours, so they had a wonderful time playing together. They regularly ask to go visit or when the cousins are coming up here to visit them.

Skyler and Georgie are six weeks apart and Anika and Olivia were born three months apart. Plus, David and Erica adopted a new little guy, Silas, from Ethiopia in February and this is the first time we’ve met him (if you missed this at the beginning of the year, go back and check the January/February archives). He’s three and a half, and wow is he a cutie!

George said the first thing Silas said to him was, “Hey there, Buddy!” with a big smile on his face. He spoke no English when he got here and now it’s perfect. Well, as perfect as three year old English ever is. He’s so completely charming that you just love him right away. Yep, new nephew. Pretty darn cute!

So the wedding was Saturday and Sunday we went over to one of George’s other brother’s place for one last family get together before David and Erica had to go back home. We had so much fun that we didn’t get home until 11:30. George signed up several months ago to go be a slave driver counselor at our church’s Future Men’s Camp from Monday morning until Wednesday night, so he got home and packed real quick before collapsing into bed. Then he was up at church by 8:45 the next morning to head out to camp.

I don’t sleep too well while he’s gone, but other than that all machinery seems to be functioning normally. The kids cleaned up with me Monday morning and then spent the rest of the day recuperating (i.e. “vegging in front of the idiot box”) and taking naps. I told the big kids they all had to take naps too and not only did they not complain, but they looked rather relieved and all of them slept.

Since George was gone, I decided to make my favorite foods that he hates so I don’t make when he’s here. This involves breakfast for dinner, also known as HURRAY FOR FRENCH TOAST, which was Monday’s dinner, and pasta alfredo with a bunch of chicken and veggies in it with some Artisan bread on Tuesday. Both of these seemed to go over well with the children. Hehe. Anika thinks that French toast would be a good dinner to have every night.

Masha was over for cards Monday night and then dropped some stuff off and hung around for dinner and the evening on Tuesday. My Mom watched the kids while I ran errands on Tuesday and my Dad came over Tuesday night. I conquered Mount Laundry. Enough has been going on that the time has gone by fast. I’m glad George gets home tomorrow.

Oh! I almost gave my poor Hubby a heart attack last week, I think. We’re switching insurance companies and the new one wanted me to go to the doctor for a pregnancy test and then send them a copy of the results so they know for sure that I’m not pregnant. Hello! I’m five months post-partem and nursing full time. Not exactly high risk here. Now if it were two weeks after I had quit nursing, then yes that could possibly be considered the danger zone.

Anyway, last week we sat down to dinner and started discussing our day. I started with, “Well, I have to go take a pregnancy test next week.” This was perhaps not the best phrasing. George bellows, “WHAT!!! Not again! You can’t be pregnant!” Immediately I start backtracking and telling him that it’s for the insurance. He told me that would be grounds for divorce and glared at me for about ten minutes after that. In case you somehow lost track, we now have six kids. Our house is very loud,
everything we own is stained or broken within ten minutes of arriving
on the premises, and 1998 was the last time we talked to each other without it sounding like
this:

Me: HI HONEY, HOW ARE YOU? {we have to yell to hear each
other over the din}. Georgie stop telling your sister that the bee
is on the inside of the window instead of outside.

George: I’M TIRED. HOW WAS YOUR DAY? Kyra, why are you crying?
You smooshed your toe jumping off the couch? Hey. Anika? ANIKA! STOP
JUMPING OFF THE COUCH! What Kyra? Oh yeah, I forgot to kiss you. Sorry.
There. All better.

Me: BUSY. ARE YOU HUNGRY? What Faithy? You have to go potty? Well, come on let’s go.

George: YES. WHAT’S FOR DINNER?

Me: DO YOU SEE A CLEAN SHIRT IN THE LAUNDRY PILE ON THE COUCH FOR FAITH? IT LOOKS LIKE SHE DUMPED MILK ALL OVER THIS ONE. Hey!! Faithy, that is wayyyy too much toilet paper.

George: I DON’T KNOW WHICH SHIRTS ARE HERS. THEY ALL LOOK THE
SAME. WHAT SIZE IS SHE? No Georgie, you can’t play Guitar Hero. Is your
room clean?

Me: I’LL GET IT. Trinity, is that Henry crying upstairs?
George: Hi, Honey. How are you?

Me: I’m tired. Are you hungry?

The weird thing is the kids are all pretty well-behaved kids. They’re just all under ten and outnumber us three to one.

We called Henry “Oops Shubin” for the first several months he was in utero, and when I told George I was pregnant that time, his response was “Oh NO! Not again!” Actually, that was more or less my response as well. We should probably do something about that soon…. At least Henry is a big sweetie-pie now, and he thinks George is pretty hot stuff, which none of the other kids did until they were a year old. At that point they all decided I was completely passe and George was SuperDad. At least I get to be WonderMommy for awhile.

Rachel

This morning as we were barreling down the freeway my children began to sing the Twelve Days of Christmas because really, Christmas is a mere four months away!! This delightfully repetitive and obnoxious song that is pretty much the holiday equivalent of 99 bottles of beer on the wall began to evolve after about the third time around, and all of the gifts changed from leaping lords and dancing milkmaids or whatever they are to the following:

12 giant flytraps
11 hobo spiders
10 boxes of lice
9 pterodactyls
8 rising mummies
7 T Rexes
6 hungry zombies
5-headed dragons
4 spraying skunks
3 thorny devils
2 stinging scorpions
1 velociraptor

So that’s festive, right? I particularly like the use of appropriate adjectives like “rising” mummies (for when the regular mummies just won’t do). Now, I realize this looks suspiciously like something that Georgie would come up with alone, but I’m fairly sure that the girls were back there envisioning this monstrosity right along with him. I mean really. Is this what you want for Christmas??

Venus Fly Trap, although I think they may have been envisioning something more like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.

Hobo Spider, which is our very large, local, nasty, poisonous one.

Lice, which I’m sure we all know enough about to detest.

Pterodactyl, which I always thought of as rather charming dinosaurs until I saw Jurassic Park III.

Rising Mummy = never good. This is me (or my body double) being threatened by a rising mummy:

Happily, this guy should be coming along any moment to rescue me.

I wonder how good Brendan Fraser does against these:

Zombies ~ ugly yes, but they move soooo slow. Oh no, what could be fast enough to escape them?? Stilts? Pogo sticks? Tricycles??

Five-headed dragon, which will be represented today by a drawing of a Hydra. Georgie will like that.

Skunk buns. Just what I always wanted for Christmas!

Thorny Devil. Call me crazy, but I think these guys are kind of cute. They certainly beat out skunk butt and zombie woman.

Stinging scorpions. Nope, not cute!

Velociraptor: cute until they slice you open with their giant middle claw and eat your guts while you’re still alive. And thank you, Steven Spielberg, for delivering that very important information to little rabid dinosaur-loving boys everywhere.

I better not get any of these things for Christmas. Of course, when I was a teenager my brother gave me a piece of moldy bread he had been growing in a jar in his closet for three months specifically for the occasion (he partitioned the box and put the actual gift in the other side). I don’t know that spraying skunk could smell much worse than that.

Rachel

WooHoo! Looks like we may finally be making potty training progress with Miss Faithyroo. She’s pretty close to Georgie territory on how long she’s been taking to train. Georgie was four months but Trinity was only a week, Anika one month, and Kyra two weeks start to finish. Faith here is somewhere around three months, I think. Actually looking up when we started would be way too depressing.

Anyway, she’s far enough along now that she’ll go one and two pretty consistently… as long as we ask her if she has to go every hour or fairly consistently. If we are doing something like say, feeding the baby or making dinner or doing something other than spending every moment watching her, then she goes merrily along her way and doesn’t bother telling us she has to go. This is not good for the furniture or her mother’s psychie.

So last Friday after she didn’t tell me and I found a surprise at naptime, I got pretty fried. One of Henry’s diapers was on the floor there, so I stuck it on her (he’s in 4’s) and deposited her in Henry’s crib with the admonishon that only babies go potty in their underwear and babies have to wear diapers and sleep in baby cribs. Wowee, should did not like that!!

She pretty much freaked out. Noooo, it’s Henry’s bed. I want my bed. This is Henry’s!!! I picked her up and plopped her flat on the matress because she wouldn’t lie down, and then attempted blankets. Well, that was met the same was as the crib itself, so I just left.

When I came to get her after nap, she was standing in the crib and had dumped everything else that was in there on the floor (of course). I’m pretty sure she didn’t sleep at all.

The next day, she was remarkably good and ooooh, came and told us when she had to go potty. That night she got a pullup and a big lecture about how good she’d been doing and was going to sleep in her own bed because big girls go potty in the potty. Twenty minutes later after I was done monkeying with the other kids, I picked her up and met ye olde stinkeroo. Argh!

So, I changed her and told her that she was going to have to sleep in Henry’s bed because that’s where babies who go potty in their undies or pullups have to sleep. She looked right at me and said, “I’m not a baby.” What did you just say? She repeated this to me three more times by the time I had her in bed. Ha! There’s the key. Finally, after three months, I think we may have found the key. Chocolate? Take it or leave it. Pretty big girls panties with butterflies and horses? Not terribly interesting. Wandering around in wet stinkiness? That’s okay. But the shame of having to sleep in your brother’s crib? Intolerable!

Since then she’s been pretty close to perfect. She had an oops at Babunya’s house Monday, but that’s pretty common when kids are learning. I’m not going to give her a bunch of grief about that until she’s really consistent at home. She’s starting to look like she’s making an effort at bed and naptime as well, so I’m expecting that to shape up here pretty soon as well. Yay!! This has been long and trying, and I’m glad that it seems to be nearly finished. Only one more child to go. At least that won’t be for awhile. Maybe he’ll be easy. One can dream, right?

Rachel

Wildlife Safari last week was great! We drove through the park twice, picnicked on their grounds, took a little train ride, ate snow cones, the kids rode camels, and nobody had a meltdown from spending six hours in the car. Here are a few pictures:

Trinity on the Train

Kyra the Zebra Girl

Hungry Hippo

Kyra with Her New Post-Haircut ‘Do

Non-Plastic Pink Flamingos

Georgie & Faith with Mr. Camel

Everyone had fun!

Henry’s Hungry

Have a great week!

Rachel

We are going to Wildlife Safari on Friday. I’m so excited! It’s this huge drive through animal park where the animals are in their own habitats and wonder around while you drive right through the middle in your car. Ostriches come up to your windows and all kinds of stuff. I’m so excited!

We’ve been telling the kids for a few weeks now that we are taking them somewhere three hours away and that we’re not telling them when we’re going (this turned out to be smart since we’ve had to reschedule it twice now). Listening to their terrible guesses has been quite amusing (for me) the last three weeks. One of the little ones wanted to know if we were going to McDonald’s. Sure! We’re driving three hours for McD’s. The older ones immediately corrected that.

So this week we started giving them more hints. It’s three hours south on I-5 if you drive 60mph. It has ostriches there. This would have been more helpful if they had been able to figure out how to spell “ostrich,” but since we wouldn’t tell them and they kept typing in “ostrege,” it didn’t get them too far.

This morning George finally told them the name of the town it’s in, so they Googled that and figured it out. I don’t know if they’re more excited or I am. We went when Georgie was a baby (he was too small to remember) and loved it. They haven’t been so they don’t know what to expect.

We have it all budgeted out, got Zoo Memberships, planned car breakfast and picnic lunch, and tomorrow I’m organizing everything. If you have an Oregon Zoo annual membership, you get 1/2 off your Wildlife Safari admission. It was going to be $82 admission for our gigantic family without the Zoo pass and the Zoo passes are $69 per family, so Zoo + 1/2 off WLS = $110. Basically for $30 more than it would cost us to go to Wildlife Safari once, now we can go to the zoo up here as many times as we want through the end of next August. Hehe.

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for (come on, you know you have)…. This is why Kyra is lucky to be alive. This is the scene that greeted me when I went to wake her up from her nap (which she took in Trinity’s bed due to malfeasance on Faith’s part necessitating Faith taking her nap in her and Kyra’s room by herself):

Yes, that’s Kyra’s hair on the left.

And the fabric on the right is from….

the big hole cut out of Trinity’s pillowcase. See the orange fluff on the bed there? That’s actually not Kyra’s. You’ll meet the hapless owner of that hair in a minute.

More Kyra hair all over the bed (nice big blob on the left by the pillow).

Even Garfield is sad. I thought the orange hair was from him, but he appears to have survived the nap intact.

Meet Sally. Sally is about two feet long and has been Trinity’s friend for years. Now she is Trinity’s friend with….

a really bad haircut.

And the Demon Barber of Long Street herself.

If you’re going to lop off your hair, at least try to get it even!

So Kyra gets a trip to the hairdresser tomorrow, and will undoubtedly return home with a much shorter haircut. I usually cut the kids’ hair, but this is slightly beyond what I want to mess with. She took a least three inches off in chunks on one side and then did the same on the other but it looks like she just took off wisps there so she has long and short mixed all over on that side. Ugh. Every time I try to look at it, more comes out in my hand. Not a good way to make your Mommy happy. Did I mention she’s in a wedding at the end of August?

So instead of going out to dinner with her Auntie Masha tonight, spending the night at Babunya’s house (a.k.a. “Tanya”), and playing with Babunya all day tomorrow, Kyra instead received gigantic disciplinary action from her Father (because Mommy was worried she might actually damage said child) followed by cleaning up her big snippy mess and not going on her overnight trip.

You see, this morning I emerged from my shower to hear children #1 and #3 fighting with each other loudly enough that I could hear every word they said downstairs from my bathroom upstairs. Since this is the third day in a row that such behavior had been exhibited from dawn until bed, they both met the morning with the business end of Mom’s wrath. After that, the morning went along quite cheerfully.

After lunch I let the little girls watch Sleeping Beauty for a bit so I could clean my pantry. Apparently Faith opted to remain on the couch watching Prince Philip fight Maleficent when duty called instead of doing her doodie in the specified recepticle where it belongs. This earned her Father’s wrath and she also had to sleep in her bedroom by herself because only big girls get to nap in the same room with their big sisters.

Which left big sister Kyra sleeping in her big sister Trinity’s room, and now I think we’re all caught up. At least Henry’s been nice lately (and Trinity has been a good girl too). He’s four months old now, and is doing fabulously. About a week after he hit three months, we moved him into a crib in the little girls’ room.

Yes, danger danger, I know; however, he falls asleep in my bed and then by the time I move him to his crib in the other room, the girls are alseep. Then he wakes up and comes back in for breakfast with me before they wake up so they don’t have much opportunity to do things like cut his hair….

Around the same time we moved him out, he finally quit doing that snorting thing that was keeping him awake all the time. The doctor said that was from tiny nasal passages and he should outgrow it around three months. Guess they were right! I was able to add coffee and chocolate back into my diet without it bothering him.

Cheesecake and more than a bite or two of ice cream is still verboten (my eating cheesecake makes him absolutely miserable for two or three days afterward). I haven’t been drinking milk either, and I’m kind of looking forward to adding that back in. I’ve been slowly adding in cheese, a little milk in my frappe, and increasing amounts of ice cream to my diet with minimal effects on Henry’s part, so I’m hoping his digestive system is beginning to adjust.

We’ve discovered that when he’s sleeping well, not snorting, and his tummy isn’t bothering him, he’s quite a happy little boy. He doesn’t generally cry without a reason, smiles easily, is happy to be held or not, and is generally quite adorable. Plus, he’s lengthening his sleeping schedule out again.

He’s slept longer than eight hours in a row with no feeding in the middle anywhere for the last three nights. Last night I put him down around 9:30, fed him at 11:00 and moved him to the girls room, and then woke him up to feed him at 8:30 this morning (one of us needed to nurse anyway). That was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in over a year! Hurray!

Here’s a picture I took about a week and a half ago. I cleaned the kitchen. Henry took a nap.

Kids are so cute when they’re asleep. Then they wake up…. I think that’s
about it for today. I think I’ve earned liquor (yay pineapple mojito!).

Rachel

No, I’ve never been a big salad eater. It’s nice and all, but always seems to contain way too many, you know, vegetables. Blech! Who wants those? Plus, I didn’t even know that other non-iceberg types of greens existed until after I got married. In case you were wondering, I think of iceburg lettuce in much the same way I think of celery: fibrous water. Thank you but if I want crunchy flavorlessness, I’ll chew ice cubes.

I haven’t turned into some wacky salad-lover (because salad-amor can only be bad), but my culinary greens are slowly becoming much more interesting. To me. Ahem, shortly after I got married, I discovered that all lettuce doesn’t have to be pale and sickly-looking and that Romaine is actually much more edible. Fast forward a few pregnancies and tomatoes started looking pretty good as well.

A couple of months ago I got a new cookbook The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio’s Award-Winning Food Show. One of the recipes called for escarole. Escawha? Apparently it was some sort of spicy green that was too swanky for Safeway to carry. Ditto the curly endive in another recipe.

Finally yesterday I got around to going to the Market of Choice down the hill from my house, where they carry all sorts of fancy thises and thatses and slap the “organic” label everywhere you look so they can charge gazillions of dollars for it. There, right next to the $49.99/lb. mushrooms (not even kidding), were my fancy escarole and endive and the more pedestrian romaine. They weren’t even terribly expensive.

I did get suckered into paying $4.99 for a small package that contained about twenty blooms from edible flowers. Some smarty pants decided not to put the names of the flowers on the package (otherwise, who would buy them when they can go raid their friends’ or neighbors’ gardens??), so I had to purchase a pack to take home and try to ID the contents. Of course, this becomes more difficult once the contents are in your stomach.

I had read somewhere or other (I think in that same book, which is full of all sorts of useful side information) that if you wash and spin dry your lettuce when you first buy it and then store it with a couple paper towels in a Ziplock bag that you’ve sucked all the air out of, it will keep in the fridge for up to ten days. Not wanting my new spiffy non-iceberg lettuce to get all gross, I spun it up in my
awesome new Oxo Good Grips Salad Spinner

that’s actually kind of fun to mess with. It’s very zoomy and spinny. You know, “awesome” and “salad spinner” are probably words/phrases that should never be uttered together.

I tasted some of the endive and escarole on the way home, and they both seemed more bitter than would be strictly desirous in a salad, so I stuck a whole bunch of romaine in the bowl and then a little bit of each of the others. Feeling all
epicurean, I then added maple bacon pieces (the real stuff, not disgusting fake bacon bits), tomato, hard boiled egg slices, and toasted pine nuts as well as a bunch of the flowers. A bit of fresh viniagrette for the table and voila! a lovely salad to go with George’s fabulous steak, my crusty bread, Bourbon and Brown Sugar beans (thank you, Bush company), and watermelon. And no, we did not devour all this ourselves. My parents came over and happily helped.

And the salad….. was a hit! Some of the flowers were a bit bitter, but the pansies were quite sweet and yummy. I’m starting to think about maybe making a potted garden next year and I’m going to have to look into some edible flowers for it. The endive and escarole added just a bit of a peppery flavor to the salad without overpowering it and making it gross. The entire bowl got eaten. I was shocked!

So that is my salad story (and I’m stickin’ to it!). Which officially makes me quite possibly the most boring person on earth. To make up for the fact that I’ve just essentially done an entire post on lettuce, I am leaving you with a picture that my FIL took on Saturday at our church’s picnic. This is Faith practicing her supermodel pose, complete with the cadre of admiring onlooking boys behind her. Hehe.

Rachel