Quote Monday is a big Gordon Lightfoot fan

/ Shane / Leave a comment

::Ollie was trying on his new shoe::
Sara: “Okay, do you want to put on the other one?”
Ollie: “There’s two of them?!”

Dabu, to me: “Beating you is not much of a victory, but beating Sara is.”

::At the Jazz Festival::
Singer: “This next one was by Ella Fitzgerald…”
Evie, her eyes shining with excitement: “They said they’re going to sing the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald!!”

Sara: “Did the monkeys take his hats?”
Ollie: “And they climb up in the trees!”
Sara: “And what did the monkeys do after that?”
Ollie: “They flew away.”

I think someone has been immersed in the Wizard of Oz at a young age…

Simple Potato Soup

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.

The Reason:

Now that it is starting to be fall, it is starting to be “soup season”. Sara kind of thinks soup season extends year round, so she has quite a lot of soup recipes in her arsenal, but this one is by far my favorite.

The Journey:

Let me start by saying, I am very anti-creamy soups. I like thin soups, like chicken noodle, french onion, etc. And this soup is as thick as it gets. The next day you can practically cut it with a knife. And yet, I love it.

Maybe it is not coincidental that it has bacon in it, which certainly doesn’t hurt.

The Verdict:

Sooo yummy. It’s in the crock pot, so it’s not too difficult to make, but you do have to do a lot of potato chopping first which takes a long time. However, it makes a lot, so you get multiple meals out of it, making the effort more than worth it. It works fine to freeze it.

It is a very hearty soup. I recommend serving it with some fresh baked bread.

The Recipe:

Recipe from Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook

  • 5 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 1 stick of butter
  • 1 cup half-and-half (or whole milk)
  • 1/2 cup sour cream (we use our homemade plain yogurt instead)
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 8 ounces bacon, cooked, drained, and crumbled
  • 6 green onions, sliced
  1. Put the potatoes in the slow cooker and add water to cover. Cover and cook on high until the potatoes are cooked and falling apart, about 5 hours.
  2. Turn the cooker to low, add the butter, half-and-half, and sour cream, and season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook until hot, about 20 minutes.
  3. Stir in the crumbled bacon and green onions. Serve immediately or keep warm on low, adding water or milk to thin if necessary.

Urine, urine, everywhere…

/ Shane / 2 Comments

…and not a drop to…wait a minute.

Ollie has been potty trained for so long, that we often don’t even think to bring extra clothes with us. Therefore, it was a little disconcerting when Oliver started having accidents several times a day for a few days. I don’t think it is unusual to have the occasional minor set-back, but it just kept catching us off guard. We kept thinking, “Well, of course we don’t have to worry about him having another accident, he just had one.”

This is why, after he had a “small” accident, we decided to go to the mall anyway. However, we at least had the common sense to take him directly to the potty.

Sara went in with him and got him situated, sitting on the potty. You know how public toilets have that U-shaped toilet seat on them? Well, you see, Ollie’s not real good at aiming, and with him sitting on the potty facing forward, that missing section of toilet seat was *just enough* of a gap, that when he let fly, it came shooting right out of the toilet and onto the floor.

English: photo of toilet seat

(Not the actual scene of the crime)

“Stop, Ollie, stop!” Sara cried, immediately doing the splits to avoid the growing pool on the floor. But stop he did not, and maybe couldn’t, because he obviously had a full bladder.

“What? What Mama? What is going on??” shouted Evie from where she was standing outside of the stall, unable to see what all the shouting was about. Slowly the urine pool turned into a urine lake. Once he was finally on empty, Sara had to deal with a freaked out Evie, mop up the mess on the floor, and then discover that Oliver had also gone all over the back of his pants. She was not having what you would call a good day.

Meanwhile, I had returned some clothes and was waiting obliviously out in the hallway, wondering what was taking them so long.

It was time to beat a hasty retreat from the mall. We had promised the kids that they could play in the little play area after they went to the potty, but we had to back out on that promise as I tried to hold a pee-soaked Oliver out away from my body and retreated in a half-walk, half-run to the car. Evie was not very appreciative of our dilemma, and was demanding to play (after all, *her* pants weren’t soaked in urine).

Afterwards, Oliver sheepishly confided in Sara, “You said stop, but I didn’t stop.”

Monkey See, Monkey Do

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Lately, Oliver has been picking up some bad habits from his sister.

Just in general, Ollie is always echoing what Evie says. I don’t think that is specific to him, but more just what two year olds do in general. Usually this is a good thing, because he’s learning about language and socialization. But going through the terrible twos is a lot different when you have an older sister to teach you everything, including how to misbehave.

Evie has a certain way of dealing with situations where she doesn’t get what she wants, where she sort of raises her eyebrows and gets this nonchalant tone of voice, agrees with what you’re saying, but exaggerates it to some ridiculous conclusion as if to say, “Okay, we’ll do it your way, do you see what’s going to happen?”. Something like, “Fine. Fine. I guess I’m just never going to wear clothes ever again.” It’s actually pretty hilarious; it’s petulant, but it seems like grown up petulant, not 5 year old petulant.

And now Oliver is doing it too. He doesn’t get extra rice like he wants? “Then I’m not going to eat it then.” He just absolutely matches the tone and posture and facial expression *perfectly*, that there’s no doubt where he got it from (and, unfortunately, I think they both ultimately get it more from me than Sara, which is sort of an uncomfortable realization).

There’s a couple of other bad habits he’s picked up from her, mostly about being afraid of things. He won’t go into the basement anymore, or even the living room if we’re at the other end of the house. Sometimes if you leave him alone (and he thinks of it), he’ll come running out screaming, “I’m scared, I’m scared!” I’ve asked him some questions, and I don’t even think he knows what he’s scared of, or even what “being scared” means. He just knows that’s what Evie would do, so he does it too.

Oh well, at least this way we know what to expect…

Anyway, it’s not all bad. It does my heart good to see him gaze at her with adoring eyes and just try to do everything he can to be like his big sis. He copies her because he thinks she’s the most amazing person in the whole wide world. For now, she doesn’t mind too much. It will be sad when she gets old enough to not want her little brother copying her all the time, or when he gets old enough to do it out of a desire to annoy rather than love.

For now, though, it’s actually pretty sweet.

100 puffs and counting

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This month we officially passed the “100 puff” mark on our Beekeeper’s Quilt, and it’s really starting to look like something.

The score for the first 100 is 90 to 10, Sara, which means I’m perfectly at 10%. Sara thinks that’s a little pathetic, but I’m pretty thrilled with it! (And also, how many stories has she published in that time?)

This month was a big month in terms of puff production. We have been driving a lot on the weekends lately, and Sara can really crank those puppies out in the car. We have quite a little basket full of these little things, and it does look really cool seeing all the different kinds of yarn. My favorites are the ones we made from the yarn we hand dyed. What a cool thing to be able to include.

So now we just keep on being busy little bees and see how fast we can get the next couple of hundred finished.