We grew this in our garden

  I don't really know how

I don't really have any other comment...I just think it's worth sharing.

Banana split!

  The finished creation 

I ran to the store this afternoon to pick up some Diet Coke and the 2yo noticed the bananas. He's at that age where he both a. comes up with new words every day and b. surprises you constantly by appropriately using his new words in context. So as we wheeled by a stand in the middle of an aisle, he gleefully shouted out [there's a lot of shouting when you're 2, apparently], "Bana!" I like to reward the language usage whenever possible, so I put some nearly-not-green ones in the cart, and then got a sudden inspiration. I got one ripe banana and some squirty whipped cream.

We think ran down the street and stopped in Pied Piper, where we got them to pack up some chocolate ice cream for us. At home we already had strawberry from Pied Piper, and some Cherry Garcia from Ben & Jerry's.

So we piled up the banas, three scoops of ice cream, chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, squirty whipped cream, some candy sprinkles and four cherries.

Wow.

We took it outside to eat it. Though it melted faster, it was a lot easier for the 2yo to manage outside. Despite some impressive spoon work, he still ended up covered with chocolate -- face, hands, shirt, shoes. So then I got the hose out and sprayed him off. Y'all, there's no happier person in this world than a 2yo playing with a garden hose.

links for 2007-07-27

• Is Junie B. Jones Talking Trash? | New York Times
  Count me among the Junie B. haters...but my 8yo has always been allowed to read them. I've never heard her talk, nor seen her act, like Junie B., so we're OK here.
  (tags: JunieBJones)
• Behind a Garden Gate, a Nasty Fight Develops | New York Times
  People have asked me before how into gardening I am. Short answer: I love my garden and working in the yard. But people like Niall Hobhouse's critics make me shy away from the garden industry. Those people are crazy.
  (tags: gardening design)

The Hungry Toddler turns two

What a day. The Hungry Toddler turned two today, and so we celebrated in low-key fashion. To each her own, but we are so not having a major party around here for a child who won't remember the festivities next month, never mind when he's 10. :) [For the record, we started to get slightly more serious about things when the current 8yo turned 3, but we are still pretty low-key on the birthday scale. Every party we've ever had has been at home or a local Metro park.]

And in fact, we are doing a cake-and-ice-cream party for the 2yo in a week and a half, when his sister and one set of godparents return from vacation [sadly, we are therefore missing another set of godparents who'll be at a wedding; I may not have mentioned before, but HT has five godparents], and when my parents will be in town. There will be an Elmo cake then, so look for photos the first weekend in August.

But today, it was just the Hungry Toddler and me. So I made some sugar cookies and took those and juice boxes to his school for snack, and we were very popular with the other 2yos. I don't know if you have ever had a 2yo, and if so, if they've attended day care. But in case, I will tell you that the one thing you do not want to do is visit a 2yo at day care in the middle of the day, then say goodbye and come back for them later. It's just a disaster. So, I planned to work from home the rest of the afternoon.

The 2yo was delighted to wave goodbye to his friends, and we got home and I fired up all the computers and planned to finish up a project I'd been working on this week. I set him up with a Veggie Tales movie, which he occasionally pretended to watch to appease me.

Now, I will say this. I am pretty laid-back about a lot of things. So ever since he first discovered it, months ago, I have been letting him play with this heavy aluminum bowl I have sitting out in the living room. It's not like he can break it. And he enjoys watching his balls roll around in it. You get the picture.

So he wandered in the living room where I was, and picked up the bowl, like he's done 100 times before. Except this time, he didn't have it balanced or something, and it fell back and smacked him in the nose. Really, really hard.

No, really: it left a dent.

So then we proceeded with 45 minutes of shrieking, punctuated by my call to the pediatrician [this happened at 4:50 p.m., no way to get there before they closed] to see if it was possibly worth going to the emergency room.

Me [over intense shrieking]: ....so yeah, that's what he did. Is it possible for a 2yo to break his nose?

Nurse: Oh, yes, it's possible.

Me: So should I go to the emergency room? I mean, what would they even do?

Nurse: Well, that's up to you. Do you feel like he needs to go?

Me: If I freaking knew that, I wouldn't have called!

OK, so that's not what I said. That part was just in my head. We decided to wing it, and much comforting, rocking, Motrin and a sippy cup of milk later, things seemed better. I tried to give the 2yo a bag of ice, but he held it against his chest instead of his nose. After he mostly calmed down, we ran an errand, with my thinking that removal from the scene would change his focus, and that totally worked.

Now, of course, he has gone to bed with a red stripe across his nose, backed by a bluish tint to the skin. Poor boy!! What a birthday.

On the plus side, we had tomatoes and fried okra for dinner, and those seem to be about his two favorite foods in the world. Whatever happened to his nose, it sure didn't hurt his appetite.

links for 2007-07-24

• Living Below Your Means
  Am trying so hard to do this. Day care kind of interferes.
  (tags: money budget)

A shirtful of tomatoes

  It's not really so good for your shirt, though.

In case you're wondering how many tomatoes fit inside a shirt, the answer is 22.

It seems to help if you have a bunch of plum tomatoes [the yellow ones on the bottom] ripe when you are ready to fill up the shirt.

Sorry I can't say more. I have to go put up more tomatoes now.

Reunited and it feels...never mind

I'm so excited. I'm now one of the triumvirate who's assumed control of the family reunion.

Please recall that I do not like to plan family events, and you may understand the significance of this happening.

Here's the story. From before when I remember, my mother's family [her 4 brothers and all the families] got together every year -- first for Christmas, then instead for Thanksgiving and then also every summer for family reunion.

Now that the 2nd generation has grown up and most of us? half of us? have kids of our own, it's gotten more difficult to make the reunion happen. Thanksgiving fell off years ago after the first wave of marriages and therefore, in-laws who kinda expected to see you every now and then on a major national holiday, but the family reunion has persisted, with some sputtering.

So my sister and my cousin and I decided to fix that. We got the "grownups" to agree, and now we're in charge for '08 and into perpetuity.

All I can say is, I'm the big picture girl who says, Hey, we shouldn't depend on the parents to plan our get-togethers. They've done it for years. What if we took over so they didn't have to worry about it any more? And now I am going to depend on the other two to ensure that we get hotel reservations and have somewhere to eat.

Well, I might could make a potato salad or something. :)

Freezing tomatoes

I'm not sure I could properly explain the marvelous bounty I got today from my CSA. I could barely lift the box, for starters. The veggies are coming in now, big time. If you work with me, show up early tomorrow and get your pick of the homegrown vegetables I don't like and/or have too many of: eggplant, cabbage, cucumbers and possibly some squash.

But for the moment, I'm off to the kitchen. I ordered special a 25-lb box of tomatoes, for the purpose of freezing them for this winter. Here are the instructions I'm following to freeze the tomatoes....so simple.

I've done this before in years past, but never on nearly this large a scale. I feel sure a lot will have to come out of the freezer to make it happen. I need to get serious about finding a second refrigerator/freezer.

links for 2007-07-17

• American Food Writing: An Anthology With Classic Recipes | New York Times
  A fun review by Roy Blount Jr. Now I need this book!
  (tags: food writing nytimes 2007)

More thoughts on the guitar

Surely the last person in Nashville who doesn't play guitar, I decided earlier this summer to remedy that situation. I took piano lessons for years [even taught them for a long time], but excepting some short-lived experiments with trumpet in junior high and the xylophone in high school, I've been a one-instrument girl. I've now been messing around with the guitar for a few weeks, learning some chords and attempting to strum. It's still pretty laughable, but I'm going to start with real lessons once the 8yo is back in school this fall and our schedule settles down.

I've wanted to play guitar since I was in junior high. I'm sure this is because I was a camper. I mean, every summer, I signed up for any camp I could convince my parents to let me attend. And I don't care what kind of camp it is -- church camp, 4-H, youth conference, whatever -- the coolest people there are the guitar players. I first knew one of my favorite bloggers as a guitar-wielding summer staffer at Lakeshore United Methodist Assembly.

NYC sister [also a summer staffer at Lakeshore back in the day. Coincidence? I think not.] also took up guitar several years ago, though she professes not to be terribly serious about it. [No worries there; she has always played circles around me on the piano. She can also play drums.]

Though I'm not heading out for camp anytime soon [unlike say, Nashville sister, who STILL runs a week of camp every summer at Lakeshore], I'm determined to be able to lead Kumbaya next time I happen upon a campfire. Or you know, when I learn 3 songs and invite a whole bunch of you over for a sing-a-long. Now that will be awesome.

Anyone for s'mores?