Surprise!

Heh. Well, it looked promising there for a minute, didn't it? Me all bloggin' away for, like, weeks? Well, lemme tell ya what happened. First of all, Caketember nearly did me in. Caketember is a solid month of celebration that runs September 11 (my mother's birthday) to October 10 (our anniversary). Smack in the middle of Caketember is the 9-day period when Hubby C, Miss B, and C-Bear all get to blow out their respective candles. Which is enough so make me want to sleep for a week, usually, but this year Caketember started with unexpected bathroom renovations, my mother-in-law needing a pacemaker (she's fine now), a massive computer meltdown, and then finished up with Hubby C's book launch, which I catered (and I catered the hell right out of it, if I do say so myself). By 10 pm on the night of the launch, I was done. Went home, went to bed, and woke up sick. Stayed sick for a couple weeks with  a cold that receded and was replaced by headaches and full-body fatigue. 

It took us a while, but we figured out what that was:

That's 21 weeks worth of baby gut right there (gut in photo may appear smaller than it really is... hard to get the proper angle). Baby number four, due June 10. "But didn't you just have a baby?" you may well be asking. And the answer is, "Yes, yes I did." Hubby C and I had been planning to try for a fourth, but we had wanted to wait another year or so, on the off chance that we might get a load of laundry done or something. But apparently biology had different plans, despite my having been on the pill, and despite the fact that Hubby C and I are barely ever in the same room long enough for such a blessed event to occur. 

Ah, well. We're lucky. We're freakishly fertile. We're young. Onward and upward! 

But it's been a slog. Joodles is the worst sleeper in the history of sleep (worse even than his siblings, which I would never have thought possible). Hubby deals with the worst of the nighttime waking, but I still wake up every time Joodles does, even if I don't have to get up (and believe me, I would have Joodles in the bed in a second if it would help him sleep through the night, or even for more than a 60-minute stretch at a time, but in fact it just makes everything worse). So very much looking forward to him growing out of this, or at least to him being old enough to lie in bed and read when he can't sleep. What's that, five more years? Hubby C and I are both so very, very tired. If I ever complained about how tired I was when I was pregnant with Joodles, I take it back. That was a flippin' cakewalk.

So that's the scoop on all that. Sleepy, but happy. Completely unproductive, but, well, awesomely reproductive. Lots and lots of things to write about but very little time (and even less brain) with which to do it. But ain't that always the way?

How have you guys been?

KCWC! Fun for you! Fun for me!

Since I obviously have loads of time on my hands, I've signed up for the Elsie Marley Kids Clothes Week Challenge, which runs October 10-17. Stalwarts among you may remember that I attempted said challenge way back in May, 2010, and all I managed to finish was a skirt for Miss B. But I was very pregnant then, and it is  a well-loved and oft-worn skirt, so I consider that a success. This time, I'm hoping to be a bit better organized, possibly even cutting some pieces ahead of time. The terms of the challenge are that you spend one hour - a mere hour - a day working on kids' clothes. You can sew, knit, crochet, stencil, applique, whatever, and of course you don't have to limit yourself to an hour if you're totally on fire.

This is really an incentive to get my sewing room cleaned up (it is currently housing, in a post-performance-art-piece style scattering, the contents of my bathroom cabinets, as the bathroom is mid-reno and nobody has felt like picking all the bottles and tubes and rolls and packages up off the floor). Kind of like inviting people for dinner so you can make yourself clean your house. I know I'm not the only person who does that.

There are a few projects I need a boot in the arse to tackle, chief among them being:

• finishing a skirt I started ages ago for Miss B,
• a dance bag, also for Miss B (not strictly clothes, but I think it still counts), and
• fall hats for the boys.

There are a hundred thousand other things I could do, too, but there's no sense setting my (or your) expectations too high, now, is there?

The aforementioned bathroom renovations have been all manner of ridiculousness, but it's going to be a huge improvement. We have one bathroom for the five of us, and it is tiny. Like, storage-room tiny. Not small in the suburban sense, small in the house-that-predates-plumbing sense. Some previous owners had furnished it with an enormous cabinet around the sink, and the toilet was functional but gargantuan. Now we have a sleek pedestal sink and a water-saving, apartment-sized toilet. Lovely. There was also a set of cabinets above the sink and toilet that gave the illusion of storage, but which was in fact both inaccessible (I had to stand on the toilet to reach them, and even then could not reach the farthest section) and impractical (who puts 7 1/2-inch-high shelves in a bathroom?). They're gone now, to be replaced with a shelf and baskets, or some such system. The floor was covered in this mildewing, cracked, awful tile which Hubby C ripped out and which we planned to replace with some very tasteful but still easily cleaned vinyl (I have it on good authority that boys take some time to learn proper aim... suddenly, vinyl seems like a godsend). However, while the workmen were here tearing and replacing, it became evident that putting down flooring before installing the sink and toilet would make much more sense than the alternative, and Hubby C had about an hour to grab something. Everything on offer was truly hideous, so Hubby C went for the closest he could find to "inoffensive," with the intention of painting it later. I admire that man's confidence that we can pretty-up any old crap vinyl flooring. And so I will be taping and dabbing my heart out as I wrangle a floor of fake-looking stone-print vinyl into a tasteful checkerboard arrangement of grey and white squares. I am actually rawther excited about this. It's a very small floor, so I don't mind in the least the prospect of taping off three-inch squares.

Oh, and we dodged a hurricane. The weather guy got us all freaked out, but then in the end it was no big deal. Miss B got the afternoon off school yesterday, though, and I had to separate my cabin-feverish kids from one another lest they do each other injury, but everybody had popcorn and I baked a peach upside-down cake. It's still blowing a gale out there, and I imagine there are some pretty impressive waves for those closer to the water, but I'm content to stay home and hope the diapers don't fly off the line. 

Oh, oh, oh, and I have just discovered The Gaytheist Gospel Hour, which I am reading as though it were a novel. It's. So. Good. I wish it were a paperback so I could put it in my pocket and take it everywhere with me. I laugh, I cry, I want to call people and read sections aloud to them. You will be enriched for having read even one entry, I assure you. 

It must be fall

The weather is beautiful, even summery, but the sky has that big look to it, like it's farther away or something. The mornings are cool, and in the evenings I have to go through the house, closing all the windows. The leaves are still green, but trees and bushes are heavy with berries.

All summer, the house has been a mess, as every chore was abandoned in favour of a picnic or a barbecue or a romp at Grandma's house. Our food staples have been cereal and sandwiches, supplemented by handfuls of lettuce or snow peas or raspberries from the garden. Now, that morning chill has turned my mind from flame-charred beef patties to long-simmered stews and cheese-topped casseroles and soup with oven-hot biscuits. Yup, it's that time. 

It's funny how quickly fall changes me. During the summer, life is unscheduled, bedtimes are approximate, and supper arrives on the table some time before dark. Now that fall is here, the meals are like clockwork (even the late-season barbecue dinners), the kids are all in bed at a reasonable hour, and the dishes are all done in time for me to bake a batch of muffins for the next day's lunches and snacks, or for me to make a batch of jam, or to pack ahead some portion of Miss B's lunch.

And lunch. Remember how I was going to rock it? Yeah? Well, I totally am. So far, it's been all success. I'm sure the novelty will wear off, but since last week it's been one lunch triumph after another. Since a few of you have asked (and for my own future reference), here's a week's worth of rockin' lunch menus:

Day 1: yellow rice pilaf*, apple, peach spice mini-muffins, blueberry yogurt, strawberries, chocolate-dipped mini rice cakes. (yogurt and strawberries not eaten)

Day 2: ham and lettuce sandwich on toasted English muffin, cheese slices, apple, banana “doughnut”  (banana muffin batter baked in a doughnut-shaped muffin tin), blueberry smoothie made with leftover blueberry yogurt and strawberries from day before. (cheese not eaten)

Day 3: chicken, black bean, and cheese quesadilla (with leftover cheese from the day before), apple, banana “doughnut,” yogurt for dipping quesadilla, carrot salad, strawberries. (carrot salad not eaten, so I ate it)

Day 4: baked French toast** with maple syrup, apple, cheese slices and soda crackers, yogurt with blueberries.  (Everything eaten)

Day 5: faux “lunchables” (crackers, sliced mozzarella and cheddar, and pepperoni packed separately, for lunchtime assembly), sliced black olives, celery sticks, carrot sticks, apple, blueberry mini-muffins. (everything eaten) 

Day 6: ham and lettuce sandwich on English muffin, granola bar, apple, strawberries, cheese, snow peas. (waiting to see how this one goes...)

*Yellow rice pilaf isn't, strictly speaking, a pilaf, I just cook 1/3 cup basmati rice with 2/3 cup water, a few tablespoons of cooked chickpeas, some frozen peas, and a tablespoon or so of currants, with pinches of cinnamon and turmeric. Cover, bring to a boil (happens fast, since it's such a small amount of liquid), reduce heat to very low and cook about 15 minutes, until water has been absorbed. Makes one perfect insulated-bowl-sized serving.

** Baked French toast is a new thing for us, but Miss B loved it, and it's super easy. The night before, I cut some light rye (light as in "pale," not "low-cal" or anything) bread into one-inch chunks, so it made roughly a heaping cup's worth. I beat one egg and a bit of milk (2 tablespoons?) in a container, added the bread cubes, stirred it up to coat well, then covered it and left it in the fridge overnight. There was a relatively high proportion of liquid to bread, but it was all absorbed by morning. I heated the oven to 400F, put the bread mixture into a well-buttered dish (I have these little individual casserole dishes that are the same diameter as Miss B's insulated-bowl-thingy), sprinkled it with cinnamon, then baked it until crusty and starting to turn golden, maybe 20 minutes? Then I removed it from the dish, placed it in the warmed insulated-bowl-thing, and packed some maple syrup in a small container for pouring come lunchtime. 

In case you're wondering, yes, I am keeping a detailed lunch log. And yes, that is about as completely unlike me as it gets. But so is having the dishes done before bed, and I'm managing to tackle that one, too. 

I've been testing a new granola bar recipe for lunchtime packing awesomeness, and it seems to be a success. This one is my standby, but Miss B has moved beyond crunchy and is into the chewy granola bar these days, so I tried out something new. I started out with this recipe here, but I made a lot of substitutions: 

• I swapped out the peanut butter for tahini, since I'm not sure yet whether peanut butter is allowed this year (sigh... amazing teachers at Miss B's school, but much-less-than-amazing home-school communication),
• I was out of honey so I used brown sugar,
• I added 1/4 teaspoon of salt,
• I didn't have large-flake oats so I used 5-minute ones.
• I didn't have sunflower seeds, so I used a combination of pumpkin seeds and millet puffs, and upped the crisp rice cereal content to 1 1/2 cups,
• I used chopped juice-sweetened dried cranberries instead of raisins, 
• I nixed the peanuts, and
• as soon as the pan came out of the oven, I sprinkled the top with mini chocolate chips, then, when they had melted, I used an offset spatula to spread the chocolate smoothly.

(Note: these bars are gluten-free if the oats and cereal are certified as such: check labels if you're not sure.)

So I guess it's pretty much my recipe now. I still want to tweak a little, and when I'm happy with  it  I'll post it in a more useful form. I will say that these ones sliced very nicely, which my other recipe didn't always do. Cha-Bear has already eaten more of them than he should have, and the whole things, too, not just the chocolate off the top. I think in the future I'll reduce the oats and add in more puffy cereals, as these are very dense, probably too dense for children whose diet is already rather rich in fibrous materials. Sometimes more roughage is not actually the answer. Go figure. 

And on that note, buh-bye!

Grade three

Our windy, rainy morning isn't giving me much light to work with, so we've got some blurry indoor back-to-school photos for this year. Miss B was up before any of us, vibrating with excitement. She was actually pretty pleased with the chillier weather, because she was desperate to wear these pink knee socks, and wasn't at all impressed with the possibility of another hot day. I still predict she'll have shed them by lunch time.

On the lunch menu today, since I made such a fuss about it last week (and have been egged on by lunch-packing friends here and on Facebook to share): yellow rice (basmati rice with currants, chickpeas, green peas, turmeric, and cinnamon), yogurt with blueberries, peach spice mini-muffins, strawberries, four chocolate-dipped mini rice cakes, and an apple. Oh, and her stylin' Barbie water bottle. I will report back on what comes home.

We camped.

And it was awesome. We roasted so many marshmallows. We stuck our feet in the frigid ocean. We saw evidence of fairies. Nobody slept very well at all, but nobody minded, either.

 

Kids in the woods. So, so good.

One more thing before I hit the road

We're packing for our camping trip today, but before I head out I want to show you my new kitchen shelf, complete with hangy thing:

Check it out. Hubby C put up the shelf, which spans a double window. The window faces southwest, which means it's one of the best spots in the house for overwintering my potted herbs. Yay! The hangy thing is a rack jobby from my pizza stone (I had thought it was from a casserole dish, but my Very Dear Friend Emily pointed out that she has the same one, from her very same pizza stone). I found it when I was clearing out a ton of stashed glass jars under my sink. St. John's - ahem - doesn't recycle glass. I know, I know. Anyway, when I fished this metal thing out from the back of the cupboard, it quickly became clear that its very purpose was to provide a hangout for my measuring cups and tea strainers and what-nots. Was I right, or what?

September

My most favouritest month ever. Back to school, man. I loved it. I still love it. I've never been good at creating my own routines, even as a kid. Back-to-school time created them for me. I was one of those kids who thrived in the school environment (not so for lots of my friends, many of whom are way smarter than I am). Sure, I would start getting all anxious, oh, around the second week of August, but it was in that anxious-about-something-good way, like some kids are about Christmas.

Miss B has also been terribly anxious. What if she doesn't like her new classroom? What if there are new kids who are totally mean? What if the older girls kick her off the monkey bars? What if nobody likes her any more? I have assured her that these problems are all either unlikely to occur or easily solved if they do, but still, I'm just a mom, so what do I know?

She's already packed (and unpacked, and packed again) her bookbag, lined up her gym sneakers and indoor shoes, and picked her outfits and hairstyles for the first week and a half. She has made me go over the likely course of events of the first day about fifteen times. She's ready. She's prepped.

And now, we just have to wait. School doesn't customarily start here until the Wednesday after Labour Day, which gives us one last long weekend hurrah every year before we get down to business. Usually we go to Eastport, but it's just too far to travel with three kids in the back seat of a compact car. Both boys are big enough now to reach over and pull Miss B's hair or swipe her glasses, and I am just not spending the better part of two days in a car threatening them this year. So we found a place to camp that's much closer, and still on a beach. I'll report back when we return.

For now, we've got a pile of weekend menu-planning and sacrifices to make to the weather gods, because apparently it's supposed to be on the rainy side. Three wet kids and two wet parents in tents. Awesome or awful? Yeah, I expected as much.

And Miss B, she's up in her room, settling in to her new desk (made by one Hubby C, who is so super I can hardly stand it), and writing stories about the end of summer and the tedium of waiting for school to start. I know I've said it before, but: she is so my kid.