Early morning

By 8:15ish, Liam had finished breakfast and seen the sun and was ready to go outside an play, no fooling around. So, he and Mollie chased the ball and he played with trucks and I tried to drink my coffee.

Poor baby boy started running a fever this afternoon and evening -- I suspect another ear infection, which means another trip to the doctor tomorrow morning and another assignment for Mommy: read up on recurrent ear infections and what to do about them.

We got our sunny day

It was lovely. Not quite as warm as I'd like (I don't think it was into the 60s, but maybe tomorrow), but very sunny and pleasant. Liam and I started the day by meeting my parents at the Farmers Market where Liam must have consumed an entire apple and pear worth of "samples." (They like him because we go pretty much every week and Liam's first word was apple.) Then home for lunch and nap and playing in the yard all afternoon: chasing Mollie the dog, planting seeds, playing with the gravel, rolling trucks and climbing all over the big rhododendron tree. Now we're inside; Liam's reading with Daddy and trying to wind down before bath time. Hope everyone who visits this space is having a lovely weekend.

How to eat macaroni and cheese with your spoon when you are 21 months old

First, you have to get the macaroni and cheese made. This requires Mommy. Get the empty taped up box of macaroni and cheese from your play kitchen and carry it around whining and signing please until Mommy stops what she is doing and puts water on to boil. No photo of this, but you can see the box on the table in the later photos.

Wait patiently for the macaroni and cheese to cook (while eating carrots and pea pods). When it finally arrives, shovel the macaroni and cheese into your mouth with both hands.

Look at Mommy like she has grown two heads when she says "Liam, macaroni and cheese is a spoon food, please." But, try to humor Mommy. Place the macaroni and cheese very carefully one macaroni at a time on the spoon and put it in your mouth.

Whenever Mommy isn't paying attention go back to using your hands.

Try to figure out how your hands got so sticky.


And you are spared photos of the drumming on the table with the spoon while singing at the top of your voice and of holding the sippy cup in your teeth and pretending to be the dog. (Who has never, as far as I know, put one of the sippy cups in her mouth.)

Happy birthday to cousin K. I bet your table manners beat Liam's!

(All done sign.)

The weather

Honestly, the weather has been rotten lately. We had snow again this morning. Not enough to stick to anything, just enough to make everything thoroughly wet and cold. And then wind and rain on and off all day. I'm ready for a week of sunshine. This is a winter to make one understand all those people who spend spring break some place sunny and warm.

The hummingbirds are going through sugar-water at a rate of about one feeder full every three days. It's something.

Tuesday nights are for reading

A quick picture of Will and Liam reading. This is the pre-bedtime reading. Later they have the post-bath, pre-rocking to sleep reading upstairs. Liam likes to select the books and he especially likes this bright one about, of course, cars and driving.

Aggravating night in the extreme, trying to deal with getting my flaky, flaky tenant out of the rental so the new, seems-like-he-has-his-act-together tenant can move in. This is complicated by the fact that she is not really living there any more and it seems to be inhabited mostly by her stuff (lots!) and her (illegal!) sub-tenant/lessor. I now realize that the other point of a security deposit is that it is some motivation for her to get all her c-r-a-p out of the place, since, of course, I'll keep it until she does. As it is, I was over there to do the walk through and get the key at 6 pm tonight as scheduled (with Liam!) and she was hours away from being done, stuff everywhere, all over the yard, I have no idea how it's all going to go into the already jam-packed cars. So I'll be back tomorrow morning at 8 am (with Liam!) to try again. I will not be sad to see this one go.

And then I had to work the phone to make sure the new tenant has a place to stay, since he was planning to be there tonight. A: yes, he can stay with friends and/or get the key from flaky tenant, probablly around now. This is a good outcome since for about 30 minutes there I thought I was going to have to run around like a crazy person and pick up the house and fold the 2-weeks worth of clean laundry piled on the guest bed so he wouldn't be in the street. All these kids are young, it's a college town, and they don't have the money to keep a place for half a month just so they can have a slow, easy paced move.

Will had a very high fever this AM and most of the day, so we're really hoping it is transitory and he's not headed back to the hospital any time soon. (Cold for Liam = pneumonia for Will, generally.) I can't wait for cold and flu season to give us at least a small break. It seems like we've all be sick for the past 100 years.

Funeral today

Our dear friend and colleague Mike died last week after a six or seven week ordeal. He had heart bypass surgery and was recovering really well, and then had a stroke and was finally starting to recover from that, and then got pneumonia and died. I had forgotten how l-o-n-g big Catholic funeral masses can be. Long. But, the church was full to the rafters and the Mayor and most of the city council were there even. I think it's probably a comfort to the family to have so many people and such a manifestation of their loved one's service to and connections in the community.

Lovely service except there was the whole: Catholics who are able can come forward and receive communion. . .everyone else, stay where you are. (For those of you not steeped in the Catholic faith, I'm no longer eligible to receive communion, pretty much, ever, since IVF is considered a mortal sin because "extra" embryos are created and they "die," and, also, some people end up discarding unused embryos (which we did not) and I refuse to repent and say I would never do it again, because, well, of course I would do it again if it were the only way to have a child, which, for us, it was.)

Anyway, the whole thing was pretty long on theology and pretty short on fun stories about Mike and what a great guy he was, and what a profound difference he made in so many lives and in this community. And that was too bad, because I heard at the cookies and coffee after that lots of people had some really fun stories they were hoping to share. Rest easy Mike, you'll be sorely missed, but there is an entire town (pulse some more) of people who are going to do their best to help take care of your lovely spouse and beautiful daughters. And, I hear you might get a public memorial down at the new LOTT interpretative center or at rotary park---wouldn't that be something to make you grin!

Still snowing here

The snow seems to excite the hummingbirds --- we have at least 3 and maybe more, they're hard to tell apart. They have been zipping around the yard all afternoon. This snow didn't stick; but it did pour rain or snow or some combination all day. The rain gauge says .86 inch in the past 24 hours. Seems like more. Liam has learned the hummingbird noise except he doesn't make a "zzz" or a "t" sound yet so the "tzzzik" noise comes out more like "mmmmik." It's still pretty cute and is now the default bird noise, replacing "da, da, da, da, da" in a high voice, which is what birds used to say.

In other news: 4 dishes of chicken divan were made by me today. One to eat and 3 for the freezer. This is what happens when you buy an enormous block of cheddar cheese and an enormous bag of broccoli at Costco thinking: "neat, we eat cheese; we eat broccoli, this will take care of itself." Not so much. Turns out, you have to eat a lot, every day, for this stuff to be consumed by the time it should be.

If you look up chicken divan on the Internet you get recipes that are mayonnaise based, cream soup based, milk based, and broth based. Some have sherry, some don't. Some cheese, some not. Many have curry powder. None of my present cookbooks have a recipe (not even the "new, improved" Joy of Cooking). So, since the one we ate for dinner was pretty good, in the spirit of public service, here's what I did:

Make the sauce. Melt 2T butter and 2T flour and a liberal pinch of salt and pepper over med-high heat to make a roux. Add 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth. Whisk away until it's smooth and let it cook a bit until it starts to thicken. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup heavy cream and a few tablespoons of dry sherry or white wine. Whisk again and cook some more. Add about 1 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese. Whisk again. Check for seasoning and adjust, I added more pepper and salt.

Assemble the dinner. Butter a baking dish. Spoon in the broccoli (I cut it pretty small and did not steam it ahead of time). Add the cooked chicken layer. Spoon the cheese sauce over top. I made it so the cheese sauce pretty well came up to almost the top of the chicken layer, but did not totally cover things. Add some bread crumbs to the top. Bake in a medium oven until it's hot and the broccoli is cooked. I think this took 20-25 minutes. Serve with rice. We used brown rice and are therefore officially labeling tonight's dinner as healthy. Tzzzzik!