Thursday, October 28, 2010

Towering love

School for Otto starts at 9 which means if we are walking we need to be stroller bound by 8:45 and if we drive (because I am headed to the store after Otto is dropped off) we need to out the door by 8:50. The kids are up and raring to go by 6:30 which should leave us plenty of time for mette's three bowls of cereal, coffee for me, Otto's snack packed and clothes for everyone, and yet somehow each school day we manage to loose focus and I end up running to get us out the door on time. Today Otto needed to wear his Ferrari suit before he would get dressed. He was taking it to school for Halloween activities but had to wear it first for a bit before he would get dressed in clothes. Not too surprising knowing Otto but he plans to dress up as a race car driver again this year, and every year for a while would be my guess. Today while he was being a race car driver and I was getting mette dressed he did this.







He was mighty proud as he well should be. That is some good stacking. He has always been very good at stacking things and really loves seeing what kind of towers he can make. Of course, this only added a new dimension to getting us out the door on time. How am I ever going to get them on the bus??

You must excuse my posting absence, the little baby I mentioned earlier arrived Tuesday night and it has been very exciting around here because of it. My good friend Rachel and family welcomed a beautiful little girl into their family. They are all home safe and sound and we are all looking forward to more snuggles with her.

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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Add your own caption

All I am going to say is it is lunch and they are eating cereal. You fill in the rest.





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Friday, October 22, 2010

Filing

As I mentioned before, I have been moving things around a lot here. My favorite is this old letter file that I moved piece by piece while the family slept from the third floor down to the first floor. It's like it was made to be in our living room. Once I measured it I knew it belonged on this wall. On top is a great display of some old 16mm projectors of Eric's along with the poster from the Library of Congress tour he hosted at the Campus Theatre when he owned it. It is signed by Janet Leigh. Too cool for school my boy is!


It took five days, but Mette figured out the the drawers open. I am working on organizing all of the drawers. Once I know what each one will hold I will print out labels for all of them. With period correct fonts of course!


Crayons, paper, all the bottom drawers are for her and Otto.


This new corner has become a favorite play place. I put an old phone on the table and they both love to sit their and make calls. Mette likes to call Argentina, good thing we aren't paying for that!


The curtain fabric is a trial but I think I need to go get more and turn it into curtains. It has movie tickets, how could I pass it up?


The kids got little pumpkins at market today and drew faces on them when we got home.


Mette saw the flash and came running. "I say CHEESE!!!"


George has been getting a lot of lovin' lately.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010

Hello Again


Hi, it's me, phoebe, mom, writer of the blog.

Did you forget about me? Sorry about that.

Things are going full speed around here. We have had a few visits from Nonna Jen on her way to and from Corning to do research work which have been a lot of fun. Do you think I managed to get any cute pictures of the kids with her? No, that would have been too much. There are some great photos of when she and Grandpa Chris were here, but we are waiting on him to post and or send them along to us. I have also been going a bit crazy on the rearranging furniture moving/painting everything in the house mode and that seriously cuts into my blogging time. The living room is all moved around and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. (said in true Eloise fashion) I am also still chipping away at painting the kids room. Man is it ever hard to paint the room they sleep in!! When they sleep is usually my time to get stuff like that done and with them sleeping IN their room, well, it just doesn't work to paint while they are sleeping in the room.

In addition to all of this craziness eric was out of town for two big conferences which meant he was both gone and getting behind on regular work at the same time. Which means that when he was finally home he had massive amounts of work to catch up on and wasn't around much. That is fine, we miss him of course but we get by. What it really means is I am the only one cleaning, cooking, doing dishes, taking out trash etc... I do most of the house work as is, but eric cleaning up after dinner and taking out trash and watching the kids while I tend to eight million loads of laundry and make dinner is a huge help. When he is gone by the time the kids are in bed I am spent! This past weekend was fall break for him and to celebrate finally having a break from work, he spent it in bed working while recovering from a vasectomy. So it's official, our family will stop at four. That was always the plan, but we sealed the deal last week. He is still not up to full speed from that but should be soon.

I am thinking I better get going on the posting soon though because sometime soon my friend Rachel is going to pop out another baby (just like that, POP, wouldn't that be great if that's how it worked??) and I am going to want to spend a TON of time oogling and cooing over the new bundle of goodness.

So here is some news from our land:

After seeing kids get tickets to ride ponies at a fair a few weeks ago Mette now declares at random times "I ride pony my tickets!!!" It is said in a crescendo and repeated again and again.
She is also eating us out of house and home and appears by the looks of her clothes to be growing. I am going to try and measure her to see how much soon. So far today she has had:
one and a half bowls of cereal for breakfast
two cups of milk
a granola bar
5 big bites of my noodles
a kiwi
another bowl of cereal
a bowl of yogurt and granola
a fruit bar
and it is only 2 p.m. All this from the girl we never thought would eat. No worries there now.

Otto continues to love school. He has started singing the songs from school at home and it is wonderful. Eric is really going to try and bring the camera home one of these days so we can get some good footage of them. Mette is talking up a blue streak and Otto with his songs, it must be captured.

Really overall we are having a great time. Preschool and playdates are keeping us very busy and I am bursting through a series of projects around the house. I am taking a break to do somewhat boring winterizing projects and the garden needs to be "shut down" for the winter but all in all it is coming along.

I will upload some pictures soon. But for now I will leave you with this. Mette saw eric's phone which she knows is also a camera and said, "take a picture me, I say CHEESE" and this is what he got. Gold



Sunday, October 17, 2010

A glimpse into my world

Those of you who know me well will no that I am not a "scent" person. My soaps, laundry detergent and cleaners are all fragrance free. Perfume, cologne and really anything too smelly give me a migraine and make me feel queasy. I have a very good sense of smell, perhaps too good, and for the most part fake smells really aren't my thing. Give me a bunch of fresh lilacs or real lavender and I will swoon, but anything labeled as such normally is not my cup of tea. That is why what happened on Friday was so surprising.

I was walking down the street after just buying stamps at the post office when a young, fairly attractive man passed me. As he went by I caught a whiff of his cologne. Normally young men in the town are wearing so much cologne I want to stop them and tell them that really, no girl is going to like that, but some how I stop myself. This was different, he actually smelled good. While I was thinking how funny it was that I liked the way he smelled I noticed he was carrying an odd box and long poles.

He was a window washer. The smell I was loving was ammonia, or Windex. Good stuff no doubt, but a little sad that the smell of clean windows is more appealing to me than Old Spice.

The day before the window washer eppisode I finally broke down and turned on the heat in the house. As it is still October I am refusing to set the thermostat above 64, but still, it is on. I am all for just wearing sweaters and moving around, but my Florida native husband isn't. When he got home from work on Thursday and noticed the heat on his first comment was, "are you trying to seduce me?".

I may need to get out more :)


Sunday, October 10, 2010

Hot chocolate

If Mette remembers anything of Otto going to preschool, it will be hot chocolate. It is far too tempting to stop at the coffee shop on the walk home after dropping Otto off in the mornings so I can get a cappuccino and with that comes a hot chocolate for my girl. Fair enough, when Otto was her age I was pregnant with Mette and let me tell you, he got his fair share of hot chocolate! Last Tuesday it was raining and cold, I didn't even bother with clothes for her, I just put rain gear over her jammies and off we went to deliver Otto at school and score some treats for ourselves. She brought her treat home and managed to cover herself in whipped cream.


Even though the lighting in funky, I really love this shot.


How does she look 15 in this photo?


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Lunch Special

If I was still running the Bleu Plate what we had for dinner tonight would definitely be our lunch special this week.

It was with special fanfare we celebrated the end of our tomato season. The two last large green tomatoes were carefully sliced, dipped in flour, then eggs and finally seasoned bread crumbs. From there they were carefully dipped in simmering bacon fat in my cast iron skillet. Once fried they were layered between fresh local lettuce and some of the bacon which gave us the delicious frying oil. Crusty french bread, spread with a layer of homemade pesto mayonnaise, worked well to hold it all together and keep your hands somewhat clean.

Despite talking about how decadent and yummy this was, we didn't think to get any pictures until it was almost too late.

There were a few slices of fried green tomatoes that couldn't fit into a sandwich and had to be enjoyed on their own.


It was a good tomato season, though next year I will get the seedlings started earlier. Now I just have to chop away (literally) at the GIANT bucket of green cherry tomatoes I have sitting on my porch. Green tomato relish, green tomato salsa, bread and butter cherry toms... anyone else have any ideas?

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Friday, October 1, 2010

Portugal

Grandama Bah recently returned from a trip to Portugal and sent a wonderful package for Otto. A Portugal jersey, matching shorts and a Ronaldo jersey which I still have to get shots of. Needless to say, he is over the moon. He is currently sleeping in what you see here.





Thanks grandma Bah!!!!


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