bumpy road

Delma has her little repertoire of comments she makes and things she likes to talk about while we're riding in the car. She likes to tell me that she sees houses ("other people's houses"); she likes to talk about puddles and says she likes going through big puddles; after we go through a traffic light and she talks about stopping and going, she says, "Let's do it again, Mom!"; when it's dark out she asks where the sun went, and says "I don't see Fletchie's house!"; and when we go over a bump in the road she says, "That's a bumpy road! I like bumpy roads!"

We had my dad and Josh's mom and step-dad over for latkes and kugel one night during Hanukkah. Delma was very well behaved and ate nicely at the table without acting like a complete maniac (though she did refuse to eat what we were all having and just had some p'sgettios -- but she ate it all with her spoon). After dinner she went into her room and pulled ALL of her toys and stuffed animals out of her toy bins and piled them on her bed.

When I went in and saw all of her toys on the bed, she said, "I made a bumpy road!"

rollercoaster

Life is feeling like a total rollercoaster lately. There are some predictable parts of our day, like Mimi going to sleep between 5:30 and 6 every evening. That works out perfectly, because we have dinner with Delma at 6 and we can eat with her and hang out with her and put her to bed without being distracted by the baby. At around 9pm we give Mimi a bottle and put her back to bed. But that's all we can count on with this baby. Some nights she sleeps til 3-4am before she needs to eat. Sometimes she's up at midnight and then again one or two more times. Some days she takes good naps. But some days, especially if I spend much time outside the house, she does not nap well -- she HATES the car and will scream like she's getting stabbed for the whole car ride, no matter how long. It's maddening.

There is also Delma's problem with waking up as early as 4am some days. We started taking away privileges, like her binkies or her Supergirl costume (which she has still wanted to wear every day since Halloween), unless she stays in bed in the morning until Josh or I comes in to get her. It finally started working, and for 4 days in a row she hung out in bed and waited patiently for us. It was great. But then today she was back to her old tricks, so who knows.

It's all really beating me down.

Then this past Saturday I had exactly the kind of day I needed. Mimi took a really long morning nap. Delma waited in bed for us, then had a nice morning. Josh took her out to play and I stayed home while Mimi napped, and I got to do some baking. It was calm and lovely. In the afternoon I went out with just Delly to buy her some new shoes. It was a nice change to be alone with her. It was all just what the doctor ordered.

Since then our days have been all wonky again of course. I'm looking forward to going back to work soon and having more structured days.

bouncing around the room

...pardon the Phish reference...

So, my calves are getting a workout this morning. We had some serious rain last night, which caused major flooding all over town. When we got up this morning we noticed some water on the floor downstairs, and literally as we stood looking at it, we could see it creeping farther across the room. The dehumidifiers are cranked up, Josh went late to work so he could wet-vac the water on the tiled and concrete areas, and I've been standing on towels and bouncing around to soak up water from the carpeting. It's almost 10am, I still haven't showered, and the baby just woke up. I'll be lucky to get out of the house by noon. TGIF!

rice and beans

We've been relying a lot on quick-and-easy dinners lately, like pasta and frozen veggies. It's so insanely easy, just throw frozen veggies into the pot when the pasta is almost done, bring it all back to a boil then drain, toss it all with a little oil and parm and chow down. But it's not good for us to be eating so much pasta. And as vegetarians, we really need to get more protein into our diet from more than meat-alternative foods.

So when we need quick dinners I've started making brown rice stir-fries with beans. I sautee veggies and then throw in beans and cooked rice, cook it in the pan just enough to mix it all rogether and dry it out a bit and Voila! Sometimes I throw in some baby spinach, or a can of diced tomatoes (drained), or tofu. I use different beans to mix it up. Trader Joes has good, cheap bags of mixed frozen veggies. I particularly like their fire-roasted corn/peppers/onions -- The flavor is so nice that I don't need to use any additional seasoning at all. There endless combinations to try.

For rice, we're usually very lazy and we use brown boil-in-the-bag rice. It's so easy and so fast (boils for 8 minutes). Tonight I copied an idea I read about a while ago on some blog... I cooked a whole bag of regular real brown rice, and when it cooled I put about 3 cups into individual little freezer storage bags. Now when I do my quicky stir-fries I can just grab a bag from the freezer and throw it in the pan with the veggies. It ended up making 7 bags, so that will last us a few weeks.

I'm very pleased with myself. It will make those dinners even easier to prepare, and a bit healthier, and even cheaper. And we're into cheap these days, now that I'm on unpaid leave from work, and we have a little vaca booked in January, and, well, we're broke. There's a lot of rice and beans on the menu for us.

bad morning

The Girl Days are over. This week we started sending Delma back to school fulltime. She misses her friends and is bored when she's home with me. If I'd always been home with her, I'm sure it would be different, she's be used to less running around and playing all day, but that's just not what she's used to. Now I have a couple of weeks to spend with Mimi before I go back to work. And when she's napping I'll have time to myself to get some gift crafting and baking done.

We have had some really rough mornings for the past week. Delma wakes up at about 4am and we have to turn her around and put her back to bed countless times before we finally give up at about 5:30. I'm not super-psyched about having to go to work soon, when I'll still be nursing Mimi every night and then waking up so insanely early. And I'm still off caffeine since it messes with Mimi. Oy.

rabbit rabbit

I made it through November with a post almost every single day. I was going to sign up for NaBloPoMo for December too, but I think maybe not. I will try to post more regularly, though. I was thinking December may be a good time to post daily, since there will be so much happening. Posting daily would really force me to process it and not just mindlessly slug through every day. And writing that, I think maybe I'm talking myself into doing it. Hmmm.