And she walks!

18 months and 1 day.  That's a long time to wait.  But last night, whilst visiting our neighbors and good friends up the street, Simone decided to start walking!
Of course, who has a camera on them when talking a family walk up the street, just in case "the baby" takes her first steps?  Not I!  But here are the photos from this morning, as she continued to work on her mad skills.

Kitchen Remodel- Day 25

25 days of construction on our house.  16 days since I have had a kitchen.  Some days I am in awe that we are living through it so well and that time is flying by.  Other days I want to lay on the floor and kick and scream until I get my kitchen back.  Finally, there are the days when I think about all that still has to be done to be "finished" and I start to hyperventilate.  It is overwhelming, but the beautiful thing about letting others do the work is that I can just walk away from it and come home to see the progress.  Having the kids and work as my distraction is a good thing.
I have spent many days running around town, finding places to hang out with the kids and places to let them nap (LOTS of time at grandparents' houses).  We've been blessed by food and beds at our parents' houses numerous times.  We did a picnic at Lake Harriet one evening.  We've dined out plenty of times thus far.  And I've found that Kowalski's has the best salads for when I need to grab something to bring into work.  We've used our makeshift kitchen (i.e. the laundry room and Charlie's workbench) to an extent, but what we didn't count on was the sheer amount of debris falling from the kitchen, through the cracks, and into my rack of drying dishes on top of the washing machine.  Ew.  And a rodent made it in during the remodel and somehow, seeing that critter running through the laundry room makes me a little less excited to eat/prep food in that space.  (Of note, we think it got back outside again, as we've seen no other evidence of it) Thus far, we've made it work.  It's getting old, but we're too far in to turn back now.  And so we press on, as there is no other way to go!

The "bump out" 

And you know what we found underneath that ugly yellow siding that we've always hated?  Beautiful original cedar siding (the white siding in this photo).  And now we will be ripping off all of the yellow siding and painting the cedar siding.  (In all of our spare time, of course!)

Last night in the old kitchen (sob)

Last batch of chocolate chip cookies in the old gal.  That was our specialty together.  Something about that oven produced the most amazing cookies (and a lot of disasters with other foods!)

After the first demo day (will post later about the amazing "relics" found when the layers were peeled back)

And after a few more days of demo- gone is the wall!  The kitchen and dining room are now one large open space.  Laila got a kick out of walking through the space that used to be the wall.

Day One

Kitchen remodel started today.  A couple of holes in the ground outside of the wall that will be demolished.  A garage that's starting to fill up with construction supplies and new kitchen appliances.  Massive amounts of money being discussed in deciding whether cabinets from Ikea or have someone custom make them.  Me, trying to decide if I should pack up the kitchen now, procrastinate yet another day, take pictures of the kitchen in its current state, or just try to block it all out and play with the kids instead.  I am thrilled and yet am dreading the next 8 weeks of upheaval in our household.  Yes, I found out today that I could be without a fully functional kitchen for up to 8 weeks.  Ack.  With 2 small children.  No sink.  No stove.  Food stored in boxes in the living room or the basement or somewhere else.  Yikes.  
And to think that this all started because I decided that I wanted a dishwasher.  Be careful what you ask for.

Just a Quick Note...

I only have a minute (which is all I ever really have, hence no posts!). But I have to note that it is March 13. It is 67 degrees and sunny. I saw my first robin of the spring today. Three days ago, we found the first tulips coming up in the gardens on the south side of the house. Can I emphasize that it was MARCH 10TH?!?! The girls now have the sand and water table set up on the deck and they have christened the deck with sand piles already. Simone screamed when it was time to come inside for a nap. I went for my first run outside- 15 minutes of running down by the rushing creek.

Ahhhh the change in seasons, weeks and weeks early. I am in heaven!!

Fear and Loathing

Let's be honest...I dislike cooking. Recipes intimidate me. Fresh veggies stare at me, begging to be used to their flavorful fullness, and I can only roll my eyes and wish that someone else would cook it up for me. If a recipe has too many steps or ingredients that are new to me, I dismiss it. Give me the Betty Crocker cookbook any day. I groan at the load of dishes that gathers after making one meal, a meal that is enjoyed for 30 minutes and during which, most likely, my kids will have thrown the fruits of my labor on the floor or flat out rejected (to which I think 'why did I even bother to cook?'). To make a mess of the kitchen that I just spent a hour cleaning seems like a crying shame. To spend an hour or two preparing a recipe that falls flat on its face is fodder for my loathing. I don't find rest and comfort in the process. It's simply a necessity of the day, a thing to be checked off, and then be on to more fulfilling prospects. If I were rich, I wouldn't bother with a nanny or someone to clean my house. I like taking care of my kids and cleaning soothes me. But I would hire a cook faster than you can say "foodie."

I actually thought, at one point, about starting a blog dedicated to the many reasons that I dislike cooking. Let's be honest: there are thousands of blogs and websites dedicated those who take glory in the stirring, the blending of beautiful colors, the calm that surrounds them as they create sumptuous meals. But are there blogs out there for those like me? Those who love to eat the food, but get a pit in their stomach at the thought of having to make it? Those who get pit stains from the sheer effort of trying to come up with new meal ideas for their family?

Don't get me wrong: I love to eat. I love to eat good, healthy food, with some tasty desserts thrown in. I love seeing what veggies come from my parents' garden and the idea of eating what's in season or what's local fascinates me. I love to eat out at new restaurants and I love it even more when it's a night that I don't have to cook dinner. I guess that not every day or every meal is fear and loathing. But there are definitive moments in my cooking career that definitely tip the scales.

Tonight was just another check mark for the "dislike" vs. "like" of cooking. I decided to be resourceful and use up another of our winter squash from the farmer's market. It was a bright orange round thing, a Golden Nugget, per my mom. I cooked it up just as Betty Crocker suggested (perhaps my first problem of the evening was following her directions and not my mom's). After 45 min, it was still a little hard, so back in the oven it went. After an hour, the chicken was done, the kids were in their chairs hollering for food, and the squash had to be done. Now how to get steaming hot squash out of the shells? Pick it up with an oven mitt and scrape it out with a fork, right? That's a great idea until the hot juices from inside the squash runs down the oven mitt and soaks right through the mitt. And then the shell of the squash, to which I nearly lost a finger trying to cut through when it was raw, decided to completely fall apart as I'm scraping out the innards. As I am trying to pick up the bits of shell to salvage the squash "meat", I realize that the squash isn't nearly as cooked as one might hope. So I am trying to pry hot hard squash from a flimsy shell, meanwhile thinking, "who needs fingertips anyway?" After I finally cut and scrape as much as I can handle from the shell (read: as much as my burnt fingertips allowed), I attempted to pull my wits about me and make something edible from this. A few more minutes of cooking in the microwave didn't exactly make a buttery smooth squash dish. That's when I took out my weapon of choice: the immersion blender. The final product was a somewhat bland (despite my additions of salt, butter, and brown sugar), mildly chunky squash puree. Not at all what I had imagined. Surprisingly, both kids ate a little squash with minimal coaxing and all that was left at the end of the night was a little container of leftovers, bound for the fridge, a reminder of the daily disaster.

So, notes to self, Sweet Dumpling squash is WAY tastier and much easier to cook than Golden Nugget. Golden Nugget looks pretty and its looks are only skin deep. And the butternut squash soup that I made for Christmas Eve, intimidating as it was, turned out pretty amazing. Perhaps there is hope for a "hater" like me.

And we call her...

Pet names for Simone thus far:

• Sweets
• Squishy
• Party-party (when she doesn't want to sleep)
• Play-play (also when she doesn't want to sleep)
• Thumper (bangs her legs on the bed all night long)

Two of the most ridiculous photos of her thus far:

I cannot stop laughing at this photo!

These piggy pj's were Charlie's favorites on Laila, so naturally I had to unearth them prior to the time at the cabin (chilly nights up there!). And I have no idea what was going on with her smile, but it looks like she's about to let loose with blowing raspberries. Which, naturally, one would want to do with the excessive amounts of drool that she produces.

Parenting Moment

Of all of the funny moments of the last 2 years, here was the most amazing one by far. At dinner the other night, Laila let out a huge toot and we just looked at her and said, "Was that you?" She paused and then said, in a total 2 year old voice, "Awesome!" We burst into laughter and tried to look away, so that she wouldn't see us laughing, but that was worthless, as neither of us could stop once we got going.

Of note, that was her first time using the word "awesome" and it was in the right context. But who knew she was such a tomboy about such things?