Author: Amy

Animal Farm

Posted on by Amy
Fall will be here soon. It’s my favorite season. In the fall I get all excited about going to new outdoor places and soaking up every possible moment of the beautiful weather, before Winter hits us like a slap in the face…

Yesterday we checked out a local animal farm, where they have all sorts of cool animals to look at and feed. When I paid our admission, we were given three bags of bread and told we could feed any of the animals we wanted, but just to “watch our fingers.” Miss got right to feeding some goats.


We had seen two beautiful peacocks walking around free right after we drove onto the property. As we went further, we saw there were lots of animals roaming around out in the open. I noticed one of the peacocks near where we were standing and tried to get a great photo of it. I was not successful. See that goat behind the peacock?
Shortly after I took this photo, that guy and one of his pals accosted us, trying to steal my bread and completely freaking Lass and Miss out. Lass was in her stroller, doing a great job, and Miss had been feeding the smaller caged goats. These two insane goats practically stood on top of the stroller, trying to get at the stack of bread I had pulled out of the bag and the pieces that had fallen on the ground. There was a cat trying to climb into Lass’s lap too. Needless to say, I forgot all about the peacock as I was frantically trying to strap on my Ergo while Miss was working on climbing up my leg saying, “Hold me Mommy! Hold me Mommy!” and Lass was screaming bloody murder. One of the women working there came over and started trying to pull the goats away just as I was getting Lass into the Ergo, her favorite spot.

I ended up pushing an empty stroller for the rest of our visit. It was a good spot to hold the bread I guess.

Fortunately, Miss quickly forgot about the goat attack and was right back into feeding them.



This guy kind of made her nervous though.

I thought he was really fun to feed. His tongue was super long and funny.

Miss kept getting freaked out though and dropping her bread each time he’d stick his tongue out to grab it. By the way, if you can’t tell from the photos, this guy is a buffalo. I think. They had Bison there too, but they were separate, and I’m pretty sure this guy was a buffalo. There were water buffalo too, which Miss thought was pretty fun, since we recently got the book, “Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?” in which there is a water buffalo.

This is the guy who freaked me out a little bit. Just for a second. With each of the animals we fed, I gave them a piece of bread before letting Miss do it, just to make sure it wasn’t going to take her little arm off or anything. When I held out a piece of bread to this ostrich, he stretched his neck out and grabbed at it so quickly, he startled me so much I jumped back, let out a screech, and dropped my bread.

After a second try though, he really was pretty friendly. Miss had no trouble feeding him.
She love seeing the ostrich eggs and kept asking if she could go get one and were they going to hatch. I thought it odd that they were just lying all around on the ground like that.
There were a few other odd things about the place. Like the fact that a stretch of our tour led us through this area that was full of trash,


and these. There were a bunch of them just in a pile in the trash area. Notice several of them still have fur on them? One was even a bit more fresh, but I didn’t take a photo of that one. Weird.
And many of the animals clearly needed a bit of grooming.

But, Miss didn’t even notice all that stuff. I just looked past it, after taking some photos of course, and we really did have a lot of fun.
There were so many different types of animals to see and being able to feed them was great.
Camels.

Horses. Miss loved the horses. And I loved seeing her run right up near them and then stop and stare, up, up, up at these big guys.

Lass enjoyed the horses too.
I was trying to get a photo showing how she was interested in them. What I got instead was a horse nipping my shoulder. I snapped this photo right as the big black and white one was taking a nibble. It didn’t hurt, but scared the heck out of me for a second.
I thought this pig was so funny, but was bummed that he didn’t want anything to do with us. We had to just drop our piece of bread for him, and he didn’t even sniff at it until we had walked on by.
Miss did get to feed some other pigs later though.
I loved this fawn. It ate out of our hands, and made this funny little squeaking sound asking for more.
The bison.
Eyeore.
This guy was a miniature dwarf pony. He was one of my favorites.

Birds.

Turtles.
I think these were porcupines.
There were a lot more animals too. When I asked Miss what her favorite was though, she said, “The cats.”
She loved this little bunny too.
And so did Lass.

It was a fun day. I’m glad we have something like this place nearby. I still have to take the girls to the bigger zoo soon though. Miss keeps asking to see giraffes, hippos, and rhinoceroses. So we’ll make that trip soon.

343

Posted on by Amy
It’s been 10 years since that Tuesday no one will ever forget.
I was thinking today about the moments from that day that hit me the hardest. I’m sure everyone has has certain memories that have stuck with them most clearly. For me, the image, and particularly the sound, that seared my soul and burned into my memory that day was the sound of the distress alarms going off on the firefighters when they began showing footage of ground zero and the rescue efforts. I will never forget hearing so many piercing reminders of all the firefighters and other rescue personnel who were running into the World Trade Center buildings when everyone else was running out. I have a huge respect for firefighters. I have two of them very dear to my heart.

My Dad and Brother (and my nephew!), both professional firefighters (Dad retired).
I think this was the day my brother was made Captain.

A more recent photo of my brother after he ran the Firefighter Combat Challenge last year. He’s on the far left.

343 firefighters and paramedics died in the attacks on 9/11/01. That is well over ten percent of the total number of people killed that day. I am remembering them today.

Cheech and Chong

Posted on by Amy
Today, when we were getting ready for the day, I swore, for a brief moment of “where the heck did she get that?” that Miss was saying, “Cheech and Chong” over and over. I started to crack up about it, but realized all too quickly that she was actually saying, “teeth and tongue.” She was playing with a doll and I suspect she was brushing its teeth. Damn. “Cheech and Chong” would have been funny. But even without that, my kid is pretty amusing. I love those moments when she says something that cracks me up. She does it more and more often these days.
An example of this occurred in the grocery store checkout the other day. We were waiting for the bagger to get the last of our stuff in the cart. Miss said she was hungry and I told her that we were going to go home in a few minutes to have lunch. I then asked her what she might like to eat. Without skipping a beat she replied, “A lemon.” She was so serious about this I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. And she continued to ask for a lemon to eat, all the way home, during lunch, and the next day. I kept telling her that I needed to use the lemon we had purchased that day for a recipe, but she kept asking. Today when it was time for her snack I suggested apple yogurt. She said, “No, I fink my want a lemon.” I had realized, when cooking my recipe that required a lemon last night, that I actually had another, extra lemon in the fridge, so this time I said, “Sure. Hop up to the table and you can have a lemon for your snack.” I was chuckling to myself about this, but she surprised me. She took several bites and kept asking for more.


She didn’t shudder. Didn’t make a sour face. She seemed to love it.


She got to her third wedge of lemon before finally giving a little shudder.

Then a big shudder and sour face.
She then held her lemon wedge out to me and said, “Apple yogurt please!”
Today the weather was perfect. A beautiful late summer, early fall day with sun and a breeze and a temp of about 75. I decided it was a park day. Lass loves hats, and was so excited when I pulled out her bonnet for the park trip.
As we were getting loaded up to go to the park I happened to think, “It’s Thursday, I’ll bet I could find a few rummage sales on the way.” So I took a slightly circuitous route to the park to look for some sales along the way. I found two. They were crap. Seriously, the first one had deodorant for sale for 75 cents. Deodorant! 75 cents! So wrong. I didn’t look any further because I wanted the girls to have plenty of time at the park before lunch. We went to a new park today and Miss had a blast checking out all the new stuff there.



Of course there was a lot of swinging.


This park has a splash pad, which I assumed was turned off. One little boy apparently touched the magic spot to turn it on, and Miss immediately asked to go play in the water.



The little spouts of water shot up in a sporadic manner, so Miss got doused by a couple of them.
She didn’t seem to care. And Lass had fun putting her hands in the water from the Ergo.
This place is my new favorite park.
We came home to get dry clothes, eat lunch and take naps, and then went back to the beautiful day outside. We took a walk, which was very short because Miss requested to walk by herself instead of riding in the stroller. As she was walking she went onto a neighbor’s lawn and started to take her shoes off. I told her she needed to keep them on while we were walking and she informed me that she wanted to feel the grass under her feet. All right. She agreed to keep her shoes on until we were in our own yard, and then we all promptly took off our shoes to feel the tickle of the grass under our feet. Lass got a big kick out of this. Miss and I danced and shuffled our feet. This resulted in some heckling from my hubby who was inside changing clothes after work. The heckling resulted in a dazzling display of the Running Man by yours truly. The evening was topped off by grilled homemade brats, football on the telly, and very soon, ice cream. I love days like today. My spoon is calling me.

Chopped – Back in Action

Posted on by Amy

I haven’t posted anything about my latest Chopped at home adventures in a while. Initially this was because it took me forever to get plantains. You might remember that my last three ingredients were plantains, tofu, and bacon bits. Well, my grocery store didn’t have plantains, so I ordered them from an online produce vendor. Then I waited. And waited. As time passed and we were coming up on our trip to Florida (yes, a month ago), I called the vendor and asked what the deal was. He said it had been too hot to ship the plantains, but they were planning to do so that weekend. I said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” since that weekend was when we would be leaving for Florida for a week. Anyway, to make a long story short, we went to Florida, came home, and I ended up finding plantains at a local grocery store where I prefer not to shop. Ingredients in hand, I proceeded to the cooking part.

And that’s where the second delay in my writing about the experience come in. It has been over a week since I created dinner from the above listed ingredients. I have just been too ashamed to tell about it. Okay, I’m not really that melodramatic, but I was bummed by how my meal turned out, especially on the heels of The Pickled Herring Disaster. Here was my plan – Slice the plantains, pan fry them in some oil with garlic and chopped bacon bits, then mash them with butter and put them back in the pan for a second fry. I still think this was an excellent idea, I just didn’t execute it well. For the tofu, I got the extra firm variety, planning to coat it with seasoned flour, dip in egg, then coat with panko bread crumbs and more chopped bacon bits and pan fry. I figured the panko would give some good texture to contrast the mushiness of tofu and the S&P and bacon bits would add flavor to the blandness of it. This was executed just fine, but the idea wasn’t so excellent.
I got my pan way too hot while struggling with getting the peels off the plantains. I thought they would peel off easily like a regular banana. Not so much. It took me forever to peel the darn things. Especially with two screaming children getting into all sorts of mischief under my feet. So, as I mentioned, my pan got way too hot. My garlic got burned. I was distracted and did not tend to my plantains as I should have. The plantains got burned. They were then hard and dry and would not mash. And they tasted burned. The tofu on the other hand was nicely coated, had a nice crunchy exterior, and absolutely no flavor whatsoever. Grade? D- I’d say.
What would I do differently if I had even the slightest desire to ever cook plantains or tofu again (I’m only sort of joking here)? I’d not get my pan so hot and would cook the plantains more slowly. Then I would follow my original plan and I think it would turn out well. I would probably do something entirely different with the tofu, like buy the soft version (what I used in the delicious Tofu Chocolate Pudding I made) and make a sauce or something with it and just pick a different protein entirely on which to put it. Or, I would marinate it. I learned this past weekend from my husband’s cousin that this is crucial when preparing tofu. Like, marinate the heck out of it. Who knew?
I drew my next ingredients the other night and was relieved to get some more normal foods. Spaghetti squash, spinach, and merguez sausage. The only ingredient here that might give me a little bit of trouble is the sausage, because I’ve never had it before. It is a North African sausage made with lamb, which I think will have a bit of a smoky, spicy, slightly sweet flavor. My husband is making it as I type this. I am excited for this round, and am looking forward to hopefully cooking up another home run. I’m due, I think.

A Week to Remember

Posted on by Amy
We got back late last night from a long, tiring, yet fun-filled ten days at the Farm. The girls grew so much during the week it seems, with so much to do and so many loving people around to do it with. Both sets of their grandparents, aunts, uncles, a gazillion cousins. They saw cool and interesting things and had new experiences. This bird’s nest is just one example of the treasure trove of nature that is the Farm.

The photo doesn’t do it justice. It’s made mostly of pieces of baling twine, twisted intricately around the branches and woven with grass, and probably other stuff. The general consensus was that it was probably an oriole’s nest. We didn’t bring it back with us, though that would have been a hell of a find for Miss to take to preschool. Miss’s Baba also gave her a robin’s egg, but we forgot that too. Miss saw deer, a coyote, a huge praying mantis, the biggest spider I’ve ever seen outside a glass case, a stick bug, and on and on. She really loved checking out the milkweed pods and walnuts that she found on the ground.
A different kind of new experience came for her in the form of corn. She has had sweet corn many times that I cut off the cob for her, but this week she had her first try at eating it right off the cob. She thought that was pretty cool.


But much more thrilling was her first ride on the “Great Big Mable” float pulled behind my in-law’s boat.



She didn’t seem scared in the slightest.
Just waving and smiling. My little daredevil.
Right after coming in from the boat and Mable ride, she went fishing with her Daddy. They caught several fish, and she had lots of fun with the worms.



One fish broke off their hook, so Miss sat and watched for fish with my mom while her Daddy went to get a new hook.
Then they were back in business.




Poor Lass is too little to get in on lots of the action her sister is getting into now, but she had great fun playing with her cousins. She really started moving with her walking this week too. Though she took her first steps shortly after turning 11 months, she never really got going with walking, and in fact until a few days ago, had almost stopped trying entirely. Now she’s really getting into it, choosing to walk instead of crawling more and more often, and stringing together more and more steps.

After her fishing time with her Dad, Miss got ready to go for a treasure hunt. She got all ready in her boots and headed out to the Ranger. The treasure hunt is one of my favorite things about the farm.
Tons of kids and adults pile on the Rangers and go off to explore and look for treasures of all kinds. I used to love going on treasure hunts when I first started coming to the Farm almost a decade ago. I was always the “City Mouse” to my husband’s “Country Mouse” family, and thoroughly enjoyed going out and being awed by all the finds. It’s a hundred times more fun to do it now with my kids.
We stopped to pick lots of wild flowers, which Lass loved.

Then we got down to the beach, where the kids splashed around and looked for shells and critters.

There were tons of tiny frogs hopping all around and the kids had a blast trying to catch them. Miss got to hold one that her older cousin caught for her. She also found a snake that her uncle grabbed up for her. That girl and her snakes…
Lass enjoyed the beach too.
It was really a week to remember. Every new experience for my girls seems like something new and amazing for me too. I love every minute of it.
Today we savored the trip and each other, happy to be home and back in our routine. Summer is winding down quickly here in the North Country. Today was crisp and felt very much like fall already. Football has started (Go Blue!). And preschool starts this week! Loving every minute.

A Snake and a Cake

Posted on by Amy
We had Lass’s birthday party on Saturday. We are at the Farm, and are so lucky to have such a wonderful place to have a party. A perfect example of how things often happen here is that one of the girls’ cousins found a snake shortly before the party started and brought it up to the house. Everyone was shying away from it, except Miss of course.


She thought it was pretty cool.

It was a dead snake,


but she didn’t care. I love, love, love that my girls can have experiences like this. Miss was not squeamish in the least about holding that snake, and that makes me smile.



Something else that makes me smile is a first birthday party. I like birthdays. I like celebrating my girls’ birthdays, but there is something just a little extra special about a first birthday.


It’s seeing the look on the face of my littler girl, who has never really had cake before, when she sees it for the first time. A special little cake just for her.


It’s feeling her excitement when everyone sings a song all together, just for her.


It’s this look of “Can I really? Really?”


And then the laughter and joy in watching her gradually try it out


and finally dig in.




She spent a few minutes just squishing her hands in the cake, loving the feel of it.


And then she remembered, “Oh yeah, this stuff tastes good too!”






I love this!


Getting ready to dive in…


Yum!!!







Washing it all down.




How many shots does it take to get our little family photo with everyone looking at the camera and smiling? Not so easy with a 2.5 year old, a 1 year old, and a cake sitting in front of both of them. In the first attempt, we did pretty well. Lass had already had her fill of cake. Unfortunately, Miss hadn’t gotten her piece yet, and she couldn’t take her eyes off Lass’s totally destroyed cake.


Second try? Miss stole a pinch of cake, and Lass didn’t like it too much.


Third try? Lass decided she’s better eat more before her sister got it all.
Oh well. They’re great photos anyway. Thanks to my Auntie for taking them (and for coming to the party from 3 hours away… and picking up the cakes…)


Big sister finally got her cake and ice cream.




She even shared with Grandpa.


And the clean up effort.



It was a wonderful day and a perfect party. So many family members came to celebrate with us, and that always means so much to us. Huge props to my in laws for letting us have this special event at their Farm. I know Lass won’t remember this day, but I’m thrilled to have these great photos to show her when she gets older. And the day is indelibly imprinted in my memory, just as Miss’s first birthday party a year and a half ago is. I love a first birthday party.

Happy Birthday Lass!

Posted on by Amy
My baby turned one today. She has been such a beautiful addition to our family.


She is the perfect sister for Miss. She laughs at her at all the right times, gives lots of love and hugs, and tolerates Miss’s ever increasing “muggings,” I mean hugs, fairly well.




She is such a happy girl and brings so much fun and laughter to our family.












She’s my little snuggle bear and I love how much she likes to cuddle.






The past year has just flown by. Today was for celebrating our beautiful Lass.


So, we went to the small local zoo for a play date. It was kind of dingy and pitiful, but the girls didn’t know that.


Goats and cows? Right on!




We also saw llamas, a wolf, elk, a lynx, and some monkeys. Lass is not a huge fan of her stroller, so I was really happy that she was riding in it at the start of the outing. Then we got to the monkey cage, where those noisy things scared the crap out of her, and I had to wear her the rest of the day.




I just had to share the photos of Miss climbing on this turtle. The park I went to when I was little had a turtle just like this, which I had completely forgotten about! Ah, the silly things that will make me nostalgic…


After dinner we had ice cream for a birthday treat, and then Lass opened a few of her presents. We are going to the Farm on Friday and having her party there on Saturday, so we’ll take some of her presents there with us, but today she opened the bigger ones that we don’t want to take.






She really didn’t even seem to care that we didn’t get this put together yet.




I got this Dora dollhouse from Ebay for a steal! The girls played with one of these a few months ago and loved it, and I loved that they could both easily play with it together and that it folds up pretty compactly. Score.


Naturally Lass tried to climb it.




Happy Birthday Lass.

One Year

Posted on by Amy
One year ago, I was arriving at the hospital, in labor with Lass.


I was excited about her impending arrival but scared and nervous at the same time. I had only been in labor with Miss for about four or five hours before I had a c-section, so I had very little experience and naturally I was apprehensive about my plan to have an unmedicated VBAC.


Little did I know how long that night and the next morning would turn out to be. Little did I know that Lass would be 10 and a half pounds of perfect. Little did I know how much joy she would bring to my life and our family. One year ago, when I got to the hospital, ready to get the show on the road and meet our little Lass, I had some idea about the joy part at least. I knew she would be wonderful and we would love her. I knew it would be amazing to have two little girls and a sister for Miss. But that night, one year ago, in my last few (okay, many and agonizing!) hours as a mommy of one little girl, I couldn’t even imagine how much. How wonderful. How big our love. How amazing.

Tonight I’m reflecting on that night, just before Lass came into our lives and made our happy family happier. I’m remembering being a little scared about how Lass’s arrival might affect Miss. I’m smiling at how it did affect her, and at what a fantastic big sister she is. Tonight I’m choking up thinking that my baby will be a year old tomorrow. I’m cringing slightly remembering the pain of getting her here (who the heck says you forget that, by the way?). I’m reminiscing about how great my husband was and what a great team we were that night.
Tomorrow Lass will be one, and I’m all sappy and sentimental thinking about it tonight. It’s amazing the difference one year makes in the life of a family. I remember feeling like Miss grew up practically overnight between the time I put her to bed on this night one year ago and the time she walked into my hospital room to meet her baby sister.
This is Miss, one year ago.


This is her a few weeks ago.


I love to see how much she’s grown.




I mentioned above how it seemed like Miss grew up almost overnight when Lass was born. Today was another day that made her suddenly seem so much more grown up.

Today she went for a visit to her preschool. Preschool. It wasn’t her official first day of school. That will be after Labor Day. Today she just went to check things out and was only there for about an hour and a half. She seemed to be having a blast when I left (she gave me a kiss and ran back to playing with blocks and toy dinosaurs with another little boy) and when I came back (she was happily drawing a picture). Her teacher said she had a little rough patch, but over all did great. When I asked Miss how she liked school she said, “I cwied because my want you.” Stab to the heart. Twist. Gulp. I have to remember how much fun she seemed to be having for the majority of the time she was there. She was very interested in the science area with the birds’ nests, rocks, seeds, and other various objects from nature (she couldn’t stop talking about the birds’ nests and seeds). She got very excited when we talked about trying to find something at the farm next week that she might be able to take to school to add to the collection. She talked about new friends she got to play with. I know she’s going to love school. She’s so confident and inquisitive. It will be great for her to have her own “thing” to do twice a week, without me. Hopefully her first “full day” (three hours) will be a little easier in a couple of weeks.


Lass and I will stay nearby just in case. Today we went two doors down to a bagel shop and met up with the Daddy (who is on nights this week and came from work) for breakfast and coffee. In my last post I mentioned that Lass was feeling under the weather. When she woke up with a fever again on Saturday I took her to the doctor and found out she had strep throat! I suspect she picked it up on the plane home from Florida. She’s been taking her antibiotics and is back to her happy little self now.


My little almost-one-year-old at breakfast with Mommy and Daddy:



Painting, Playing, and Peanut Butter

Posted on by Amy
Oh, I do love the alliterative blog post title. You might remember Burritos, Boobs, and Bundling Up or Morning Meltdown and a Messy Make-up. I don’t know why I enjoy coming up with titles like these, but I do. So I just go with it. Here’s to the letter P today:
Miss sure does love to paint. And I sure do love to watch her. I was really impressed by this face she painted a few days ago.


I mean, she’s two and a half. Amazing, right?


And then it turned into this…


If you look closely you can see that she’s painting with all four of her brushes at the same time. This is her new thing. She does it with crayons too, just grabs as many as she can hold in her hand and colors with all of them at once. It’s all good. But I was a little bummed to lose the face. It is fun though to see how her artwork changes over time. She is growing so quickly and developing new skills so I find myself always a little surprised and awed over what she can do.
Another thing that is so fun for me to watch is how my two girls play. Sometimes they play nicely together.


Sometimes they do their own thing.




Lass loves to climb and explore, while Miss likes to act out dramas with various characters. Miss also sings to herself a lot, and listening to her is joy.


I think playing is one of the best ways for them to learn and I just love to watch them. I can’t wait to see how they play together more and more as they get older.
Miss has never been a big fan of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. In fact, pretty much any time I make a sandwich for her, of any flavor, she promptly takes it apart and eats each part of it separately. But the other day when I gave her “peanut butter and jelly sandwich” as a choice for lunch, that’s what she chose. And then she said, “and honey.” Cool. My mom used to make peanut butter and honey sandwiches for me when I was a kid. As soon as she said it, I thought it sounded pretty tasty and decided to make one for myself too. But first things first, I had to get Miss her peanut butter and honey and jelly sandwich.


My first mistake apparently was mixing the honey with the peanut butter before spreading it on the bread. She did not like that. She nearly had a meltdown when I mixed it up, but I distracted her by getting the jelly to spread on the other piece of bread. I was smart enough to ask her if she wanted me to put the two pieces of bread together or eat them separately. She wanted them separately.


She then proceeded to eat the peanut butter and honey and the jelly right off the top of the bread.


And after she had eaten just the good stuff off the top of the bread, she requested more, and more as the bread got more and more soggy and hole-y.


This is how my girl eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.


Lass on the other hand had her first PBJ and loved it, as much as she could love it with a fever and runny nose.


She’s been a bit under the weather the past two days.


But my little sunshine girl still managed to flash me a smile, right on cue.


All these little moments make such happy memories for me. And for the record, I did eat my first peanut butter and honey sandwich in about 10 years and it was fabulous.