My Future Beer Belly

My pants have been fitting rather tightly as of late. It's conceivable that they have all been shrinking but after doing a bit of research (i.e. weighing myself) I have discovered that I've gained ten pounds. Now I only get around to weighing myself about every six months or so, so I'm not sure how recent or rapid this weight gain has been. It could be my exceptionally sedentary lifestyle that has contributed to this. Maybe it's the fact that I'm getting old. It could also be that there is some sort of strange chemical compound in that beer I got in Quebec that causes accelerated weight gain. Yeah, that must be it.

Jen calls this my Quebec Beer Belly.


Yesterday the guys were thoughtful enough to make these Easter pictures for us. This is the first time they've used their fingers to paint for us as opposed to putting a footprint next to a picture of Santa or something. They did a pretty good job! I'm very impressed with how cleanly they cut out the bunny and centered it on the construction paper. They're exceptionally advanced for eight-month-olds.


We ended up eating a huge amount of mango today. I had a few mangoes and cut them up into little chunks for the guys. They had a tough time picking up the pieces as they slid across their high chair tray so I started helping them and having just as hard a time picking up the slippery bits to feed to them.


Since it was Good Friday today, day care was closed. This meant it was a full day of daddy events. A year ago this would have meant staying inside all day and watching videos on YouTube. While that still sounds amazing I decided to take the guys out for a walk after a lunch of cold pizza (the pureed ricotta, tomato, asparagus, and multigrain cereal for the guys), and a nice walk through town.


This ended up being more of a workout than I thought. We live in the bottom of a basin which is why we're so prone to flooding. This means that pushing two babies in a stroller a hundred feet above sea level is actually a lot tougher than it seems it should be.


The high point of our journey was the cemetery -- the exact opposite of life!


For dinner I pan fried some tofu and served it with rice, steamed carrots and broccoli, and two dipping sauces: soy and sweet chili.


For the second night in a row the boys had the same thing as us for dinner. Well, sort of. I served them pureed broccoli with rice cereal and cut up pieces of tofu.




The tofu went over quite well. It was much easier for their tiny hands to grab than slippery pieces of mango. And since they haven't been indoctrinated into the "Eww gross TOFU!" culture of this country yet they had no preconceived notions about the food. They enjoyed it thoroughly.


Since all that Quebec beer has been going to my stomach I decided on the perfect remedy: American beer! I've been dying to try this 3Beans from Sixpoint Brewery that I've had chilling in the fridge for some time now. After having gotten carried away with all the Quebec beer I finally enjoyed a glass of this after dinner this evening.

This was a perfect after dinner beer. It gets its name from the three beans used in its brewing: Romano beans, cacao beans, and coffee beans. The result is a unique beer. It's brewed more in the style of a porter than a stout and I'm very happy that I have an additional three cans for the future.

My future beer belly is going to be great.

Sleep Burping

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night to a strange sensation. There was a gentle rubbing on my back alternating with four or five pats and cycling back-and-forth between the two. It took me a moment to figure out what it was that had woken me up. Eventually I realized that Jen was burping me in her sleep. I took a mental note of this before drifting back to sleep.


The guys were a little groggy and a little cranky today because yesterday they had to get their first serious round of vaccinations.


This left their legs sore and made them potentially a little feverish. The very nice woman in charge of ruining babies' days by injecting them put Peanuts themed bandages on their legs which begs the question: "Does any child in 2012 have any idea who the Peanuts are?"


Today we had a fairly full day. We checked out a day care location in the morning, took the guys into town to have lunch on the green by the library, then off to another day care location in the afternoon.


I got them both bathed and cleaned up which lead to the above picture which I hypothesize may be the greatest beefcake shot that has ever been taken. Elliott is a world class beefcake.


After all of this I had every intention of cleaning up the kitchen but instead I fell asleep and woke up moments before we were to get a visit from our friend Heather.


For wine I poured this 2011 Vera Vinho Verde, a super-dark slightly effervescent wine. This was mostly for the ladies. You may know from reading the blog that I am a little partial to beer.


For the men I poured this Dubhe Imperial Black IPA from Uinta Brewing. Technically I was the only man present. I can only be classified as a man when in the presence of two women and two tiny baby boys. In any other setting it is debatable if I am a man at all.

This beer was great. It had a fairly strong alcohol taste thanks to the high ABV but it was right up my alley with a nice chocolate and coffee taste from the roasted grains. After the fact I learned that this beer was brewed with hemp seeds which was a little more hippie than I'd been planning on but made for a very nice beer indeed.


In honor of our dinner guest I made a "healthy" meal starting with this tomato and radish salad with steamed edamame. The tomatoes and edamame were from the farm and the radishes from the local farmer's market. I also added some slices of farm shallot, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and black pepper.


I also made a salad with julienned farm Chioggo beets, lime juice, olive oil, and dill from the farmer's market with a little salt and pepper.


For the final course I soaked some garbanzo beans overnight then cooked them along with some garlic, farm shallot, farm onion, farm jalapeno, farm purple pepper, farm eggplant, carrots, and farm tomato. I added a little vegetable stock, Proseco, salt, and pepper. At the end I tossed in some of the purple basil leaves from the farm and toasted some pine nuts, ground them with a mortar and pestle, and folded them in. The pine nuts added a nice creaminess and rounded out the dish rather nicely. They also made me want to give myself a pat on the back for thinking of the idea.

After an extended sleep this morning snuggling with Martin and an impromptu nap with him in the late afternoon I'm actually feeling pretty lively at this late hour. I'm excited to wrap up the evening, watch a little television, and perhaps try to get upwards of five or six hours of sleep.

More Wombat visitors tomorrow so I'll need my beauty rest even though no one has ever so much as glanced at me in their presence.

The REAL Last Supper (Maybe)

Today we got some bad news. Elliott, how had previously been the eating champion of the two, was not eating well enough to be discharged from the NICU. So we had to leave the guys at the hospital for another day.



They inserted a feeding tube for Elliott to help him eat a little easier. With a little luck we may be able to take them home tomorrow but it's still not guaranteed.



After spending the afternoon with them at the hospital -- where I got to change the messiest diaper of my very short diaper-changing career -- we came back home to nap for a bit. Afterwards Jen and Lauren took the nurse's orders and went out for a pedicure. No, seriously. I'm not sure if they treat it like a consolation prize for not getting to take the boys home but they said we should make the most of these last moments before they come home.

Jen and Lauren got pedicures, I stayed home and did nothing, one of my favorite relaxation activities.



For dinner I made this sort of Provencal style zucchini stew with olive oil, garlic, onion, three types of zucchini from the farm, potato, tomato, salt, pepper, and chopped parsley. I served it over cooked quinoa with chopped scallion from the farm. It actually came out far better than I'd expected and used up a good portion of the summer squash that we are soon to be drowning in.





I poured some preferred wine for the ladies after they were drenched in a downpour on their way home from the pedicurist (or whatever you call those people). For Lauren I poured a specially-purchased sweet wine for her which she declared was good because it tasted "like Kool Aid." Jen had another half glass of her preferred rose which she nursed over the course of two or three hours.

They're some pretty wild ladies.



For myself I poured an Old Curmudgeon Ale from Founders Brewing Co. The other day I celebrated a beer that signified Elliott's personality. Today, I picked a beer that represented mine. It was extremely tasty even for an old curmudgeon like me.

Tonight we are getting ready to watch Back to the Future II and hope that the guys can return home with us tomorrow to watch the final installment of the trilogy. After a full week at the hospital it sure would be great to have them at home.

I think I'm probably being incredibly naive and tempting fate by saying this but: it will be a lot easier when they're at home.

I'll try to ignore the laughing of the experienced parents out there as they read this.