The Walk Home

Since our return home from our North American tour life has returned to a normal state. Aside from another bout with the dreaded Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease things have been good.


With some help we were able the affront to horticulture that was our front shrubs.


We harvested many more vegetables form our garden.


We made lots of fresh tomato sauce which, despite the look on his face, Elliott has enjoyed quite a lot.


Martin has assisted me on the "Garbage-Q" which is how he now refers to the barbecue.


We babysat Evelyn for a weekend.


We picked up a lot more vegetables from our farm share.


And, the cousins enjoyed eating huge amounts of ice cream.

Recently the boys have not wanted to sit in their stroller for their walk home from daycare. They would much rather walk by themselves, or as they would angrily yell it, "I do myself!"

This has turned a normally enjoyable 10-minute walk into a 45 minute odyssey complete with picking flowers, trying to walk into our neighbors' yards, not wanting to hold my hand while crossing the street, and sometimes wanting to be carried the rest of the way.


It all begins with stalling as we try to leave daycare. They recently set up a book fair at our day care which means they continually try to take books from the shelves and read them in the entryway before leaving.


Then, as we walk along a busy street, they try to pick flowers, plants, and large sticks up to carry with them on the way home.


They try to sit down on tree stumps to take a break.


And, on occasion, Elliott just lies down on his belly on the sidewalk and refuses to follow me home.

This week marks the one year anniversary of our move to Illinois. It's hard to believe it's been that long since we said goodbye to New York.

It will be nice to not have to spend all of this fall looking for and moving into a new house. Maybe we'll even get more than a ten day lead up to Christmas to mentally prepare the boys (and ourselves) for the festivities at hand.

Hooray for the holidays!

St. Patrick's Play

March rolls on and the countdown to being able to enjoy our backyard, a yard that really only exists in our imaginations, is nearly over!


I decided last week to set up their kid table for use to eat dinner rather than just for arts and crafts. Elliott took to it immediately, enjoying the idea of being able to put his feet up on the table, something he never did even once when the table was ten feet across the room.


This quickly turned out to be a disaster as they spent most of the time just pushing the table across the floor into their brother until one of them began crying.


Martin became obsessed with wearing his stuffed snake in the manner of Jake the Snake Roberts. He then ran over to the door yelling, "Bye! Bye!"


He desperately tried to make his escape. I'm not sure what his endgame was. I can only presume he was late for snake practice.


The healthy eating streak continued with this kale salad with fig tahini dressing.


I also made an oil-free baked chicken breast (a term I have always despised) with zucchini "spaghetti" and a mixture of boiled potato and broccoli stem topped with a light dusting of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.


Witht he leftover potato and broccoli I made a soup with a splash of milk and vegetable stock.


I also turned the leftover zucchini "spaghetti" into a pizza on multigrain crust with a small amount of mozzarella.


On Friday night we got to watch Evelyn. The boys helped by rocking her violently and yelling Shhhhhh! in an impossibly loud manner.

Despite it all she fell asleep.



On Saturday, before going to a friend's birthday party, they resisted their nap for a full two hours. This was a new record. They were in full-on sleepover mode and once again pants were removed and children collapsed in place when exhaustion finally got the best of them.



Two word sentences have been popping up here and there. Elliott says, "My Daddy!" Martin says, "Big Elmo!"


Saturday night, after the party, Lauren, Doug, Evelyn, and Pete came over. Pete has been hanging out with them since Jen's parents are in Montreal.



There must be some bad blood between Elliott and Pete because Elliott was chasing him around with his harness and seemed to be calling him out to face him. It was as if he was challenging him to some climactic battle, a final showdown between a dog and an overly-dramatic toddler.


Saturday night we made some corned beef and cabbage with pork brats and enjoyed some of Jen's homemade soda bread and Kerrygold Skellig cheese. Jen and Lauren enjoyed watching Frozen. Doug and I watched Frozen but we enjoyed drinking some tasty beers.



The next morning, while Jen was at yoga, I attempted to take the boys' pictures for their passports. The last time we tried to get their photos was at Walgreens. This had been a disaster as the guy was using a $59 point-and-shoot camera that had a fifteen second delay between pressing the button and the picture being taken. Also, he had the boys sit precariously on a 12 pack of bottled water on top of a stool and kept telling us not to get in the shot. This was more difficult than he probably suspected as it's hard to dodge a camera when you're constantly trying to save your child from falling to the floor.


After lunch we played a good game of "Under the Counter" before getting them to bed for their nap and me going to work.

I returned home at midnight to find boy boys awake with their mother in bed watching Eureka. That was just the start to my evening, but certainly not my sleep. After about 5 hours of restless sleep we brought them to day care where apparently the had a fire drill five minutes after we left.

I don't know whether I feel relieved that I am not doing their bedtime tonight or happy that I will merely be working until midnight again.

Sorry, Jen!