Beach Baby, Beach Baby

Today began with Jen formulating what would be our most adventurous day with the babies yet. This only involved a five minute trip to the beach but the fact that she even suggested it in the first place struck me as particularly audacious. The five minute drive meant a precision feeding at 11:00 AM followed by the short drive which was sandwiched between two thirty-minute packing and unpacking sessions.

After navigating the stroller across the beach sand (a chore I do not recommend) we were at our destination.



The beach was met with mixed reviews. Actually they weren't that mixed, the guys seemed to hate it. They didn't like the sun. They didn't like the sand.


And they hated having their toes dipped in the water more than anything they've experienced in their short time on this Earth.


After the beach we went to the park to have a picnic lunch. The Wombats enjoyed this significantly more than the beach.


Elliott, in particular, enjoyed the picnic because he got to sleep through the entire thing.


After getting home, and taking a glorious two-and-a-half hour nap, we went out to the back patio and enjoyed a drink.


Jen's mum, when asked about beer, said the only time she ever enjoyed beer was when she got to have shandies living in England. Hearing that I searched out a beer and found this Porch Rocker from Samuel Adams. This is a shandy-type beer or Radler, a German-style shandy I had not heard of before having this.

Overtly this is not my favorite type of beer but after a long day at the beach, outside, and sitting in the warm humid August air this was a perfectly refreshing way to begin dinner.


After out drinks I put out this salad of farm kale, farm cucumbers, farm tomatoes, farm grilled peppers, mixed greens, feta cheese, olive oil, lemon, salt, and pepper.


To recreate my summer youth for my mother-in-law I made up these stuffed clams (or 'stuffies' as they were called in Rhode Island) to start out the meal.


For the main course I overdid the breaded seafood theme by making this baked scrod which was actually some fantastic haddock I got on sale with lemon, fresh thyme from my mother's garden, olive oil, butter, salt, and pepper. Using haddock was a bit of an extravagance that one doesn't often experience in the restaurants of Rhode Island but, technically, it is still a recognized preparation by all accounts I can find.


After bathing the guys and putting them to sleep we were ready to settle down and watch last night's premier of Time Machine Chefs. I explained the premise of this show to Jen's mum as people going to a castle and using only techniques found in the 1500's to create a typical meal of that day. She said that was boring because she mistakenly thought that I meant they did this in every episode.

After I explained to her that I was just giving an example of one time period they were cooking from she warmed up to the idea of watching it.

However, it's on a major network so I'm sure they'll screw it all up.

Positive Baby Contact

I miss lots of great moments while I'm at work. For example, this morning, I missed Martin rolling over for the first time. No, wait, I wasn't at work when that happened, I was sleeping.

Is it wrong that I wouldn't trade in that sleep to have caught that moment? Maybe I'm a bad father.

Apparently most babies don't flip over for the first time until they're four months old. I guess that means that any day now they'll start sleeping for six or seven hour stretches at night.

I'm confident that's exactly what that means.


Yesterday I missed a monkey hoodie fashion show and Hall & Oates listening party. Even the best day at work cannot compete with that sort of day.


I also missed Elliott going on a Baby Bjorn adventure. I thought, from this photo, that he did not enjoy his adventure but his mother got very upset when I made this assumption. Maybe it's getting his photo taken he does not enjoy. Something must have inspired this gesture.

It also sounds like I missed another full day of the care and feeding of babies which, of course, meant that the adults don't get out of their bathrobe until 2:00 PM or get anything to eat other than a granola bar.

At least at work I get a lunch break.


I made up this salad with some of the farm kale, baby greens, and the remainder of my aunt Pat's bean salad. I call it "beans and greens." Jen was tentative in her consumption of this due to our flimsy theory that the beans may have been resulting in the babies' recent gas attacks. I would eat nothing but Saltines if I were here but, then again, I am overly cautious about such things.

If there are two things Jen hates it's repetitive eating and Saltines.


For the main course I picked up some beautiful swordfish which I blackened along with some shrimp. I served them in a pan-toasted flour tortilla with grilled corn, tomato, avocado, feta cheese, grilled farm peppers, and cilantro over a bed of the remaining Bright Lights Swiss Chard.


As the official Baby Duty Bartender, I served up a glass of this 2011 Sauvignon Blanc from Castillo de Molina. I think Jen got this at some sort of work event. Between all the guests we've had lately along with Jen being able to drink again it sure is nice being able to clear out some of our wine collection. It is amazing how much wine one can accumulate in the course of nine months without even trying. People just seem to give you wine all the time!

I just need to figure out how I can get people to bring me beer all the time.


Until then I need to continue buying it myself. Tonight, I celebrated the first time I didn't have to use a Champagne stopper to reseal a large bottle of beer and drink it over two nights. Jen was able to help me finish this bottle of Positive Contact by Dogfish Head in one sitting!

This is an odd beer. That much could be discerned simply from the Dogfish Head logo on the bottle. It's made with farro, apple cider, cayenne, and fresh cilantro. It has a very distinct sweet and sour apple taste to it. I didn't detect much of the cayenne but the cilantro could have been mistaken for a normal soapy scent associated with beers of this style. It had the distinct flavor of Belgian yeast which I enjoyed quite a bit. This beer was strange but in a completely different way than I'd expected.

This beer was another from Dogfish Head's musical collaboration series. The first I had was their Miles Davis collaboration, a musician whose music I enjoy quite a bit. The second I had was their Pearl Jam collaboration, a band whose music I don't enjoy at all. This one is a Dan the Automator (of Deltron 3030) collaboration, a musical act that I know nothing about other than I think I heard someone mention Dan the Automator at a party once in 1998.

And, again, it's off to work. Tomorrow we have the tentative plan of going out for dinner -- something we haven't done since the babies came home. With Jen's mother leaving this weekend this could be our last opportunity for such an adventure for the next eighteen years.

Wish us luck.

I'll leave you with a little Deltron 3030's Positive Contact to bounce your head to while you consider how tomorrow's plans will be thwarted.

The Grandma Baton

Yesterday, while I was at work, the grandma baton was passed. Jen's mum landed in New York and my mother headed for the relatively quiet borders of Rhode Island. The babies had spent the bulk of the day being extremely gassy and miserable despite everyone's efforts to soothe them.


There is nothing like the peaceful transfer of power between grandmas. It reminds you what is truly great about this nation.


Today I returned home to find a similar sight. Both babies were a gassy mess and nearly inconsolable.


While they attempted to calm the Wombats I went over this week's farm share which, somehow, Jen had managed to find ten minutes to go pick up.

This week we got three pounds of tomatoes, a basket of cluster tomatoes, a pound of squash, a cucumber, lemon basil, two Walla Walla onions, large Bell peppers, Red Russian Kale, New Red potatoes, donut peaches, Venear plums, and peaches.


Jen took Elliott out in his inaugural Baby Bjorn adventure to go to the corner store and buy a single lime. Unfortunately the store is on some sort of summer break, like everything else in our town. It was not wasted time, however, since Elliott's new thing is that he shrieks when anyone other than his mother picks him up. This means that the rest of us spend most of our time snuggling and feeding Martin with Jen is tethered to little Elliott.


While the Wombats were wrangled I put out this Mittica Nuvola di Pecora. I don't know what that means but I'm assuming the rough translation is: "tasty raw milk cheese."


Jen requested a second Monday Nicoise salad tonight. Instead I made this incredibly un-Nicoise salad with pan roasted chicken, peppadew, Walla Walla onion, grilled corn, avocado, tomato, kale, mixed greens, olives, lemon, and olive oil. For what it lacked in Nicoiseness it more than made up for in goodness and cleaning-out-the-fridge-ness.


As an accompaniment I had this Perpetual IPA from Tröegs Brewing Company. For some reason I expected this to be very similar to Nugget Nectar but it ended up being a much more perfumy (and oniony) IPA. I bought several bottles because I know Jen's recent tastes are that she likes a very hoppy IPA. Because she is a hipster. She also only listens to music on vinyl.

Last night we watched the closing ceremony for the Olympics. Jen's mum hated it almost as much as the opening ceremony. I found it rather lacking as well.

Tonight, with the Olympics behind us, I was missing the thrill of sport so I fired up the Nintendo and got to work.


It was like a breath of fresh air playing Track & Field. I played by the rules and did not grab a battery to cheat by raking it over the buttons. Nope. I did not wish to sully the dignity of these games in such a way.


I think this may have been even more enjoyable than watching the real Olympics. I didn't have to suffer through NBC's embarrassing, lowest-common-denominator coverage where they explain to us dumb Americans about things we've never heard about before such as World War II, tea, and William Shakespeare.

And I got to set a new world record in the high jump.

Yup. Overall a pretty good night.

Good Eats, Great Aunts

The Wombats have had some visits from some aunts. Don't get me wrong, they've been some pretty good aunts. Even really good aunts but today they were visited, for the first time, by great aunts!


One reason they are great is that they brought us both lunch and dinner. Another reason they are great is a technicality in that they are my mother's sisters.

After a long day of watching indoor Olympic volleyball it was nice to get a visit and take some time off from watching the most overly-televised sport of the 2012 Summer Games.




Great Aunt Pat made her famous spinach pie (much to my father's dismay) along with Italian snack mix and I put together a salad with whatever was left lying around in the fridge.


We also celebrated the great arrival with a bottle of 2010 Marigny-Neuf Sauvignon Blanc. Well, they did. I had water because I was the designated parent.


After that it was a long day of hanging out with the Wombats . . .


. . . opening lots of gifts . . .


. . . and ruining Grandpa Butch's shirt.


For dinner my mother made a big pan of lasagna and vegetarian meatballs, Great Aunt Pat made a delicious bean salad.


I also opened this bottle of 2007 Chateau Lalande-Boire Saint-Julien to celebrate the occasion. This was a nice reminder of our trip to Bordeaux last summer, the last time we will be to France (or outside the New York City Metro Area) for quite some time.


Great Aunt Debbie made my favorite blondies as well, the perfect end to a great day.

I'm hopeful that we can have guests every day for the next year that will come over, bring dinner, and do dishes. If we receive this level of support then things are going to be much, much easier.

Email me if you want to volunteer for some shifts!

We Are NOT Torturing Our Babies (I Promise)

The babies had a great night last night. We did too. We were still exhausted this morning but thanks to my brilliance the babies had some of their longest stretches ever without waking up.


Okay, it wasn't my so much as the brilliance of friends that recommended these Velcro swaddles. It seems kind of like a medieval torture device but somehow experts agree that this is not torturing our babies. The babies like to be bound tightly so that they cannot move their arms. To me this sounds like a nightmare but the babies don't seem to mind. Even if they do mind it's easy to put the torture aspect out of your mind if you're able to snatch an extra hour of sleep. Besides, they say that we're not torturing our babies.

We're not torturing our babies.


It's gotten increasingly difficult to find time to make dinner. Even with a helper here and a complete day off of work the babies monopolize most of our time. Even throwing together a dinner which I'd previously have considered phoning it in takes about every spare second that is not spent caring for children.

I was able to put together this salad with greens, tomatoes from the farm, red onion, Sun Gold tomatoes from the farm, and some spicy avocado vinaigrette.


I also put together some couscous in this makeshift tagine which uses two ancient pans that probably should have been thrown away years ago.


For the tagine I caramelized some farm onion in olive oil, tossed in some of the farm purple peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes. I also browned up some nice lamb sausages and threw in some dried figs before adding some couscous, chicken stock from the freezer, water, and chives from my mother's garden.


Elliott immediately started fussing before dinner so I had to eat and drink while holding him in my lap.

For a drink I had this RastafaRye from Blue Point Brewing Company. I've been eyeballing this one for years but I never bought it because the head on the bottle kind freaked me out. However, this was a very nice, surprisingly malty, rye ale. It went better with the lamb couscous than I would have thought. If I was smart I would have saved this beer for a Jamaican-themed meal but, you know, I'm not really smart.


Speaking of Jamaica, Elliott has taken to doing his Usain Bolt impression while sitting in his Boppy. The babies have spent about 50% of their life at this point watching the Olympics so it isn't too surprising. Even though they've spent far more time watching Michael Phelps they haven't quite identified with him the same way. This could be because Phelps has not yet given himself as iconic a stance. Unless you count that pose where he celebrates his victory.


The babies' abs are notably softer than Mr. Phelps's at this point. I think we're going to start taking them to the gym.