Thanksgiving

These pictures are in reverse order! Oh well.

Eric snoozing after dinner:


Cute little Jonah:


Fredrik at the table:


Madi smiley and messy:


The pie course, nice touch with the pastry cookies, Bev:


The bird turned out well. Go Organic, Free Range and lots of butter basting!:


We had so much food. Our kitchen was overflowing, and so was the table, notice the doubling up of bowls:


Jonah and Fredrik play a duet with assistance:


Tis Peter and I in the kitchen:


G June and FGH:


Playing in the apt. full of tables:


The table before it all happened:

Auntie Anna

Anna swooped in for a little SAHM pick-me-up this weekend. She arrived from Boston on Thursday and stayed until Sun. morning. We had a blast, chatting, going out-and-about, and eating along the way. Peter and I even went on a date on Friday night. We traveled all the way to Brasa in Mpls. Thanks for everything Anna!!!

Mirror, Mirror

Mirrors are one of the new fun toys with FGH.

From today:


A cute shot by Gpa Jim on Halloween:

Sun Doodles

I've finally finished doodling the sun. I don't know why I did it in the first place, but here they are again all together. Two of my marker pens are totally dried up. It was fun. I'm thinking of printing them out as little note cards. My goal is to get an etsy shop up and running by January 1, just in time for the holiday shopping to be over and a perfect time for recession-phobic consumers to not buy things. Ha.

Another Sun

My boy is a little strange-looking in this picture to say the least. He's foaming at the mouth, well, not really, that's a teething tablet that he spit it out before it dissolved. They dissolve in about 3 seconds, so that's pretty impressive. This is his looking-at-the-camera face:


Another good one:


Another sun doodle:

Up and Running Studio

It's amazing what sleep can do. In my case, now that I have some free time at the end of the day while Fredrik sleeps, I have been going full steam with art projects. I finished unpacking and gave my little art studio room a quick organize, and now it's so easy to start creating things.

First on the list was a 15 book series of handbound journals that I had started a few months ago. I thought a big project would quickly hone my bookmaking skills. Repetition is best. Here are my book parts as they lay now:


I just ordered some book cloth from Paper Source, I've never used there book cloth, but the colors were just fabulous.

I made these name tags for Thanksgiving next week. I had collected some fall leaves a couple of weeks ago and I pressed them in a huge anatomy book. I had the bright blue cardstock on hand and simply sewed the leaves on. Easy yet classy, I think. (I didn't write the names on yet). We may have a crowd of 19 in our cozy little house here.


I'm not sure what I think of this sunny drawing. I was missing the sun and I had just bought some wonderful illustration markers.

Natural Toys

Sleeping Baby

Fredrik slept 8 1/2 hours last night without waking!!!

Day with Dad

FGH spent most of the day with Peter. I needed a break from the house, and Peter needed a break from studying so there you have it. This is what Busca looked like when I got home! Really, I was only gone a few hours, but even once home Peter played the part of Dad most of the day and I took care of things like hanging curtains and cooking supper. I visited Costco for the first time with my sister, bro-in-law, and niece. It was very big. I came home with a lot of food and cooked up a pasta dish with mushrooms, fresh spinach and a very nice fresh pesto -all costco purchases, also organic salad greens. We followed up with dried mangoes. It was good stuff, I'm not sure if we'll join, but it was fun to get out.

I also stopped at a bookstore and browsed the baby section for books on sleep training. I made a plan and I have to say, Busca is asleep in his crib. He groaned and lightly cried for about 45 minutes. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, and I know that it will be good for him to be able to self soothe. He has been waking up so many times lately in the night and I know he wishes he could stay asleep. It is progressively getting worse, too, he stays awake for sometimes 1/2 hour at a time and wants to crawl around the play. He wakes up early and just looks exhausted. This is supposed to work in a few nights. Tomorrow he will probably take an hour or more to fall asleep (according to my sources) and ....oops...he woke...and is not happy...

Best Pancakes Ever

Last night I made the best pancakes. I have been on a gluten-free diet for about five years. My wonderful Grandma June makes most of my baked goods, but I have become a bit of a gluten-free pancake master over the years. It's pretty much the only thing I make with flour. Our meal last night consisted of Buttercup squash pancakes, toasted walnuts, a shredded apple salad, real maple syrup, and wonderfully tart goat's milk yogurt. They were the fluffiest I've ever made, a feat without gluten if I do say so myself. Mmmmm.
Here are some pancake rules I have learned over the years:

1. Measure everything with ACTUAL measuring cups and spoons.
2. Use a fairly hot cast iron skillet, adding a dab of butter before each scoop of batter.
3. Keep pancakes uncovered in a warm oven (on a pottery plate is my favorite) as you wait for the whole batch to be made.
4. Use fresh baking powder. I only buy the little containers. It's just not an ingredient to buy in bulk.
5. Be careful about substitutions.


Gluten Free Squash Pancakes
2 cups Bob's Red Mill GF Flour
2 Tablespoons turbinado sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 cup milk (I use goat's)
1 cup baked buttercup squash
4 tablespoons olive oil
butter

Whisk dry ingredients together. Whisk wet ingredients together, starting with the eggs. Stir all of them together until mixed. Add a dab of butter to a hot cast iron skillet, pour 1/2 cup of batter into pan. When bubbles start to come to the surface around the edge of the cake, flip it. It will be done in another moment or two, not too long. Stack into the oven on a warm plate. Serve with toasted walnuts, apples (shredded), yogurt and syrup. Peter added more butter. This recipe made a lot of huge pancakes, but we ate them all. We will never be waifs.

Sleep Training

We are at our wit's end around here. FGH is too busy to nap. He is too busy to eat during the day. He likes to eat all of his calories at night. That equates to 4-5 full fledged wakings each night. Could it be teeth? Could it be excitement over crawling, trying new foods and pulling one's self up? Whatever the cause, it has come time for a little sleep education and we are trying to figure out the best way to teach our busca that it is OK and actually REALLY ENJOYABLE to sleep through the night. We've tried some CIO (cry it out) the past couple of nights. I just can't handle it. We may try that again, but tonight we are going to try the Dr. Sears method http://www.babycenter.com/0_baby-sleep-training-the-basics_1505715.bc (thanks for the link, Amos). I like it because it focuses on the father playing a big roll. ( And I can catch up on blogging (and housework(and portfolio building(and sleep)))). Peter is supposed to rock the boy to sleep, lay him down -feet first for some reason- and keep his hand on him until he feels calm and stays asleep. This goes on through the night as he wakes up for up to 5 nights, then apparently he is able to nap better during the day AND sleep better during the night. As for eating only at night, I'm hoping the preference to sleep during he night leaves him starving during the day.

We'll see how it goes. And I won't really make Peter get up all those times, we may switch to co sleeping when we wakes up in the night. He does have a law degree to earn.

WOO HOO!!!

The Most Beautiful Fall Ever

Yesterday I got out of bed and there were only two cars on our street, ours. Hmmmm, I thought, it seems as though we should move our vehicles to another location. It was leaf-sweeper day. Huge street sweepers came through to take our golden autumnal glory away. For weeks I've enjoyed strollering through the leaves piled in the sidewalks, giant yellow and red maples, red oaks, other varieties that I can not identify but are still very nice looking. I feel like a kid again and shuffle through the deep spots so I make an extra crunchy noise. It's so delicious. This area of St. Paul should win awards for fall splendor. I think it has, actually. The leaves just keep coming and coming, too. It's not just a week or two, they've been around since before I moved in. As I write this I realize that I haven't even lived here a month yet, but I guess it just seems longer since I am outside walking around 1-3 times/day (mostly to induce sleep for the one in the stroller). Many days the sun is peaking through the half-skeletal trees making it even more enjoyable. Today rain fell and tomorrow it might be snow. I guess snow is nice, too. And the farmers like the rain!

Bad Idea Baby Food

I thought I was being resourceful, but the busca would not eat my creative baby food of puffed millet mixed with blueberries and apples. I bought the puffed millet as an alternative to cheerios, since I want to stay away from wheat until he's a bit older --- I am a gluten-free girl. But, the millet is too small for busca's motor skills at this point. They taste good, but they just don't end up in the mouth. So, I let a tablespoon or so of the puffed cereal soak in a too-runny apple/blueberry sauce that I had made a few days ago and the result was a unique textured flavorful concoction. Not so to FGH, he spit and squirmed and spit some more. Oh well, it was worth a try. By the way, I figured out on another website that the reason my applesauce was so runny, I overcooked the apples.

In other baby food news, he has successfully tired potatoes, white rice, goat and cow's milk yogurt, and cheese! Don't forget small soft pieces of ice, an alternative cheerio called an Oatey O or something, and a teething bisquit. The excitement is just too much, I know.