Knitting Granola

The kids and I made granola this morning. I'm not sure if this pushes me over some hippie cliff, but let me tell ya, it was teh awesome, and I am now confused and unsure as to why I ever bought granola when I can turn this stuff out in my own kitchen. As an added bonus it's a great thing for kids to "cook" by pouring and stirring all the dry ingredients. I have a bunch of ideas for different types/flavors of granola swirling around in my head now. I told Kenny about some of them this afternoon, and he helpfully suggested that using bacon grease instead of grapeseed oil might give one of the recipes that nudge from delicious to decadent. Hmmm.

In knitting news I finished the pink cabled mittens I was working on. They aren't my favorite knit (the pattern had a bunch of errata on the right hand mitten that really slowed me down as I had to reconstruct the pattern from the left hand mitten), but they are reasonably cute and should do the trick. Crappy photo, but what'dya think?
Robert was talking to one of his friends on the phone while I was finishing them today and he told her that I was knitting a pair of mittens. She said, "Oh my gosh, that is so sexy!" Yep, nothin' spells sex like a ball of yarn and 2 needles...

The Wisdom of Children

We've been sick lately. Unable to muster the energy to cook dinner tonight, we decided instead to head to our local Vietnamese joint (side note: a recent review by the local paper was posted on the wall. The review mentioned that this place is the only Vietnamese restaurant in several counties. Man, we narrowly dodged a bullet we didn't even know existed...). It's a family affair, and our favorite waiter is a guy in his mid 20s. He's always happy to see us and is kind to the kids.

We were the only customers when we sat down tonight, and after he brought us water our waiter turned on the fake revolving fish tank, which always delights the kids. Zion's face lit up when he saw it go on, and then he turned to us and said, "Yeah, but they are fake fish". "Yes", Robert agreed, "but they are still pretty to look at". Zion turned back to the waiter. "We used to have a real fish", he said, "but then he died." The waiter made a sympathetic noise and said something like, "Oh, how sad". "Yeah", Zion agreed. "But", he said, brightening, "luckily we still have his boat (one of the tank decorations)!"

A Day Without Pie

I meant to make apple pie today. But I didn't. And guess what? It was a day without sunshine. I should've set up a mournful keening- perhaps something like:
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
And she's always gone too long anytime
She goes away.
Yep, there it is folks, my traditional Pie Dirge.

Yarn Harvesting

...or, not. As the case may be.

Tonight Robert pulled a bunch of stuff out of our hall closet that we don't really use and is just clogging up the very limited space in there. Among those items was a sweater I knit for Liel last summer- about 18 months ago. Obviously this sweater no longer fits her. Furthermore, it was my first sweater EVER and it sucked. Not dreadfully, but suck it did, all the same. So I got the brilliant idea that I should unravel the sweater and re-use the yarn (my beloved Peace Fleece and all).

After 30 minutes I'd managed to unravel about 5% of the sweater. The damn thing isn't just unraveling, there are loops and knots at the end of every row. What, did I turn into some kind of devil knitter when I did this thing? It ain't natural! Or perhaps the sweater has become sentient and is fighting is apparent demise. Hmmm. Still not natural, but I think I'll put it in the bathroom for the night, just to be safe.

So yeah, there I am pulling and twisting and winding and unwinding and suddenly it occured to me that: 1. at the rate I was going it would take me 10 hours to unravel the sweater and 2. I was looking at approximately $2.25 worth of yarn for my troubles. That pretty much put a stop to that. Maybe I'll use to it stuff one of my Creatures. That'd be like an extra bonus Creature cause it'd be pretty on the inside, too! Awwww. Maybe I could call it Christmas Miracle or something. As a child my gramma had a pet rabbit named Sunday Dinner. Guess the sense of humor runs in the family, right?

BIrth-day

So, today is the big day. Liel is 2! In celebration and commemoration, I offer a few pictures, a stroll down memory lane. Here is Liel nursing for the first time, about 30 seconds after she was born.


Here she getting measured on our bed, after her little snack.


Here she is being held by her daddy for the first time.

Zion slept through her birth and much of my labor. He did go over to Kenny's for a while in the evening, for dinner and some play time. Then he came home and went to bed, and when he woke up in the morning he had a sister. Uncle Kenny came over to meet her on his way to work.



Of course, most of the actual birthing of Liel took place the day before she truly entered the world. I am so incredibly grateful to have been able to homebirth my kids. Home is where I am comfortable. I know where everything is, I know who touched it, I know who's been there, and if they were sick or not. Home is normal, and in my experience birthing there normalizes the process of labor and birth, as life flows and moves around the experience. During my labor with Liel I baked scones. I was in reasonably hard labor (contractions every 2-3 minutes), and baking gave me something to focus on aside from the pain of contractions, and really did remind me that what I was going through was normal, as normal as baking a batch of scones. After Liel was born, Robert, the midwives and I ate the scones. Liel entered our lives seamlessly, part of an organic, continuous whole.

She is such a blessing and a joy, a daily reminder of the advice that her namesake, Siduri, gave to Gilgamesh: "Fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man."

Unbirthday

On Sunday we went to Brooklyn to celebrate Liel's 2nd birthday with Uncle Kenn and Aunt Giselle. We cleverly managed to forget that the NYC Marathon is run the first Sunday in November, despite the fact that after my water broke the day before Liel was born our midwife suggested we walk down our block and watch the runners go by to take my mind off of things. And we did. And it's a very clear memory for me, one I associate with Almost Liel Time. But we still forgot. The reason I'm wasting so much metaphorical ink on this oversight is that it cost us probably 45 minutes of extra car time. Not because there were more cars on the road (most folks were more aware than us, I guess), but because, as the electronic billboards all over the city helpfully noted, there were "Various road closures". And one of those roads was 4th Ave in Brooklyn. Kenn and Giselle's house is between 5th and 6th Aves, and the BQE (the rather misnamed "Brooklyn/Queens Expressway) runs right above 3rd Ave, and drops you off down by 2nd Ave. So in short, we couldn't get up by Kenn. We made various bad calls in attempts to get closer, but in the end we parked on 55th St between 3rd and 4th Aves (by going backwards up the street, I might add), and walked across the Marathon. The helpful cop we talked to down in Bay Ridge said he thought it would be OK for us to do that, since most of the runners were past that point.

Anyway, you still with me? Good. So we all sauntered down to Bay Ridge and I bought a lifetime's supply of tahini (4 lbs!) and then we went to La Maison du Couscous for some delicious Moroccan food. We used to go there all the time when we lived in Brooklyn, and Robert says it's his favorite restaurant in all of NYC. Rashid, the owner, calls Liel "the Moroccan baby" because he says I ate there so much when I was pregnant with her. Here we are, enjoying our tagines, couscous, and lamb shank bones.



After that we drank mint tea (not pictured), and headed back to Kenn and Giselle's for cake and a couple of gifts. Kenn and Giselle gave Liel a Hello Kitty backpack, which she loves, and which Zion now covets. Luckily for him she's pretty accommodating (tho not as much as he'd like, since he'd like to just have it be his!).





All in all, quite fabulous.

Turns

Every night Robert tucks Zion in, turns his music on, and snuggles with him while I put Liel to bed. When she's settled down I go in and snuggle with Zion for a few minutes.

Tonight Zion had The Clash as his bedtime music (he's on a Clash kick these days). Robert told me that after a very short snuggle Zion announced, "I think it is Ima's turn." "Hmm.", said Robert, "I think Ima is still down with Liel, so how 'bout if I stay a little longer?" Zion considered this. "I think", he said, "that when 'Clash City Rockers' comes on, it will be Ima's turn".