Getting good with food

That would be both Lane in terms of eating and me in terms of cooking.

First off is Lane and his love of all things big people.  This week had his first ear of corn and also learned how to hold his own bottle.  It's not full, but it does keep him occupied for quite a while. This is key in the morning.  The corn on the cob also kept him occupied.  Not sure if it's good that good can occupy him, but it's not cookies or ice cream so we'll say it's good for now.

Then me...  I found a new recipe to try this morning and I love the blog I found it on.  I love scones too and going out to get one in the morning just doesn't work when your husband goes on a fire call at 3:30 am.  And bagels rule the world around here.  Lane then decided it was "morning" at 5:30.   So much for making his room dark.  He sleeps longer when I forget to pull the shades - sometimes.  argh.  So I decided I would whip them up for a tasty morning treat.  Went great with my cinnamon coffee.
Here is the link..  Katie's favorite food blog.  Here is my final result.  I followed her directions of using the food processor and will do that for future scone recipes too.  It was way too easy!  Clean up was more work than making them!

Pizza and grilled veggies! Lane ate all my veggies and then the rest I had made for later. After he had a full lunch an hour ago. Mad there is no more.

Welcoming in July

Lane and I both have colds, but we managed to still have some fun on Saturday.  Both the boys are napping so I have time to blog!  woohoo!  Just hoping the naps last longer than 45 minutes.  Lane is not a napper.  Yesterday he refused to take an afternoon nap and after an hour of screaming I  gave in thinking he would have gone to sleep after all that screaming if he was tired.   He must have wanted to be outside as much as me so we hit the bridge for a walk and to try and catch sight of the hot air balloon launch.  That was a fail. The only balloon was about 20 miles away and while we could see it that's pretty far. The walk was entertaining though.  Quite the parade of characters with the many tourists.  Sort of felt like we were in Europe based on the languages, accents and clothing.  Goodness.

Pool time delayed the all important nap too.  He's just not a napper and if he's not cranking out I'm not pushing it.  Even at daycare he sometimes only takes a one hour nap in the morning.

So...  after swimming he's gotta have the sippy.  Never mind he's more interested in chewing the handle.  He's quite good at backwashining into it too.  Puffs before sippy not a good idea.  Don't quite think he has the hang of it, but that's fine for now.

I'm loving his new swimming toy.  I think his life jacket is too big and this allows us to both float around.  Put a couple of noodles under it and we are set to float!

And what little boy doesn't love a football?  Favorite thing to do with it....  chew it of course.

Now for the pictures you won't see...  of me grilling pizza.  I've made it twice now.  After the first time I said I was going to take pictures of it the next time.  Problem is once you get going it goes fast.  Never would have guessed it was so easy and good.  Maybe next time?

day of firsts

Lot's of firsts today.  First farmer's market of the season and also the first time Lane has gone to the farmer's market.  It's only around the corner from home and it's just the right size for us.  We don't have to wander aimlessly shopping for the best price as there is only one veggie vendor and she has great prices - we get the Whole Foods Market's leftovers...  things she didn't sell to them this week and it's all fresh and good.  I would imagine some was picked yesterday morning too just for us!  We love the veggie lady and she came thru again yesterday with sweet carrots and baby peas!  Made for a first time ever mash up of baby peas and carrots and it got snarfed down with lots of happy baby eating noises.

First time trying out a Saturday evening mass as well.  Didn't go as well as a Sunday morning and Lane ended up falling asleep outside on daddy.  Then we went to the church bazaar - another first.  Think country fair, but the food looked a bit better.  Don't ask for a review on that as we did skip it.  Huge tents and entertainment.  It was geared towards kids a little older and we wanted more than fair food for dinner so we hit the road after taking a walk around.

We ended up going to dinner at a diner I was at a few weeks ago for work.  Figured my breakfast was pretty good  (translation non-greasy for a diner...) and the desserts in the case rival the Cheesecake Factory.  I was told the other meals were pretty good too.  First off a diner usually has good burgers so we were taking a risk by going here for a non-burger dinner.  A huge risk by diner standards.  This place needs to come off the diner map.  It's not your typical diner.  As Mark said it's quite gourmet, something about goodness in the bread.  We both ended up getting the same thing.  Southern Fried Chicken with biscuits, mashed potatoes and corn. (yes, I'm sure my mom is drooling right now along with a few others and yes it was that good...) Had some sort of white gravy on parts of it - we didn't bother to ID it.  Not greasy so I'm wondering what their trick was maybe the oven and good spices?  My greek salad had real peppers in it, olives with pits and tons of feta.  Even some foo-foo lettuce as it's called in our house.  Field greens mix to most people.  Mark was not overly pleased that the appetizer that came with it was a stuffed clam.  I was somewhat amused as I had never had one and I figured stuffed meant some sort of stuffing with clam in it.  And it was stuffing and it was pretty good and I'm not a clam person.    The topper...  any dessert of our choice from the sweets case.  I got tiramasu cake and Mark had the strawberry shortcake cake - lots of cake I know.  Mine was good and Mark didn't share so I would imagine it was also good.  We did get it to go in case you were wondering how we managed to stuff all that food in.  It was good last night and again this afternoon.  Huge slices.   Lane enjoyed his first mashed potatoes and had lots of fun making tons of noise.  He was getting a bit crazy over something there.

unexpected vacation at home

Having a feverish baby has led to two vacation days at home. This is a first.  I would have to say we've been super lucky that this is the first real illness that he's caught from daycare.  We always take off and travel for our vacation days so this has been interetesting to say the least. Since his fever has been gone since 4:00 pm Thursday he's back at full tilt with tons of energy.  That could be because I let him take a 3 hour nap this morning too. He did have 20 minutes of intense "you are cutting off my legs" crying last night, but other than that he's been a model sick baby.
Not sure what caused the crying because his fever was gone, but a bottle finally cured it. Must have had his appetite was back? Daycare won't take him until he's been fever free for 24 hours so we are now having some fun waiting for daddy to get home from his trip to California for work. I see some sun in the forecast for later this after noon so I'm hoping to take a walk on the bridge.

We had a chance to introduce the sippy cup yesterday and today. He's not keen on the apple juice and spits it out. Might as well just use water for now. Really don't want to put his formula in it - that stuff really gets stinky and gunky if I don't clean his bottle out right away so I can only imagine the things that would get stuck in the sippy cup. gross. The handle also makes a great teething toy. An expensive one at that. Multi-use cup I guess.

The rain has yet to let up making this a less than ideal "vacation". It's great for our pool which was in need of some more water. It's now full! Overfull if I was to ask the pool expert, which I'm not going to do. He's going to tell me it's low on chlorine too. hmmm... Since it's been cold I'm not overly worried. Lane is not a fan of the cold pool so we aren't going in it today therefore the fact it's low on chlorine is not a big deal. This is not a pool summer thus far. It's tempting to get a solar cover, but you need sun for that to work. What's that... haha
And here's my PSA... make sure you are up to date on your virus software and malware. I didn't know what malware was until this latest run in. Had a bit of an issue at work this week when I was on the New York Public Library website looking for ebooks to "check-out". Great website tip Andrea... problem is now I am afraid to go back there. It took the IT god 8 hours to get my computer back at work. Thank goodness I didn't try it at home! We are up-to-date with our AVG software, but still I would hate to test it out like that.

So now that we are getting a 4 day weekend at home I can't believe we will have another one next weekend too! Bring on the 4th of July. Weekends at home are rare these days with Grandpa Sens (Mark's dad) being sick. 10 hours a weekend in the car is a challenge. We won't trade that time with them and all the Rochester family for anything though!  Here is a photo from Father's Day....   Three generations of "Lawrence" Sens boys on Father's Day with Lane showing off his "Happy Feet of Lane" art.  Both daddy and grandpa got a copy for Father's Day.  Lane loved making them and was a really good sport about having his feet painted repeatedly throughout the weekend that daddy was in Arizona.
Time to think about lunch...  carrots for Lane and Frank's for me?  It's vacation after all right?

yum, yum, yum

This is hilarious.. (more so if you are a Grandma or me).  He was making all sorts of foodie noises while eating his carrots so I started in with yum, yum,yum, yum, yum and he started laughing at me.  He has laughed before, but not at me like this.  Had to video it and I knew the Grandma's would get a kick out of it.