motherhood, politics, faith & whatnot

In other news, Andrew is trying to scratch his face off today. I think it’s the teeth. Um, yep. Thank God, for the soothing powers of Baby Einstein.

Made the ham/swiss calzones for dinner last night. They turned out OK. The dough had been in the freezer for a little while, so it was kind of tough. We didn’t have any Italian seasoning, so I improvised, but it didn’t have as much flavor.

I enjoyed making them though. J had the boys upstairs and had cleaned up the kitchen. Except for the ubiquitous ants, it was very enjoyable. It’s something that I’m familiar enough with that I could work without checking the recipe very often. That’s kind of fun. I imagine that as you get older and have a stock of recipes in the back of your head, cooking gets more enjoyable because everything isn’t a novel learning experience.

We had calzones again for dinner tonight. Jim reheated them for us in the toaster oven.

Daniel is even more reluctant to try new things.

I made pancakes for breakfast this morning using the Food Lion pancake mix. J seems to like these better than the ones made with Bisquick. Daniel likes pancakes with syrup, too.

Daniel and I went to a Halloween Party yesterday. Daniel must have eaten 10 slices of apple which he procured himself from the food table. He also ate hot dog which had been cut in long thin strips to look like a bowl of guts. He ate some goldfish, too and drank juice out of a cup. He had a cupcake which he ate the icing off of and then handed the rest back to me. I told him to sit in the same place while I went to get a napkin to wipe his hands and he reached over to somebody’s sweatshirt in the seat next to his and wipe his hands. Nice.

I’ve been sooo hungry this week. I don’t know what it is. I’m hungry right now and I had a bowl of ice cream less than an hour ago. Maybe because it’s getting colder?

I plowed through the snacks that we got last weekend at the Farmer’s market in the Shenandoah Valley. They were gone by Wednesday. Homemade twizzlers and yogurt covered pretzels.

I need to put new batteries in the scale in our bathroom.

Can’t think of anything else memorable about food from this past week.

Oh, I’ve been making mini-pizzas with pita bread as a quick meal lately. I was hoping to get D to eat them, since he likes pizza, but he won’t eat them.

Andrew is eating so much. He likes the fruits the best and those puff things. He’ll pick those out of the cheerios all day long.

The ants in our kitchen are making me crazy. We spray one area and they pop up in another. No surface is safe now.

I carved our pumpkin today. D enjoyed carrying the top around, trying to put the seeds back inside as I was cleaning them out, trying to put the mouth back in. Maybe he likes pumpkins better whole. In addition to the big pumpkin, we have three littles ones — two from the Pumpkin Farm we went to and one from when Daniel went to a pumpkin lot with his preschool.
I’m totally decoration deficient and have no idea what to do with all these pumpkins.

I have a friend who went to the Culinary Institute of America. She said my calzones were good. I couldn’t tell if she was just being nice, but she seemed sincere. I just didn’t think they were as good this time as before.

Speaking of food, I’m totally freaking out about our Christmas trip already. Every five years, my mom and her family and her two sisters (one now deceased) and their families get together and rent houses at the beach. That’s what we are doing this year. My parents are paying for our house which will contain my parents, J & I and D & A, and my brother and his wife and daughter. My mother was indicating how expensive it was and said we’d work something out and that maybe we could bring the food. Our house has four bedrooms, one master upstairs and three on the main floor. I’m not sure how we’ll divide everything up. I’m worried about how the sleeping is going to be with our little guys with naps and what not. It’s stressful enough to travel with these little guys as it is. I’m not sure I can placate my mother and deal with everything all at the same time. Something’s going to have to give. The other thing is that Andrew’s 1st b-day will be that week and I want to do something special for it. I’m sure we’ll do something with the family, but everybody’s going to be doing their own thing that week. For goodness sake, we see each other every five years, if that — we’re not exactly close. I think that I’ll plan a party for when we get back so that we can celebrate with our friends and the people who actually know Andrew.

Oh, and speaking of Andrew and sustenance, we’ve had a rough time lately with sleeping issues and him wanting to nurse several times a night. He can’t get back to sleep on his own. The recent development has been that he seems to hate his crib. He’ll fall asleep nursing, but then as soon as he’s placed in the crib, he’ll scream bloody murder. He’ll cry for an hour if I let him. That’s so hard during the day with Daniel around, too, because I’m frustrated from trying to figure out what’s going on and trying to get Andrew down. The baby’s screaming and I’m snapping at Daniel who really hasn’t done anything wrong. And we are all sleep-deprived. I’ve started talking to anyone who’ll listen about our sleep issues. I’ve had a couple books recommended to me and we are educating ourselves about babies and sleep. Sometimes I think it’s probably just a phase, like anything else. He is getting more teeth in and he’s had some issues with constipation. Good enough reasons for his sleep to be disturbed.

It was a tough week. By the end of it, I was yelling at Daniel and Andrew out of frustration and throwing stuff. Sometimes I’m ashamed at how I behave. What kind of mom am I?

I probably ate a lot of those Twizzlers while obsessively watching CNN and checking political blogs, awaiting any word about the CIA leak / Plame investigation. Finally, the indictments came down on Friday. Five against Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby. None against Rove, but he’s still under investigation.

Rosa Parks died this week and her body is lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda for viewing. Tired after a long day of work, she refused to give up her seat to a white man. I can’t even imagine the courage and fortitude it took to do that. Did she realize the impact that her actions would have when she was doing it? I don’t think she did. She just did what she had to do.

Harriet Meirs withdrew her nomination for US Supreme Court Justice on Thursday. Good timing for Bush since it was overshadowed by the CIA leak investigation very quickly. Who will he pick now? Are we in for a big fight?

I ate a cookie with pink icing at the mom’s bible study that I’ve been going to on Thursday morning. We aren’t supposed to have snacks there because one person said that she was trying to eat better and didn’t want to be tempted. And noone else wanted to admit that they wanted to be tempted. Leftover snacks from various church functions make their way to our room, though. That is the last time that I will be thusly tempted for a while though. The childcare hasn’t been working out there. Andrew hates the nursery and the older lady that cares for him and just screams the whole time. After being out and about on Mon-Wed mornings, I think it might be better for us to just have a morning at home on Thursdays when we don’t have to rush to get out and mommy’s super-crabby.

Oh, I forgot. . . a new scrapbooking store has opened nearby and they have a scrap night every Friday from 6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. It’s $10 and they provide dinner from a nearby restaurant, use of their tools and their expertise. They have a big room in the back of the store with tables and chairs for scrapping. I went on Friday night thanks to my lovely hubby. The food was good: a chicken and pasta dish, salad, bread, etc. And I got some good scrapping done. I’m so bad at it. I got a couple “Wow. I’ve never seen a layout quite like that before. . .” lol Do you say “thank you” when someone says that? I did, but wasn’t sure if it was really a compliment. I enjoyed it though. I just need to find out if we can bring wine next time. Drunk scrapping, now that would be really fun. I’ll have to take some pics of my layouts and post them for critique and more compliments, of course.

And finally, on the food front, tomorrow=Halloween=CANDY!

I kind of feel bad for Harriet Miers, because she had a pretty respectable career before being wrongly nominated to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice. I guess it’s the price you might pay for being a W loyalist — you risk getting nominated by him for something that you don’t have any business being nominated for and then you get skewered for your lack of qualifications. Anyway, this is an entertaining and funny column which explains why being president of the State Bar of Texas is not really such a big deal, and certainly doesn’t really add to your qualifications to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

An apt quote on the difference between truly high-powered attorneys and Bar Association presidents. . .

“Does David Boies spend his $800-an-hour time going to committee meetings and wrangling over the ABA’s next convention schedule? Hardly. He might deign to give a speech at a bar gathering if he can fit it into his busy trial schedule. But bar weenies—their slightly kinder name is bar junkies—are the ones holding the Town Car door open for Boies when he arrives at the hotel. And when they’re not doing that, they’re jabbering endlessly about legal-regulatory policy questions that even most lawyers find stupefying.”

Read more. . .
Vote for Harriet!!!! - The dubious professional distinctions of Harriet Miers. By Mark Obbie

My next door neighbor (the hot UPS guy who is the ex-husband of this womanwho’s a lawyer who prosecuted the Mike Peterson case — prominent author who killed his wife and tried to make it look like she fell down the stairs — and is now running for D.A.) has been having some work done on his house. Today it’s powerwashing, I think. Whatever it is, it’s very loud. And the guys who are doing it are yelling to each other over the running equipment. Poor Andrew is trying sooo hard to go to sleep.

*a little while later*

OK, the powerwashing stopped. Now just some hammering, so Andrew is now snoozing. Yippee!

CNN.com - White House to Onion: Stop using seal - Oct 26, 2005

Chilly here today. But sunny and beautiful. Went to playgroup at the park this morning and stayed for only about 10 minutes before everyone was so cold and the little guys all had red noses.

When will the ants ever vacate our house until next year? They’ve even made it to the 2nd floor into the baby’s room — they go into the infant Tylenol on his dresser.

Andrew is crawling all over and started pulling up in earnest over the weekend. That kid is so fast and so agile. We have a low stool in our den, probably 15 inches off the floor. I was watching with my mouth agape yesterday when he crawled over to it, got on his knees, pulled one knee and then the other. Just like that, he was up on the stool. Daniel and he are starting to wrestle already. It’s so funny. Andrew holds his own, for sure. We’re gonna have a lot of fun around here.

This went up last week.US Department of Justice, Office of Special Counsel It’s thought to be a prelude to indictments which may come this week.