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Summer Weekend

A Dutch baby for breakfast with raspberries and blueberries from our yard:

Popsicles (Joe ate like 17; somehow Viola had only one):

Filling up the kiddie pool (and lounging in it, of course):

Housework (V's job is sorting the bibs and washcloths):

Not pictured: building a deck (almost finished!), going to a festival, getting a pedicure (my twice-a-year treat), grocery shopping, grilling, mowing the lawn, Viola's first smoked salmon (she liked it!), picking a ton of sugar snap peas, playing with frozen washcloths, and on, and on...

All this, and we still had time to feed the little gold baby. It came from my grandma (my parents sent it to me after she died), and it is the perfect sample of her old-world European aesthetic. She kept these little cherubs in her potted plants, so that's where I had it, until Viola took a shine to him. "Bay-bee!" she says, and then offers him a little of whatever she's eating, saying "nom nom nom." Usually we can get her to say "bay-bee watch" but occassionally she also invites him on to her highchair. Here he is enjoying bunny crackers and goat cheese:

Tools we have used to operate the furnaces at our last two residences, in order of frequency of use

Thermostat
Wooden chopstick
Hammer

Greeting

Waiting

The arrival

Jumping with excitement

In Pursuit of a High Chair

Sometimes we have a hard time time finding products that both meet our aesthetic requirements and fall within our budgetary parameters. Like the time it took us five years to find a couch. For approximately the last fifteen months, we have been following this familiar pattern looking for a rocking chair and a high chair: research obsessively online, react violently to the offensive product designs, find a great high-priced alternative and argue repeatedly about whether we can afford it, decide vintage is the way to go, visit antique stores and garage sales flakily, check Craigslist once in a while, scour the internet some more, and so on.

However, our high chair needs have recently become dire, as little V is now eating pears, rice cereal, plums, peaches, and sweet potatoes. And her thighs are too big for the Bumbo seat.

How bad can a high chair be, you ask?

Approximately this bad:

Or, oh, this bad:

I'm not trying hard to find ugly high chairs, either -- these are recommended by Consumer Reports.

As is this one:

Just when I thought that every high chair in existence looked like a Barcalounger or an over-engineered athletic shoe, or cost $300 (we still would like to own you, Stokke Tripp Trapp), we finally went to Ikea and got this gorgeous white plastic model for $19.99:

I think she likes it

It's simple, it's easy to clean, and it holds the baby safely while she eats. The tray is a little hard to take on and off, but, again, it cost $19.99. Bring on the mashed peas!

While at Ikea, we also found a non-offensive rocking chair (not a glider!) for a reasonable price. And we dined on delicious meatballs and marzipan in the cafeteria. Thank you, Sweden, for allowing us to purchase your genius output.

May the Farce be with you

Since I've been hanging out at home on Thursday and Fridays with Viola, I've had a little time to think about my home here on hilltop. That and Zillow keeps me apprised of how our home is faring in today's real estate market. Our house is up 31.6% from when we bought it 5 years ago but down 12.4% this year. Not bad, but then I saw this sign while walking Viola around the neighborhood. Would someone actually buy a house from this company?

On my first full day single-parenting

I paid a kid $8 to mow our lawn and he took off to "go get his mower," never to return. In his defense, it started raining. Also, who pays a kid to mow the lawn before he mows it?*

I ate a bunch of undercooked brown rice. I guess I took it out of the rice cooker too soon. It was really chewy, and I imagine it is still cooking right now, judging by the way my gut feels.

Not the mixed nuts! Anything but the mixed nuts!

Until last week, the home intruders I was most concerned about were of the rodent variety. Long-time readers will remember the mouse graph of 2008, which documented a few rounds of mouse catching at our house. Even after the mouse graph, we have experienced additional breaches of our studio (to access a cough drop) and pantry (to get at a bag of dried porcini).

Christmas food

We cut down on the amount of truffles we made this year for Christmas, but then we invented all sorts of other stuff to make.

The truffles are Bailey’s-flavored. Here they are with the dulce de leche candies that Joe invented. He started with this recipe (the cheater one that starts with condensed sweetened milk), and then rolled the caramel into balls and coated them in chocolate. Then he topped them with sea salt. I’ll admit I was skeptical, but they’re good - not chewy, and not hard candy, but somewhere in between.