Pick Pocket

We have a thief in this house. Good thing we caught her on video surveillance.



Notice she doesn't bother with cash and goes straight for the credit cards

My favourite part of the day

I love the morning. That's not to say I'm a morning person, cause it takes a good strong coffee to get me going in the morning. But I like the quiet peacefulness of it. One of my favourite moments of the day is when Stella wakes up just a little bit early (not too early), before Jeff's alarm goes off to start our day. If it's just that few last minutes, I scoop her up and we lie in bed together. There's just the soft sound of her breathing, the gentle kaka sound of her swallowing while she nurses, the warmth of over night sleep and it's peace. The three of us are warm and snug together while we shake off the last sleepy dreams and get ready to start our day.

Pull up your socks...

Our milestone explosion continues. Stella is trying to pull up on everything, she even sits and play on her knees now. Unfortunately, she's usually playing with the cable box. Naptime has been challenging, but we've got a new plan to start tomorrow.

This weekend was quite busy, Jeff and I primed the walls in the attic. Our attic project hit a big road bump with our busy summer, but we're back on track now. Just seeing that first step was awesome, it's starting too look like a real room instead of a construction site. Later that afternoon we went and met some friends at the Ceili Cottage for a beer. They had home made kettle chips!

Today Jeff put the colour on the walls while Stella and I were at a baby shower for our awesome friend Nat. It looks awesome. We have so many great plans for the room. Tonight while Stella was in the bath and laughing I spied Tooth #4 breaking through!

I can see you!

Happy October

I loves loves loves me some pumpkin. Luckily last week our veggie box gave us a Pie Pumpkin. I couldn't bring myself to bake a pie this week, and I'm trying really hard not to bake anything too rediculous since the salty chocolate caramel cookies fiasco (howsweeteats.com),but I couldn't bring myself to let the pumpkin go to waste. I mean look at that tastiness, sweating away in the steamer. I think he (she?) knew I was going to devour it (her/him). Almost every single recipe I could find called for canned pumpkin so I had to make a puree first. Good thing I have a left over eating machine (aka Stella), cause one pumpkin makes way more than 1/2 a cup of puree.

This pumpkin turned into 16 delicious pumpkin scones (joyofbaking.com). Joy of Baking has the best scone recipes in the whole world. These are almost like the amazing pumpkin scones I devoured when I was pregant with Stella from Starbucks, those were the only thing that helped my nausea. They needed a little something so I cheated and used the leftover cream cheese icing I had in the freezer from when I made oreo truffles for Erin's bachelorette weekend (bakerella.com). I whipped in some milk to thin it out a bit (too much, so I had to add some icing sugar) and drizzled over the scones. Only drizzled so they don't contribute to the caloric intake. See, so much healthier than pie.

Jeff has been mocking my inability to waste anything, so the seeds had to be put to good use. And these I tried to keep vaguely healthy. They're seeds right? Look how trim birds are, practically vegetables. A little olive oil, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne, sugar and garlic powder. Have I mentioned my obsession with cinnamon? More antioxidants than blueberries. So that totally cancels out the cream cheese icing right?

I've got the joy joy joy....

to quote the Flanders....




This was our post lunch conversation today. Then the little pick pocket snuck up on me and stole my home depot list out of my back pocket!

And time ticks on....

Life keeps ticking by! It's sometimes hard to keep up, and I keep thinking I have to write that in the blog so I don't forget! This weekend we blitzed the house with the baby proofing to keep up with Stella. The doors in the kitchen are now a pain in the ass to get open and we installed the baby gate. Just in time, she has taken off this week. She's even started "wandering", not just crawling to get something in particular, but just to go for a little stroll. All this crawling is playing a little bit of havec with our sleep and napping has been a challenge. Why sleep when there's so much more to do!

Jeff and I have kicked it into gear trying to finish up the attic before Stella's birthday. Jeff patched up the last spots on the walls and I started working on cleaning up the plaster and taking all the screws out of the stairs. Hopefully this weekend we'll get some primer on the walls, and maybe even a coat of paint! Next will be getting some carpet down, and I heard there's a sale at home depot!

The nanny hunt has begun as well, which is another reason why the baby proofing is in overdrive; Stella and Henry will be spending Tuesdays and Wednesdays here.

It all sounds so boring, but it's life and it's going too fast! Before we know it, Christmas will be here!

Babygate 2010

No, it's not newest political scandal.

Today, we are officially baby-gated. And strangely, it's the first day we really needed. This kid has taken off. Not only is she mobile, but she wants to get at so many things. For ages I kept saying: "She's a content baby, she's just not driven to move". No more. Maybe all this time she was just plotting her first moves.

As we were putting up the gate today we had her playing in our bedroom on the floor, if you turned your back for a second she was right at our elbows, trying to get the tools and eat the instructions. Ironically, she managed to pull the baby gate on to her head as we were figuring out how to bolt it to a portion of non-existant wall.

Installing this baby gate was a bit of a MacGyver operation. We tried various different solutions which didn't leave us feeling as comfortable with the safety. In the end, we have a Franken-gate, or maybe Mad Max Gate; two pieces of wood bolted with a piece of plastic in between to accomodate for the baseboard. It's sturdy and it takes me 30 seconds to get through it. I can see a lot of stuff getting piled at the bottom of the stairs.

To reinforce our baby-proofing, Jeff and I have a started a contest to help us a remember to do all the little things. There's a chart on the wipeboard on the fridge. Not sure yet what the prize is going to be.... thoughts?