Elisa’s Day

the path to homemade bread is a long and somewhat convoluted one, i think that’s probably pretty common. it started with a bread maker, and then we moved on to hand making each loaf when the urge struck us but still buying most of our bread, then we made the decision to only eat homemade bread, and then we were thrilled to find a recipe that made 3 whole loaves a time, which for a time was great. then the kids got bigger and more lunches needed to be packed and soon i find myself making bread a couple times a week. and to that i say yeeeccchh.

so i turned to grandma, who had 5 kids and made her own bread. and as usual grandma’s “recipe” is sketchy at best. she basically started throwing out vague measurements and “i think” amounts.

“it’s just bread” she says.

“it’s yeast, with sugar and a liquid and a fat and flour” she says.

and she’s right. and so i decided to tackle it grandma style. with some yeast and some sugar and some fat ( oil for me ) and some liquid ( water ) and then keep adding flour until it feels right. it’s hard to keep exact count of flour, but i’d say it was approx. 21 cups of flour. and that gave us 6 loaves of bread and two batches of rolls. that should last us a week, or just slightly more.

we had a lovely day in the city on sunday. we saw the truly amazing shop bill has put together there. we ate good food and did some crazy people watching in the market. i got a $7 cowboy hat to wear in the garden . we did some tattooing. we enjoyed the good company. we ate some more good food. the baby charmed all around with her “look how cute i am” smiles followed by “but still kind of shy” head ducks and said “hi” over and over and to as many people as she could.

really the only hard part about going to the city is time allotment. we have few good friends left in the city, so when you’re only there for the day, the very hardest part is trying to find time to see them. and when you only get to the city a couple times a year, it makes it even worse. so this time we just decided to just stay in the market for the day. because i hate clock watching while he’s tattooing, or having to say no when he asks if we want to grab food after. and because i hate rushing from one friend to another. then we end up clock watching there too. how long can we stay?….how late is too late to start the long drive home? how long will the already tired baby last at another stop? so it was a quick in and out visit. which was nice. it was nice to not always be rushing off somewhere else. so what we really need to do is start getting into the city more, so we can have a nice, dedicated visit with other friends too, not be trying to bounce between them all in one day. and now that the kids are ( baby especially ) getting older, hopefully we’ll only have more and more opportunities to sneak away for a day here and there in our future.

really, any excuse to eat in the city. according to ryan, i only go to the city to eat. i’m still thinking about how good the tacos and guacamole we had in the market were.

that’ll keep the sun off

and all caught up ( sidney took this for me, it’s not in focus but you get the gist )

well hopefully we’re done with sickness for awhile. olivia just finished her second round of Rx in a month, as did sidney ( olivia did in fact have a nasty ear infection, and surprise, sidney had tonsillitis ) in light of these two facts, we wrapped up our school year a few days early. i mean, don’t get me started on the absurdity of making the kids go right until the 30th even though marks for report cards go in the second week of june. so with both kids sick again last weekend, i decided to call it a year and told the school as much. and so, with that, our summer begins. thank goodness. looking forward to some sleeping in and some lack of schedule.

busy weekend last weekend, ryan’s mom was here and it was another rainy day at the market. so when my usual veggie guy pleaded with me to take some strawberries off his hands because he was never going to get rid of them in the rain, what could i do? $10 later i have a flat of strawberries ( that he continued to pour pints on top of as i picked veggies ) that i need to do something with. normally i only make raspberry jam, i’m not a big fan of strawberry, but the kids like it, so i kinda thought i might make some anyway. so we did. lots of jam, and one delicious strawberry pie. then sunday we blew through our egg surplus with a ridiculously huge pound cake recipe ( it takes 24 eggs ) and muffins and cookies. at least it solved my end of year gift dilemma for the kids teachers. so wednesday i dropped by the school to grab any last bits of stuff ( and report cards ) and drop off a pound cake for the office, and mini pound cakes plus jam for the teachers.

we had some birthdays too. someone turned one, which is hard to believe.

and finally started crawling, which means i can’t turn my back on her for a second or she’s into the kids book shelf, trying to stick her finger in a light socket, chewing on the kids dirty shoes……general ‘baby on the go’ mischief. i’m definitely in that same bittersweet place i’m sure all mom’s go with the last baby, glad it’s all coming to an end but sad to see it go. i’m finding myself very undedicated to trying to get her on bottles, i am both so ready to be done nursing and so aware this is my last time. even when i felt like maybe we wouldn’t have more before, i always knew there was a [good]chance we’d have more. but with this, the very last baby, it’s so much harder to let that go, even though i want to. and there has been sleeping through the night. which i hope means sooner then later i can split the girls back up two and two, because if i have to listen to hannah and the older girls spend many more early mornings arguing in bed, i may just loose my shit. don’t ask how i plan to split them i haven’t decided yet. the obvious, older two, younger two maybe, but  maybe i mix it up a little too? who knows.

and someone turned six. also hard to believe.

our traditional birthday pancakes, which you get on your actual birthday since you get a cake at your party and two cakes was too many. olivia decided to ask for money for her birthday this year, because she really wanted to take gymnastics, and the only money in our budget for extra curricular right now goes to swimming lessons ( no body needs to know how to walk a balance beam to save their own life so….. ) so that is what she got from all the grandparents and aunties. and she is very excitedly waiting for the fall session to start up now. my mom also gave her a leotard to wear ( which she desperately wanted as well ) and a new book, that she estimates to be about a 4th grade reading level ( based on the vocabulary ) that olivia is already half way through. i am definitely glad she’s in the french, i could see her being much less challenged in a regular class.

and this weekend, i think we’ll have to forgo any going away to spend the entire weekend trying to catch up on all the outside stuff we fell behind on due to the last three weeks of rain. i heard this was the most rain to ever fall in june. and i’d believe it if all the standing water everywhere is any gauge. i just really hope that our garlic and potatoes don’t get rot.

well, one more coffe and then time to get moving. my step dad is away and so his morning chores fall to me, which means there are birds waiting for me to start their day.

my final thought today is, you know the only good part about having to wake a baby up from a nap? getting to snap the elusive ‘cute sleeping baby’ photo without any concern that it might wake them up.

now i just can’t wait until there are raspberries and veggies to add to the bowl too.  man real strawberries are good. the very first one eaten made all the work worth while.

i have written, had to abandon half way through, and then never returned to, several updates. june is just a crazy month of work outside and end of school stuff and birthday parties……..so yeah.

today is bake the cake for olivia’s party tomorrow. ( which i will ice tomorrow morning while ryan is doing the swimming lessons/farmers market/pick up ballons run ) then i must try and clean my house to a semi-presentable level for tomorrow. and run into town when ryan gets home for the food for the party ( picnic outside, olivia’s choice ) and any other last minute stuff i need. oh and finally plant the last tomato seedlings which have been sitting outside on the deck in pots for weeks now. oh and take some pictures of the baby…..today one of my goals is to take some pictures of the baby. ryan was always the big picture taker around here. but now he’s not here so much and the pictures are much fewer and far between for it.

time to get the girls up for school.

lots of black coffee and home made brownies. so good.

3 kids are playing a board game together and the smallest worden girl is pounding out her little baby heart on the piano. it’s a little melissa and doug mini piano. it’s a big hit with the nine month old set as i remember from my niece’s visit last summer, and molly agrees.

it’s been cold here the last few days, which sucks. but apparently it’s going to be very warm by next weekend so i’m holding out hope. ashley posted a picture of a tulip, it’s been too yucky to go on a search for green here, but i wonder if we did, would we find any? from the window it’s a sea of dreary brown.

had some friends from the city here yesterday for a visit which was awesome. although i did feel a little like all we did all day was eat. they brought lunch and then there was the above mentioned brownies. and grandma’s spaghetti sauce with homemade french stick. and apple pie. so good. and i sent them home with some homemade raspberry jam. because once you’ve tried homemade i don’t think you can ever eat weird gelatinous store jam ever again. the girls had a blast with their three little dogs. three of the best behaved little dogs i have ever met i might add. my grandma was also here, at my mom’s, with her new little dog. plus my mom’s dog. for a brief moment in time the dogs outnumbered the children.

molly did not go down for her regular afternoon nap though in all the excitement, which is probably why she woke up at 2:30 am all bright eyes and “da da da”s. never a good sign when that happens. good thing i always have some movies pvr’d for just such and occasion. nothing like being up for a couple hours in the middle of the night.

nothing exciting on tap for today. some cleaning up, maybe i’ll pull out the easter stuff. i can’t believe easter is already next weekend.

ryan and i have a huge cleaning and organizing job to do in the basement this spring, during which i hope hannah’s missing birth certificate turns up. though i am not holding my breath at this point, you never know.

lets just see if i can bang out an update while the kids are playing outside and the baby is sleeping. that’s right……playing outside because it is beautiful and spring like out there. it’s going outside with no hat and mitts weather out there. it’s the sun actually feels warm weather out there. it’s a beautiful thing. i mean sure, the kids play outside in the winter too. but there is only so much fun to be had with the mobility of the michelin tire man. and it’s always a race against the clock, how long can you play before your numb fingers, toes and nose force you back inside? on a good day it might be 45 min, but more often then not it’s about 20 minutes. so it is a happy day when i can kick the kids outside sans hats and mitts and they’ll stay out there a good hour or so.

last week was a crazy one. i was on the go all week. which means my house is trashed in a serious way. i can generally keep on top of the mess (to a reasonable extent anyway) but if too many other plans start creeping into the picture, well, something has to give. so mess was left. laundry was not done. it all spirals out of control pretty quickly believe me. so today was spent cleaning. though sadly, not much laundry has been done yet, but i still have the afternoon.

and now i hear my baby crying, so off i go to get her, feed her etc. and will have to finish this later

okay, two hours later. baby is playing on the floor with the kids. roast is in the oven. ryan made our very first successful pie for dessert. we have both tried pie crust before and it always ended badly. but he did it !! yay. also the house is reasonably clean again and we even made bread. a productive day.

yesterday we spent the day in peterborough shopping. my grandma was nice enough to escort us to costco ( membership required ) and we even got to leave the kids with my cousins so we could shop in peace. i have had to start shopping at costco. it’s kind of annoying to drive to peterborough to do it, but the kids are getting bigger, they eat a lot and there is still one more to add to the collective appetite. imagine you buy on bunch of banana’s and then you doll them out three ( soon to be four ) at a time ( let alone if you want one ) well, one bunch doesn’t go too far. i need the giant bag of grapefruit. the giant bag of oranges. the huge box of granola. the 44 pounds of flour. the six pack of whole wheat spaghetti, because everyone here loves spaghetti and one box of noodles is barely enough. if we want leftovers i need to make a box and a half. you get the point. ryan says our basement is starting to look like a bomb shelter with all the overflow storage in addition to the home canned goods. what i really need now is a second fridge for the basement. ryan has a little bar fridge down there that is packed, but i’m going to start watching the classifieds for one. and i definitely can’t wait to get some new egg layers in the spring. ( or sooner ) we go through 2-3 dozen eggs a week. we’re also getting a freezer pack of local beef from a guy up the road to go in the deep freeze with our chickens this year.

not much else going on. another round of swimming lessons over with. and a few extra weeks in between this time, as the pool closes for some much needed renovations.

other then that, march break, no real plans, but we’ll head up to my dad’s for a few days just to get out of the house. i’m working on ryan’s sweater. it’s coming slowly, but coming along all the same. i finally got around to reading the Lost Symbol. it was fine. a more formulistic writer there may not be, but entertaining all the same. then my mom brought over Year of the Flood. i’m just trying to decide of i should read Oryx and Crake again first. i also have a few easy patterns and some fabric i picked up for next to nothing at our fabricland, soon to be closed. i’ll give sewing another try and see how it goes. i’d like to be able to make things for the girls.

and there you have it, the mundane minutiae of my life, but now my baby wants me and i need to switch the laundry.

a few random things i have been meaning to talk about floating around in my head, i could do a small update for each one, but’s lets go with a scatted, random, longer one instead. but hey, ryan fixed my admin so i can upload pictures, so at least now there will be cute baby( or big kid ) pictures along with the rambling updates.

lets start with the most inane. you already know i love tv, but i especially love crime drama. so anyway, i watch criminal minds. and a couple seasons back they replaced a character. and the new guy was fine. never bothered me one way or the other (though i liked the old character better ). then a couple weeks ago ryan and i watched a special about the simpsons. and during that special i learned that the actor who plays said character also voices fat tony. and NOW all i ever hear while watching criminal minds when he talks is FAT TONY FAT TONY FAT TONY. i NEVER heard it before. now it’s all i hear. not only am i boggled by the fact that it seems so obvious now but that i never noticed before, but i find it distracts from the show when all i hear is fat tony.

sidney had to take something to school today for their valentines party. there was a schedule sent home at the beginning of the year, and we were scheduled for the end of yr party. yesterday she came home telling us that one girl scheduled for valetines day is absent so sidney’s been switched. which, whatever, honestly i could whip up cookies or cupcakes from scratch, no problem, even on that short of notice. what is so !#$%@ annoying is that the school board policy as of this year is “any snack sent to school to be shared with classmates MUST be bought” …….seriously…….because you know, it’s all this bullshit health board regulations and general fear mongering about baked goods and the general public. so you can’t provide anything to the general public that wasn’t prepared in a health board approved kitchen anymore. i’m not sure exactly what kind of evil i’d be spreading with my home made cupcakes, maybe they came in contact with nuts, or i prepared them on a salmonella covered counter or something. because i’m clearly an incompetent moron, as is anyone offering homemade baked goods ( uh, just seems not likely to me ) so instead, i had to get in my car, drive 20 minutes, spend $10 on some chemical heavy, probably don’t even taste good, valentines cookies from the grocery store. it’s nice to know that chemicals and preservatives are considered a better alternative then anything homemade.

as expected my good sleeper was replaced by a not good sleeper around 4 months of age. and it’s been a rough go ever since. i just really can’t get up every 1.5 hours. maybe, if i she was my first baby and i could dedicate all of my energy to her, if i didn’t have three other children that require my attention. i find it very interesting to see the difference between parenting one or two kids and parenting more then three. the luxuries afforded a parent of a single child as far as time and focus are pretty staggering. i know we made the conscious choice to sacrifice some of that for a large family. and i’d do it again. but i’m off topic already. i just can’t get up every 1.5 hours. it is not an option. and since sleep training at this age is also not an option, i was definitely delving into desperation. then my parenting magazine that my MIL always gets me from the kids magazine drive came. it was the yearly “sleep issue” and although it didn’t hold any main articles that held any information i didn’t already know, in an article about the newest fad “sleep doulas” i read one small paragraph about the possible downsides of nursing to sleep. now i nursed all my other babies to sleep all the time. maybe it caused issue, but never issue enough  for me to really notice so…….but every baby is different, and this fell into my “acceptable to try” category ( along with sleeping in bed with us, different sleeping positions in her crib and cereal before bed, which yes, i know is a myth, but hey, remember the desperate part? not a lot of options to even try at 7 months ) so we started nursing at wake up and then a couple hours later in a wakeful environment  ( no more dark quiet nursing ) and then when it’s time i rock her to sleep instead. it has made a shocking difference right away. crazy. a couple night she even slept through the entire night. but most nights she now wakes once  which is a huge improvement on 4 or 5 times ( obviously in the night we still nurse to sleep, it seems to be different for whatever reason, maybe because she isn’t really even awake ). and for several days now, when she is ready for her morning nap i have laid her down in her crib and she goes quietly to sleep all on her own. i only discovered this when i put her down to do the girls hair the other morning before they left for school and she had quietly fell asleep by the time i finished. it only works for the morning nap for some reason, but whatever. best breakthrough ever. seriously.

and now, my favorite sleeper, almost to small for the big giant baby. heart bum.

i can’t even get a handle on how fast time is whipping by us these days. it was thanksgiving and all of the sudden it was halloween and i just know that before we know it it will be christmas!

the last few weeks have been a blur of activity. halloween costumes were made, a baby blanket was knit, the resulting chaos that became the house with so many other projects on the go, was finally cleaned and organized. it was probably a good week after thanksgiving before i even got the extra tables out of my living room ( they actually came in handy when sewing halloween costumes )

i have another project to knit in the cue and i really want to start teaching myself to crochet, so those are my focus for november.

i just finished re-reading The Timetraveller’s Wife. so good.

sidney has the flu. I don’t know if she has THE flu, or just A flu, and truthfully i don’t really care. my kids are healthy, with no pre-existing conditions ( like asthma ) to complicate, they have strong immune systems (  the last time i can recall sidney barfing was in 2004 ) so i am really not scarred of THE flu, it’s a flu like any other flu. i do have minor concerns about the baby. sidney is to go nowhere near her. and i wash my hands before i pick her up every single time. and i will be keeping a very close eye on her for any fever or breathing issues and will take her into the doctor immediately if i notice any. hopefully we were careful enough soon enough that it will be a non-issue, there is nothing worse then a sick baby.

speaking of the baby…..she’s so big. i’m in full denial of her bigness. she can’t possibly be big enough for toys. but she is. her favorite is this little haba mouse. she loves to look at it while i shake it, she loves to talk to it and touch it and especially to chew on his little ears. she’s all slobbery smiles and giggles. she finds sidney especially funny. when sidney laughs, molly laughs. sometimes we tickle sidney just to get the baby laughing. i think she might be teething.

the girls had a great halloween, much trick or treating was done, much junk food was procured. sadly, being sick has kind of taken the fun out of it for sidney, who only got to enjoy her bounty sat. night and sun. morning before the headache set in. for now the supply is still ridiculous, but if she’s sick more then another day or so  i will stash away some of the goods for her before the other two ( and dad and i ) finish it off.

we missed the last farmers market, though i doubt there were many vendors, it was a dark and rainy day. we did make it last week though so i could stock up on macoons. if you like mac apples and ever find yourself with the opportunity to try a macoon do so. it’s a cross of a mac and some other apple i can’t remember. best apple ever. i pretty much bought out the apple guy, as many as i could fit in my crisper and ryans little beer fridge, now our apple fridge. i always look forward to late fall for the macoons.

and mondays, i look forward to mondays because it means dexter, pvr’d from last night.

another one survived ! this year everyone came here, which was especially nice for us being the only ones with small kids and a baby. at full attendance we think we’re around 35? but we have already gotten the whole family together twice this summer so not everyone made the trek for thanksgiving this year. we had about 25 this year. our great room still has all the furniture pushed to the sides with four full sized tables set up in the middle. the kids enjoyed having their own personal tables to sit at for cereal this morning.

even with two ovens and stoves, it was still madness at the end to get everything ready and on the tables, partly due to the fact that we had our very own turkeys, and so with 25 people we felt we had to cook two to be on the safe side. so we had a turkey in each oven. but everyone still pretty much ate at the same time. grandpa made one of the ducks too, i didn’t try it, but word on the street was it was good. i ate a small bit of stuffing, with hopes miss molly won’t pay too much ( and make me pay ). to compensate i passed completely on the super garlicky caesar salad…..the things we do for babies!

the girls had so much fun. it’s exciting for me to see them getting older and more comfortable with everyone. they love love love playing with all my teenage cousins, and they all play with them tirelessly, that is a good bunch of teenagers i tell you. they are all so great with my girls it’s crazy. we did have plans to set the playstation up for teenagers after dinner, but apparently too much fun was being had with the connect four and perfection games to care. ( the perfection game is old school, found at value village and then ryan managed to get it working when it was discovered to not in fact work )

the baby was passed around endlessly, and everyone marvelled at how big she seems already. the girls shamelessly hawked their school fundraiser magazines and received many compliments on their paper bag turkey centerpieces and fall coloured paper chains strung up everywhere. just a great day.

and this afternoon we’re off to my dad’s, for ham instead of another turkey. but first i think there is a piece of pumpkin pie with my name on it. holidays mean pie for breakfast around the harmer family.

on my way to get the mail yesterday i ate an apple of the tree in the driveway. delicious. last year the apples weren’t much, there are several trees around. but this year for whatever reason, the one in the driveway is full of good sized apples. now the lowest and most ripe ones are wormy, but the ones that aren’t are pretty darn good. so we need to get out there with a ladder and start picking. i also need to go pick the pears as well, there is a good lot of them, and i learned last year, they are better small and still kind of red/hard. i don’t know why, but once they turned fully green, they were kind of yucky. and i’m not sure if i spy a few green apples on the tree out the window just this minute, supposedly some kind of heritage apple tree according to the previous owners, but last year it didn’t have any apples at all, i’m definitely going to check it out this morning though.

our poor garden is much neglected and completely overtaken with weeds. this was just not a good year for us. ryan working so much at a new job, me pregnant and miserable or busy with an infant ( and so far from miserable about it ) but even in it’s completely neglected state, we still had some peas, beans, beets, and a lot of amazing potatoes. and of course the crazy garlic, all 150 of them or something like that. i think tomorrow if i can leave molly in grandma’s charge for a bit i’ll forage for anything else that managed to survive, who knows, i may find some squash or something.

but not today, because today is supposed to be the only hot day this week and we’re going to the cottage. when you only get one nice day every 10 or 15, you gotta take advantage of it ( aside from the fluke heat wave while we had our company of course, a whopping 6 days of hot weather in a row !! )

and then it’s sept. wow. sept is always a nutty month for us. with 4 birthdays, school starting and the fair which has become a bit of a family event. but this year we also have a wedding. crazy.

last weekend was my grandma’s 75th birthday. so we all got together and had professional portraits taken, which was hectic but cool. i wonder what the final head count was? i’ll have to find out, probably around 30……lots of good fun and good food. my girls had a blast dressing up fancy, getting their nails painted, and then changing back into their regular clothes to play basketball and football with all my teenage cousins. that’s some good balance ! and grandma laid out a whole table of random china and other bits and pieces she wanted us to all take. i took two tea cups for myself and one for each girl. apparently it was popular to collect single teacups so grandma had a lot of them, all different. i also took a cut glass pickle plate and creamer/sugar set and a china platter that was a wedding present. the only one i got a story on was the platter from her wedding, so next time she’s here i’ll have to see if any of the cups i took has it’s own story.

okay, must go pack for the cottage.