Fiona's bad day

Today started well for Fiona. She was up and at 'em at 5.45. Had a cookie for breakfast. The cookie had oatmeal in it so it's healthy. She played with Daddy and Dell-Roo and then made some paintings with her feet (her new favourite game). She sat in the kitchen sink for a while to clean her feet (and she cleaned the sink too, so that's pretty nice!). Then she dried off and played some more. I made her a totally awesome duplo helicopter...

Then she got a BIG owie. She closed a door on her thumb and somehow really, really hurt it. She tore a big flap between the knuckle and the nail and it clearly needed stitches, so off we all went to the emergency room. She was hysterical, it was awful. Luckily there was no wait and they saw us immediately. I think running in the door with a child screaming that loudly will get you attention in most situations, and this time it worked to our advantage.

They x-rayed it and found that she'd actually managed to fracture it. Poor, poor little thing. They had to put in an IV and very heavily sedate her to make her comfortable enough for them to get a good look at the wound, and it seemed she'd nicked the tendon, but it looked ok. THAT was a relief. The doctor gave her 4 or 5 stitches and bandaged her up, and then the sedation started wearing off. Despite the awfulness of the whole thing, it was kind of amusing to see her all goofy and happy after being sedated. She was rambling on about the stars on the ceiling and seeing two mummies, and two Dells (double vision, totally normal), and was, at that point, pretty happy with the world (although she looks totally miserable here, she's not, she's just really zoned out).

After watching the whole "Finding Nemo" movie and eating two popsicles, she was sober enough to be allowed to leave.

She needs to see the doctor on Thursday to have it checked and make sure it's healing properly, and then the stitches come out in about 10 days. She has been in pretty good spirits this evening, and is sleeping peacefully. Hopefully tomorrow will be ok. It's going to be sore for a while.

Since I feel like we should have a happier picture in here too, here she is a couple of weeks ago modeling the hat we made for Adele's friend Aubrey's 1st birthday. I had to have her test it out to make sure it looked ok on on a real live person. And she was just so cute in it, I'm making her one of her own...

so this one time, in my blog stats...

Every so often I check my blog stats on sitemeter. I don't check often because it's never really that exciting, and I know pretty much who is reading it (hi Mum!). The most interesting part is looking at the google searches that led people here, but the vast majority of the time the search terms are either my name, or the name of the blog. Google doesn't have to work too hard for those...

But today... well, today was different. In the last week I had two very interesting, somewhat bizarre searches that sent someone here. The first came from Canada on January 8th and was...

"Granny making love to Grandpa"

*Ahem*

Interesting.

They landed on a story about my parents visiting, which clearly did not hold their interest because they left again almost immediately. Sorry to disappoint...

The second search though was the one that really surprised me...

"Old Grannies and Grandpas making love"

And to that I say... WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON HERE?!

And it's not even the same person! This one came from the UK!

So here's the thing. My stats only go back 6 days because they're free. In the last 6 days there were 7 google searches that led people here, and 2 out of 7 were searches for grannies and grandpas getting friendly. If I had 10,000, or even 1,000 searches, and 2 were for grandparent nookie, I might be less surprised, though I still don't really see the appeal, but 2 out of 7? That's just weird.

Still, let's look on the bright side... at least they're looking for Grannies having sex with Grandpas and not.. you know... something else. That's pretty wholesome, considering the possibilities.

So welcome, blog visitors searching for Grannies and Grandpas copulating. You won't find it here, but we're not judging...

Eggs Benedict Adventure

Eggs Benedict combines two of the things I have been most scared to cook... poached eggs and hollandaise sauce. But I vowed to keep cooking new (and healthy) things, and eggs benedict meets at least the first of these criteria! And they are deeelicious! Carbs topped with cholesterol topped with fat. YUM!

I came across this recipe and thought it looked delicious enough to give it a try at home.

First, I read the recipe and realized I needed vinegar. White wine vinegar to be precise. When I went to the store they had a gallon of vinegar for about $4, but it was not white wine vinegar. I had no idea what the difference was, but felt like I should get the stuff that the recipe called for, which came in an 8.5 fl oz bottle and was made with pinot grigio (oooooooh) and cost twice as much. This is now the fanciest food item in my cupboard, and needless to say I will not be using it to clean the sink.

Ingredients assembled, I began today's breakfast. Ben played with the girls while I started the hollandaise.

He observed my ingredients, and his first comment was "Is that butter? Are you trying to kill us?" I took that as a compliment...

I followed the instructions and soon I had a creamy, beautiful hollandaise.

Success!

Then I got the eggs going. I have never made poached eggs before and I was sure there were going to be a few disasters, but the 2 tbsps of fancy vinegar must have done the trick because when I dropped the egg in, this is what it did...

I would be lying if I didn't say that this moment was one of my greatest achievements. Birth of two children... check! Successful poached egg... check! My work here is done.

While it was cooking I toasted a muffin, and layered on some yummy smoked salmon. I scooped out the egg, laid it on the salmon and topped it with the lovely hollandaise.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm. I did not have chives to sprinkle on top. Let's not get too crazy here.

Sadly, this one was for Ben because I can only poach one egg at a time. Then... DISASTER STRUCK! In the four minutes it took to poach the second egg, I think I bumped the heat on the water keeping the sauce warm, and it curdled. I could have cried. It was made even worse by Ben's noises of pure joy while consuming his own breakfast, and comment of "oh, that's so sad, the sauce is SO GOOD!". Waaaaaah.

It turns out that a poached egg without hollandaise just looks kind of... naked.

And I felt a little guilty slicing into its tender perfect whiteness and spilling its yolk without a layer of sauce to cover it and protect its dignity...

But it was very tasty nonetheless, and now I have a good excuse to make it again! I just need to figure out how to poach multiple eggs and serve them up before the sauce goes wrong...