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...
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 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...
Here's what we've been up to in the last couple of weeks...
Fiona and I made a gingerbread house together. It was fun, but more work than I thought it would be! Fiona wanted to eat the house walls, and as much frosting as possible, but it turned out ok in the end.
We had a lovely Christmas with Ben's family. Christmas Eve was of course the traditional dinner and talent show at his parents' house. The talents this year were exceptional, including Fiona's "bottom dancing"...
We spent Christmas Day here, in our pyjamas. Ben's family came over and we opened presents together, and tried to polish off the Christmas cookies and desserts. We failed, but it was a good effort. Fiona quickly got into the spirit of opening presents, and found the whole thing very exciting!
She got some really great boxes!
Fiona was too excited and much too full of sugar to take an afternoon nap, and by the time everyone left (around 7pm) she was starting to get cranky. She was annoyed because I told her she could not watch a movie, and stomped off to her room, and turned off the light. I jokingly called out "goodnight, Fiona!' and finished saying goodbye to our guests. Once everyone was gone I went to check on her and she was curled up in bed fast asleep. A Christmas miracle!
We had a wonderful day and Ben surprised me with some lovely gifts, none of which required batteries, micro usb adaptors, or a network to function. Nice job sweetie :-)
So here we are - 2011. We took down the Christmas decorations today, and I think the girls will miss the dancing snowman. 2010 was a wonderful year filled with many happy memories. Here are some highlights...
I hope everyone is having an enjoyable (and not too stressful) Holiday Season! If you were in that crazy traffic jam trying to get into the Mall of America today, my thoughts are with you!
This year I am feeling thankful. I am constantly reminded of last year when Adele was in hospital and we were stressed out and worried. I am so happy to have her home with us this year, even if she is yelling in her bedroom after only taking a 15 minute nap. I am grateful for her happy spirit, and beautiful smile.
I can not imagine not being able to share her smiles. For her, or Fiona to have been born with a facial deformity that makes it impossible for them to smile. Luckily, if that had happened, we live in a country with good healthcare, and we have excellent health insurance, and she would not have had to go through life unable to smile.
So this Christmas, I am grateful, not only that I have two beautiful, healthy, smiley girls, but also that Ben and I are able to donate to organizations that can help families who are not as lucky as us. One of my favorite blogs Cake Wrecks is in the middle of a "12 days of Christmas" charity drive - every day they feature a charity and ask each reader to donate a dollar to the charity. That's all. Just one dollar. If you give a dollar a day, that's $12 dollars. But if everyone gives a dollar a day, that's a lot of dollars. Today they featured the charity Operation Smile which provides free surgeries to correct facial deformities in children, and they do some incredible things for children who would otherwise have to go through life without showing off their beautiful smiles. So if you have a dollar to spare (or even 12), think about contributing. Go to Cake Wrecks, and follow the link to donate. Smiley babies all over the world will thank you.
This post will be in backwards chronological order, beginning today and going until it seems like I've rambled for long enough to send most of you into a comatose state...
Wow, December is speeding by! I can't believe it's the 14th already! The 14th was always an exciting day growing up, not so much because it's my Dad's birthday (sorry Dad! also, Happy Birthday!) but because it's the day we'd put up the Christmas tree, and once the tree is up, it's almost CHRISTMAS!!
Side note: because December is crazy I never manage to post even a card to my Dad, never mind a present, so as usual, this year, he got this...
And as a special treat this year he even got this!
Not initially included on Flickr, but now available as a bonus feature is this... the outtakes!
She's so cooperative!
Fiona loves all the Christmas decorations and lights on the houses, but doesn't seem to get the concept of asking Santa for presents yet. Or even who Santa is really. And to be fair, it's an odd concept. At bedtime tonight she was asking for a flashlight, and I told her she should ask Santa for one and she might get one for Christmas. She looked at me like I was nuts... Santa? Ok Mum, whatever...
I am almost completely done shopping, which is a minor miracle. I did almost all of it online, which was a lot of fun (more fun than battling the maniacs at the Mall) and now I have the added excitement of getting all kinds of mail. I still need to get something for the girls... I was going to get Fiona a trampoline, but we think it might take up too much space, so maybe I'll just get her a flashlight... and a lot of batteries.
On Sunday we went out to the Mall for a little while, just to get out of the house. If you're not there to shop, it's fun to visit :-) Fiona went on some rides and had fun seeing her cousins and eating ice cream. We got home, and it was bedtime, so I went to the basement to get their pyjamas from the dryer and smelled gas. Our hot water heater had not been working well, so we assumed that was the culprit and turned it off, then I called the gas company to see if we should do anything else. I was not prepared for her instructions... we had to leave the house immediately and wait in the car outside for the gas inspector to come and make sure there was not a leak and we were safe. So at almost 9pm we dragged our tired children out in 0 degree weather (that's -17C), loaded them in the car and sat outside for an hour, making occasional trips round the block to try to keep them asleep/entertained. I unearthed some toys in the bottom of the backpack, and Grrr and Fwroar had an exciting battle, but that only lasted so long...
Of course almost as soon as we're in the car Fiona starts crying that she needs to go potty. Luckily she had her night time diaper on so it was not an emergency but she did not want to go in the diaper, and was really upset. I told her I'd change her if she needed me to, and after a little while she insisted on having a new diaper. After some very awkward maneuvering I got her old diaper off, only to find that it was STILL DRY! You tricksy toddler, you!!
Luckily, Adele slept the whole time, so that helped.
Anyway, it turned out that the vents for the hot water heater were clogged with snow (more on that next) and once we cleared them off, it was back to business as usual.
Last weekend we had an epic snow storm, and although they did a great job of clearing the roads off, it's still kind of scary if you are one of those people who drives like an old lady, hunched over the steering wheel, sweating even though according to the car thermometer it's -15. Not that I am that kind of driver of course... Um. Anyway... there was so much snow that it even brought down the roof of the metrodome. Which is a big deal, I know, but come on people, it's not like it was a real roof! It was some kind of fabric tent and was held up by AIR!
Here's a picture of some snow, and Ben shoveling. We got almost 20 inches. And no, I did not even go outside to take pictures!
The last time it snowed Fiona loved playing outside, but it's been too cold recently. Here's a picture of her having fun back when it was warmer...
Those loose threads are... um... a style choice. Nothing to do with laziness at all...
I think this has dragged on long enough, so I'll leave you with a picture of the mug cosy I made for the playgroup secret santa. I have never made one before - it was fun! It's so cold here that even hot drinks need sweaters to keep them warm...
I would have written this on your actual birthday, but you and your sister keep me pretty busy so I didn't get a chance to. On December 3rd you had your first birthday, and it was oh so exciting! A little over a year ago you gave us a big surprise when you decided you would like to be born more than two months early, and since that day you have surprised and amazed us over and over again.
When you were born it was pretty scary. We hoped everything would work out, but you were so very tiny and fragile. You amazed us at the moment of your birth by screaming very loudly, and we took comfort in that, but seeing you so small and weak with all your wires and monitors in your baby greenhouse was hard.
You weighed 3lbs, 2.8oz, and were teeny tiny. Grandma reminded me that I compared you to a butterfly, beautiful, but scary to handle in case I broke you.
Here you are at 8 days old. You already loved to look around and take everything in.
You did a great job while you were in the hospital - you learned to keep yourself warm and graduated from the greenhouse to your own little bed. You learned how to drink milk from a bottle, and you got better at remembering to breathe while sleeping, though we had a monitor for you for a while at home because you liked to test our reflexes from time to time. You came home on January 15th after exactly 6 weeks, you met your big sister, and got really, really good at breastfeeding. In fact, it became your favorite thing!
In the last year you have become a giggle monster - you love to be tickled, and for Fiona to blow raspberries for you. You roll from your tummy to your back, and have started to roll from your back to your tummy, but only when you absolutely have to. You love to read books and listen to music, and are a big fan of toys that sing songs. You have started to sit up, and think jumping in the bouncer is very entertaining. You have 5 teeth, and make some very silly faces...
You love to be with me, and can be fussy with other people, but I don't mind. It's nice to have a little snugglepuss, and I know all too soon you'll be asking me to leave you alone like your big sister does.
You have a smile that lights up the room and makes everyone else smile too. Your giggle could cheer up the Grinch, and you have a funny little sense of humor. You love your big sister very much, and she loves you too, even if she steals your toys.
Happy Birthday Adele, Dell-Roo, Tiny Love. We are so grateful for the joy and laughter you have brought to our family.
Now if you wanted to start sleeping at night, that would be cool. I might miss you at first at 10, 1, 3, and 5, but I think the time apart would be good for both of us.
I grew up in Scotland, and now live in Minnesota with Ben, our little Fiona, and Adele, the newest addition to our family. And also Brodie-dog and Monty-cat. Adele decided to show up a little early and was born at 30w4d, coming home at 6 weeks old. Here you will find the tales of what we get up to together, updates about how Adele is growing, and other random thoughts.
