Fiona eats hummus and learns a new dance move

This week the weather has been very Aberdonian. Some would describe it as dreich. We haven't been out much. We've been doing things like going though Ben's drawers and throwing out all his t-shirts, and hoovering the house. Fun. 

We have had some fun times too though. Recently, Fiona has been much more excited about eating things with flavour. I usually give her some of what I'm having, and she ate half of my extra tasty salmon burger (made by Grandma) on Sunday. At the farmer's market we also got some homemade hummus, so when Fiona woke up from her afternoon nap yesterday, I thought we'd have that for a snack. This is some pungent hummus! It's got enough garlic and pepper in it to really clean out your sinuses, and she LOVED it. I took a very cute video, but despite Ben's constant reminders that the camera needs to be horizontal, I turned it vertical resulting in a sideways video. Rather than give you neck pain trying to watch it, here are a couple of cute photos. 

Concentrating hard on getting it in her mouth.

YAY! Hummus!

Very successful snack. It's exciting that she's eating more and more 'grown up' foods, but I was a little sad about it this morning when she guilted me into sharing my blueberry muffin. 

Today Fiona also expanded her repertoire of awesome dance moves... in addition to the 'bounce up and down' she now also incorporates the 'head shake' and 'body sway' for variety. The song is the same as before because it's her favourite dancing song. Enjoy...

Our latest adventures

I haven't updated for a while... I was still recovering from my sunburn incident ;-)

Last week we had some lovely weather. I was really happy our yard was all cleaned up so we could enjoy it! One of the things we did last week was hang up a clothes line. I was so excited, until I hung up my clothes, only to find that the line was to low and they trailed on the ground. Then I had a brainwave... washing pole! My Mum had a washing pole... it was a long, smooth stick topped with a hooky thing made specially for the purpose of propping up the washing line. I, however, did not have a smooth stick, or a fancy hooky thing, so I found a long piece of wood in the garage, and banged a nail into it near the top. It works great, and also comes with the added excitement of the danger of serious splinters in your hands when you use it! 

Here's a picture of my washing line, and pole, with diapers hanging out to dry.

To celebrate the first day with temperatures above 80, Ben and I ate dinner outside on Thursday. By the time Fiona was alseep and dinner was made, it was pretty late, so we even got to use our 'summer' lights*. Here's Ben...

I love eating dinner outside, and I especially love drinking wine outside. It makes me so happy that the sun finally came back! This time of year is extra lovely because there is only one mosquito. I'd say there were no mosquitoes, but one bit me, so I'll have to assume there's just one so far. 

This weekend was also the first day of the Farmer's Market. I love the Farmer's Market, so I was pretty excited. I hadn't completely thought it through though... given that we've only had a handful of days without snow this year so far, there was not really anything to farm yet, so pickings were kind of slim! 

We ended up buying some crazy hot salsa (Ben), crazy hot pickles (Ben), and crazy sharp cheddar cheese (to share). There were also many options for hot food, so despite the fact that it was only 10.30am, we had lunch. Ben had shrimp taco and fries, and Fiona and I shared a fish taco and stole a few of Ben's fries. 

Ben really enjoyed his lunch!

On Sunday we had dinner with Ben's family. His Aunt Gloria and Uncle Neil are visiting this week, and his sister Laurie was here for the weekend. Here's Fiona and I with Laurie. This photo is evidence of why I generally take the pictures. Out of nine pictures, this one was the best. Yep, I know I'm missing part of my head. I'm not sure if it's my face or Ben's skills that's the problem, but at one point Ben did ask me to 'do a different smile' and then winced at the resulting photograph. 

Fiona enjoyed the visit, and even pitched in with the dishes...

This week, Fiona has a new tooth! Which explains why she has been sleeping so badly. Hopefully that will improve now that tooth number 7 has emerged. She also has a new diaper! (ok, the diaper is partly for me too). I got 2 on super sale online, and I really, honestly needed two more diapers! I mean... Fiona needed two more diapers!

It's made of mostly bamboo with some cotton blended in. Apparently Bamboo is pretty eco friendly because it grows faster than cotton and requires less resources to grow. It's SUPER soft, and extremely cute! Fiona loves it ;-)

So that's what we've been up to in the last week. It is sunny today, so after Fiona wakes up from her nap, I think we'll go for a walk. Who knows, maybe we'll meet George Clooney at the park and I'll have something more interesting to write about next time!

*Summer lights = Christmas lights. Except turned on during Summer. Sneaky, huh?

Brodie... my first, and furriest baby

Brodie has always been a dog that loved to be comfortable. Even as a puppy he rejected the floor and preferred to nap on the couch. If there was a pillow on the couch, that was the perfect nap as far as he was concerned. 

Well today he managed to take it a step further and reach nap nirvana. He has a big fat pillow on the floor, with another pillow on top of it (just like the princess and the pea). He was taking a long time to get comfortable, but finally settled down, and when we looked over, we found this:

Yep, he's trying to become a Brodie-pillow sandwich. One chunky slice of Brodie between two hunks of pillow. And by the look on his face you can tell he's pretty pleased with this new arrangement.

And since I'm feeling nostalgic about my first baby-turned-furry adult dog... here's a bonus baby Brodie playing fetch video. Awww puppies. 

Spring = Yard Work

Since October last year we've had a giant pile of leaves sitting in our back yard... they were raked, but never quite made it into bags. Since then, more leaves fell, as did tons of nobbly offerings from our neighbour's tree, which we are so lucky to have half of hanging over our yard. During the winter we cleared out our basement, and some of the old shelves and junk took up residence outside. Combined with six months of accumulated dog poo, all we needed was a car on cinderblocks to complete the picture. It looked bad.

Last week the sun came out, and I was wishing that Fiona could feel the warm grass between her little toes, but sadly you could barely see the grass under the... well... you know. So this weekend Ben and I decided to tackle the mess. 

Fiona was hungry, so Ben fed her lunch while I raked the leaves. This is her 'no thanks, I'm done' face.

Here I am... working so hard! See how much better the first half looks! During my excavation I found all kinds of things like old lost bones and rarely seen white dog poo. Exciting!

Here's Ben picking up the leaves. You can see where the pile used to be.

I even managed to decipher the heiroglyphics included with the play set that Ben's coworker donated to us and I built a little swing and slide for Fiona. And here's the finished product in our newly tidy back yard!

It looks much better. The only downside is that despite it only being April, my freakishly pale Scottish skin managed to soak up enough sun for a toasty sunburn. Time to break our the factor 45!

Fiona's adventure with a train

My Uncle Michael and Aunty Julia, and my cousins James, Chris, and Catherine are visiting us for a while. Well, they were, but then they needed to take a break from visiting us and went to Vegas for a few days. They'll be back on Thursday.

When they arrived, they had a mysterious pink suitcase with them, and when they opened it we found it was full of Brio! Brio is a Swedish wooden train set with jigsaw ends so you can build all kinds of tracks. We loved to play with Brio when we were little, then passed what we had on to James, Chris and Catherine. They added some seriously cool parts - like a drawbridge and battery operated train - and then a few years later decided that since they were finished playing with it, that they'd pass it on to Fiona. 

Fiona loves the train! Aside from enjoying the tasty wood flavour, she likes to watch it go round the track, and sometimes will crawl around after it, trying to catch it. When we first built it, she'd giggle like crazy whenever the train would go by. 

Here is a video of Fiona and the train. Monty was intrigued, but a little nervous... 

Another game she likes to play is to pick up the pieces one by one and put them on the table. And then throw them onto the floor. And then pick them up and put them on the table, and then throw them on the floor... and pick them up and put them on the table... you get the idea... I think this is going to be a lot of fun!

100 foods to try

I was meant to be making dinner, but instead started browsing the internets, and came across this here. There is more explanation here. I thought it was interesting. 

The idea is that this is a list of 100 slightly odd foods (depending on where you live, some are odder than others) and you mark in bold the ones you have tried, and cross out the ones you would never consider eating. The only ones I would never consider are the ridiculously spicy ones like scotch bonnet pepper (but I couldn't figure out how to cross it out!). I'd try the other ones. And now I have a goal to try more of these foods when I have the chance.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Dancing Queen

Fiona has been learning all kinds of things recently. Yesterday she hung out with Grandma Ginger and Grandpa Bill while Ben and I had a date. When we got back, she had learned how to climb the stairs! And we'd only been gone for an hour... she must be very very smart! :-)

We noticed in the last few days that she loves to dance to music. As soon as the music starts, she starts bopping around happily, it's very cute. Today we managed to catch her on video... 

It's funny when she does things that make her seem more like a little girl than my baby. I know I say this all the time, but she's growing up so fast! ;-)

Though if she starts showing an interest in clear heels, her dancing days are over.