New Year of Cooking

My attempt at the soup.  It actually looks like the picture!

Every year I try to improve my cooking.  I'm still learning and experimenting in the kitchen.  A big help to my cooking has been our weekly trips to the Farmer's Market.  A few weeks back we saw Nathan Lyon at the Torrance Farmer's market.  He had his cookbook with him.  I didn't buy it that day (I know I should have) but luckily he was back at the market during Steve's vacation and he picked up the book for me.  The cool thing is that the book is organized seasonally.  I started looking through the different winter recipes and decided to try the Sweet Potato-Carrot Soup with Candied Pecans (well, we switched out walnuts for pecans but everything else was as it should be).

My biggest frustration with cooking from cookbooks has always been that my food never really looks like the picture.  Image my surprise and delight at my soup ACTUALLY looking like the soup in the book.  Pretty cool.  The soup was tasty too!  The only set back was the fact that my co-workers said that it looked like I was eating baby food :-P. I was happy and am now looking forward to trying the tomato soup in the Winter section.  Yeah, Cooking!

Surviving the First Week of Working Mommyhood

For a full week I've been getting up every morning and kissing my two guys goodbye before heading off to work.  The first few days weren't too bad.  I missed my little guy but Steve has been sending me picture of Max throughout the day.  It also helped that Max was asleep in the mornings when I headed out.  Unfortunately, the last two days he's been awake and ready to play.  Having to leave him when he's awake and so happy has definitely been the hardest thing for me.  It has helped that when I get home he's happy and ready to play (hopefully not realizing that I've been missing for the last few hours).  Steve has one more week of his time off with Max then I won't get my daily pictures for him.  We're getting ready for his day caring, labeling galore!  So far, I'm getting used to the working mommy world.  In a week, once we introduce daycare, I know we will have to readjust again.  In the meantime, Max seems happy and that's all that matters :)

Max's First Christmas

Max's First Christmas

In the middle of Max's first Hanukkah, we got to celebrate his very first Christmas.  I had lots of fun opening up all of his presents for him.  I don't think he minded as long as he got to drool on all of the presents once I had them out of the wrapping.  He was an absolute hit at Christmas mass in his Christmas outfit, provided by Nona (thanks, Nona!) All of the singing put him to sleep - a major bonus considering mass lasted about two hours.  After church, we headed out to his great-grandmother's for Christmas early dinner catered by Canter's Deli.  To be fair the Christians were outnumbered by Jewish folk so it makes sense that it would be catered by the nearby Jewish deli :). TONS of food later, we finally took our little guy home to cap off the night with the lighting of the menorah.  We are truly getting this Chrismukkah (or Hanumas) down!

We took a whole bunch of pictures throughout this Chrismukkah.  You can find the photographs here: http://pgobiren.shutterfly.com/1820.  Enjoy!

Last Week of Maternity Leave

So I am back to work on Tuesday.  As expected my return to work is creating a number of conflicting thoughts and feelings.   I am excited to get back to work but I'll be missing all of the time that I have been spending with Max.  I'm trying to enjoy my last maternity leave days with my little guy.  The fun thing is that we get to play all day long.  He's actually interacting with and enjoying his toys, now that he can grab stuff.  It'll be a bit sad to have to leave him in the mornings now.  What makes it easier is the fact that Steve is taking a few weeks of leave now that I'm headed back.  We have a few more weeks of the little guy before we have to start taking him to daycare.

So five more days and I'm back at work.  It'll be interesting to see how the whole working mom things goes.  Another adventure!  :)

Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

Max is chilling with the tree. 

So our Christmas tree was delivered last week by the the Living Christmas Company last week.  We got a call the night before confirming our delivery.  I was really impressed.  Two big burly guys in their santa hats came by and dropped of our tree right on time.  They were super nice and I was super happy with our little Christmas tree.  It was definitely a bit taller than I though it would be but that worked out great.  Now I just have to make sure to keep the tree watered and with daily light.  I do get an email every few days reminding me to water the tree.  It's actually helpful since I want to make sure not to underwater or overwater the tree.

So the poor tree sat alone in the corner for about a week before we were finally able to get the lights onto the tree.  A few days after that, we finally got the ornaments on.  We have a few picture frame ornaments that still need pictures.  We're working on it.  Slowly but surely our little Charlie Brown Christmas tree is coming together.

My MisAdventure in Domestic Life

Those of you who know me, know that I'm not the most domestic of folks around.  To be honest, Steve is the one who keeps our home well fed and clean :) Since I'm home with the wiggly one I've been trying to do more of the cleaning and a bit more of the cooking.  I do lots of laundry (victims of baby spit up along with the cloth diapers) and have an insane time trying to keep all my socks married.  I have a pretty big pile of lonely socks at this point.  I'm sure if I went through that pile, I could reunite most of my lonelies.

But today takes the cake.  Not only did I lose a sock in today's laundry, I lost a shoe between the washer and dryer.  Let me explain.  I'm not a big shoe wearer and love wearing what everyone calls my feet shoes (a pair of black Vibram Five Finger Shoes).  I couldn't really wear them towards the end of my pregnancy because my toes wouldn't fit into each of the individual slots.  Now that my feet are back to normal, I've taken to wearing them as much as I can again.  The great thing about them is that I can just throw them in the wash like socks because they are so lightweight and flexible.  Because of the rubber at the bottom, I don't send them through the dryer.  I emptied out the washer into the dryer to find only one shoe.  I stared and stared into the empty washer thinking "HELLO? Where is the other shoe?" I had to take everything out of the dryer to find the shoe. Everything out of the dryer.  Literally, there was one t-shirt and one sock left in there before I saw the shoe.  It takes some extreme domestic talent to lose a shoe.  It's bad enough that I can't keep my socks together but now my shoes are going missing in the wash.  Oh well, at least I found it and now they are drying outside. Baby steps.  Baby steps towards domestic divahood!  :)