Well, we’ve finally done it. We’ve moved little Coco into her own room. At 6 ½ months, it was about time. It’s not that we’re into the co-sleeping thing--she started put in our room in the lovely antique cradle that Christian’s Aunt Polly lent us. The plan was to move her out after a couple of months. But we simply didn’t have the energy to move her. And so when she outgrew the cradle, we put up her crib at the foot of our bed.
We hadn’t planned it that way. Henry was on his own by three months and sleeping twelve hours at a stretch by five months (He is still an amazing sleeper which has kept me sane throughout his supercharged toddlerhood.). In fact, we’ve been ready to get her out of there for some time. We’ve been itching to get the AC cranking and watch Netflix with the volume above 6. Also hoping this will get her to stop waking up several times a night. It’s just too easy when you can roll over and look your source of food and comfort in the eye every time you wake up.
The problem was that there was nowhere to put her. We had very briefly considered sticking her in with Henry, but after observing his behavior when sharing a room for a week with his cousin Scarlett (who’s got him by a few months and several pounds) we decided against it. So we set our sights on the tiny, wretched little room we referred to as the office. To understand the psychological hurdle involved, you must know that our rustic old farmhouse is built in two parts: the more recent frame half is where pretty much everything happens: the kitchen, living room, our bedroom and Henry’s, and a bath. Until now, the two-room log portion has been a kind of no man’s land, with the room downstairs full of junk from ceiling to floor, and upstairs the “office”, a grimy lair where the Christian used to hang out writing songs and watching You Tube videos and a dumping ground for unfiled paperwork, old magazines, and his collection of beat up old guitars and various other musical equipment. Put my baby in there? You must be kidding. But as one sleepless night rolled into another, I eventually came around. For one thing, the house just isn’t that big. If she needs me, I can still get to her in a few seconds.
Anyway, we hossed it yesterday and got (almost) everything out of there. Without all the junk, it’s rather nice, with two bright windows and lots of exposed wood. It’s a pretty bare bones nursery: a crib, a dresser and a changing table. But our low maintenance girl seems pretty happy in there. I am delighted to report that last night went about as well as I could have hoped. Only one middle of the night feeding around 1:30. After that, we didn’t hear much from her until 7:30 or so when I heard some pleasant little cooing and gurgling sounds over the monitor (or harmonitor as Henry calls it. He is, after all, the son of a blues singer!).
So we are now gratefully looking forward to the return of restful nights and watching Star Trek DVD’s with abandon. Now, what to do with all the guitars in our living room…?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Garden Loser
Let me start by saying that I haven’t given up. Despite the fact that our “garden” is essentially a patch of weeds with a few rows of
(very delicious!) greens.
The conditions for gardening around here are, in principle, ideal. We live on a farm, for God’s sake. We have plenty of room and access to free horse manure. We have two beautiful plots, which have served, on and off, as gardens since the hippies and hillbillies lived here in the 60’s and 70’s. What we seem to lack is time and motivation.
On a positive note, we’re off to a considerably better start than last year. Last summer we were ready to go and full of grand plans until I saw one of the cats squatting in the freshly tilled ground and freaked out. I was a few months pregnant at the time and toxoplasmosis was weighing heavily on my mind. In addition to being irrational, I was feeling pretty crummy pretty much all last summer, so we just decided to let it go.
This summer, determined to make things grow, we set out to cultivate our dream garden. We bought a book, Barbara Damrosch’s Garden Primer. We borrowed a roto-tiller from a family friend. We bought the seeds—cukes, chard, green beans, etc. We even started some of them in those little peat pots, but somehow they just never got planted. Unfortunately, we lost a bunch of beautiful little seedlings during one of the crazy tornado-type storms that have hit our little corner of Blue Ridge heaven in recent weeks, and the ones that were spared just seemed to shrivel up and die. Guess it could have had something to do with lack of water and sunlight…hmm…
However, all was not lost. My stalwart husband planted three gorgeous, precise rows of different types of lettuce and one row of kale (a great love of mine), which we have managed to keep in fairly good order. He also got in two rows of tomato plants, God bless him. At the other end of the garden, my haphazard mother jumped in and planted a haphazard row of peas. I’m sorry to say I have all but given up on the poor little peas. It’s absolute chaos in that corner of the garden--impossible to determine where the weeds end and the vegetables begin. I’m sure the poor things are nutrient deprived--the few pods I’ve picked are pale and not appetizing in the least. Never fear little tomatoes, I won’t let them get you, too!
It just seems like there wasn’t enough time to get all those plants in the ground. And there’s just not enough time to get to all those weeds. I try to get out there, really I do! There are just, as always, so many distractions. The baby keeps rolling off the blanket I’ve set out for her, or starts fussing. I haven’t quite mastered gardening with a sling/carrier. I’m sure it can be done, but I haven’t yet found the key. Then there’s Henry who keeps trying to dig up his father’s meticulously crafted rows with his Tonka bulldozer or starts running off in the direction of the pond while I’m trying to get some work done. How on earth do other people do it?
But my problem is not just one of motivation: it’s also absolute cluelessness. How the hell do you dig a proper row? How do you plant the seeds? How on earth would you build a trellis? All this is especially tough for a spatial-relations challenged gal like myself. Whenever I have a question, Christian tells me to get out the book and see what Barb has to say. The Ever Lovin’ is crazy about Barb, but I’m ambivalent. There’s a smugness about her, which is no doubt precisely what appeals to my better half, who is also on some kind of higher plane of consciousness. And she makes hard things sound way too easy, which plays right into my inferiority complex. Barb suggests that to become a good gardener, one needs to learn to think like a plant. While I sometimes feel like my IQ has been reduced to that of a stalk of asparagus since I had kids, I just don’t seem to be able to get in synch with the vegetable kingdom.
But as I said, I’m not giving up. I like to think of this as our pilot garden. I am truly inspired by the deliciousness and the delicious cheapness of one’s own vegetables. Next year, we’re gonna kick ass, I swear! Til then, we’ll be relying on farm stands run by people who know what they’re doing—and eating lots of kale.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Been in Virginia Too Long...
The other day, I was thinking about my old friend Liza who’s a wine write/educator in San Francisco. I decided to take a peek at her site and was tickled to read that she spoke at an NRA convention in May. Wow--I didn’t think those guys would be into wine—seems like it wouldn't be such a good idea around all those guns…What? NRA stands for National Restaurant Association?? Oops—guess I’m really a Virginian after all! Anyway, LZ is on her way! Go girl!
Monday, June 23, 2008
Beaucaillou & Beaux-parents
My very charming Gemini in-laws have consecutive birthdays right around the summer solstice. So we celebrated with a good old fashioned Sunday lunch. Things got off to a rocky start, I must say. Christian was otherwise occupied (weed whacking) and neglected to get the grill going at the appointed hour. Mama started losing it (blood sugar emergency). I hadn’t planned anything in the way of hors d’oeuvres so went scrambling for a snack and came up with some old Ritz crackers my mother in law had brought over on a previous occasion (Unlike my firstborn, I’m not a fan. Corn syrup- yuck!) and an ancient, rock hard piece of bland, pasteurized Brie from Costco. The fireworks began when the ever lovin’ husband got ticked off at my lack of prep work on the pork chops (failure to marinate—guilty as charged). Which led to an exchange along these lines:
Papa: “You’re insane!”
Mama: “You’re driving me insane!”
We were soon laughing about it (after Mama had a few swigs of Bordeaux, that is) and things finally came together around two. Grilled pork chops (which, thank goodness, turned out just fine), roasted asparagus and new potatoes from my favorite local farm stand. We washed it down with a 2000 La Croix de Beaucaillou (the second wine of the second growth Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou in Saint Julien). Dee-licious! Plus it gave us a chance use some of the Riedel wine glasses we got for our wedding. I gave Henry his first glass of (watered down) wine. He seemed to dig it but liked the corkscrew even better. Rhubard pie for dessert—yeehaw! My favorite and also beloved by my belle-mere. After that, the in-laws went off in search of some kind of enclosure for a wild turkey chick they are now keeping as a pet (more on that one to follow) and the rest of us crashed hard.
I came across this helpful little article on women and wine by Mireille Guiliano in June’s Bon Appetit. Enjoy!
Papa: “You’re insane!”
Mama: “You’re driving me insane!”
We were soon laughing about it (after Mama had a few swigs of Bordeaux, that is) and things finally came together around two. Grilled pork chops (which, thank goodness, turned out just fine), roasted asparagus and new potatoes from my favorite local farm stand. We washed it down with a 2000 La Croix de Beaucaillou (the second wine of the second growth Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou in Saint Julien). Dee-licious! Plus it gave us a chance use some of the Riedel wine glasses we got for our wedding. I gave Henry his first glass of (watered down) wine. He seemed to dig it but liked the corkscrew even better. Rhubard pie for dessert—yeehaw! My favorite and also beloved by my belle-mere. After that, the in-laws went off in search of some kind of enclosure for a wild turkey chick they are now keeping as a pet (more on that one to follow) and the rest of us crashed hard.
I came across this helpful little article on women and wine by Mireille Guiliano in June’s Bon Appetit. Enjoy!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Les Mouches
One of the biggest drawbacks of country life is the profusion of vermin that find their way into one’s sphere. In summer, for example, just when the mice and squirrels have finally decided to check out and return to nature, the bugs arrive.
First came the termites, swarming in to feast on our rotting windowsills and porch. “I’m glad the termites left some wood for us,” said Henry when they were gone. Then came the ants, thousands of tiny sugar ants crawling all over our kitchen. They must have felt like they had found the Promised Land, here in the valley of lost Cheerios.
Our ants seem to like anything except vegetables (hmmm) and are especially partial to breastmilk. Every time I fix little Coco a bowl of rice cereal made with mama’s milk, I’m afraid to set it on the counter for fear that a line of little ants will dive right into it.
The ants seem to be moving on to greener pastures (I think I made them mad because I finally decided to put the sugar in some Tupperware), only to be replaced by the flies. We call them mouches around here (they’re somehow more tolerable en francais..). They have been worse than ever this year, mostly because our screen door is lying horizontal on a couple of sawhorses out on the porch. Christian pulled it off to replace the screen (several big holes!) but has since become distracted by more pressing issues. So there it sits, and without our first line of defense, we were at their mercy. Yesterday, they were driving me nuts--one brazen little bugger landed on my eyelid while I was pumping. They were circling poor little Coco as I fed her strained peas. I had to leave her in her high chair for a few minutes and told Henry his job was to keep the flies from landing on his sister. He held his own, I must say—swatting at them and hollering, “Va-t-en, mouche!”. That’s my boy…
For some time, we had convinced Henry that we actually had only one fly and that his name was Manny. It really did seem for months that there was only one fly about at any particular moment. But that charade is over, I’m afraid to say. There are simply too many to go on pretending. I’m embarrassed to note that we’ve had to resort to putting up fly strips. They’re hanging in all the kitchen windows like white trash Chinese lanterns. They seem to be pretty effective, though. I can actually sit here and type without Manny and his disruptive cousins crawling all over the computer screen.
And those are just the house bugs. We are bombarded by gnats every time we leave the house. And, of course, the ticks. We have plenty of the regular old Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever kind and I’ve found three deer ticks on Henry so far. He’s getting good at spotting them himself. Christian is uncharacteristically freaked out by the prospect of Lyme disease. So much so that he recently took it upon himself to give Henry a buzz with some twenty- year old clippers. The blades were shot and after hacking away at Hank's hair for a while, papa realized that a disaster was in the works and took our boy up to the bathroom where he shaved his poor little head with my Venus Divine razor. He looked like Kojak or a mini-Buddhist monk. Mama was in floods but have gotten used to it now, and it is in fact, growing out which is, thank goodness, the nature of hair…
I really shouldn’t complain since the fireflies make up for it all. They are glorious out here! Henry calls them Birthday Bugs, having noted their existence shortly after blowing out a birthday candle (on another kid’s birthday cake!). I remember rediscovering fireflies for the first time after moving back to Virginia from Paris. I was housesitting in another, far more elegant farmhouse outside of Waterford, ten years ago or so. It was the beginning of summer and I was sitting alone on the porch when I looked up and saw this amazing glowing stream of them at the treeline. I was so overjoyed I almost fell out of my chair. They no longer have that effect on me, but I still get a little tingle when I see one.
First came the termites, swarming in to feast on our rotting windowsills and porch. “I’m glad the termites left some wood for us,” said Henry when they were gone. Then came the ants, thousands of tiny sugar ants crawling all over our kitchen. They must have felt like they had found the Promised Land, here in the valley of lost Cheerios.
Our ants seem to like anything except vegetables (hmmm) and are especially partial to breastmilk. Every time I fix little Coco a bowl of rice cereal made with mama’s milk, I’m afraid to set it on the counter for fear that a line of little ants will dive right into it.
The ants seem to be moving on to greener pastures (I think I made them mad because I finally decided to put the sugar in some Tupperware), only to be replaced by the flies. We call them mouches around here (they’re somehow more tolerable en francais..). They have been worse than ever this year, mostly because our screen door is lying horizontal on a couple of sawhorses out on the porch. Christian pulled it off to replace the screen (several big holes!) but has since become distracted by more pressing issues. So there it sits, and without our first line of defense, we were at their mercy. Yesterday, they were driving me nuts--one brazen little bugger landed on my eyelid while I was pumping. They were circling poor little Coco as I fed her strained peas. I had to leave her in her high chair for a few minutes and told Henry his job was to keep the flies from landing on his sister. He held his own, I must say—swatting at them and hollering, “Va-t-en, mouche!”. That’s my boy…
For some time, we had convinced Henry that we actually had only one fly and that his name was Manny. It really did seem for months that there was only one fly about at any particular moment. But that charade is over, I’m afraid to say. There are simply too many to go on pretending. I’m embarrassed to note that we’ve had to resort to putting up fly strips. They’re hanging in all the kitchen windows like white trash Chinese lanterns. They seem to be pretty effective, though. I can actually sit here and type without Manny and his disruptive cousins crawling all over the computer screen.
And those are just the house bugs. We are bombarded by gnats every time we leave the house. And, of course, the ticks. We have plenty of the regular old Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever kind and I’ve found three deer ticks on Henry so far. He’s getting good at spotting them himself. Christian is uncharacteristically freaked out by the prospect of Lyme disease. So much so that he recently took it upon himself to give Henry a buzz with some twenty- year old clippers. The blades were shot and after hacking away at Hank's hair for a while, papa realized that a disaster was in the works and took our boy up to the bathroom where he shaved his poor little head with my Venus Divine razor. He looked like Kojak or a mini-Buddhist monk. Mama was in floods but have gotten used to it now, and it is in fact, growing out which is, thank goodness, the nature of hair…
I really shouldn’t complain since the fireflies make up for it all. They are glorious out here! Henry calls them Birthday Bugs, having noted their existence shortly after blowing out a birthday candle (on another kid’s birthday cake!). I remember rediscovering fireflies for the first time after moving back to Virginia from Paris. I was housesitting in another, far more elegant farmhouse outside of Waterford, ten years ago or so. It was the beginning of summer and I was sitting alone on the porch when I looked up and saw this amazing glowing stream of them at the treeline. I was so overjoyed I almost fell out of my chair. They no longer have that effect on me, but I still get a little tingle when I see one.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Versa Envy
Absolutely dying to trade my clunky old SUV in for a new Nissan Versa. The amazing thing is that it was Christian’s idea. I almost died when my swaggering, 6 foot four, climate change denying husband--who absolutely insisted that a Tahoe was the smallest vehicle a couple of vertically enhanced kids like us could possibly get--came home one day and told me he had found or next car. Some friends of his got a Versa--exactly the one we’re hankering for (white with tan interior)--and let him try it out. Apparently it’s got a ton of room inside—even in back. I like it because it’s so darn cute and because I’m sick of driving around with my gas needle hovering on empty because I just can’t bear to shell out a hundred bucks to fill the sucker up. The problem is—who the hell wants a beat up old 98 vintage gas guzzler that smells like sour milk and has a bunch of unvacuumable goldfish crumbs between the seats. (I’d better stop dissing her or she might break down on me—again). I heard a piece on NPR the other day about a guy who has TWO gigantic Ford SUVs—fairly new. He decided to try to trade one in and got offers of eight to eleven thousand for a $50,000 car! So apparently the answer to my question is: nobody. So, I guess we’re stuck with her. Meanwhile, I’ll continue trying to consolidate my errands, limit child-related outings, feeding the beast ($20 at a time) and dreaming of a little white Versa.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Rosé and Remembrance
A recent foray into civilization in search of BPA free drinking containers—Sigg bottles for Henry and me; a Born Free trainer cup for baby Coco—led me to the very swankyWegmans in Sterling (my favorite grocery store--I never go in there because it’s like a zillion miles away and because I could spend a fortune on cheese alone in there…)I decided to go nuts and buy a bottle of wine. I told the very nice wine guy I was looking for a dry rosé from France, not too expensive. I am absolutely wild about rose, I must say. Proper dry stuff of course, nothing resembling white zinfandel…I look forward to it every summer. Back in NYC, my friend Manon and I would drink buckets of it as soon as the weather gor warm. I had to skip rosé season last year because Coco was gestating so was psyched to be back in action. Of course, I can’t put it away like I used to…both because of the nursing thing and because I have become a total lightweight in the past few years. One generous glass is just about all I can handle.
The Wegmans guy steered me toward a bottle of Jean-Luc Colombo’s Rose de Cote Bleue. I have a soft spot for Colombo from my old life. My old boss in NYC, Jean-Louis Carbonnier, used to do PR for Colombo who’s a well-known winemaker and consultant in the Rhone Valley. I had the good fortune to visit Jean-Luc and his family at their place in Cornas back in 2000—gorgeous—the wines, the setting, all of it. Colombo had this fabulous fireplace and I remember his effortlessly throwing a few duck breasts right in there and coming up with this fabulous meal. I was able to visit a number of winemakers he was affiliated with up and down the Rhone Valley and in Provence. Jean-Luc’s lovely daughter Laure stayed with me for a few days in Brooklyn the following year. Colombo is best know for his Cornas, but from what I understand, he now owns or is involved with some projects in southern France (Provence and Languedoc Roussillon). I’ve unfortunately lost touch with him so don’t know that full story. The wine guy from Wegmans had also been to Colombo's place, and I was really enjoying having an intelligent conversation about wine (with a grown-up!). But then my three year old decided to take off running in the direction of the meat department, so I had to cut the chit-chat and go retrieve him. Anyway, the Rosé de Cote Bleue is an AOC Coteaux d’Aix en Provence and was very drinkable for $10 which is pretty much my limit for a bottle of wine these days (except for an occasional splurge on Champagne which is another story). We had it with grilled shrimp and burgers—yum!
The Wegmans guy steered me toward a bottle of Jean-Luc Colombo’s Rose de Cote Bleue. I have a soft spot for Colombo from my old life. My old boss in NYC, Jean-Louis Carbonnier, used to do PR for Colombo who’s a well-known winemaker and consultant in the Rhone Valley. I had the good fortune to visit Jean-Luc and his family at their place in Cornas back in 2000—gorgeous—the wines, the setting, all of it. Colombo had this fabulous fireplace and I remember his effortlessly throwing a few duck breasts right in there and coming up with this fabulous meal. I was able to visit a number of winemakers he was affiliated with up and down the Rhone Valley and in Provence. Jean-Luc’s lovely daughter Laure stayed with me for a few days in Brooklyn the following year. Colombo is best know for his Cornas, but from what I understand, he now owns or is involved with some projects in southern France (Provence and Languedoc Roussillon). I’ve unfortunately lost touch with him so don’t know that full story. The wine guy from Wegmans had also been to Colombo's place, and I was really enjoying having an intelligent conversation about wine (with a grown-up!). But then my three year old decided to take off running in the direction of the meat department, so I had to cut the chit-chat and go retrieve him. Anyway, the Rosé de Cote Bleue is an AOC Coteaux d’Aix en Provence and was very drinkable for $10 which is pretty much my limit for a bottle of wine these days (except for an occasional splurge on Champagne which is another story). We had it with grilled shrimp and burgers—yum!
Monday, June 16, 2008
Not in Montmartre Anymore...
My darling cousin-in-law Amy passed along a lovely little blog by a lovely young French chick, Clotilde Dusoulier-- www.chocolateandzucchini.com. Reading over some very charming posts by a glamourous 28 year old foodie living in Montmartre brought back memories of my own carefree days living on the butte and my glorious years on the food and wine scene in New York. Flash forward to a 37 year old housewife in exurban Virginia (how did that happen??) with two brilliant, adorable, demanding, exhausting kids. These days, it’s all about congealed string cheese, half-eaten hot dogs (organic of course!) and, well, poop, snot and tears.
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