Pancake day

I made crepes with lemon juice and sugar for dessert, since it’s Pancake Day. I will make it a family tradition. I told Sparks that I like making crepes and want to do it more often.

Us in New Orleans on Ash Wednesday several lifetimes ago

I think liking to make crepes has two sources:

1) I’m proud that I can do it, cuz not everyone can, and
2) crepes are supposed to come with whipped cream and nutella

Crepes themselves I can take or leave. They always seem damp and spongy, or alternatively, dry and paperlike. Not an incredibly delicious thing either way. I suppose I could make them into blintzes, which are incredibly delicious. Or, you know, nutella and whipped cream. Or bananas foster. Or bananas foster with nutella and whipped cream.

The keys to making good crepes are:

1) let the batter sit for at least twenty minutes. this is the most important thing.
2) get the pan screaming hot
3) use a quarter-cup measure to make crepes in a large skillet, or your silverware’s sauce spoon in a small one
4) the edges will pull away by themselves when it’s ready to turn. trying to pry a crepe up before it’s ready is futile. if you have the pan screaming hot, though, the crepe will be ready to turn by the time you’re done swirling the pan to distribute the batter.

Mimi threw her crepes on the floor.

She pulls up to stand now, too.

Eleven months

What a bittersweet post to write. This is the last monthly update before Mimi turns one whole year old. Oh my!

At eleven months old, you are in a loving, giving phase of your life. Your favorite pastime is to hand things to us; books and small toys, pieces of your food… you even drop peaches on the floor for the cat. Your favorite figurine from Noah’s Ark is Mrs. Noah, and you always hand her to me. What a sharing child!

You are also showing a few signs of becoming cuddly. When I carry you to the rocking chair before naptime, you lay your little head on my shoulder. After you’ve had your bottle and I’m humming to you, you want to sit up–none of this lying back like a baby!–then your little head droops and you collapse against my chest. Poor little mite.

You are eating like a champ. I just found out how much you love steamed, buttered California mix. I guess you’ll like school lunches, kiddo. You are also vocalizing in new ways. Right now there is a lot of “ladl ladl ladl” and “eh! ehhhhh!” going on. Your grandma taught you to go “ahhhh!” after drinking from your sippy cup.

You are getting more and more physical. You are climbing up steps, pulling up to your knees, sitting back on them, and if you have the right prop you’ll even push up onto your toes–with legs splayed in a wide V for stability. You sometimes crawl on all fours, but the army crawl is still your preferred method of locomotion. I predict that you will walk at 13 months. We shall see.

And you are getting more and more beautiful by the day. What a gorgeous, warm, curious, and funny little monkey you are. We love you every bit imaginable and more.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Or as my mother’s Facebook page says, Happy Chocolate Eating Day!

Baby girl got a card and a bear. She looks pleased, no? Sparks got card and candy from me, Mimi, and Pudding. I got pink roses, chocolates, and a card from Sparks. Tonight we’re doing Sparks’ favorite thing–staying in for dinner and TV time

Toy theory

I love to play with “theories” about household organization. I love to think about how many sheets and towels one really needs, which kitchen gadgets, what cleaning supplies, and what wardrobe staples.

Since I started the Baby Sweet Pinterest board yesterday, I’ve stumbled into an interesting question: how do people who live in truly small spaces deal with The Toy Issue?

Mimi only has one aunt and uncle and two cousins, and her grandparents are all still married to their original spouses, so her close family is small, which I suppose kept her Christmas loot under control. We also don’t have a whole lot of family friends who give her presents. We also live in a 2100 square foot house, and Mimi has a room and a big closet to herself. I keep one bin of toys in the great room and one bin in the media room, and everything else stays in her bedroom. It’s all very nicely under control.

But Baby Sweet, she lives in a tiny Greenwich townhouse. And what about all of the babies who live in tiny New York apartments? Babies like Huck, son of Nat The Fat Rat, who until recently had a closet for a bedroom? Nat posted a picture of Huck’s “room” that is now irretrievable, and Huck’s selection of toys was extremely well culled. Huck has a kajillion aunts and uncles and family friends. How does Nat keep the clutter under control?

I am sure that constant culling and purging has something to do with it, and having a lot of family and friends who also live in tiny spaces probably keeps the incoming stream to a minimum.

And what would you say are the “basic” baby toys? The best toys that they play with the most and truly enjoy? Before Mimi was born, I decided that a good starter list of basic baby toys was:

A rattle
A couple of other “clutching” toys
A couple of stuffed animals
A set of stacking rings
A set of nesting cups
A set of blocks
A shape sorter
A pounding bench

The reality about what toys she plays with the most, though, has been:

A crinkly fabric book
A set of plastic rings (counts as a clutching toy)
A shape sorter
A topsy-turvey beanie guy funhouse
An electronic toy that makes noise when she pushes buttons etc
A Leapfrog electronic book with plastic pages that reads to her
Any and every board book she can get her hands on
Any and every kitchen utensil I’ll give to her
Old laser discs

What are your thoughts about all this?

Baby Sweet

Thing 1: No, I am not having another baby. Not right now.

Now that we have that straight,

Thing 2: I have a baby, which means that I can officially croon over sweet baby stuff without anyone saying “creeee-pyyyyy…”. So I’ve started a Pinterest board full of the fantasy baby stuff that my imaginary, restrained, and very rich self would buy for a baby girl. It’s here.

Thing 3: I love Pinterest because I get 95% of the joy of shopping for things with 0% of the cost and 0% of the clutter. Pinterest is a very, very valuable tool.

Thing 4: when I was younger, I liked to write stories. Then somehow I lost my plots. I still have places, I still have characters, but they are without dialogue or situation. But they can go live on Pinterest anyway. My “Baby Sweet” board linked above is a wealthy family with an adorable tiny townhouse in Greenwich Village and adorable baby girl who has all of those clothes. My “The Greenhouse” board is a pair of sisters, unmarried, both semi-famous botanists (how famous can a botanist get?) living in an old house in the English countryside… one spends her days tramping over the fields and woods, the other working with domestic plants in her greenhouse and her walled garden.

Thing 5: my baby girl is too old for the baby-baby stuff. She’s wearing 18 month pajamas and 12 month stuff otherwise.

That vacationy feeling

The vacationy feeling just won’t stop. Coming home was so very sweet–good coffee, good bed, and oh my GOODNESS was the baby always so adorable???–but part of my mind is still stuck in vacation-world. I find myself with a little thrill of excitement, a voice in the back of my head saying “oh goody goody goody goody goody”.

I think it’s spring coming. Going on a vacation right before spring comes is such a special feeling. You can really luxuriate in it, you can enjoy the immediate treat and the long-term treat. Now, fall is my favorite season and I love the holidays, but springtime is when I’m happiest. It feels like the whole world is on vacation, when you can leave windows open and sit outside in the sunshine and see flowers growing again. Oh boy. Midwestern winters are brutal.

South Beach was a special little vacation. We needed it so badly. We did almost nothing, I tell you. We plodded out to the beach two or three times, but it was too windy, so we beat it back to the still courtyard with its heated pool. We went to a fancy restaurant every day, but we ate every other meal at the deli across the street. No pressure to find something “different”. No pressure have an “experience”. Just sitting outside, eating sandwiches and drinking lattes, enjoying the warmth and the sea air and the little dramas that unfold in a city (we saw a Chevy van rear-end a Porsche; the drivers looked for damage, found none, shook hands and drove away). Then back to the hotel for a long day on the pool deck, alternately reading and bobbing in the warm water, no pressure to be touristy or go on excursions or even entertain each other much. We would even go to the hotel room to lounge around and watch TV when the sun got to be too much. Ahhhhhhh.

Our own bed and coffee and baby, but on that little verandah in warm sun and salty air. That’s my idea of perfect.

Winter blanket

I’d looked at this wool blend fabric at Hancock’s about three times before it went on clearance and I finally bought the last 46″. Then I left it in the trunk of my car for a week. Finally yesterday afternoon, Mimi took her second ultra-long nap of the day (grandma really wore her out) and I boldly went into my sewing room for the first time since… I can’t remember. October? September?

The binding is stashed Kaffe Fassett shot cotton. I sewed it on with a zigzag stitch, which is becoming one of my favorite things to do.

It looks good with the curtains here. All bluey-gray and cozy and warm. I’ve been thinking about re-directing my color goals for the house to the brown/gray/cream/blue-green. Time to really make that decision, because Sparks is renovating the powder room and I get to choose the paint color.

Anyway, I love this little snowflake blanket. It’s so soft and cute. It goes with my Boughten Socks and My Mug and the gray and white nordic sweater I bought from eBay. Alas, it is so very springlike outside…

South Beach

Sparks and I are back from our first post-baby vacation: South Beach.

We were away for three and a half days, which left two and a half days for soaking up sun beside the pool (and on the private beach) at the Savoy Hotel at 5 Street and Ocean Drive Boulevard, in the heart of SoBe’s Art Deco District. It was rough, let me tell you.

We recommend the Savoy. It came under new ownership last summer and is being actively spruced up; lots of outdoor planting and painting went on while we were there, and our room had obviously been re-painted and furnished recently. The Savoy has the double blessing of being on the beach instead of across the street from it, and of having not one pool but two–and one of those heated, which made soaking possible and a pleasure.

Even now, in the lull between the holidays and Spring Break, SoBe is crazy. At night, six blocks of old Art Deco hotels light up in different colors and try to attract pleasure-seekers to their restaurants and bars. There were cigar hawkers, Spanish dancers, open flame heaters, and one wicked sound system at The Clevelander.

We had dinner at Prime 112, where we discovered we do not possess certain expensive tastes, on the day of the Floriday primary. There were a lot of Republicans there but no one we recognized (I guess we missed a lot of news anchors by one night). The next day we had lunch at Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant, where Food TV was filming a segment, and which was pretty much the same crowd as Prime 112 but this time in golf clothes. Finally we got away from them on our third night, when we ate at Nobu. I had a lot of very good sushi and Sparks had the black cod, which was almost–like 95%–as good as the meuniere amandine I ate in New Orleans. It was a good ending to the vacation.

Mimi stayed home with her grandparents, because Sparks and I couldn’t imagine how to manage air travel with an infant–not an active one like Mimi–and because we haven’t both slept past 5:30 a.m. since before she was born. I’m happy to report that we both slept till 7:30 on both of the lazy mornings.

When we got back home Mimi choked up a little at first, then gave us lots of big grins and baby kisses. She has aged about a year since Monday. Her face is rounder, her hair is longer and thicker, and my goodness… was she so smart and wonderful before?

All in all, everybody is happy.