I took the Bisousette, who was a big hit with the farmers once she admitted that she liked to play in the dirt.  We went here:

White Barn Farm

I picked up sugar snap peas, radishes, a head of butter lettuce, and scallions.  One of my goals is to try a new veggie each week, one I've not really tried before.  This week was radishes.  I know, I've had radishes.  Plasticky radishes that come with salad mix or in a salad buffet.  I've never actually bought any and ate them fresh.  So I got a little bunch, washed one, chopped a slice, and, woah.  Kinda bitter. Peppery.  Exactly what you would think of when you think of a stereotypical stern mom saying "eat your vegetables!"  Not my cup of tea- apparently the French dip them in salt and bite in to them, like an apple.  A bitter, peppery, salty apple.  Or have them sliced with butter and salt on bread.  Must be lots of butter.  

Anyway, I sliced one into small slivers and added it to my salad.  The salad was last week's head of romaine (which I washed, cut, then refrigerated in a bowl with a piece of paper towel and covered with saran wrap.), some corn cooked on the cob (shuck your ear, wash it, salt it, wrap it in a paper towel, mircowave for 3-4 minutes, cut kernals off the ear if desired, or rub in butter and eat - it is perfectly yummy), feta cheese, and my own salad dressing mix made of two parts olive oil, one part balsamic vinegar, some sliced garlic scapes (leftover from last week's run to the farmer's market), salt and pepper.  Jamie Oliver says 3 to 1 oil to vinegar in your own salad dressing, but I find that to be too oily.  

With the dressing and the cheese and whatnot, I hardly tasted the radishes, and it was good.  

Anyone have an awesome homemade salad dressing recipe to share?  I've started making my own, and I don't want to go back, especially since you have to be super careful with the store bought salad dressings or you end up with vegetable oil and high fructose corn syrup concoction.  Plus, it's probably cheaper to make your own, all told.

I'm wondering what to do with the scallions.  Slice into omelets?  Make a oniony cornbread? Anyone love scallions and have a wonderful idea for them?  I still have some garlic scapes to cut up, and I think that would make a mighty fine cornbread with the scallions...

Posted by bisous at 1:46 PM EDT

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Soon, very soon, the Bisousette will turn two.  At which point she is supposed to switch to 2% milk.  These recommendations are made because kids are fat these days.  However, the Bisousette is not fat, and I don't really believe that fat causes people to be fat - fat + fructose causes people to be fat.  Apparently a lot of people out there let their toddlers drink soda (really?  like, pepsi and that crap for toddlers?) and eat a lot of junk, cookies and chips and the like.  (Bisousette has cookies and chocolate and chips, actually, almost every day, just a very small amount, I hope.  Not entirely sure what she gets fed at the nanny's house when she is over there).  Milk is an issue because there are some kids who drink milk to the exclusion of eating other foods, but Bisousette doesn't do that.  She eats everything all day long (except olives.  I don't see martinis in her near future).  I buy fancy organic milk for her beefed up with omega 3 fatty acids.  So healthy fat, a robust amount, for her big ol' brain, which is 60% fat.  And when I cook for Bisousette, she eats what I eat, which is cereal or oatmeal or eggs in the morning, with fruit and after that veggies or fruit with protein, or maybe whole wheat pasta.  And a bit of chocolate chip banana bread today.      

Did you guys switch to 2% at two?  

Posted by bisous at 11:39 AM EDT

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The moose is old enough that she's been, well, awake from time to time.  Thus a little less time to blog.  Last night she was up from 4am to 7am - just in time for the toddler to wake up.  That's the difference between the first baby and the second.  You sleep train and put a schedule together as soon as humanly possible, because there is no catching up during the day as there used to be.  Not that we're leaving the little one to cry it out at 6 weeks.  But I'm considering putting her in her own room very soon, much sooner than I did the Bisousette. 

(I'm trying to put out of mind the blog that I was reading the other day from a woman whose 3 month old son died a few months ago for no apparent reason.  Horrible!  I could hardly leave the moose out of sight for more than a minute for a couple days after reading her entries.  Sounded like SIDS - awful awful awful, and I feel for her so much.  But note to self - do not read dead baby blogs.  Or Cormac McCarthy. Until your kid is at least 25.  But before grandkids).  

I'm cleared to resume all activites, per the OB.  It's raining though, so I have a good excuse not to run this morning.  I did lift some weights and did some actual crunches on the Swiss ball.  Not that my lower abs will be visible for some time.  Gah.  I've lost 39 pounds, which is just a little less than I had lost at this stage with the Bisousette.  I'm in no mood to be fat, though.  And the breastfeeding hunger is not as intense as pregnancy hunger, nor as intense as I remember it being last time.  I can skip whole meals, being busy,  and not even think about it, and there is no consideration of eating whole cakes, which one can contemplate doing while pregnant, yet can't possibly do, due to compression of one's stomach.  

I have a whole different idea about what to eat and what is good than I did when I first started watching what I ate.  If Mr. Bisous didn't bring home chips and cookies, I would be totally golden (except for the chocolate chip banana bread I make sometimes - only when the bananas aren't eaten in time.).  I'll blame him.  :)  But I'm getting back to the point where I find chips and nasty things somewhat revolting.  That's how I spent my early thirties - the thought of french fries was rather disgusting.  All that oil and weird chemical flavor additives, for what?  A few seconds of crispy goo in the mouth?  

If only I could feel that way about diet coke. 

Posted by bisous at 11:06 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 06/19/2009 11:06 AM EDT

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The littlest one, my little moose, will be 6 weeks old tomorrow.  6 weeks is supposed to be the height of fussiness. And, indeed, she is slightly fussy in the evening - she'll want to be rocked and fed and walked around sometimes, and seems to have a hard time settling to sleep.  During the day, however, she is very easy.  I've generally been putting her down on the couch (and hanging out nearby to keep a close eye) or in her swing, but today I thought, heck, why not the pack n play?  So I put her down.  While she was awake.  On her back. 

And she cooed to the cat for a while, and then she fell asleep!  On her back, arms and legs splayed out without a care in the world.  I mentioned to the nanny how I had no idea that you could actually put babies down like that, for real, and she said, "Yeah, when Bisousette was little I hadn't realized that babies could cry that much."  This from a mother of four.

So, my parenting tip - have the difficult baby first.  Then you don't know any better.

*I'm also realizing that my first babysitter might not have been crazy, but that she didn't show up three weeks ago because my baby was, well, awful to be around.

Posted by bisous at 2:06 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 06/15/2009 5:11 PM EDT

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Lost another pound, after 10 days of nada. 

I jut figured how much I have to lose to get to my wedding weight, and I think I'll go into a corner and sulk now.

Posted by bisous at 9:02 AM EDT

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I suppose we are officially out of baby jail now (though it doesn't really end until Tuesday).  That's the first 6 weeks when you are not supposed to take the baby out too much, as her immune system is nada.  Breastfeeding helps, especially against GI illness, but it is no substitute for your own antibodies and killer T cells and other cool checks against viral and bacterial invaders. 

But we took both children to Kohl's yesterday, and to the farmer's market today, so I suppose we are officially out and about.  

The farmer's market made me happy - we got to talk to the farmers, who set up the stand right across from their 3 acre farm in the neighboring town.  Talk about locally grown.  And it is inexpensive - compared to the subcription services where you fork out $600 for the season or $20 a week for a box (which you have to pick up anyway) - at the market yourself you pick what you want, and because we got there at the end of the hours, we got a free big bag of spinach picked this morning. 

All told we got fresh spinach, basil (our basil plant at home is dead or nearly so, and I've been too preoccupied to start some more seeds), garlic shoots (think scallions, but garlic-y), and kohlrabe (a veggie I've not heard of before) for $16.  Just the tomato plant would have been that much at Home Depot.  The spinach is amazingly tender, like the baby spinach you get at the store, in full grown, happy leafy dark spinach.  

I'm happy to try the kohlrabe tonight - maybe in a stir fry of some kind with the garlic shoots.  I've been meaning to try new veggies, but at the farmer's market you can talk about how to prepare it and what it is - that's not something you can get at the grocery store.  

It must be some sort of innate biological darwinian pleasure that can be gained from fresh-grown stuff, especially gardening, because I'm a little at a loss to explain how happy and pampered I feel eating these awesome veggies.  We have plenty of land, but so many critters around our house that gardening would require armed guards or an electric fence.  I'm still temped to try it, but we're starting out with containers on the back porch.  Well, one container, the tomato plant.  

Posted by bisous at 2:36 PM EDT

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The 5&1/2 week old baby actually slept through the night last night.  And no silly 5 hour definition of slept through the night.  She actually slept from 10pm to 5:30 am.  Then she woke up, slurped down some milk, and slept again until 8:30.  I'm actually well-rested!  The house is relatively clean!  I have crocheted a mama and baby penguin, and I've caught up with most of the TiVo'd programs.  If most babies are really like this, I no longer feel sorry for new parents.

(I'm still cheating a bit - she still sleeps next to me - I tried again to stick her in the bassinet with the miracle blanket and it devolved into a 2 hour scream fest two nights ago.  She is also sleeping on her side, not on her back.  She waves her arms a lot, and manages to move from her back to her side much of the time anyway.  The only fix for that is a swaddle, but if she's already sleeping pretty well...)

Posted by bisous at 2:43 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 06/12/2009 2:46 PM EDT

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I haven't lost any weight in the last week.  This is not good, as my current weight is patently unacceptable.  As in, I go back to work in a few weeks and I have very few clothes that fit.  The pants aren't that much of a deal - the maternity work pants obviously still fit.  But shirts are a big problem.  I need shirts that button up or zip up (I have an array of zip-up sweaters, but that works for the fall, when I went back to work last time - this is summer, folks).  I need work-acceptable zip-up shirts.  That don't make me look like a member of the Sopranos.  And the milk bar, sadly, does not fit under XL button-up shirts.  Not yet.  Normally I am a large medium, a 34C, none of this triple gargantuan food repository craziness.  This can happen to you, folks!  Use birth control.

 And the milk bar is uncomfortable, because I have been pumping each morning but didn't get around to it this morning, so the milk bar is like, dude, I've got an extra 6-8 oz here and I've been waiting and waiting and no one will help me!  The newborn is not helpful - she had a growth spurt yesterday and ate constantly, which only worsens my issue today.  Today she has been waking up for brief spurts to nurse for a minute or two, then she falls asleep for another three hours.  Because she is growing growing growing, and soon will be the size of a moose.  

The is no way I will be doing bouncy exercises any time soon.  Bouncy exercises are my favorite kind, but you try bouncing around with two water baloons strapped to your chest.  It's NO FUN. 

Boy, I'm glad I got those complaints off my chest.

Posted by bisous at 1:03 PM EDT

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So last week I had one day of a halfway decent workout.  Got out the free weights and the Swiss ball and went walking twice.  I'm still not supposed to push it - you really should give it 6 weeks rest (other than walking and light stuff) after having a baby.  And I was punished for my excesses with pain, bleeding, and complete exhaustion. Today I might try it again, but without so much excess.  6 weeks is still over a week away.  But I hate to be a fat slob, too. This muffintop won't take care of itself.  Though my moose of a baby (still can't believe she is 12 pounds - that's the size of an average 3 month old baby) will take off some of it over time.

It doesn't help that breastfeeding fills you with relaxing, yawn-inducing feel-good hormones which make the couch and cookies seem like excellent places to hang out forever.  Mmmm. Cookies.

I did make banana bread this morning.  We actually have some excess bananas - which is not a usual occurance with a toddler in the house.  A major toddler fuel source is bananas.  When my mother was here, she ate tons of them too, and I think I kept buying enough for toddler, Mr. Bisous, and my mother.  And me, admittedly.  When I was working pregnant, my midmorning or mid-afternoon snack would involve a banana of some sort.  Now that I eat almost like a normal person, I don't HAVE to have a daily banana, apple, orange, etc.  In fact, I've skipped a real dinner the last two nights.  I just wasn't hungry.  I can't remember the last time I skipped a meal because I wasn't hungry.  

But here we went skipping off about food again, when I want to actually... skip.  Run.  Lift.  Kick-A.  I should get on my bike, but I am still hesitant ever since I broke by tailbone on my bike last year.  

One more week!  I bet I still won't be able to run.  Babies do a number on your insides and outsides, some of which it takes a few months to get right.  

Posted by bisous at 11:43 AM EDT

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Having an especially cute and personable 2 year-old girl must be just a little bit like being a movie star.  (*or living in the south).  Today at each stop along our errand way, a manager made a special effort to get me a cart, and we got stickers and special attention at check-out, not to mention all sorts of waves and smiles throughout the store.

Also, the twenty of you who read my blog must be real fans of nursing pads.  Ever since I plugged the Johnsons' variety here a few weeks ago, my Target has been clean out of them.  Nursing pads are vital pieces of equipment - one can't really leave the house without them.  However, this morning they had a few boxes, and I emptied the store, leaving other moms stuck with crappy lansinoh or gerber ones (they have mountains of those).

All right - off to enjoy the beautiful day!  As soon as it is not eating time or nap time for one of the two little buggers.  Or me.

Here's my ticket to good customer service:

Posted by bisous at 10:57 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 06/07/2009 9:17 PM EDT

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