Friday Morning

It's been a busy morning around here. We've already
terrorized the peasants,


looked oh, so dapper,


entertained Mom and Dad,

people-watched from the window,

and put up with Mom spiking our hair to see how long it was.

Now it's time for a bath and a nap! Fridays are awesome.

Valentine's Day Snapshots

Paige has been kinda sassy lately. Yes, she's standing. Scary, huh?

My sweetie pie's sweetie pie. Well, I guess technically it's a galette, but same difference.

Happy Valentine's Day, guys. We love you all beary much.

Speaking of Bananas

Otherwise titled: crummy pictures of a cute baby

It's been raining the last couple of days, and while it's given me an excuse to use my new umbrella, it means we haven't really wanted to venture outside much. Paige is just fine with that, since she's recently discovered how to push open the door to the bedroom, pull herself up onto her knees, steal clothes from the laundry pile, push over the space heater, and other semi-troublesome things. I'm...coping.
This is what I've been doing during naptime, while I'm avoiding laundry.


I made it from a shirt I got from a friend that didn't fit me very well. Paige looks way better in it. My favorite part? The BUTTons! I laugh every time I see them.


P.S.- I promise I'm not purposefully making all the dresses I sew look like business wear, though babies are adorable in business wear. It's just the fabric I have to work with.

Ripe

The week after we got married, Jeff told me that one of my selling points was that he found out early on that I liked sushi. Yesterday he told me that he should have added "How do you like your bananas?" to the list of important questions that we asked each other while engaged.
"Ripe" for me, means yellow, no brown at all. In fact, the tips of the banana are usually still a little green. These bananas are perfect. If they go beyond this point, they're too sweet, they're mushy, and the ether's over-developed. They are only good for bread.


Jeff likes his bananas thusly. See previous commentary.

We both really like bananas. The problem Jeff has is this: I buy bananas for the family, and then eat them all or give them to the baby before they get to the stage he likes them. Jeff gets maybe two bananas in eight, and I really have to try to not eat those last two. Jeff also really likes banana muffins, so his two bananas usually get muffinified, and then I eat at least a third of those too. So Jeff has had, like, three fresh bananas total since we've been married. And I feel guilty for eating two of the eight bananas I bought today.

Fancy Food

Jeff has been making bread again lately, trying to recreate and one-up the fresh bread we get from Sainsbury's. I'm always impressed when it comes out of the oven.



A very common food here is a "pasty" which is pretty much a pot pie wrapped like an empanada. I love chicken pot pie. I think I like it even more as a pie-lette, which one makes when one doesn't have a pie tin. I didn't think about making pasties until they were already in the oven. Next time.



An, of course, we can't forget a nod to our local food connoisseur. It's intimidating to cook for her sometimes. She can be a tyrant.

Proof of (no) Purchase

Paige is now crawling alarmingly fast and getting into everything she can see. Baby proofing is hard when you're in a tight space, tight for cash, and you don't want to damage anything. One day, I'm going to write a book on how to live in a small apartment with a baby because conventional advice doesn't always fly.


We walled off the TV, cords, sewing machine, and outlets in one corner and the garbage/recycling in another.


Paige is usually pretty curious about the box walls, but she had to stop for Jumu'ah. She's planning her pilgrimage to Mecca this summer.


Most drawer latches require you to screw them into the side or the drawer, as well as have either a medium in between the drawers, or room on the side to mount the other side. Luckily, cardboard is the new duct tape.


I'm proud of this one.


And this one. Who makes an odd number of cabinets? Actually, I'm pretty proud of the last three. They're not rock solid, but they'll hopefully keep her out of things long enough for me to take a potty break once in a while. Whew.

Wanted: Trash Can Lid

Guess what Paige has been up to this morning! Yay for my big girl! We put the bottle there after we already had found her in that corner twice...