Buying The Farm

Lately, I've been thinking that Nora needs a farm. I have fond memories of my old Fisher Price farm from the "good old days" (see, I've started already) that we spent spent hours playing with as kids. The new Little People Animal Sounds Farm, is just not as fabulous. So I have some options: eBay an old farm just like my own (not that expensive and they can go through a wipe down with bleach), buy the cute but not as accessorized wooden farm that Melissa and Doug make or find some other fabulous farm. Anyone got any suggestions?

Grocery Store Happiness

Isn't usually an emotion I feel. It's more like grocery store annoyance or grocery store irritability - despite that fact that I like to shop and I like to eat. Lately I've been extremely annoyed because I'm reading more ingredient lists on my food and suddenly I don't want to eat that food anymore. The most recent case was when I bought some turkey sausage for Nora and me and then was extremely annoyed to find that it had whey in it (off limits for Nora) and then after I read everything else, I was sure that I didn't want to eat it either! What with the absence of soy cheese and yogurt products at Schnucks and my already aware state about our meat industry (made worse by everyone reading The Omnivore's Dilemma in my orbit) I have not been too happy at the grocery store lately.

But then I visited the Local Harvest Grocery on Morganford. This place is small but awesome. Local meat (not necessarily organic - but hormone free and grass fed), soy products galore and other organic/healthy food also. And it is so much closer than running out west to shop for those specialty items. I'm happy again. Please go and support it! They even have sandwiches/coffee/sweet rolls for when you just need a quick nosh. Yum!

Welcome to the World

Allana Michelle Ogden, 6-26-07, 7:42 pm, 6lbs, 8oz, 18 in.

Congratulations to Uncle Bill, Aunt Lynn, Beth and Andy! So glad to hear everyone is doing well.

Soccer Blog

No, this isn't Jason's Blog - he doesn't have one because he has a dissertation instead. So why am I writing about soccer? Because my cousin is. Well, really my cousin's son, Sito is. He plays soccer for his school and also for the Scott Gallagher team (okay, I don't really follow much soccer, but I'm told he's a big deal). Anyway, the cool thing is that Sito's team has made it to the 2007 National Youth Soccer Championship (way to go, Sito!). But for me the really cool thing (not a soccer fanatic, remember) is that he was one of 7 players chosen to blog about it on their site. Check him out here. I hope they win and that he keeps writing.

Welcome Summer!

It really is summer, and if you have a doubt, I give you this picture of Nora in her kiddy pool at Grammy's.
To mark the solstice, Jason and I took turns running outside during a 3 minute window to watch the progress of the space station and shuttle orbiting across our sky (Nora was inside sleeping, hence the tag team relay). We didn't take any pictures because we're not good with night pictures and it just really looked like two stars moving slowly across the sky in tandem which wouldn't look like much in a picture, but was nevertheless pretty cool to the two of us. They will be visible again tonight. Here's the link where you can check out shuttle/space station /satellite spottings

Mac and Cheese for the Cheeseless

One of Nora's favorite new words is "CHEESE". What she is actually meaning is vegan cheese or soy cheese (see previous posts about milk allergies). I finally figured out a way to make the holy grail of kid friendly food safe for Nora - so here's my Vegan Mac n Cheese. I made it with soy milk and tofutti american cheese. While it doesn't age up as well as the real stuff, it does taste pretty good first time around.

I am thrilled she is learning new words and thrilled that I can figure out a way to feed her things that she likes and that don't make her sick, but I am a little concerned about her new found love for cheese. Because eventually, she's going to realize that there is other stuff called cheese as well. And while we try to watch her all the time, there's the chance she might grab someone else's cheese from their plate and eat it and then it's not so pleasant for her or for the person she throws up on either. I just hope she's in the 85% who outgrow this nasty allergy and then we can move on to a whole new set of words that will no doubt become favorites: ice cream, yogurt, milk shakes, cheesy-puffs, gold fish crackers and all that other yummy dairy stuff. In the meantime, I've got my Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook from Isa Moskowitz, and I have to say, her stuff is super yummy - even for carnivores.

In the Park

This weekend we went to the Shakespeare festival in Forest Park with Todd and Natascha. Despite the heat, a lovely time was had by all. Natascha and Todd had brought a yummy yummy picnic that we contributed some wine, cheese and bread to and Nora did her best to flip over all of the containers to feed the absent Karl. Or maybe that's just how she views eating - stick food in mouth, dump bowl over, repeat, sometimes with out that first step or with the added step of opening mouth and letting food fall out. It makes for a delightful meal.



The play this year was Much Ado About Nothing, but set in the Old West. Once we got over the strange (but very necessary) disoriented feeling of having all of the actors miked over the loudspeaker and the whole gunslinger atmosphere, we settled down and enjoyed the play. Nora's favorite part was the Hey Nonney, Nonney song (she's got a thing for guitars - maybe she'll have her own garage band one day).

Three of us had to leave after the first two acts. Someone was sleepy (okay, really all of us were sleepy, but one of us HAD to go to bed), but fortunately the two of us who were still following the play had read it before or seen the Emma Thomson version, so we knew the ending, and didn't have to call T & N for a recap.


All in all, much fun, and it was sort of nice to get out and do something adult-ish and still bring the kiddo along too.

Possibly the best part was that the next day, Nora slept into the unheard of hour of 9:00! Absolutely the best Father's Day gift ever (and I got to share in it too!)

Families Rising!

Booktalk

This weekend I've been reading three books from Unshelved's Bookclub. An Abundance of Katherines, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and Kiki Strike in the Shaddow City. All three have been a lot of fun, but if I had to choose my favorite it has to be Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. It makes me feel both old and young at the same time. I was half way through the book when I looked back at the title and saw that it was written by two different authors (one is Norah's voice, one is Nick's). Each have a distinctive voice, but their writing works really well together; it could have been really distracting in less able hands. With both the Katherines and Nick and Nora, it was interesting to see a male writer offer the male view of relationships, something I don't remember being a part of adolescent fiction when I was reading it. I recommend Kiki Strike to any of you disgruntled Girl Scouts out there and look forward to introducing it to Nora when she hits those tween years.

The other two are more appropriate for folks a little bit older, which got Jason and I to talking about books we read in high school. I don't know that there really was "young adult fiction" or at least not "young adult fiction" like this. I read stuff targeted at young adults when I was in late primary/ jr. high (Judy Blume, Madeline L'Engle and a ton of other stuff), but by high school I think I was moving on to adult books because the young adult stuff really wasn't that realistic to high schoolers. Or maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places. Or maybe I thought I was too grown up for "young adult fiction" and what I find appealing now, wouldn't have been so appealing then, at least not if it was marketed as being for "young adults" But, part of me says that young adult fiction has grown up. I'm sure there's a lot of really unappealing stuff as well, but the above titles really held my interest. Check 'em out.