We were all in the kitchen making granola the other day, Kit in the sling, me measuring dry ingredients, Little Bear watching the butter melt in the microwave. Ding! "Not melted yet," he tells me. I ask him to set it for another 15 seconds; next thing I know, the butter starts exploding. Little Bear is crouched down, peering up at the butter dripping off of the microwave ceiling. "The butter is totally melted!" he announces. "Now you need to clean the microwave."
II
Today was the first time that Kit stayed awake through an entire Mass, and the young lady was not happy about it; she was yelling by the time Father finished the opening prayer. I had to take her out back, where she finally decided that, oh, I guess I do want to eat, Mama... We made it back in for the general intercessions, and she stayed not-quite disruptive through Communion, when I took her back out because I didn't think she had much more "quiet-enough" left in her. Thank goodness my parents were there too, and could keep Little Bear with them! How in the world do you handle a baby and a little kid by yourself in Mass?
III
Happy baby: When she's not yelling her way through Mass, we've been getting so many smiles out of Kit this week! She'll notice someone looking at her and start cooing, and if you answer her back, she breaks out into a great big smile.
Love that face! ...Especially in contrast to her angry face, which, unfortunately for her, one of her parents noticed bears a remarkable resemblance to the Hulk's "roaring in fury" face...
IV
It's been a busy week for all of us. I had the car four days as opposed to my usual two, what with checkups, grocery shopping, visiting the chiropractor, a rained-out attempt at berry picking, and Mass and a stop at the park today. We got up to 65 degrees this afternoon, which felt incredibly hot after days of barely brushing the lower 50s—we were all dressed for the weather we'd been having, and were very warm! Matt has been trying to finish building a couple of new rooms before classes start on Monday, and they just keep running into problems. He began working through lunches on Tuesday, and pulled out his laptop to rebuild new graphic user interfaces as soon as he got home yesterday and today. Tomorrow morning he'll be back at work first thing, staying "until it's finished." Semester Start is officially one of our least-favorite parts of the year.
V
Has anybody successfully dehydrated fruit in their oven? How did you do it? Will it work if the lowest heat I can set my oven to is 200 F? Peaches are on a really good sale this week, and I know they'll be astronomically expensive again so soon... I'd love to save them for the winter, to put in oatmeal and muesli and such, and I've heard that dehydrating is easy, but all the instructions I've seen online want your oven at 130 F or 160 F or something like that, and my oven can be set to "warm" or "200," but nothing between the two.
VI
Two cords of dry spruce arrived Monday afternoon to be split and stacked, and we haven't even been able to begin because Matt's been so busy and I definitely can't swing a splitting maul with the baby on me. He has the small mountain of logs covered with a tarp as best he could get it, but we're still hoping that the called-for rainstorms all day tomorrow somehow miss us, because the wood at the bottom of the pile will get so wet. Everything happens all at once at the end of the summer, it seems like. Hopefully we will be able to get it all taken care of soon.
VII
Feast days! It's a Marian time of year, with the Assumption last Saturday and the Queenship of Mary tomorrow. We joined my family for supper for the Assumption, and my mom made her traditional custard pie for the feast day. I don't actually know why that's the tradition; Google doesn't seem to think that it is a tradition from any particular culture. I'm sure she has a reason, but it's too late at night to call and ask... Regardless, it turned out as delicious as ever.
Tomorrow being the celebration of Our Lady's coronation as queen of heaven and earth, I've been trying to come up with an appropriate dessert. Somehow I don't have a bundt pan, so anything crown-shaped is out. It needs to be fairly straightforward, ideally something Little Bear can help with... I'm thinking maybe a chocolate pudding pie (for earth) topped with whipped cream (for heaven), and maybe we can make a little crown out of something to set in the center? Or draw a crown of stars with chocolate syrup? Hmm... That might be beyond my artistic talents, but Little Bear would love helping me make chocolate syrup stars, which would mean we'd be able to talk about why we were drawing stars... I think I'm going to try it. Stay tuned for photos of a very messy pie!
Have a blessed feast of the Queenship of Mary, y'all. Check out more quick takes for this week over at This Ain't The Lyceum!
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