Seven Quick Takes

I

Little Bear's current favorite game is picking a letter and asking us to help think of words that start with that letter. This morning it was M, and he personally contributed several abstract words including Memory, Make, and Melancholy. Where did he even learn the word melancholy?

II

For the feast of Pope St John Paul II yesterday, a friend and I made padahae (Ukrainian pierogi), some filled with mashed potatoes and some with sauerkraut. Delicious! I would have served them with Polska kielbasa if I'd had any, but chicken sausage worked just as well. One of these times, I'm going to plan ahead enough to have some ground caribou browning on the stove as I'm rolling out the dough, so we can make meat-filled padahae; Little Bear does not really like potatoes or sauerkraut, and while he did eat his potato padahae without being told last night, I know that he would enjoy meat more. 

III

Kit had her 4 month well-child checkup on Tuesday, and is doing fine. She's such a happy girl, smiling and babbling at everyone! I was much happier with this pediatrician than we one we saw when she was 2 months; this doctor noted that she was a little above the 75th percentile in weight again, but said that there was nothing wrong with that, she's just a big, healthy breastfed baby. Which I knew, but it's still nice to hear it from the pediatrician. We were looking forward to seeing just how big Kit had gotten, and I had to laugh when I realized she's already half as big as her 3 year old brother! Little Bear started out growing very quickly too, and slowed down considerably in his second six months. We will have to wait and see what Kit does.

IV

It has been nearly a month since that several-day power outage, but still, every single time I hear the fridge kick on, there's a little millisecond of "thank you, Lord, that the power is working!" It took losing electricity for me to realize how much we rely on it, and taking the things that are always around us for granted is definitely normal, but goodness, there are a lot of things that I don't want to have to lose in order to become consciously grateful for them! It's been a good reminder: I'm trying to be more intentionally grateful for each member of our family, the material goods and graces we've been given... actually thinking about what I'm saying instead of the rattling off the same list of "thank-you-for"s at prayer time each night.

V

Since he worked all last Sunday and they aren't supposed to take overtime thanks to budget cuts, Matt theoretically got a three-day weekend this weekend. While he and Little Bear were out running errands, though, he was called in to the office to help fix a problem. Little Bear got to have fun at the office for a while, but Matt eventually had to run Little Bear home and go back in by himself.

We've hardly seen each other recently: he was gone half the week for work, and the night after he got home from that he was out at a parish council meeting until after the kids and I were all in bed; last night he was busy until late again, working through some problems building a computer with a friend; and now today Kit and I were in town for a meeting in the morning, and Matt headed out shortly after we got home. Hopefully soon things will calm down enough for us to actually have some time together.

VI

Supper has been a (pseudo-)international affair this week:

Quesadillas and salsa on Sunday.

From-scratch chicken noodle soup on Monday.

(My brother's birthday on Tuesday)

Chicken-vegetable stir fry over rice on Wednesday.

Sausage, padahae, and cucumbers on Thursday.

Mujaddara and hummus with raw veggies today.

Caribou stroganoff with a Russian cucumber salad is the plan for tomorrow.

Once I had the padahae and mujaddara on the menu everything else sort of fell into the "theme," although some of them were definitely bigger stretches than others. It was fun, though!

VII

Our hostess, Kelly of This Ain't The Lyceum, has been asking questions each week this month, which I have not at all been keeping up with because I've been so bad about blogging at all lately. Today's is What was your most popular Quick Takes? I looked mine up, and it's a pretty ordinary slice of life from a year and a half ago: Writing, Sleep, Productivity, and a Smashing Afternoon. It's so hard to believe that not so long ago, Little Bear was so much smaller!

Drop by today's linkup, and check out some other folks' most popular Seven Quick Takes!