Baby

I'd like to introduce our newest addition, "Otter"! 

Our largest baby yet at seven and a half pounds, Otter was unexpectedly born at home Sunday morning: thankfully two of the midwives with our birth center live nearby, because I woke up at 2am, they got here at 2:15, and Otter was born about ten minutes later! It was certainly not the birth we'd been expecting, but it worked out perfectly. He and I are both doing fine, and we are all so happy to have him here!  

Matt is able to stay home with us for a couple of weeks, for which I am very grateful! LB and Kit have been excited about Otter, but realistically they're probably more excited right now about having their dad home to play with them and do things with them while I'm busy with the baby. LB is still doing school this week, and has been so happy to have his dad here to do science projects with him! And I have not yet had to re-master doing everything one-handed, since Matt has taken on most of the meal-prep, and I've been able to hand Otter to Matt when I do need both hands for something. Maybe we'll work on that next week... Right now, I'm just enjoying sitting and holding this new tiny baby as much as possible!

Patience and a Lent list

About two weeks left of Lent! And of this pregnancy, theoretically. It is making me crazy that I can't really make plans for the rest of this liturgical season, because we've reached the point where baby could come any time now or not for a couple of weeks yet. My chiropractor commented yesterday morning on how much lower baby had dropped since she last saw me, so maybe it'll be sooner rather than later? We shall see. I actually spent about 7 hours at the birth center last night/this morning with very convincing labor that just... stopped. So now we're back home, and maybe we'll have to head back tonight and maybe not until Holy Week! Getting some practice being patient here.

Last night I sat down with three weeks' worth of menu-planning sheets and started trying to map things out for just in case I'm actually able to make everything I want to between now and Easter, and as I looked back through past years' plans for Lent and Holy Week, I realized how disappointing it was that I have a bunch of Lenten posts from 2013-2016, but my search terms brought up nothing from last year. Yes, I'm busy, and always tired, and it's hard to find time to write... But it's so good to have this record, too! And I know that I'll feel badly about it later if I continue to do such a poor job of posting. So, here is my "probably more wishful thinking than realistic plan" for this home stretch of Lenten observance (with feast days thrown in):

Saturday, 17 Mar: St Patrick

We are talking about St Patrick and Ireland in social studies this week; for supper, I'm planning Guinness moose stew with Irish cheddar biscuits, and my friend's mom's recipe for Guinness chocolate cake!

Sunday, 18 Mar: Passion Sunday

It's the annual "why do I suddenly have no purple fabric??" day! Time to cover all of the statues, icons, and religious art in the house. Unless I am actively in labor and thus am not home, this will definitely happen, because Little Bear has been excited about it for weeks and will happily help Matt take care of it.

Monday, 19 Mar: St Joseph

Instead of an Italian meal for the Solemnity of St Joseph, as we've done in the past, I'm planning a supper that Matt particularly likes (since we treat the day as a patronal feast day for him as a husband and father): chicken salad on homemade pretzel buns. Possibly a dessert; I haven't thought that far yet. No one would complain if I said they could have ice cream, though I'd like to do something more creative/intentional.

Sunday, 25 Mar: Palm Sunday (and Annunciation)

I know, I know; the Annunciation gets moved to after Easter so that it can be celebrated on its own instead of being overshadowed by the celebration of Palm Sunday, but we will definitely still be talking about how March 25 is exactly 9 months before Dec 25. I figure it won't hurt to use foods for both celebrations that day, either; chocolate waffles for breakfast, and psari plaki (Greek baked fish) for supper.

(Tuesday, 27 Mar is my due date... I've never yet had a baby wait until their due date, so the rest of this is fairly unlikely to actually happen...)

Wednesday, 28 Mar: Holy Wednesday

The day Judas betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver. Hopefully, we'll have Jidase buns with supper.

Thursday, 29 Mar: Holy Thursday

Persian lamb with almonds for supper. Holy Thursday is also the day we make Hot Cross Buns. If I'm on top of things, we will hopefully hard-boil and dye eggs as well. Probably not making the traditional red dye out of onion skins this year, though!

Friday, 30 Mar: Good Friday

Hot Cross Buns for breakfast. I grew up with potato soup for supper every Good Friday, but I love potato soup so it's not at all a penitential meal for me, and Matt particularly dislikes it... anyway, we don't have a traditional Good Friday supper yet. I tried for a couple of years to make lentil soup our traditional supper, and it did not work out. Maybe tuna salad or egg salad this year?

Saturday, 31 Mar: Holy Saturday

No promises, but the Italian Easter Bread that I always bake on Holy Saturday may be possible this year; it's always been a knead-by-hand-forever recipe, but the new stand mixer will definitely be able to handle the dough on its own, so there's hope! 

What are your plans for observing the upcoming feast days and holy days?

Easter baskets

I am so thankful today for a post from Katie Kimball of Kitchen Stewardship on non-candy/non-junk Easter basket items! Both because she has a lot of great ideas, and because reading her post reminded me that my usual waiting-until-the-last-minute approach to finding things for Easter baskets would not be a good idea, considering that the baby is due during Holy Week... So this morning I left Little Bear and Kit home with Matt, and went to town all by myself to pick up Easter items along with my regular errands.

(I am also thankful to Matt for being awake enough this morning to point out that, while in many places sidewalk chalk and bubbles would be very reasonable things to give kids in early April, that is not the case here!)

This year, the kids' baskets will each have:

- one small toy (Lego for LB, doll for Kit)

- one accessory to match their clothes for Mass (tie for LB, headband for Kit)

- a pack of Easter-y stickers

- freeze-dried fruit

- and a few chocolate eggs

There is supposed to be a sacrifice jar on the table, slowly getting filled with black beans throughout Lent so that I can replace it with a jar of jelly beans for Easter, but... I am very tired and forgetful. And the kids keep forgetting about it, too. I bought jelly beans before Lent even started, though, so I suppose we'd better get the jar going. Better late than never?

What are your thoughts on Easter baskets for adults? My parents shared one, which looking back was probably just the most convenient dumping-place for the leftover pieces from each bag of candy—there certainly wasn't anything but candy inside. Matt can't remember what his parents did. I do remember as a kid feeling strongly about the importance of my dad having his own basket, so that he wasn't "taxing" our candy intake. :-) In past years we have done adult baskets as well as kids, but this year I think we'll do one shared parental basket and I don't even know what to put in it... It's not like either of us needs candy. Possibly jerky or coffee for Matt; the only thing I'm likely to want at that point is sleep, and you can't put that in a basket!

(I do not know whether this is relevant to a discussion of Easter baskets for adults, but it just occurred to me to note that we don't "do" the Easter Bunny; the kids know that the baskets are filled by Mom and Dad, and are a fun thing to find on Easter morning, but that they aren't really what Easter is about. Not that we necessarily have any particular problem with the Easter Bunny... it honestly has never been important enough to Matt or me to bother putting thought into whether there was a reason to do/not do it. There are so many other things we are actively doing/making/talking about during Holy Week and Easter! Maybe it would be a thing we'd have to address if our kids were in a traditional school? At this point, I don't think LB or Kit have ever even heard of the Easter Bunny, except possibly in the context of my younger siblings joking about the Easter Bunny wearing bunny boots...)

Assorted things (7QT)

I

Baby has not made an appearance yet; figured I'd better get that one out there first! :-) It's a good thing, because we don't necessarily have a name nailed down yet... or the newborn clothes or other baby things ready. I'm 37.5 weeks now, so that should probably go on the *really does need to be done* list for this weekend.

II

I started seeing a new chiropractor last week, and she's been so helpful: I can actually walk again! I'm definitely still having a hard time, but being physically capable of walking and getting some things done has been good. The kids have also been getting lots of practice helping; with me literally unable to pick things up off the floor, they've learned that they actually can clean up quickly without me doing it with/for them. Two of my sisters have been coming over regularly as well, and their help has been invaluable. I'm so thankful for all of the ways they've helped and let me sit/lay down!

III

School is going really well. We just finished our 27th week today, which doesn't actually mean much since we aren't required to do school for a specific number of days/weeks each year per Alaska homeschooling regulations, but it's nice to have a measure of how long we've been working. We are starting to see the end coming: there are only a few pages left in the handwriting book, three or so chapters in religion, I think five weeks of math... Our grammar/language arts program I expect to carry through the summer, since we started it in January and he's enjoying it so much.

IV

We spent this week in science learning about cheese, and yesterday we made cream cheese out of whole milk and vinegar! It's really closer to ricotta, I think, but it tastes good. And as initially horrifying as it was to see four cups of milk shrink down to just one cup of cheese, when I did the math, making homemade ricotta is still less than half the price of buying ricotta or cream cheese at the store!

And to go with our cheese, my sister and I made our first-ever batch of homemade bagels! We used the recipe from King Arthur Flour, making some plain and some cinnamon raisin, and they came out so well. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but they are exactly the texture and flavor I want from a bagel! And they really weren't that much work; we will definitely be making them again.

V

It's beginning to look and feel a little more spring-like outside, despite the slightly ridiculous amount of snow on the ground right now: 

That would be our deck. The snow is almost up to the top of Kit's head! But it really is feeling springish anyway, because we have so much sunlight—more than 11 hours today! 

VI

Of course they're taking away our lovely morning sunlight this weekend... I'm always so disappointed when we have to change the clocks and suddenly it's dark in the mornings again. I know it won't take long before the sun is up before we are again, but it has been so nice to open the shades in the morning and not have to use the lights! At least our parish doesn't have religious ed this week (the public schools have spring break), so we don't have to get up at feels-like-5:15 for the early Mass on Sunday!

VII

Kit, wearing Matt's ear protection: "You don't hear me, Mama, 'cause I have hearing protections on!"

She is so funny, chattering all the time and telling us stories about what she is doing. Lately she's been pretending that Matt's office area is Nome, because we've been talking about the Iditarod a lot with the kids; she keeps telling me about what she's going to go do in Nome today, or how her baby dolls are waiting in Nome to watch for the sled dogs.

Little Bear signed up for the IditaREAD this year: he picked a musher to race, and then tried to read 998 pages before his musher's team completed the 998-mile race. The race started on Saturday, and he had already passed 1,000 pages by yesterday afternoon... I now understand why my mom never bothered having us sign up for the program! :-) I love that he loves reading so much, but he definitely didn't get as much out of the program as he would have if it had actually been a challenge. He had a lot of fun, though, and we got to practice mental addition of two- and three-digit numbers keeping track of how many pages he had read!

That's seven! And hopefully a somewhat adequate catch-up on what we are up to. For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain't The Lyceum!