the pizza man

we loves us some pizza 'round here. seriously. i know people in general love pizza, the way it's impossible not to love kittens in a basket or grandmothers or sunny days in june, but beyond the norm we really do love it abnormally... i could eat it four days a week easily if larger pants weren't a factor... i used to make dough in a bread machine ages ago until it broke and we've tried all manner of shortcuts to get our pizza fix ever since...

when i was expecting cole we ordered more pizza than ever. jamie was out of town a lot, so often after a long day of work the only thing i could manage (in that "i'm so tired but have no clue what tired even is since i don't have a baby to deal with yet" kind of way) was to order pizza. we were actually - true story - blacklisted from a local pizza place (panago - boo, hiss) for complaining when our order was wrong and yet managed a work-around to ensure our pizza supply remained constant.

since then, we've branched out. pita pizzas, pizzas from various other places in town, pizzas made with fresh dough from whole foods. it was that last one that really turned the tides. since merging with whole foods, the dough we used to buy from capers has gotten smaller and more expensive. the last time i was picking a dough ball off the shelf - $2.99 for a ball that would barely cover our large pizza pan - i had a change of heart. why not get back to making pizza? i didn't remember it being hard, but then again i don't remember a lot of things nowadays!

i bought a three-pack of yeast instead and came home to search for pizza dough recipes online. found an amazing, amazing one. it makes three times the dough for 1/4 of the price ( (even using organic flour) and it's delicious. and easy - no kneading!

we usually eat ours later at night when cole's asleep - you know, so we can enjoy it, rather than do the gulp n' munch required at times for a meal with a toddler... but once in a while i make him his own little pizza. easy on the toppings - just cheese and sauce and dough really... tonight i got him up on the helping chair and he helped make his pie!

he rolled the dough and then proceeded to eat the shredded cheese...

if you're in the mood try this recipe - it's easier than trying to get your order across with panago or debating how much to tip a guy with b.o. who just rolled over your mailbox!

slow! they called you slow!

obviously, i've been very slow at posting news & photos lately. not for lack of doing things, mind you. many indoor things and a lot of playdates with our neighbours, and a good deal of running around. actually, oddly, because we've been so busy, updating has been low on my list. after things like: doing things, taking photos of us doing things, doing crafty such and such, more of that, some other work, making food, eating food, random and ceaseless chores, catching up on shows i like and people i know and listening to the wind try to carry our bbq away and hey - i guess i'm getting around to it now... ;-)

i braved the world of logic today and took this photo of cole sleeping during naptime:

i actually snuck in to make sure he was ok because a) i am deranged and b) he had his h1n1 vaccination today prior to our upcoming vacation, despite my vacillating about getting it, and i wanted to make sure he was doing ok. he was sleeping like the proverbial baby and even the focusing noise of the camera in his pitch-black room and resulting bounced flash didn't wake him up! i took two, tempting my luck and thankfully i had another hour of his napping in which to do work (sewing tooth fairy pillows - what a grown-up i am!).

after he woke up he was giggly and wanted to snuggle on the couch, where we laughed and played hide & peek (so he calls it) with the blankets and listened to the rain hit the windows. he wanted to hear a story, so i told him a long-winded and rambling tale about a kitty named coco (he names everything coco except sometimes he likes to drum up 'tommy' or 'abby' or 'bobby bobby') who meowed a lot and met an owl and another cat, also named coco. they ran around in a field and meowed some more and i think they might have eaten toys and cream and crackers (i get him to fill in the blanks). the problem with my stories is that i end them and then cole asks for more, so i have to keep the story alive after it's logical demise - kind of like most serial movies. some days we have more ambition and do more, things like going outdoors or even this:

finger painting! we've tried regular painting too, with great success, but of course i had to try the messiest of all painting techniques last week. it was so much fun and cole loved it. the thick yet washable paints were actually a lot less messy than i pictured, and we did it seated at the high chair. i had hippie visions of diapers-only painting on the floor, but i realized during pumpkin carving, when we got pumpkin guts everywhere, that maybe i don't want paint on my couch just yet...

and in case, like us, you are not a super-nerd who practically memorized every simpsons episode back before they went downhill and then straight to hell after about season 7 when every episode became the worst-episode-ever, you would perhaps like to know what the heck i'm talking about in that title? sorry - no video. we live in canada which, you may have realized, should you be the kind of nerd/cheapskate who likes free streaming online videos, might as well be the wilkins ice shelf or poor old pluto.

halloween hoedown

much fun was had on saturday morning, carving the pumpkins we got last week at westham island. the most fun was had, to be honest, during the goo-scooping part. we scooped goo like professional goo-scoopers. cole really enjoyed it and we had a relatively tidy time. but the morning got along and we had plans to head out to langley for some trick-or-treating in gramma & grampa's neck of the candy-stocked woods. so, while cole ate lunch, we took turns doing a lightning-round of pumpkin carving.

and we finally settled on cowboy for cole's halloween costume. it was a tossup between homemade cowboy and last-year's duck, but cowboy got the most votes (in my non-scientific, undocumented, biased, random passing mentions to friends & family...). yee haw:

the costume was a scramble of bits and pieces that turned out really well. on hand we had a hand-me-down plaid flannel shirt that he wears all the time and of course his much-loved cowboy hat. to counter the chill he wore a few sweaters under the shirt - hence the very cowboy-like physique. i have a "mystery drawer" that contains interesting toys and whatnot that i find at random regular intervals. once in a while i grab something fun from the drawer - this time i hauled out a sheriff badge and a six-pack of various stick-on mustaches from the japanese dollar store (it's quite a drawer!). on friday we stopped by the granville island toy store on main because i randomly remembered that they had the horse-on-a-stick toy that would be really perfect, and hey, at least it's a waste of money that turns into long-term entertainment! the horse needed 2aa batteries to make a very authentic clip-clop sound, so i took those from our remote (and used the tv manually - oh, the horror!) oh, and i found a potato gun because apparently i'm promoting violence? (not really - just really into accessories!) and last but not least, i made cole a cowboy-style drooling kerchief late on friday night and then gussied up a pair of brown courdoroy pants by temporarily basting a strip of fringe-cut fleece onto each leg. fancy!

we had a great night, playing outside and, when it got dark enough, trick-or-treating with the lovely folks next door. their little guy james was the cutest frog! the boys really got the hang of it after a couple of houses. mmm... "cole" is really going to enjoy that candy! ;-)

capturing the moment

i met up recently with a friend and her two adorable wee folk at maplewood farm. it was a great sunny fall day, one that included much feeding of waterfowl and an alarming incident in the goat enclosure (seriously - they really do eat clothes and baby carriages and they escape given the chance and, well, you get the idea...).

but i forgot my camera! that never happens. lucky for me then that my playdate was the lovely kim of kim culbert photography. she took amazing photos of cole and was kind enough to share.

i absolutely love how she's captured him and the style of her shots. absolutely fantastic. and it was so nice to be camera-free, if only for a day. it's hard not to get preoccupied sometimes with capturing a moment instead of just enjoying it, and having someone else to take the photos was a lovely change! i like to fancy myself a photographer but i'm totally wowed on a regular basis by folks with a special talent that goes way beyond.

if you've been thinking of professional photos of your wee ones definitely check out her site for more info!

picking a pack of pumpkins

pumpkin-picking this past saturday at the westham island pumpkin patch. lots of fun had by all!

we walked in the mud (thank you self, for remembering to wear rubber boots this year), posed with the festive seasonal decorations, rode in the wheelbarrow and on the tractors, including a "real" one that i didn't realize was in-use and the farmer kind of gave me a side-eye when we were done playing on it... and we picked three stellar pumpkins of course, despite thinking one was enough initially. what can i say - we became caught up in the excitement of not-rotten pumpkin scavenging, because as you know, it's only acceptable to buy the stickered pumpkins under extreme circumstances. ;-)

now, back to debating what to dress cole as for halloween. he still fits his duck costume from last year (it was too big then and perfect now) and he seriously loves that costume. it's been in my craigslist/giveaway pile for a while, but he keeps hauling it out and asking me to help him put it on. seriously the cutest thing ever. and he's a good quacker. on the other hand, i was thinking cowboy - some homemade not-fancy getup. we'll see...

ontari-ari-ari-o

we just got back from a week visiting my family in ontario. the funny thing was that what i was nervous about - the flight - was a piece of cake, both ways, and what i didn't even give a thought to - the daily routine - was a total debacle!

cole was such a happy camper on the flights. i highly recommend gravol and then snacks, new toys and stickers for plane travel with a kidlet this age! he slept for a couple hours on the way there (and three on the way back - delightful!), and then happily munched snacks and stuffed sparkly dino stickers down the armrest of our seat for ages. we lucked out with a set of bulkhead seats to ourselves on the way there, which was a treat and a half... i got to watch 3/4 of a movie i'd never heard of, which sadly had gone off the rotation on the way home. anyone know how the brothers bloom turns out? (actually, don't tell me - i'll drum up a copy online and finish it off.)

it was fantastic to see all the family i hadn't seen in ages. my parents, brother and sister-in-law and neice, my grandmother, my aunts, uncles and cousins, heck - even neighbours... so fun to introduce cole to everyone too. he never got tired of saying everyone's name (bryyyy, shell, ga-gra) and he was delighted to find many staircases to climb and various new methods for thwarthing my desire for sleep. but good god - he was a hard to manage... the child would not eat! not even his beloved crackers!!! and this is a kid who normally would eat anything even resembling dried bread-like products! i don't know what it was, but he barely ate a speck (thankfully he also seemed to grow, according to jamie). and sleep? forget about it! he woke up all night long, only napped when i had him in the car (so we got to enjoy many long country drives and lovely fall foliage). and it took the whole week for him to let me out of his sight, and even then - constant calls for "mama" which were endearing and heartbreaking and utterly exhausting. and my poor grandma, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday - she kept thinking cole didn't like her because he wouldn't sit still on her lap for two seconds! and i'm going to have to work hard to part him from his reinforced bond to the pacifier (which he calls 'poppie')...

but... he got to meet everyone, smell that same fall smell that i love, eat apples at my favourite farm market, pick pumpkins and leaves and acorns, enjoy many treats and he's still talking about his favourite folks. i'm so glad we went.

many more photos to come but for now here's the first one on my camera, taken on our first morning there. it's just a silly one of cole lounging on the leopard-print futon in my brother's basement family room (where we slept so comfortably, if not soundly thank you cole) but it's seriously one of my favourites:

thank you to everyone for your hospitality, the wonderful meals, the activities, the conversation, the help and the good company.

ps, for you jamie - the stellar jay is not a real blue jay. no contest!

happy thanksgiving!

we went for a great walk today with friends out at deer lake park in burnaby. i had no idea how beautiful the lake is, or any clue about the woodsy lakeside trails wrapping around it! i used to work just a few minutes back down the road before cole was born and some days while pregnant, desperate for a noontime nap, i would drive over to the park in search of a secluded place in which to doze. turns out i would have been much better off walking around the lake!

cole and abby (who can say each other's names - true love for sure!) hung out, we all walked, chatted, they walked (more on the rules of walking with babies), they rode and ate crackers, they cried and smiled, hugged and fell, and we all tried to get a photo of them together looking at the camera.

later on, we went home and cole napped, woke early from his nap, convinced me to lie down and nap with him, and then went out with jamie to get some ice cream for our apple crisp thanksgiving dessert. they came home with a GALLON of ice cream from costco, so you know we won't be wasting away 'round here anytime soon.

and we had our own little small thanksgiving dinner, just the three of us. since it was just us i skipped the whole bird (too many leftovers: we're each off later this week to parts far and wide) and made a turkey breast roast. seriously - this is the answer! so easy!!! we had all the trimmings too, and cole was particularly fond of cranberry sauce. so fond that he ate it by the handful and then tossed in a few carrots, a little turkey (the boy ate meat - a thanksgiving miracle!) and his own apple crisp (apple sauce and a little ice cream) which he also ate with his hands.

making faces

cole gets a big, big kick out of squeezing things, real or imaginary. he makes this face and squeezes every muscle in his body and it's hysterical to watch.

in the bath he's all about the splashing and bubbles. mmm - tasty, tasty bubbles. and he drinks a lot of bathwater, which i hope is not that bad for him! he's started to pee in the potty before getting into the tub, so that probably helps some. ;-)

and he just generally has a grand time. see, you only need to toss him on the bed into a pile of pillows and it's the best fun ever. and by the way - check out those teeth! he has all his premolars now and all the canines have broken through to various degrees, so we're up to sixteen teeth! crazy...

like garden gnomes

i really do love to garden. right now we have only the patio garden, with a few big pots. i'm on the waiting list for a community garden space at many community gardens in our area, but for now it's just the patio. seeing as i love to garden, and have a deep yearning for trees and lushness, you'd think i might strive to keep our plants alive? we'll you'd be right about the striving part, but sadly mistaken about the living part! i have one green thumb (the planting one) and one wilty thumb... our tree and plants from earlier this spring didn't like the psycho hot weather any more than we did, and i think our watering chain of command broke down sometime in august... (that would be me asking jamie and cole to water the plants and lots of times not).

so, i bought some fresh greenery yesterday on a whim (i was alone and driving and hey, let's go to the garden shop, self!). cole helped me, which was a lot of fun, a lot of mess, and some help. ;-) but fun! he likes to sweep and dig and transfer soil from one pot to another - we just need to work on what is swept into whose shoe and which soil should be taken to where... seriously though, a great afternoon.

we even planted some crocus and mini daffodil bulbs so we have something to get excited about in the springtime! now all i have to do is take down the dead tree to the garbage room incognito (too bad i dumped our old gorilla masks in the goodwill bin yesterday) and then wait for rain so i can wash the balcony off discretely...

randomly, since they kind of go with the topic of mud and gardening - here are a few shots of cole from our trip on friday to queen elizabeth park and the bloedel conservatory (which i always garble and call the bird observatory).

we loved looking at the birds and fish inside, but i think cole was even more impressed with the loose soil outside. he dug and dug, brought me handfuls and got entirely grimey.

and i was going to crop the dude and stroller out of this photo, but it's too funny. his whole family was motioning wildly for him to get out of the way of the camera, which i had perched on the wall and on self timer mode, but he didn't even notice... and yet i'm still fake smiling and giving him the "get a f'in clue and out of my photo" look... cole is dropping a handful of dirt onto the ground and trying to escape. too perfect.

hey four eyes

i scored these swell old man/nerd toy glasses at granville island toys on main street yesterday, and they've been a real hit around here. cole loves them - particularly on me, because apparently he prefers to wear my actual glasses and laugh at me wearing these ones...

and of course we couldn't resist trying them on jamie when he got home. yep, equally flattering and massively hilarious on everyone!

a bicycle built for two

cole was determined to take the new year's baby for a bike ride around the house the other day. i'm serious - i could hardly stop laughing, it was so cute. we should probably make some pants for her.

i know i keep bringing up the new year's baby. it's creepy, it's silly, it has a strange family history. but seriously - cole loves it! there's no way i can get him to part with it long enough to send it back into the family christmas gag gift exchange now! (hear that uncle ian - you may be safe this year after all!)

putting out fires in the tub

cole's fondness for his hats doesn't stop at bathtime. yeah, i braved the camera-in-tub for these two shots...

he likes to go around the house pretending to spray a hose on things. it's a game jamie started playing with him a long time ago, and he absolutely loves it.

talking a walk in heels

i've been a devoted heels-wearer for all of my adult life. i just like shoes, really, and if my feet are going to be fashionable and uncomfortable i figure that i might as well wear a heel over a ballet slipper... bunions vs fallen arches anyone?

i don't think i knew my real height in relation to the world until about 8 months into pregnancy when the heels went into the closet - suddenly all the counters and toilet seats and car doors were so much higher than before! and all those short people? they were on the same eye level! but since becoming a work/stay-at-home mom, i'm finding that i don't have quite the same need for my fancy shoes. we mostly play and walk places and heels are too impractical for that.

i did buy a low-heeled wedge the other day, for my "i'm comfortable and not dressed up but not slobby" look (you know, that mythical state of being) and cole has taken a shine to them:



it makes me laugh, and reminds me that, however dorky, i would really love to take tap dancing lessons. ah, that lovely 'tappa tappa tappa' sound. plus, i could inject tap interludes into everyday situations, like they did in old musicals.

our new pet - bee!

yesterday i was straightening up cole's room - not an easy task, considering he likes to rip the books off the shelves while i shelve them and putting away his toys renews his interest in them - and we found this dead bee on the carpet. i was really excited to have a bee that we could look at up close, since cole loves bees - in books or at picnics or over in the bugs/snakes/beaver dam/quiet room at science world. i scooped him in a tissue and cole was immediately enthralled. "bee?" was a massive source of entertainment. after we put her down (on a high shelf) cole lingered around, pointing to her and wanting to touch and pat the bee. throughout the day, i milked that bee for all it was worth - a fussy moment here and there? how about we see the bee?! etcetera... i figured we should take a photo for posterity (it's kind of fuzzy and oddly focused, but it worked in the moment) and then we dug out a travel toiletry jar to give the bee a little lasting power in cole's fascinated little hands.

looking at her so up-close, i realize that she seems to be missing a leg - perhaps that contributed to her demise? and today at science world we heard that the hive's queen has gone missing and they don't know what happened to her, so i sure hope she didn't wander into our place and perish!

the fruits of our labours

cole and i baked today for the first time. i mean, there have been plenty of times where i've cooked and he's played in the kitchen (like, three times a day plus snacks), and we regularly do the 'pretend cooking/bashing pot lids' thing, but this is the first time that i got him up on a chair and we made something together! i even put my grandma's apron on him - so cute.

it was a lot of fun, and surprisingly a lot less messy than i anticipated. we made pumpkin bread, since i happened to pick up a can of organic pureed pumpkin while grocery shopping solo on saturday. i love the leisurely kind of shop that a) costs too much and b) allows you to think ahead about things you'd like to make. cole used to eat pumpkin straight up but nowadays i figured that we'd better come up with a good disguise for it. and hey - it's the first day of fall, so pumpkin spice bread is perfectly festive!

he loved cracking eggs! i cracked them and then gave him the shells to re-crack (and then picked out the shells in the bowl). i dipped his finger in brown sugar and got a bonkers reaction from him when he tasted it - a muymmmmyyyy kind of sound and bug eyes. yeah, kiddo - sugar is tasty. he did lots of scooping and stirring and sploshing of things, and eventually settled on stirring his own bowl that contained a spoonful of flour and a dash of nutmeg. and he ate it by the scoopful - delicious?

he loves watching things in the oven, and it was so cute watching him watch the bread we'd made together. and eating it? forget about it - SO good.

i used a modified version of this recipe. we added some dried fruit, swapped some white flour for whole wheat and it called for a hell of a lot of sugar and oil, so i changed that a bit - it could probably go down a bit more without sacrificing the sweetness or moistness. oh, and it made a LOT - an enormous loaf and we still had left over batter for 8 muffins.

pumpkin bread

mix together, in a very large bowl:
- 1 (15oz) can of pumpkin puree
- 4 eggs
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup thick plain yogurt (i use olympic 3.5% organic plain)
- 2/3 cup water
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup white sugar

separately, combine:
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
(the recipe called for cloves & ginger too, but i didn't have any)

mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients. stir only enough to moisten. add in: - 1/2 cup golden raisins
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries

stir a little. pour into 2 bread loaf pans or a few dozen muffin cups... i baked one loaf for 65 minutes, a tray of muffins for 22 minutes...

oh my god i seriously need these...

what the ahhhhhh! these were spotted while antiquing by a contributor over at ohdeeoh.

i am really looking forward to an upcoming visit back home to ontario for many reasons, one of them being access to a really great antique market. i hope i can find something so terrifyingly awesome... i've regretted not scooping up a fang-toothed garden gnome that looked about ready to devour the fish he was holding for years now. ;-)