A Spooktacular Day

Wow… today we saw the baby’s heartbeat for the first time- very awesome, surreal and odd at the same time. God bless the wonderful world of ultrasound. I’ll be honest: these babies don’t grow nearly as fast as I thought. I know that they grow hyper fast – seriously I do, I went to Health Ed. in school, I hear what the doctors tell us. But 2mm?  That seems awfully small for a baby that causes such wide reaching mood swings. I mean, you’d think this thing was the size of the troll that lives under the bridge at this point given how much my mental state fluctuates. One minute I am happy as a clam, the next I am raging lunatic angry and ready to storm out of the house (and go where I don’t really know- it always seems like a great idea…) then the next I am sobbing and miserable trying to figure out how we are going to pull this whole pregnancy, baby, and parenting thing off. Normal? Yep.

The only true consolation that I realize I have is knowing that while we all think/ say that the men have it easy in this pregnancy thing, (at least I had imagined that Taylor did) I have come to realize that they don’t. I mean, there may not be too worse things than approaching Halloween and wondering what type of monster ate your wife and replaced her with the banshee that she sometimes becomes when a certain time of day is reached or a trigger crops up or for no reason at all.  There is a lot of caressing, and “there there” in our house right now.  To the point that Taylor rolled his eyes and laughed last night (after one of my fits of crying of course) when I said I wasn’t experiencing any real pregnancy symptoms. Woops. And I thought we were getting away scott free- oh how I was mistaken!

Past that, this week’s dinners have been relatively lackluster and nothing to write about. Not for lack of desire or inspiration but it was really hard to start a week off with Taylor's homemade gnocchi on Sunday-everything else pales in comparison. We are heading to the farm tonight for end of season lobsters from the Cape, which I can’t wait for. A limited lobster consumption this year is as close to heartbreaking as it gets in this house. I guess we can treat it as sort of our Halloween ‘treat’ since we don’t have neighbors, we don’t get trick or treaters, and there really isn’t anything uber-inspiring or that appeals to us to get ourselves dressed up for anymore.

I would say we really are growing up, but then realize that we do harbor a ridiculous desire to (for some reason) dress our dogs up for Halloween this year just for kicks. Torturous maybe but still gets a good hefty giggle out of us every time we talk about it.   I wont tell you as what in case we actually DO it and take pictures- I will of course then post the pictures for the world to see. If they only knew how we desire to mortify them then they would no doubt have done everything in their power to make sure that we didn’t reproduce. The cats on the other hand get left alone- we do have kitty wigs for them thanks to their aunt Lib but that usually doesn’t elicit too happy of a response and when a 24 pound cat with claws wants to tell you he isn’t messing around with a hot pink or blond wig that fits over his ears he gets his point across.

Even scarier than my crazy psychotic episodes might be what it would be like to experience a world series game on Halloween… in Philadelphia… not to say that I would not go and wear a witch’s hat if I had the chance, but I feel badly for any unsuspecting visitors (Yankees fans or not) for having to visit the scariest fan town in the nation on the scariest day of the year.

Go Phils and Happy Holler-ween!

My pants are too tight and it ain't the baby

Unbeknown to me – there is a pumpkin shortage going on. I have been dreaming of the nutmeg-ey goodness warm pumpkin bread, pumpkin sauce, of pumpkin pie… all of it. But it’s true, while I was able to  pick up some fabulous looking neck pumpkins when we were at Milky Way Farm yesterday (GREAT place by the way- perfect for kids too), I recently noticed when I was at the store the pumpkin shelves are barren… dry… zip…zilch…nada. And there is a sign noting that the Libbey Pumpkin Company would like everyone to bear with them, as there has been a pumpkin shortage – really? Why didn’t this make the news instead of the Balloon boy? We are on the cusp of the biggest pumpkin celebration of the year- Thanksgiving – and there is no canned pumpkin for when, in a pinch, you mess up your home baked, freshly pick’t pie pumpkins from your local farm? The ones you had planned on prepping months worth of golden pulpy goodness for breads, pies, sauces, and soups for? Not that I am planning on messing up my crooked squash mind you.  Anyway, good luck - there is a pumpkin shortage. On another note, and maybe oddly related- there also happens to be a frozen waffle shortage. Not sure how that happens but it’s also true – hmmm….

Anyway, the Beignets turned out FABULOUS…. I used the recipe from The Merlin Menu blog. The recipe is very basic, very easy and the result is near perfection. The only kicker was that after getting everything ready, dough, hot oil et. al. I actually realized that we didn’t have any powdered sugar – ACK… so they got cinnamon sugar and 10x went on the good old shopping list so a similar situation is avoided in the future. Mucho frustrating.

I have also been on a gourd kick over the last week. The other day at the Garden Store I bought 2 dozen baby gourds, yesterday I bought another dozen. It might be a problem now.  I do not usually buy gourds in the fall, but this year for some reason they have struck me as the perfect little do anything with décor item. While this is not ground breaking news to gourd lovers out there, nor is it me really as an event planner, for some reason this year things in the world of gourds “clicked”. They are easy to maintain – no watering needed (like the Mums I bought and watched slowly die a painful death at our doorstep) - easy to display – grandma’s tureen is perfect or I plan on hollowing them out (thanks for the paddle bit idea Lia) , and they look well… cute. … Martha watch out.

Here they are in my grandmother's tureen. Taylor got a new camera lens as well this week which translates to the fact that we have over 60 pictures of our gourds - so I thought I would do him the honor of using one here for him.

I think that realistically I am mentally morphing deeper into an abyss of ‘all things baby’ at this point which is not surprising given the circumstances, however is definitely an official new first hand personality development for me. Sure, I have always been drawn to the babies, children and children’s things- books, smocked dresses, little socks, blankets, red wagons, old school toys.  I could go on and on. But recently I have noticed that I am finding myself just generally attracted to small things. Mini artichokes peaked my interest on Orangette the other day, this weekend’s baby gourds, the little critter racer’s from the wisteria website I have been pining over (don’t ask), I even bought teenie weenie ditalini past-ini for soup this week - I have developed a penchant for small things. I’ll admit it, and I am watching it get worse daily.  

Maybe it is a compensation for the fact that I am staring down the barrel of the “you are not going to be anything close to small in the coming months” kind of gun (of course the beignets for breakfast and Taylor's delicate but belly filling homemade gnocchi for dinner yesterday certainly don’t help the situation – Taylor is convinced I will need back up warning beeps at the end of this whole baby thing) I am barely even hinting at a notorious ‘baby bump’ yet but it already seems that everything around me is getting smaller already. Maybe I am a sadist. Or it’s an undiscovered self-preservation technique.

There is a commercial on the television that has a woman wearing everything that is oversized– massive bracelets, big huge Texas sized hair, giant hobo bag, even a Great Dane walking by her side. Her friend in the ad tells her she looks like she’s lost weight- naw- “it’s just these big things- they make me look really small”. Well this is my opposites phase. I am attracted to small things so I can start to FEEL bigger… I like the way I work. Really I do… time to put my sneakers on and drag myself outside for a crisp fall walk before I really DO need the ‘beep…..beep…beep’