these days

Naptime is fading fast around here..... she gives in once every 3 or 4 days for a brief one, but that's it.

And so now she's early(er) to bed, early(er) to rise.  I kinda like it.  Even the getting up earlier part.

Sort of.

As long as we aren't rushing off anywhere, I'm pretty into it.

Brought the record player out of the shed, where it has been sitting for quite some time. (and before that, in another shed, at another house...)  Enjoying looking through records and having their sweet sounds fill the house.  Their scratchy, slow-down-and-just-enjoy-yourself kind of sounds.

So far, Claire is digging Elton John and Willie Nelson, Dave Brubeck and Classical Spanish Guitar, not so into Gladys Knight, and likes to look at the pictures of Joni Mitchell.

I hope she likes the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Papa was away for several days this week and it was just us girls.  He was up visiting Nana and Pipop and the rest of his (and our) clan.  We couldn't quite make it work to join him, so we stayed put and held down the fort.  Kept the fire burning, played and painted in our pjs, read lots of books.  I suppose that's what our days usually look like, but they were a little different of course without our main man around.  We did some cooking.  Pureed butternut and kuri squash soup with onions and apples, bread, cookies....

We ate a ton of clementines.  I picked them up along with some raw cashews and wine and some of my other favorite snacky things.  Good coffee in a few different grinds, trying to find the perfect grind for the chemex.   Splurged a little on munchies and such for our unvacation, I suppose.

Claire did not drink the wine.  Or the coffee.

My favorite kind of cookie jar.  One that is filled to the brim and spilling out the sides... we shared some with friends at a little mama-baby play date.  Love my mamatime ladies, and their sweet babes.

Hard to believe our little ones are all on the brink of turning two.  A couple of us talked about how we were kind of surprised that out of all of us (11 in the group) only one has gone on to have another babe so far.  Isn't two years apart a fairly typical 'spacing'? we thought...

Maybe three is the new two.....  or maybe just one (child) is perfectly wonderful.

"Whatchoo doin' mommy-o?" (this is what she calls me lately, no clue where it came from) "Making bread, baby-o, (I feel I must return the silly name- it makes any conversation a bit more fun after all) want to help?"  "Oh, YES!"

And that about sums up our week.  Papa is home now.  He got in last night right around bed time.  Claire took him on a tour of his own house, as if he'd never been here or had been away for weeks. "See my new paintin'? See my new rocking chair? See my new fireplace? See my new chair? See my new baby doll?"  He played along, only reminding her once or twice that he'd seen all of those things, maybe aside from the new painting, many times before.  That he had only been gone for five days.  I wonder if five days seems like weeks to a not-quite-two year old?

Lots of papa time today.  Leftover Indian food for lunch.  Dosas (yay!) brought all the way from Jersey from one of my very favorite Indian restaurants by my sweet mister.  He also brought back some good bagels.  (The South, I must say, is not known for good bagels.  If you like bagels and you live in the South after not having lived in the South for a while, then surely you are already aware.  I am open to suggestions should you be a local and know where to procure a decent bagel.)  More soup for dinner tonight.  Potato leek.  Soon to be made easier with the immersion blender I ordered and am anxiously awaiting.

Less internet time is working out nicely.  Never turned the computer on this past Sunday- even though that meant no Pandora streaming into the house.  There's the record player, after all.  It was nice not to be sucked into this or that for "just a minute" (er, hour).

And on that note, time to shut it down~