currently... this time of year

Currently is a weekly link-up that I happily co-host with ♥ Randalin ♥ of Harvesting Kale each week. We hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using our themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. What have you been dreading, anticipating, thankful, watching, choosing this week? Over here, we have been...

Dreading my annual "fall cough" which has set in and MEH! I hate it. Everyone can just stop side-eyeing me right this second. I am not sick, thanksomuchforsprayingmewithLysol. I am like the ever-weakly-coughing person in the room. Super cough drops and medicine ease it a bit but it's just this chronic thing that happens this time every year and takes like a month to figure itself out. I have consumption? Yes. I am a tragic heroine. Like of the Edith Wharton variety, obvi.

Anticipating getting some things checked off the list this weekend! My project-per-month PROJECT is going nowhere fast because the thrift store gods have been pooping on my every effort to find a decidedly narrow AND cool tallboy for this catch-all corner of my kitchen. This weekend I'm going to try TJ Maxx and a couple of used furniture places and up the budget if need be. I'm starting to realize that not having a garbagey junk corner in my kitchen has become more important to me than I thought it would. We are also getting the kids Halloween costumes assembled and you guys, Otto's is going to be epic. That's the tease. Just wait! He thought of it himself and it makes me die laughing.      

Thankful for my wonderful family and friends. I don't want to brag or anything but I am surrounded by the most rad people in the world. I just wish we lived a hell of a lot closer to most of them than we do. Our Arizona weekend reminded me. I knew it would, and it did.

Watching Etta talk. In the past week she has added fish, pretty, elephant, boat, and Cookie Monster to her roster of words. Amazing! And with every new word she seems to be a much more light-hearted little lady. Not surprising, she has a lot of opinions and now she can start sharing them. That would certainly take the edge off. Also Watching Otto get the knack of sounding words out and reading/spelling things. He is doing this thing now where it's like, "If bat is b-a-t then cat is k-a-t and rat is r-a-t and mat is m-a-t." And we are like, "You are awesome!!!!!"

Speaking of awesome, Rob captured this moment which will be re-shown to every girlfriend forever and ever and eventually played at the wedding (volume mandatory):  http://distilleryimage7.s3.amazonaws.com/05159a18354111e3895422000ae81dd2_101.mp4

Choosing soup. Soup season! Soup me up! Ladle the soup on my face I love soup! Fall is the best for sweaters and leaves and bottomless soup occasions. What are your favorite soups and soup recipes? I have been meaning to recreate this amazing creamy chicken and wild rice mushroom tarragon soup that I made about a year ago... it was one of those moments where you perfectly combine like three recipes and it works out beautifully and you are too busy chowing down to write down exactly what you did. Fool! Boy I've been craving that soup lately. Mmmmmm.
     

That was this week. Here are next week's themes: 

loving, listening, worrying, reading, singing 

a little back to school cutie

Otto's first day of school 2013/2014. The hamming is strong with this one.

Awww, my little guy. This will be his 3rd year attending the Montessori preschool and it is brain boggling how much he's grown as a scholar, a good citizen, a silly goof (so important to grow as a goof!), and just as a human who won't stop growing! Otto is popular with the other kids and with the parents. He's sweet and polite but he's also not afraid to challenge anyone to a game of super ninjas and he WILL be the bad guy, you bet on it! And you watch out cuz he saw a REAL badguy once, getting handcuffed across the street one time, so he KNOWS about bad guy stuff first hand... He loves math, writing, games, and puzzles. He is obsessed with the fact that another boy at school told him he can't play chess against himself. We hear that story like every other day and yes, Otto, yes you can you little amazing awesome person! When it comes to puzzles he still prefers taking on challenges he know he will dominate. As in, he'd rather wow you by speed-putting together a 24 piece puzzle versus challenging himself with a 100 piece one. But that's cool, I get it, I do. I'm kinda that way too. He loves being the oldest kid in his class this year. He started out as the youngest, being mentored by the older kids in the 2 1/2 - 5 year old classroom. This year he is basically a "senior" and loves to show the littler kids the ropes. He has a heart of gold, a wild imagination, he's smart as a whip, and I just love this wonderful little guy who is going to rock preschool this year. My super star.

so funny

At bedtime last night Otto told the funniest joke in the world.

We've added don't laugh contests to our nighttime repertoire of discussing the day's best and worst events, reading, thumb wars, and no blinking contests. Last night we were having a don't laugh contest and we were both playing for keeps. No one was gonna give. I said, in a sad, serious voice of drama, "you should think of the saddest thing you could ever think of like a sad sad little fish swimming alone and crying and another mean big fish swims up next to it and farts and laughs and swims away." Otto laughed... I won!

sidenote: I know. I KNOW, but I wanted to win.

So we had another contest and we were making the most serious, meanest, saddest, squished up faces ever and Otto said in a very very sad, serious voice, "You know what I'm thinking about?"

"No, what?"

"I'm thinking about the saddest thing I can think of in the whole world... and it's an elephant pooping on a worm."

And then I died laughing.

He is the funniest person in the world. Bedtimes are my favorite favorite favorite. The end.

a surprise cake

The afternoon before my birthday Otto found out they would be making me a surprise cake. It was all he could think about for the next 24 hours, but he knew he needed to keep the cake a secret.

That night, when we were talking about his day, I asked him what his favorite part of the day was. "Well, when we got off the bus we didn't go anywhere. We didn't go to the store." Then he looked at me with the most excited face and rolled away from me, burying that poker face in a pillow. Then, to himself, mumbling in this excited run-on kind of way, "and it's a mix and I don't know what it is except you can make WHATEVER YOU WANT with it like maybe you can make cake, but not cake, but maybe you make pizza and you don't put anything on it, or cupcakes, or whatever you want, and it's going to be so yummy, hahahahaha!"

He had me fooled, I suspected Rob and Otto were plotting to surprise me with homemade pizza. Until the next afternoon...

Otto had an early afternoon appointment at the audiologist and afterwards we had about an hour to spare. It was my birthday and I was off work early, so I decided to take him to a local bakery for a treat. Try as he might, he gave me some clues about the cake that was waiting at home...

"We can go to the bakery, but I don't want cake how about a cookie or anything but cake."

"Too bad THIS will be our last sugar of the day!"

I was beginning to suspect. After we'd picked up Etta she was a little grumbly on the drive home.

Otto: Oh I think Etta is feeling bad because she wants to see Daddy and have cake!

Me: Cake?

Otto: What?! Oh there's no cake. Etta doesn't know that there isn't any cake ::nervous laugh::

While we waited for Rob to come home for dinner (and there was a mysterious item, covered in a cloth, on the kitchen counter) Ot mentioned, "Mommy, we'll have some more sugar soon! But nothing. We're not having anything."

Keeping the secret was burning him up. Once Rob got home the winking started. Otto and Rob winking and winking to each other, hilarious. We went out to dinner and then came home. "Just lay down on the couch Mommy and go to sleep. Your birthday is over, that's the end. Stay right there, don't come in the kitchen." He and Rob ran off to the kitchen...

My surprise cake. The best cake I've ever seen. Kept completely secret by the sweetest boy in all the world. We all gobbled cake and ice cream. The end.

currently link up | I'm Darth Maul

Currently is a weekly link-up with ♥ Randalin of Harvesting Kale ♥ and I am her happy co-host each week. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. What have you been hoping, reading, wearing, making, playing this week? I hope you all had amazing Mother's Day weekends! Over here, we have been...

Hoping for sunshine, day by day. We got spoiled by an early summer, but it really is usually chilly and rainy here until about July 4th... so now that the weather is back to "normal" we are all ::frown, grumble, scratch head, stamp foot, shake fist::

Reading the same book I've been reading since February and it is ALL ABOUT CORN! (Meg if you're reading this bwahaha! ps. See: Weezin the Juice, below, always makes me think of you!) The book is called The Omnivore's Dilemma and it's great, an exploration of the path from "farm" (or factory farm/science lab) to fork. Unfortunately my best friend and I who are book clubbing the book are incredibly bad at making our book club dates and so we are only 6 chapters in and so far it's been a LOT of corn talk. We joke that we are unwilling corn experts. Because. Dudes. For real. We know a lot about corn now. The book has already made a big impact in the way I eat and shop for my family though, mainly when it comes to organic meats. I realized that it is healthier and more ecologically responsible and less cruel to eat organic meat occasionally than it is to be a vegetarian who eats non-organic eggs or dairy every day. It's counter-intuitive, but true. My husband is that kind of vegetarian and I am working on getting him on the organic bandwagon -- I don't care if he ever does or doesn't eat meat but I do care about the things that are IN the food my family eats and I also care about what happened TO the animal during its life. Moderation, for sure, but when I have the option I'm choosing organic always now... and I feel really great about making that choice for me and my fam.

||end corn talk thank ya for your time|| ps. If you want to talk more about food stuff just let me know or if you have questions about it or the book, I'm happy to go on and on and on, clearly :)

Wearing closed toe shoes but I want to be wearing open toe ones! I need to deal with these half-painted, beat toes of mine, like yesterday. Otto is wearing tanks again, at least on the warm days, and I secretly love that they are his passion and that they are so tacky, vom vom vom! It's an area where I can smile and let him be independent while shaking my head because he looks like an early 90s slacker from Southern California. Like Encino Man. I just need to find him pint-sized flojos.

ps. Weezin the Juuuuuuice ::wiggles fingers at YOU:: ::makes cheek/air sound over and over and over::

Making banana bread in a few minutes. Yum! Loretta has been making strides in learning words and babbles the most sweet-sounding Lilliputian gobbledeegoo while pointing and nodding and waving her arms around. LOVE. Otto has been making insanely great jokes, like mind-blowing. Here, see:

Otto: Want to hear a joke?
Rob: Okay
Otto: Say 'macaroni'
Rob: Macaroni.
Otto: You said 'smack a pony' I'm calling the police.
Rob: Haha
Otto: [pretending to be on the phone] Hello police, my daddy is going to smack a pony.
Rob: Um
Otto: The police are coming.
Rob: Is this still part of the joke?
Otto: YOU'RE UNDER ARREST [karate chops his dad]
Rob: Ow, police don't just hit people!
Otto: I'm not the police, I'm Darth Maul.
Rob: Huh?
Otto: Can I have a popsicle?

Playing in the front and back yard every single day and hope to keep doing just that, every non-rainy day, til the end of time. This weekend we will be playing with Katherine's girls at Rylee's Angry Birds birthday and I'm excited about that and Otto, well he is ecstatic! I'm also freaked out that so many of Otto's buddies are turning 5 and 6 and entering grade school.

That was this week. Here are next week's themes: 

eating, loving, missing, moving, taking

Life Style {mix and match Otto}

Thanks to all of you who were cool enough to link up to these Life Style posts the past few weeks! I'm changing the format of these posts to remove the linky going forward but only because I had to make a decision if I was going to pay for a subscription to the Linky service (I was using a month free trial) and since there were only a handful of linkers each week I couldn't justify the expense. Maybe someday I'll try again but for now we're kickin it old school.

Otto's style is something that's very precious to me even especially as it becomes less and less my-style-for-him and more and more just his own jam. His 4th birthday is coming up in just a few weeks (I'm not even going to talk about that) and he's really come into his own when it comes to what clothes he will wear and how he will wear them (answer: he will wear them like-a-crazy-awesome). I still have the final say on most of what's in his closet. I have appointed myself the licensed character gatekeeper and try SUPER hard to keep that stuff firmly in the land of pajamas. Otto would wear obnoxious characters splashed across every square inch of his body, 24/7, if I let him. But outside of controlling the options, we pretty much let Otto wear whatever he wants. He is so awesome.

Otto's Fall 2012 look book, hee hee. Our go-to outfit this season is a warm hat, a tee, a sweat shirt, comfy pants, and more often than not some fingerless gloves. Captain puts stickers on the tops of his sneakers which I think is pretty neat. He loves accessories like whoa and comfy pants are a big priority. Sometimes I try to put him in hip little jeans his Nana sent and he'll test the fabric between his fingers and look at me all judgey and say, "I don't know. These don't seem very comfy?" As if I'm trying to pull something. Sweat pants it is. Every. Single. Day. Luckily I found some really cute ones on Zulily recently for pennies on the dollar.

I am an emo mom who loves to travel down memory lane and be all weepy so I thought I'd show Otto's style evolution. Here he is this time last year when he'd just turned 3 ♥

And two years ago ♥

And three years ago ♥

Look at me with that dapper little gent! He was such a munch. Loretta wears that little red sweater now. ps. Guys I want my hair back. That is all. And then let's just go ahead and go there. Four years ago ♥ 

Stream of consciousness moment --> You guys. OMG you guys. It flies doesn't it? How do I have a four year old? Every day they change just a teeny little bit and most days you don't even notice it and then suddenly you have this person who is sounding out words and coloring in the lines and won't wear uncomfy jeans and sneakily asks his dad for a candy cane while you're in the shower because you already said no but then interrupts your shower to wash the candy cane off his sticky little grub hands because these little ones have no shame! This awesome evolving person. It's nuts.

And that is how this week's style post spun out of control. Brought to you by Bailey's in her 4am coffee. Tomorrow we'll talk about Loretta turning 9 months old, having 5 teeth, and standing. Jiminy Freaking Christmas. 

Vanilla Cinnamon Pear | Easy Ways to Spruce Up French Toast

Otto hates yummy food, especially french toast, and never food parties with his breakfast. He is an incredibly serious person who is also so so so very shy. We are all super boring and quiet at our house and our favorite pastime is to sit around staring at each other for hours with our hair in our eyes, while making frowny faces and whispering about rocks.

Lies! Anyways, here are some easy additions you can make to your favorite french toast recipe to really make that toast sing:

- cook in butter, no substitutes!
- sprinkle ground cinnamon or nutmeg or ginger or really any spice cake spice into the mix
- add a splash of vanilla extract, almond extract, or really any delicious extract into the mix
- dice up some fruit and sprinkle on top, then cook it right into the toast when you flip
- for a prettier version, cook the fruit up separately and ladle on top

There you have it. Simple food, made well, using really great ingredients. So delicious.

In recent news: I can't wait til Thanksgiving! This week is dragging already because IT ISN'T THURSDAY YET like every second until it is Thursday and then I will be happy. Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is on Wednesday night and I think that will officially kick off the holiday for me. We are making a Thanksgiving cake this year that I'm hoping is gloriously good looking. An ombre affair that I'm hoping is worth taking pictures of and sharing here.

What's your favorite Thanksgiving dish? Mine, by a mile, is green bean casserole. French's onions and me, we are life partners ♥

What's your favorite holiday movie? Mine, by a mile, is Love Actually. TNT needs to GET ON IT and start putting that shiz on heavy rotation already, yo!

xo, happy NOT THURSDAY YET.

craziest thing; best picture

Rob took this photo on his phone while walking with Otto through our neighborhood. I guess a tow truck dumped this truck upside down (no one was in it when it got flipped) in the middle of the street. Otto's mind? Blown.

haha! Happy Saturday, guys.

through the eyes...

Otto took my camera for a joy ride. I really love this so much.

eating elephant ears

sure, i talk a good game about eating some fair eats at the fair, then Otto comes along and puts the smack down...

kid ate the bejeezus outta that "elephant ear" which i'd always known as fry bread and who cares what you call it, you eat it, you eat it all, fool! then you eat the corn!

then you corn dog photo bomb!

then you make a terrible mistake and decide against chasing this all down with some frozen NY cheesecake on a stick. which you shall regret for days and days and days.

food. happy food.

we also met up with Ot's sweet friend Hazel and hit the kiddie rides. Otto's fair face makes my heart go pitter patter.

so much fun. i could watch Otto at the fair all day. and can't wait til next year when we can maybe take Loretta on a tame ride or two. also hopefully next year she won't demand to eat just so she can be all distracted by fair things and expose the mom's boob to the fair air over and over as she looks all around but still insists she must eat and also, wait, distracted, boob exposure, and tearing away of the coverup blankie many many times, but no really, hungry, except wait, this person hasn't glimpsed your boob yet, must eat, cannot focus, eat, just kidding, eat eat, but no, but yes, hello here's my mom's boob guy dressed like a mattress, i am hungry, no i am not... and so on. because that part was less fun. also while she was doing that Otto totally bogarted ALL THE FOOD.

for reals though, i just love that we're making this an annual family tradition, and Eugene's county fair is just the right size. A+