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The latest thing we've been teaching Henry is getting him to pump his fist in the air while loudly proclaiming one of the following: "Wicked!", "Rock on!", and "Party on Dude!". I tried to convince him that Billy aka Earl Pickens would totally dig it if he went up to him after music time was over and pumped his fist at him and said "Rock on!" Henry didn't think that was such a good idea.

Today's music hour was a huge success as far as my kid was concerned. (Are there other kids on the planet? I had no idea! I thought mine was the only one.) As soon as the guitar came out of the case Henry was frozen in one spot. Unfortunately that one spot happened to be behind and to the right, so it wasn't a very good vantage point. After trying to suggest that perhaps it would be better if we joined everyone else who had the good sense to sit in front of Billy, he might be able to see the actual guitar playing that was going on. Henry wouldn't budge so I had to take his hand and walk him over to the rest of the group. I sat on the floor and Henry stood next to me, mouth slightly agape, eyes unblinking. By the end of the set, he was on his knees with his head in my lap. It was apparently completely cool and totally overwhelming. What wasn't cool was when I sang along ("No mommy sing.") or clapped to the beat ("No mommy clap hands."). I was totally stifled, man.

We made pizza for dinner tonight. We've found an amazing and amazingly easy pizza dough recipe. I thought I'd share it because it really does make one of the best pizza crusts I've ever had and you just can't keep something like that to yourself.

Posted by Jenn at 08:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just got an email from Williams Sonoma advertising the "Perfect-Ending Cupcakes" except I read it as "Neverending Cupcakes". You can imagine my disappointment.

I'm not quite sure where February went. Usually it feels like the longest month of the year despite its being the shortest, thanks to the winter doldrums and cabin fever and colds. Instead this year we've had so many things going on: so many birthdays, so many visits from Grandparents, so much hanging out with friends. If every February is like this it may just become my favorite month. Maybe. Probably not, but it's definitely trumped January.

Henry's been a bit of a piss-whistler lately. He really testing limits, so they say. "Testing limits" translates very quickly into "lots of time spent on the time-out chair". On the plus side, he's been coming out of his shell a bit. He mostly likes to spend a lot of time on the outskirts, checking things out, not necessarily being an active part of whatever rabble is being roused. Last week at our Friday playgroup out of nowhere he charged one of the other moms so she would tickle him. He also spent a lot of time rolling around on the floor, which doesn't seem like great shakes except my kid doesn't roll around on the floor much, especially when other people are around. He's also been making all sorts of growling and roaring sounds which scared us half to death the first few times he made them, our reactions most likely being what bumped them up into his Top Ten Favorite Things To Do.

Tomorrow at playgroup this really cool guy is coming in to host a kid-oriented music hour. I'm betting Henry's head is going to explode when he pulls out his guitar.

Posted by Jenn at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Megan and I went to our first Hafla yesterday. There was lots of good food, which I didn't fully appreciate until later on in the afternoon because who can eat when you're about to dance in front of a group of people, most of whom you don't know? So, yeah, I got up and danced two dances, not alone because that would have been insane and I'm not that talented or confident, but with some of the women who are in the belly dance classes I've been taking. We did two dances, one slow number that we learned over the course of the last month and a half, and another faster (and my personal favorite) dance we learned last September/October.

The other dancers were incredibly inspiring, both for their talent and for their obvious enjoyment of belly dance. It inspired me to really try and learn how to dance, maybe even become half-way decent at it. I'm thinking about talking to my teacher about signing up for a second class so I can go two nights a week instead of one.

The other thing the Hafla inspired me to do was to get over my self-consciousness and think about investing in some sort of costuming other than my hip scarf, which is losing coins and looks sad in general. I don't want anything crazy, just something pretty I can feel comfortable in while practicing and which I can dress up with accessories for the next Hafla. I'm thinking something along the lines of this (because I can wear the skirt separately to practice in but then can pair it with the top for more of a costume) or the one I really want, which is this one, because it comes in the color I really want (maroon) and because every girl should have a coin bra in their wardrobe.

Posted by Jenn at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

My seersucker arrived in the mail earlier this morning. This is especially ironic timing considering what it's doing outside: snowing. School was cancelled today because we're supposed to be getting 3-6" over the course of the day. I don't think there's been a full week of school since sometime in January. Snow is something I never get sick of. Cold weather, yes, definitely, but throw some snow into the mix and it's all good.

Back to the fabric: I forgot that I had ordered an extra 1/2 yard of the seersucker after my mom mentioned if I ordered a little extra, I could make Henry some pants with it too. The question is, will we wear them at the same time, which also leads to the question of whether I can handle being openly mocked by my friends. (And possibly strangers.)

Henry woke up with a fever this morning. He hasn't eaten very much. So far I've tried to entice him with pumpkin pancakes, Cheerio's, crackers, even stooping so low as to give him a glazed donut leftover from last night's trip to Dunkin' Donuts, all to no avail. Spurned donut? He's definitely not feeling well. He did guzzle some orange juice and has since perked up significantly. For a while he was looking as though he might face-plant into the coffee table despite the shrieking and cackling emanating from the speakers in our TV courtesy of Elmo. It's going to be a big movie day over here I think. Right now he's sitting on my lap watching this on youtube over and over again. He loves it. It's got clocks, birds, drums, trains, and ferris wheels (actually gears) in it. What could be better?

Posted by Jenn at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Things I can't be bothered doing:

- paying bills.
- gooshing the spider the crawled up our bathroom wall last night while I was taking a bath.
- go grocery shopping.

Things I can be totally bothered to do:

- make the bed every day. I don't know why I'm doing this, I usually don't, it's just been giving me an unusual sense of accomplishment lately.
- making a draft-stopper for our kitchen door out of brown and blue polka dot fabric. It's cute. It also filled me with an unusual sense of accomplishment.
- laundry. Can't explain it, and don't want to know why.
- make cinnamon/chocolate chip ice cream with my new ice cream maker.
- shop for fringe belly dancing skirts, like this one.
- start cutting out a pattern for a summer shirt I'm going to make for myself. I also ordered some red and white striped seersucker (that's being shipped from all the way from Metairie, Louisiana which is where I used to grocery shop and buy smoothies when I lived in New Orleans) for a pair of pants I got a pattern for a few weeks ago. Also for summer. Kind of had it with the winter over here, if you can't tell.
- panicking slightly about belly dancing at a Hafla this weekend even though there'll be a few of us doing each dance.
- eating stuff that goes well with sour cream.

I should go pay some bills.

Posted by Jenn at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My parents got here early Friday afternoon at approximately 1 PM, which, coincidentally, is about the same time I became chopped liver in the eyes of Henry. Things I'm no longer allowed to do: read a book at naptime/bedtime, tuck Henry into bed, give him a bath, run around the middle of the house chasing after him, play the banjo, be around at all. But let's face it, the one thing that is truly music to my ears would have to be this: "Grammy change diaper! Grammy change diaper! No Mommy's do it, Grammy do it!"

I wonder if I can convince them to stay forever.

Posted by Jenn at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We woke up this morning to find everything iced over. There were cars across the street that looked like sheets of water from a very heavy rain had instantly frozen over them. Henry and I were supposed to crash a playgroup today, but after hearing from Dave that all the streets were bad and everyone he saw on the walk in to work was slipping and sliding, we decided to just stay home. Which meant another day looming ahead of us with no plans, nothing to do, and nowhere we could go. Slightly depressing, but we persevered.

For the past few weeks I've been wanting to make some bread, so after settling Henry down with a quick breakfast, I got out Fanny Farmer and decided to make clover leaf biscuits. It's been a while since I kneaded dough in this house and I quickly remembered why: there's no room on my kitchen counters for it, so I made good use of a large wooden cutting board and the stove top, hopefully not kneading any burners out of whack. Because our house is so cool, I had some trouble finding a source of warmth that was warm enough to get the dough to rise, but not so warm that it would rise too quickly. I tried Fanny Farmer's recommendation of filling a pan with hot water and putting it and the dough (in a separate covered bowl) in the oven. After an hour it hadn't risen much at all so I turned the oven on just until it warmed up and then put the bowl back in and hoped that would do it. It seemed to work out all right.

Henry and I banged on some drums and messed around on iTunes while the dough was rising, then got out the griddle for some pumpkin pancakes. I'm not kidding when I say this: we ate the entire batch, both of us hoping that Dave wasn't planning on coming home for lunch because we didn't want to share. And lest you think that since I'm the adult, I ate a lot more than Henry did, let me just say, you'd be wrong. The kid threw them down one after the other, barely stopping to breathe. I see great things in his future.

While I was making the pancakes I punched down the dough and rolled out a bunch of one inch balls. Three of them in each of the "bowls" in a muffin tin make the cloverleaf. Since the oven had been on to keep the cooked pancakes warm, the stovetop was nice and toasty, so there was no problem trying to figure out what to do with the biscuits for the second rise.

After lunch, while waiting for the biscuits to bake, Henry and I settled under a blanket on the couch and watched "Surf's Up". Well, I watched it. Henry watched the first twenty minutes, but then did a lot of running around. What's the fastest way to get rid of my kid? Ask him for a cuddle. The biscuits came out great. My mom told me after the first time I made these biscuits that the first time she made them they were little round rocks rolling around in the muffin tins. Every time I've made them since hearing that story I've expected to pull hard little rocks out of my oven. So far so good, knock on wood.

Right now Henry's upstairs napping, the dog is next to me snoring, and I'm feeling a little droopy myself. My house smells like bacon, pumpkin pancakes, and fresh-baked bread. If I took a nap, I wonder what I'd dream about? Probably breakfast, which is not a bad thing.

And I just realized, I wrote a post that's mostly about making biscuits. My life is complete.

And Happy Birthday Leo!

Posted by Jenn at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I set some steak out to defrost this morning to have for dinner tonight. For a side I was planning on making a cheese sauce and cooking up some cauliflower. Around 11 it started to really snow and it hasn't stopped since. Now that it's six hours and twenty minutes later, what I really want for dinner is cold-weather comfort food, so I threw the steaks back in the fridge and pulled out a frozen dinner we made from our Thanksgiving turkey/stuffing/mashed potato leftovers. I also really want some pumpkin pancakes. That would be kind of a weird dinner though wouldn't it? Although pumpkin pancakes taste kind of like pumpkin pie, so maybe it wouldn't be that weird.

There's a lot of snow coming out of the sky and landing on the ground right now. It's awesome.

Posted by Jenn at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My friend Karen went into labor this morning and on the way to the hospital they dropped Thomas off at our house. I was curious to see what it would be like being alone with two kids running around the house because lately Dave and I have been having the "Should we have another kid?" conversation. Not that having two boys who were born within weeks of each other, both of whom are now at a fairly reasonable age (meaning that you can reason with them, sort of), is anything like having, say a two year old and a newborn, but you know, I was curious nonetheless.

Since I wasn't sure when Karen's mom was going to be arriving in town, I mapped out the whole day: playtime, lunchtime, movietime, naptime, restofmovietime, playtime, dinnertime, playtime. Little did I know Karen was going to be superwoman and have her baby before the morning was over, but I did get to have Thomas for four hours today and it was a lot of fun. The three of us made play-doh spaghetti, built a fort with tunnels and tents, mastered the harmonica (at least mastered making sounds come out of the harmonica), colored with markers, washed our hands, danced to some music, ate some Spaghettio's, colored some more, washed our hands some more, and generally wreaked havoc, and would you believe somewhere in there I managed to sit down and read some of my book? I only read about four or five pages but still! Hands down the best part was when Thomas' dad showed up and when he asked if he wanted to go home Thomas said "No." And then I got a big hug right before they left.

Feeling pretty darned good over here.

Posted by Jenn at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

My mom sent me this link to The Rules of the Blues.

I would like everyone to know that from now on I will be referring to myself as Fat River Dumpling. I drive a Chevy and both Dave (we'll call him Mangled Mango Madison) and I have a penchant for cheap wine. If I got rid of the computer I'd be totally legit!

Posted by Jenn at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

When we were on sabbatical in Boston a year ago, we happened upon one of those displays at a grocery store that proffers really inexpensive DVD's. We picked up two. One of them is a collection of old cartoons, like the first Casper the Friendly Ghost (which, by the way, is really a sad cartoon) and the other features sing-along "Screen Song" cartoons, as in follow the bouncing ball. We watched the first one right after we got it, but Henry was not interested, so we packed them away someplace clever, and only recently rediscovered them. I unwrapped the sing-along collection since Henry's big into music, and there's one in particular that instantly shot up to the top of the "Things My Kid Will Watch 4 Billion Times in a Row" list. Whenever he says "Watch tuba!", we know he's referring to this:

Posted by Jenn at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's a dreary Fat Tuesday here in Central PA, but we're doing what we can to keep things lively, mainly listening to lots and lots of New Orleans Jazz/cajun music on one of the music channels that came with our cable package. The big tradition in this neck of the woods is scarfing down donuts, so I'm sensing an outing after dinner might be in order.

Here's a Bourbon Street webcam if you'd like to feel like you're part of the action. It's 79 degrees in New Orleans right now. I wonder what that's like...

Posted by Jenn at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Pats lost the Superbowl last night.

This morning Henry received a potty book in the mail.

It's already a crappy week.

HAHHHAAHAAHAHHAHAAA!

*wipes tear from eye*

Oh the wit!

My kid hasn't had a bath since Thursday night. He was supposed to have one Saturday (he's got dry skin so we give him a bath every other night in the winter), but Dave and I were feeling lazy and very much inclined to put it off until Sunday. By the time we realized Sunday probably wasn't going to be a good night for a bath what with the Superbowl on the tv and friends and family over to watch, everything was in full swing. By the time the game was over, it was pretty late, and by the time we wrangled Henry upstairs for bed it was somewhere around 10 o'clock. By the time I got close wrapping up this paragraph I realized this is just a long-winded way of saying I'm going to go upstairs right now, wake Henry up from his nap, and give him a bath because wow, does he ever need one.

Posted by Jenn at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I was in elementary school, once every few months my class would form a single line and we'd all be marched down to the computer lab. I don't remember there being a lot of options for what we could do, but I do remember we played "Oregon Trail" a lot. The object was to successfully travel from Missouri to Oregon while managing food supplies, clothing supplies, money, and health. Your mode of transportation was an ox-pulled wagon (the game takes place in the 19th century), so you also had to account for wagon repairs and associated supplies, such as spare wheels, tongues, and oxen. I loved that game. I was also extremely lousy at it.

The other day I was perusing the various applications on Facebook and came across an Oregon Trail app and after dancing around and clapping my hands with glee I signed up. I've been addicted ever since. I have four other members in my party, Dave, Megan, Phoebe, and Mel. So far only Dave has died. Of cholera. After breaking his elbow. He's so delicate.

I'm really enjoying being eleven again.

Posted by Jenn at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)