Checking in…

Hi all! Well we are back and (kind of) moved in. Since we will only be here a few months, it is hard to be inspired to unpack much.

I don’t have any recipes today (haven’t had a chance to cook much yet) but I did want to say how the pig roast went. I made around 450-500 cookies (!) which is the first time I have ever done anything on that scale. It was actually quite easy–I made the dough ahead of time and froze it in rolls and then spent all day Friday (the day before the party) slicing and baking. I chose World Peace Cookies and Bill Yosses’ Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, of which I made some with peanut butter and some with cashew butter. Both were devoured–there were basically none left. I misremembered how many cookies the World Peace recipe made (more than I thought) and so we did have some extras of those–John’s co-workers should be happy.

The party was great fun despite intermittent rainstorms. Alex spent the whole time when it was not raining bonding with the bartender, who was really great about this 3 year old “cleaning” all of the beer bottles behind her. When it was raining she was the only person out of 100-150 of us running gleefully in the rain. The rest of us stayed under the tent. I think she’s caught my cold as a result but it is hard to care since she had so much fun.

The only other news to report is that Sammy crawled out of her pack and play!!! I am so not ready for this. Alex just moved into a toddler bed, so now both kids are out of cribs, just like that. 2 weeks ago my life was sane, now it is not.

When we put Sammy to bed last night, it took about an hour. She can throw toddler-worthy tantrums, unlike Alex, although she does not do it often, thank goodness. Her room is completely empty now, except a mattress and stuffed animals, and she ran around it crazily, bellowing at the top of her lungs, randomly throwing herself on the floor and kicking. When she first got upset it was kinda hard–when they were babies they just cried but now they cry and wail “Mommmmmmmmmyyyyyyy!” which for me is harder. But we set the timer, comforting her at regular intervals, just like we did for Alex as a baby, and by the time she was in full tantrum mode I actually had trouble not giggling at her.

She eventually collapsed asleep around 11 (they went to bed rather late because their schedule was all messed up from this weekend) and stayed asleep, thank goodness. Poor Alex did not go to bed until after Sammy because all of that screaming upset her. This morning when I asked Sammy if she slept well and liked her new bed she answered yes to both. Go figure.

Anyway that is all the news around here. We had the first really sweet local corn of the season last night with local green beans, watermelon, and local lamb summer sausage. It was a wonderful meal.