Cooking with Evey

It's Saturday afternoon and I am spending time with Eve. Or rather, she is spending time with me.

I am in the kitchen at the peninsula preparing a Cheddar Jalapeño Cornbread and she is on the other side of the peninsula. She has pulled up a chair and immediately began scanning the countertop's vast wealth of food and ingredients.

She wants to help.

Eve is one of those wonderful kind of people who lets you know in no uncertain terms that she will be a part of your life and that you will like it. She's very adept at ignoring body language (what 2 year old isn't?) and plunges herself into any project I am doing with great vim and vigor. I have watched this child push herself in the middle of a group of older children, beam a dimpled smile at them and win over children twice her age... children who had earlier shunned her as unsuitable play-friend material.

I mixed the dry ingredients. Eve saw the sugar lying on top of the dry mixture. She grabbed a cracker sitting on the counter and plunged her fat little hands into the dry mixture, trying to grab as much sugar on top of her cracker.

"No thank you," I say as politely as possible and quickly take it away from her.

I add the milk and eggs. "Don't touch," I warned her.

"Counta da eggs! One. Two. Fee. Four." She eyes me, hoping I'll look elsewhere. "No touch," I remind her.

With lightning speed she confiscates the whisk. "I stir! I stir," she celebrates. I tell my nerves to hush as I marvel at her "skill". Or tenacity.

Next came the shredded cheese. Oh, the cheese. How I forgot how much she loves cheese. I pour 2 cups of shredded cheddar in the bowl. I barely catch her from plunging both her hands into the bowl. I offer her a bowl of her own. She shoves the entire bowl into her mouth, pushing the bits of cheese with both hands. I love watching 2 year olds eat.

I add the green onions. "Hep you! Hep you!" She runs to the utensil drawer and pulls out a very dull knife. It's practically round; it's used for spreading soft cheeses. She helps me cut and we put them in the bowl. She stirs the concoction once more.

Next I cut up the Jalapeño. She nearly chomps on a ripened pepper and bawks at me as I rip it from her hands. "It's ouchy, Eve. Ouchy." Sweet mercy, this child keeps me hopping.

We mix the last of the ingredients. I pop it in the oven, thankful that it's safe from little hands.

Truthfully: I'm exhausted. I can't do one thing without Eve wanting to be in the mix. Ironically, this is one of the things I adore about her.

Years from now, I will have a clean-er kitchen. My grocery shopping trips will be quicker. My laundry will stay folded when I put it in the basket. I'll cook dinner wicked fast.

Something tells me that it won't matter and that I'll miss my little helper.

Thanks for your help, Evey.

Discipline

Queen Anne's Lace

Hello, Abandoned Blog-

I have missed you, but I haven't. I have decided that I want my time to matter. Sometimes blogging matters; lately something else has.

I have learned a great deal about myself lately.

I started working out... I've been a bit more regimented than I usually am. This involves getting up earlier than my family and picking up cold metal objects and having some man on a DVD convincing me that this discipline will result in something wonderful. It has resulted is something wonderful, but not what I expected.

It has resulted in discipline.

I didn't know I could like discipline. The artsy, right side of my brain tells me to shun all things rigid. But I find an odd freedom in being disciplined.

It has splashed over into other areas of my life. I reserve a portion of the afternoon for a hobby of mine which I hope will turn into a business one day. I quietly work on my hobby with no one prodding me on. It's all because of working out, really. When you're disciplined in one area of life, it feels amazing to be disciplined in other areas.

The bad side to discipline is when it turns to rigidity, when it pushes away the people or ideologies that matter more. Discipline and flexibility need to work together for beautiful balance.

This morning my flexibility is being tested. My sweet husband struggles with epilepsy and it has reared its ugly head once more. On "seizure day", everything stops. Schedules are tabled. Doctor is called. Sometimes a hospital is in order.

I'm not sure what is most evil about epilepsy... the way it disrupts or the way it corrupts the image of Dan. It reduces the beauty in our life and we must fight to not let it become us.

This morning I have a yearning to sleep and to design and to sleep again. I want rest to restore my mind and design to recreate that which was lost.

Discipline and flexibility. May the dance be perfected.

Pizza

I must have suffered a severe blow to the head because I took my husband up on the offer to go out to dinner tonight.

Did I forget the screaming and bouncing 2 year old who accompanied us to the Chinese restaurant?

Or the time she declared the Thai food in the Noodles restaurant to be "STINKY POOPS! STINKY POOPS!" (That's the worst smell she could think of.)

Upon being seated at the Pizzeria, Eve immediately confiscated the pepper, salt and red pepper flakes. She began to shake them upon her napkin. She had several napkins because she took all our napkins as well. Normally a grown person can stand up to a 2 year old and get the napkins back, but after you see what she does to them, you really don't want them back.

There was a silver springy contraption in the middle of the table which held several specials that the restaurant had to offer. Eve immediately ripped out the offers and began licking the contraption, which we promptly stopped.

After eating chicken nuggets, french fries and noodles, she screamed "Mine! Mine!" upon seeing that Dan and I ordered pizza for ourselves. It's hard to eat pizza with someone screaming in your ear, but it can be done. I'm that talented.

Throughout the dinner she eyed the food at other tables and declared that she should also have "JUICE! JUICE". The poor table next to us was celebrating a birthday. Lucky for them, we have our own personal lover of birthdays who noticed that she was not partaking of "BIRDAY CAKE! WAN SOM BIRDAY CAKE."

One day, Dan and I will see a young couple sitting in a pizzeria with a toddler and smile appreciatively at them. But for today, that couple is us. We're ordering in next time.

Morning and Evening

The days are just packed.

With a young lady who is extremely creative and smart and funny and conniving.

She is the one who asks questions that older people would be embarrassed about, but she wants to know. Bodily function questions, mostly.

She's also the one who told us that her "close friend" (a boy) at school didn't want his sister to know who she was at the School Open House tonight.

She's the one who wants to know how we're getting to heaven. "Is Jesus going to come down and dig us up from the ground?"

She's the one who wears a breezy cotton scarf for a little spring color.

She's my Morgan.

Then there's a two year old who is toddle-y and energetic and a bit mischievous.

She found out how to open the peppermill tonight. A dozen little black balls of fun bounced on the kitchen table as I ran to stop her.

She's also the one who seizes my (sealed) vitamin bottles when I get home from the grocery store. I recently learned that she likes how they rattle and has been hiding them behind the couch cushions.

She's immensely concerned that everyone has their water bottles and shoes. It's just her "thing".

And tonight when she held a precious little 4 month old baby girl, she sang "Jesus loves me" with her whole heart, the way it should be sung.

She's my Eve.

My heart is full.

"And there was evening (Eve), and there was morning (Morgan). " Genesis 1, parentheses mine

Sanity

I'm cutting down on blogging because, well... you'll see that I'm the only sane one around here.

My in-laws brought the kids these Sesame characters.
And then I found them like this. Disturbing, I know.

I can't tell you how many times a day I find Eve doing a headstand.
I've never seen anything like it.

Morgan made a bathroom out of Legos. The seat of the toilet flips up and down.

Not to be outdone, Dan spent a good deal of time on a Saturday afternoon making this gumball machine out of Legos. It's a clown head... It actually works.

1. Open the head of the clown.

2. Put gumballs (or Lego pieces) into head.

3. Pull clown's nose out.

4. Catch the treat as it comes out the clown's mouth.

Mini Bathroom Renovation

Well, don't I feel a little rusty? I have been enjoying a wonderful season of family life and dropped clear off the blogisphere. I totally recommend a sabbatical.

Wanted to share some pics of my latest endeavor.

Project: Master Bath.

First, I would like to acknowledge that the design of the walls was not mine... I took it straight from The Lettered Cottage. Because she's genius and, hey, why reinvent the wheel?

That being said, the REASON I wanted to redo the bath was because we were storing everything on our countertops and it was cluttered. Drove me bonkers.

Here's what we had done:

1. Rewired electrical.

Our new medicine cabinets were so tall that we had to have the electrical boxes moved. While the contractors had the walls open, we asked them to put an electrical outlet behind each medicine cabinet so we could plug in razors, etc. *love it*

2. Walls

We had the walls painted a creamy white and a light gray color after they were repaired. We also had the contractor put wood panels BEHIND the drywall so that we could screw our towel bar DIRECTLY into the wood without using anchors. That was our contractor's idea. *love*

3. Cabinets

We had the cabinets painted a color called Cement Gray.

But it's not flat gray, it has some blues in it, somehow.

4. New hardware and faucets.

Delta Dryden faucets. *swoon* LOVE these. I chose them because Dan is a big guy and I didn't want him to have to delicately switch on and off the water. I bought these on buy.com for about HALF the price of other stores.

5. Bling

Spa towelette, anyone?

Marble soap dispenser?

HomeGoods store, of course.

6. Bonsai

For that spa feeling, a beautiful life-giving plant.

7. Wall outlets

These porcelain wall outlets are available at Restor*ation Hard*ware for beaucoup bucks. I found some lookalikes at Lowes for about $5 each. They are beautiful to feel.

We have a few things yet to do, but the bulk of the work is done.

We want to add a few medium wood toned things to the walls to warm up the color and contrast. And add a few knobs to the cabinets.

We hired this job out. It took several men 4 days to do this work. Some days they worked until dinnertime. We were glad to have someone else do it instead of us, since we can't have our bathroom undone for long periods of time.

We love our new bathroom renovation. For a fraction of what a whole new bathroom costs, we got some serious bang for our buck.

Hope you enjoy your home and its organization as well.

For the Grandparents

Some pics of Morgan, the Toothinator and Eve the Troublemaker.

Please note that I have more pics of Eve b/c I was home with her. No favortism. :)

Eve's post-nap fashion.

Morgan makes awesome pretzels!

Morgan made a sign to encourage the dogs at the dog sled race we watched.

Lost front teeth. So cute.

Eve's totally kissable little puffy cheeks.

Future photographer?

The look of guilt:

Sick at home. A rare smile during sickness.

Eve likes to wear goggles. That's all I have to say about that.